This Week In Chip News

Story #1: Frito-Lay Angrily Introduces Line Of Healthy Snacks
From The Onion:

"Here," said Frito-Lay CEO Al Carey as he disgustedly tossed a bag of the company's new Flat Earth-brand snack crisps onto the lectern during a meeting with shareholders and members of the press. "Here's some shit that's made from beets. I hope you're all happy now that you have your precious beet chips with the recommended daily serving of fruit, or vegetables, or whatever the hell a 'beet' is."



...According to Frito-Lay's website, the new snacks contain one-third of the fat, one-half of the calories, and one-1,000th of the irresistible flavor of Frito-Lay's classic line of potato and corn chips. The presence of trans-fats and saturated oils is avoided by employing a cooking process "strikingly similar to the method used to create particle board."

Story #2: Kettle Chips Beta
An apparently true and non-Oniony story of new limited-edition chips from Kettle:

Chili Lime is perhaps the most unsurprising of the group — it's good and spicy and sugary but we've done this before — while Dragon 5 Spice and Island Jerk are both extremely complex flavors with interesting and intense spice blends. The Royal Indian Curry is honestly one of the best chips I've ever eaten, as a general curry lover. And most importantly, there's Aztec Chocolate. That's right, a chocolate potato chip, made with actual organic Dagoba chocolate powder, cinnamon, chili.. wow. I can't imagine eating a bag, but I'm glad I got a chance to eat at least one.

Declaration of Normal People Independence

From an upcoming book by Jonathan Schwarz (of A Tiny Revolution) and Mike Gerber, a pretty funny bit called Declaration of Independence:

We, therefore, the Normal People of this Planet, who don’t care who’s on the money, or think that anybody will (or should) remember any of us in 500 years, do solemnly publish and declare that all the world’s Leaders are hereby relieved of their positions; that our feeling is, enough already with the Jihads and the Crusades and Glorious Struggles and Finest Hours; that we believe we will be much better off without them, relying for our safety instead on our inability to organize a three-person trip to 7-Eleven, much less sustained armed conflict; that it’s time to get this Leader Island idea off the ground; that if, once the Leaders have been sent to the Island, any of us develop Leader-tendencies, we will encourage such Persons to develop a Hobby, or get them a Date with somebody Nice, and this will help them remember what’s important. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our dearest Hope that we can finally get some Peace and Quiet. We are not Kidding.

Happy Armistice Day

I'm reading Rascal, by Sterling North, to my kids. As chance would have it, we read this part yesterday. Happy Veterans Day.

In Brailsford Junction the celebration began early. The decorated fire engines, automobiles, and horse-drawn conveyances crowded the streets in a noisy, happy parade. I interwove the spokes of my bicycle wheels with red, white and blue crepe-paper ribbons. With Rascal in the basket, I pedaled through the throng, ringing my bell as a small contribution to the joyous pandemonium. At eleven o'clock the fire whistle and all the church and schoolbells in town joined the chorus.

During the afternoon my elation slowly subsided, and I began oiling my muskrat traps for the season ahead. Rascal was always interested in whatever I was doing. But when he came to sniff and feel the traps, a terrible thought slowed my fingers. Putting my traps aside I opened one of the catalogues sent to trappers by the St. Louis fur buyers. There, in full color, on the very first page was a handsome raccoon, his paw caught in a powerful trap.

How could anyone mutilate the sensitive, questing hands of an animal like Rascal? I picked up my raccoon and hugged him in a passion of remorse.

I burned my fur catalogues in the furnace and hung my traps in the loft of the barn, never to use them again. Men had stopped killing other men in France that day; and on that day I signed a permanent peace treaty with the animals and the birds. It is perhaps the only peace treaty that was ever kept.