Awright, somebody at Kit Kat’s been buying votes. Where were my armed poll-watchers?! Didn’t I warn ya?
Oh. Guess I didn’t… that was a different election. Anyway, I maintain that we need more than three categories of Joy, Meh, and Despair. All this shows is that nearly everyone thinks a Kit Kat is okay, but I defy anyone to step up and declare that Kit Kat is actually their favorite candy. All we have here is a mass consensus of “Yeah, they’re pretty good. Better than Bit-O-Honeys at any rate.” (Speaking of which, I should ask “Where’s the Bit-O-Honey?” but since absolutely nobody has ever liked it, I don’t think anyone cares. I’d put it down in the Omnes Desperatio layer just below the Chick tracts (which were at least suitable for nose-blowing emergencies).
Okay, now another error keeps being perpetuated year after year: the “anonymous brown globs that come in black and orange wrappers” down on the bottommost layer (beneath the Chick tracts, scandalously enough) and the Mary Janes (just below the black licorice, also scandalously enough) are one and the same thing, and by now you guys know that! I can only assume that those of us who know them by their proper name are also the ones who think somewhat more highly of them… just because there’s no writing or cartoony logo on the label doesn’t mean they’re suspicious and inedible, guys! Come on, they’re peanut-butter-flavored taffy, nothing more or less, and how is that not perfectly yummy?
Also: if democracy dictates that orange marshmallow circus peanuts aren’t the best goddamned thing on this whole goddamned list, then democracy is an ass and can DIAF. Unless said peanuts are stale, in which case they themselves are invited to DIAF, though I suspect they aren’t all that combustible, probably due to high asbestos content. Boy, the fresh ones are good, though.
Okay, now time to tender my answer to the big question:
Yeah, this candy corn thing. There was that one weird poll from Influenster that claimed candy corn was the top choice in all U.S. states. As dutiful readers know, Candy Corn remained unclassified in 2006, was tentatively placed in the Upper Chewy/Upper Devonian in 2007, fell away in 2008, regained its footing in 2009, found a spot somewhere in the middle in 2010, and has wavered just below the Petersen Influx ever since in the Marcellus Wallace Cusp. We’re waiting for D. Petersen to tell us how it sits near the Petersen Influx. We’re waiting. Tick tock.
I thought we’d clarified this years ago: it depends on the brand and the freshness. Bad candy corn (which includes the good stuff more than seven months past its prime), while still something I’ll always brush the lint off and eat just in case since it’s never actually terrible, sits in the mid-Meh region. In fact, it could be said to actually be the Petersen Influx. This is the measure of not just a year-round candy lover, but more specifically a Halloween candy-lover: if it doesn’t chip your teeth, taste like bile, burn your mucus membranes, offend the nostrils, fuse your jaws together, attract cats, denigrate your immortal soul, or upset the stomach in reasonably small doses, then it should give you at least a modicum of joy. It’s candy after all. Free candy. In bulk. A whole pillowcasefull, if you live in even a halfway tolerable neighborhood and you’ve put the least effort into making sure your ghost-sheet doesn’t have too many eye-holes. Just picture the scene for a moment: you’re nine blocks from home on the return leg, and you’re getting tired. You need a quick sugar pick-me-up, and the nearest streetlight is pretty dim, and your dad’s using the flashlight to scope out the costumes on the sexy cheerleaders so he’s no help, but you reach into your bag for a quick sugar rush to see you through the next block and you pull out a fistful of candy corn. Will you feel despair? Hell no! Even the worst candy corn fistload should still be fresh enough at this time of year to get you through the next few houses of trick-or-treating without a wince or grimace.
But suppose you get a fresh handful of The Good Stuff… not the cheap-ass store-brand stuff picked up on a rushed whim from the Rexall that was hanging on the rack since last November’s overstock sale, but even a modest Brach’s pile that was brewed up more recently than your last haircut. Think of the creamy smooth corn-syrup sliding smoothly between the ridges on your molars and lightly coating your tongue with autumnal sweetness, the very spirit of the season infusing your taste buds with the crisp coolness of harvest coupled with the warmth of the hearth at home.
That is the very flavor of Halloween itself, and rightly deserves its place at the top of the list as Favorite Halloween Candy Emeritus, since even if you don’t actually love the taste qua taste, you do recognize that a mouthful of candy corn means you’re trick-or-treating, or have just finished doing so, and are enjoying the very raison d’être of Halloween itself. Without candy corn, this list wouldn’t exist. Don’t let’s pretend otherwise.
Also! Let’s not pretend that everyone isn’t just dying to know my proven proper method for eating an apple!
I’m right-handed. As a kid, I usually ate Red Delicious and Golden Delicious apples, and I know you’ll all hold that against me, but that’s generally what mom bought at the store. I like plenty of other, more respectable varieties, but to this day I like a good Red Delicious more than any other. Stop reading here if you must, apple hipsters.
Since I’m right-handed, I hold the apple in my right hand. I grip the apple with the ball of my thumb over the stem, the other fingers wrapped around the little nipples at the bottom of the apple. I bite latitudinally; that is, west-to-east, not eat-to-west, since most of the biting is done by my upper incisors, but I simultaneously eat longitudinally from north to south. Up through third grade, I’d bite near the top, then one through the middle, then one near the bottom, then rotate the apple clockwise and continue, biting west-to-east, but also going north-to-south. Here’s an illustration:
The arrow shows the direction my teeth bite (west to east), the numbers show the sequence of each bite (north to south). Bite through North America, west to east. Bite through Central America, west to east. Bite through South America, west to east. Rotate globe some sixty degrees. Bite through North Atlantic. Bite through equatorial Atlantic. And so on and on until you finally bite through the eastern end of the South Pacific, and you’re done.
In fourth grade, I discovered a flaw in this system. By the time you get around to the Pacific, the remaining west coast of the Americas (the extreme western ends of your first three bites) have been exposed to the air so long that the white apple-meat therein has begun to brown. And 4th-grader Donnie didn’t like that. So I adopted my present strategy: three bites, north to south, then flip the apple so my thumb is on the south pole, then three bites from south to north along the western frontier, then flip again and three more bites from north to south along the eastern frontier, and so on until the bites meet in the back, and no uneaten white apple-meat has been exposed to the air long enough to brown. Success! See Figure 2:
This system has been proven effective in 36 years of field testing. The amazing thing is that not once in thirty-six years, up until now, has anyone ever asked me the secret to my apple-munching contentment.
Now you all can share in my joy.
You’re welcome!
