Year 2, Day 211: Last Night of the Year

Here it is, the last night of the year when we are supposed to, as Jews, be squaring off all accounts with our loved ones and the supreme being, or what have you. And yet I am harboring all kinds of ill-will for those who have created both real and imagined slights to my loved ones and occasionally, my property, especially Ruby's little truck that Magnolia has commandeered of late, which too often is stolen by neighborhood ruffians. I remain covetous of advertised things and somewhat vain. I have allowed zealotry to replace modesty and on top of that, I'm impatient and grumpy from my arm injury. If you think of Yom Kippur as one long day of confession with no Hail Marys, you'll get the idea of what we as a people are going to experience, but it doesn't help to go in a with a full plate of sin. No, it surely doesn't.

Breakfast
2 Not-so-soft boiled eggs
1 slice Balthazar Bread
Green Tea

Snack
Coffee
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar
1 oz. Boston Lite Popcorn

Lunch:
93% Sirloin
Romaine & Goat Cheese with Balsamic
Leeks

Dinner
Emily's Fantastical Hungarian-Chinese Fusion Chicken
Cabbage Salad with 1 tsp too much of sesame oil (Her complaint, not mine)

I noted today a television commercial for Domino's, purveyor of mediocre, but often steaming hot, pizza. It featured a small brown square called a "Fudgem." So now Domino's if offering FREE warm ("oven baked") brownies with a purchase of any large pizza. You get an order of 10 with "Fudge Brownie Dipping Sauce." You've got to hand it to Domino's— they keep trying to give you stuff that's not pizza for ordering pizza. And they have to, since they replaced their 30 minute guarantee that made them famous with the "Made Fresh, Arrive Fresh" guarantee (that stink, in the words of KoKo the Gorilla). Unfortunately for those minding what they eat, the brownies and dipping sauce are loaded with the trifecta of trash ingredients— partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors. The brownies contain both sugar AND sucralose (Splenda), which is a neat trick. Their nutritional values are not that great, but they're no Taco Bell Fiesta salad, which is good because it's supposed to be your dessert after your carbohydrate-rich dinner of pizza. In this day and age, it's not enough to create a nutritionally void product. In my day, you had to create the dancing fudgem with hands and disco music, so I can accept that. But it's hard for me to accept the Web site of Fudgems— featuring Dancing Fudgems, Fudgems Downloads and "Fudgems Gaming Zone." I mean this is a faceless square of high-fructose corn syrup and it's got it's own Web site? Is that what Domino's corporate is spending it's money on? It's driving me to the Fudgems dunking booth.