The Salty Yellow Death.

When I was 16 years old a friend of mine slapped some microwave popcorn in one of the first generation microwaves (pre-digital, all knobs). The goddamned thing was notorious for not shutting off at the agreed time, and would nuke the shit out of everything and anything not monitored. After ten minutes on the highest setting, the microwave transmorphed the kernels into charcoal and a minute after that the smoke detector began to squeal it’s horrible life saving song. The smell of burnt carbon stayed in the house for a day and no amount of pine scented air freshener could cover it up.

The city of Seattle is currently debating banning the use of microwave popcorn in all government buildings, due to the increasing number of fire alarms set off by smoldering microwave popcorn. Imagine sitting at your desk, checking your myspace (facebook…singles classifieds…favorite asian snuff film) page and avoiding work at all costs and having that interrupted by a fire alarm. You grab your coffee mug and head outside into the rain wondering if the terrorists have struck again while the fire department searches the building.

In other parts of the United States, microwave popcorn is considered being outlawed in California by 2010. The artificial butter they use contains the chemical diacetyl, which has caused workers at the artificial butter factories to come down with a case of bronchiolitis obliterans which has only one cure, a lung transplant (unless you count a slow painful death as a cure).

Wanna learn another big word? I thought so. Fluorotelomer. Flur-o–teleo-merrrrr. No, this is not what gives the Jedi the power to control the force, it is the coating that is used to keep the bags containing the microwave popcorn grease resistant. The good news is that the FDA says it is a safe level for human consumption, so it is just another useless toxin floating around in your system, but who knows, next month it could be upgraded to level of…oh lets say…transfat.

Who would have thought that white fluffy exploded kernels of corn would cause so many deaths? It is ranked as one of the leading food related choking deaths of small children. Plus! Don’t you hate it when you get those small fragments caught in the back of your throat for weeks?

Think that you are safe in the darkness of your local movie theater? Think again, the amount of cholesterol in a large bag of kernel klink equals the same amount found in eating nine big macs (that is if you are able to hold the contents of nine big macs in your body without vomiting all over the back seat of your moms Volvo).

I imagine that Bin Laden spends his days chomping on Satan’s snack food while dreaming of 72 young virgins acting out bud light commercials from the 80’s in slow motion.

-M.Hersted