Our Vending Machines are Sexist!

Well, really it's our Caf Stores. But vending machines sounds so much better...)

If you walk into Milners, the oddly titled Brookdale caf-store, you will find an entire array of supposedly healthy foods. I say supposedly healthy because they are not, but they masquerade as being healthy and that suffices.

There's a lovely collection of Snapples with Diet-Snapples prominently displayed. There are candied almonds, sugared fruits of various kinds, dried and dessicated fruits of questionable freshness and all manner of parve candies. These parve candies are never the kind you actually want; they're not Sour Sticks or Mike n'Ikes or Pull n'Peel Twizzlers. No, these are the other candies; the ones that you find at Jewish stores that attempt to mimic the large brand-name selections.

Then you'll find sushi and Chinese food from Eden Wok. (Even though Chinese food has recently been proven to be about the unhealthiest food on the planet.)

But where are all the milchigs products? Where did my dairy sugar-high go? Why, it doesn't exist. When I want to eat carbohydrates and I walk downstairs to get myself oh, say, an Entenmann's sugar-coated donut or a package of chocolate-chip cookies, I am to consider it a treat if I can find a parve crumbling low-carb chocolate chip muffin that tastes as though it were made out of chalk and sawdust.

Why? cries the poor frustrated college student. I slave over my paper, I pay homage to the god of the computer, I tear myself away from the Internet and all I desire in return is one good candybar, one good soda. But does that go on my caf-card? No-o-o-oo. Because that would be too smart, you see. Instead, all brand-name candies including all dairy candies (Hersheys, Kissables, M&Ms and the like) are glowingly displayed in a nearby vending machine. It calls for you. It winks at you and requests your money, your dollar twenty-five. And you, poor you, acquisce. Because you're not exactly thrilled by the prospect of crumbling grainy muffins.

And then you hear about the YU Caf Store. This sounds like Candyland. It's like I've died and gone to heaven, or so it has been described. Apparently, you can buy whole packages of drinks there. And they sell Entenmann's donuts and cookies and Stella Dora cookies. Everything wonderful and unhealthy that you can imagine is there.

Even the Uptown Library has better food than we do. They sell sodas! Real sodas! Tonight I had a real live full-carbohydrate Pepsi. Can you imagine? While at Stern, or at least at Brookdale, they have somehow decided they need to manage our diets for us and therefore refuse to sell us sodas in the Caf Store. Snapples, yes. Sodas, no. The logic is completely forfallen because guess what? Snapple has more carbohydrates and more sugar than soda does!

I know that I'm supposed to be pleased. They care about me, I can tell myself. They refuse to sell me obesity in a bottle. But even so the temperamental part of me continues, "Why can't I have a Hershey bar? Why? Why no dairy? Why do I have to pay for the dairy products?" It's deliberate! They deliberately place the vending machine right next to my sexist Caf Store so that I look back and forth-hmm, parve corn chips or colorful ball-shaped candies versus Butterfinger or Hersheys. It's not even a choice. Of course I'm going for the chocolate.

They're messing with our minds, my friends; they are creating sugar-deprived girls in order to drive us mad and have us spend more money! Because it's all about the money! Sugar, sugar, sugar and money!

We should picket. I WANT MY SODA! our signs should perhaps read. Why am I subjected to Snapple day after day? Why can't I have my Cherry Coke, my Dr. Brown, my Dr. Jones?

Or is it- horror! that I'm the last girl on the planet who actually eats food?

Egad! I am the last of a species! They're going extinct! The girls now live on air and diet drinks they convince themselves are slimming! Oh dear. I am alone, alone; I am the last of the Mohicans, the last of the mortals. I like food. Yes, food. Yes, real food, which includes real soda (not diet! ye gods, I have considered praying to ensure the presence of a real soda on my table during Stern Shabbatons, as generally girls must all drink *in tones of disgust* water. Or diet soda.)

Come on, who will join me in the sugar revolution?

WE WANT SUGAR NOW! WE WANT SUGAR NOW! WE WANT SUGAR NOW!

Sigh.

Chana's going mad.

Ah well. Madness can be fun. Madness can be lots of fun. Madness can be an exercise in the demonic possession of other people's spirits. Madness can be rather compelling...

Yes, yes, yes. All that and more.

Sugar!