A side of consumerism, please

In Houston, there are more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in America. It might shake out to like, five restaurants per person, I'm not sure. Either way, it's not hard to eat fast food for your entire life, which is sort of what I did growing up. I spent a lot of my time at Wendy's, and as a kid I somehow could eat a spicy crispy chicken sandwich AND a chicken ranch pita all in one meal. I wasn't chunky in the slightest, but somehow this was a normal meal for me. No one stopped me from eating this, like, "hey, probably that is just like, Juvenile Diabetes Combo #2, maybe you should lay off the two kinds of chicken meals, 14 year old girl."

The best fast food place ever, though (besides Sonic Drive In! You can EAT in your CAR. But you're parked! It's like eating in a restaurant like a normal human being, but instead, it's in your car!) is Whataburger. As in What a Burger! Only, my entire childhood, I thought it was WATER-BURGER, because that's how people pronounce "what a" in Texas. It never occurred to me that a water burger is not a real thing and doesn't even make sense as a fake-thing. Nor did I question why the "Breakfast Taquitos" were actually breakfast burritos but they just called them the entirely wrong Spanish word. That's just how we roll in Texas.

I was back in Texas last week and went to Wal-Mart four different times. Now, before you blame Wal-Mart for destroying the mom and pop shops and screwing over workers and being giant corporate evilly bastards, let me just say that Wal-Mart sells things for CHEAP. That's why it's awesome. Plus they sell everything you could ever want--they have a NAIL SALON in the Wal-Mart, for goodness sakes. The brilliant thing about Wal-Mart is their pricing. Everything ends in weird numbers that trick you into thinking it's a steal. Like, oh this lantern is $8.87. That seems so cheap! Much cheaper than the other guys who sell it for $8.99. Suckers, I'm buying this lantern here. Granted, I don't actually NEED a lantern. In some sort of power outage, normally I spend the entire time looking for a working flashlight and then batteries, and then by the time I discover my flashlight is dim and sucky, the power comes back on. But I can't pass up an $8.87 lantern.

The other genius thing they do is package things together. Like, oh here's some toothpaste, but included is also a SMALLER tube of toothpaste. That's like more toothpaste! Why wouldn't you buy this tube that comes with some travel toothpaste? Because you're a moron, that's why, and all you do is shop at Target. Which, actually is pretty awesome too, due to the Dollar Spot. I once bought a sake set from the Dollar Spot for $2.50 (don't get me started on their screwed up pricing system, I guess calling it the Dollar Spot allows them to consider anything in American dollars as fitting that definition, and therefore I always cave and buy whatever they sell). I've never purchased sake in my entire life, and it sort of seems like hassle to pull out this little set and pour the sake into a sake jar just to pour that into my tiny cup. That's why I eat food straight out of the pan at home, usually. It's very efficient.