Sitting next to me is a bag of Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch Doritos. It’s one of the ‘small’ ones that go for 99 cents. My local 7/11 lines these up at the point of sale, and as I stand in line with my beer or (as was the case today) my tallboys of Arizona Green Tea, I always find myself drawn to them.

Which is weird because I kind of hate Doritos.

First of all, I hate the Dorito dust. It gets all over your fingers and makes you feel gross, and it coats your mouth in the most unpleasant way. And they’re so fucking sharp, and the combination of cut up mouth and gross orange dust makes me unhappy.

On top of that, Doritos just don’t taste good. They taste like Doritos, and not like the flavor advertised. Living in Los Angeles* I have come to accept eating Dominos on occasion, another food that doesn’t taste like what it’s supposed to tast like. I don’t know that I can afford to enjoy two things that don’t taste like what they’re advertised to be.

The question, of course, is which Dorito flavor is most disgusting. They’re all fucking gross, which is part of why I don’t understand why I keep buying them, but the grossest may be the one I have not yet tried: Doritos Quest. That’s what they call the MOUNTAIN DEW FLAVORED DORITOS. Good lord, what sort of maniacs work at PesiCo? I will buy The Quest someday and report back to you the horrors I experience.

It would help if they sent 99 cent bags of them to my local 7/11. Like I said, I stand in line and see these things and somehow, for some reason, think it would be  a good idea to buy them. I don’t fully understand the thought process that goes into hefting one of these bags (mostly filled with dusty air) and putting them on the counter in front of the one-eyed dude behind the counter**, but it just seems like a good idea. It seems like this bag won’t make me sick to my stomach, like this bag will finally fulfill the promise of being an extreme snack for people on the edge.

Part of it is wanting to be thirsty. You know how when you pick up some salty chips you buy a drink knowing that you’ll be thirsty after eating them? I tend to go backwards and buy beverages and then seek out salty treats to make me want to drink more of the beverage. It’s some kind of self-fulfilling alcoholism, apparently.

But I think it’s more than the need to get snacks. There are other snacks. The equally awful Lays BBQ chips sit right beneath the Doritos, and I could just as easily make  myself sick with those. I think its the packaging. The Dorios packaging doesn’t even look like it’s for a food product; you’d be forgiven for thinking there was some kind of tech item in that bag. I mean, surely people aren’t meant to eat the two misshapen triangular things on display. They look like motherships dispatched from the Crust Planet. But the rest of that packaging: so zippy! The Blazin’ Buffalo and Ranch has flames on it, which dare me to try it (the good news: these Doritos can be so hot as to render my taste buds useless for a while, leaving me free of the greasy aftertaste of these hideous refugees from Fire in the Sky). And so the Doritos go next to the beer, or next to the Arizona.

And so an hour later I sit here nauseous, wondering why I did this to myself. There’s probably another blog in pondering why I finished the fucking bag (hint: I’m fat), but now the damage is done. What freaks me out is that I know another day – not tomorrow, or even next week or possibly even next month – I will again be standing in that line at 7/11 and see those Doritos…

* the other day I called a local pizzeria and asked for a large pie. No shit, the guy on the phone goes ‘Pie? Why you calling a pizza place for pie?’

** get an eye patch, guy. That shit is grisly.