My friends, I was raped again 15 minutes ago. It was not, however, a rape of McDonald-esque proportions. It was something perhaps even worse. My head was placed inside the taco bell, and then an evil demon beat that bell until my head rang with pain and discomfort.

I'm going to jump right in. I want to first describe to you the combination of menu items which i have consistently chosen for consumption over the past 9 years of my life. let's examine each, one by one.

THE 7 LAYER BURRITO - Layer upon layer of gustatory excitement and enjoyment. Rice harvested from farmer Paco's field, deep in the heart of Mexico. Beans taken from the finest soils of Nicaragua. Avocados, smashed with a great beautiful fury to form a lovely guacamole sauce. Tomatoes, freshly diced by Rodrigo the line cook, whose father was the very man who plucked them from the vine. Lettuce. Absolute, indescribably good lettuce. Cheese. And Sour cream, sent to this cruel, evil earth by god himself. These 7 elements combine together to form a taste alliance of sorts, fighting bad tastes everywhere in this fetted world.

BEAN BURRITO - Understated, elegant. Beans, sauce, cheese and onion. This item needs no spices, no creams. It is the black tuxedo of the bell.

NACHOS SUPREME - Supreme indeed. Supremacy over all other dishes, not just at the bell, but anywere on this planet. Crispy, toasty nachos, topped with a lovely array of toppings. Warm nacho cheese sauce, although for technical reasons i will call it "cheez" sauce, sour cream, scallions, beans, and beef. An intimidating taste adventure for many, but for an experienced beller it's a walk in the park.

Tonight, actually only 15 minutes ago, I experienced something completely different than the euphoria that I've just described. I experienced a culinary mugging of sorts. Food entered my mouth, forcibly stole my pride, my manhood, and left, never to return.

Everything began innocently enough. I pulled into the drive-thru area at the Grand Avenue Taco Bell. I disregarded the recorded message that offered me a grilled stuffed burrito or something of that nature. I ordered the above items. In addition I also ordered a large Pepsi. I experienced the same high level of customer service that I have come to love at this location. I pulled through.

 

above: the scene of the crime

I received my bag. This is where the problem began. I could immediately tell something was wrong. My associate Sam Smith has talked many times of the Heisenburg-Mcdonald bag weight theory. In said theory, Smith hypothesizes that the weight of the bag is directly proportional to the quality and potential of the ingredients contained therein. This is true up to a point, that point being 4800 grams for a value meal, (4900 supersized.) Beyond this point the horizontal line on the axis at the right starts descending again, signifying the decline in both quality and potential. This theory has proven to hold true even under the most extreme conditions, down to -43 degrees celcius, and upwards of 170 degrees celcius. Smith himself once put a McDonalds bag loaded with a value meal in an oven and baked it for 80 minutes at 400 degrees celcius, simply to prove his theory. This is only a rumor, supported by unsubstantiated evidence, but it should still be noted.
People will I'm sure raise the point that
Smiths theory was designed for 
McDonald's only. I tried to consult with 
him, tried to convince him to help me 
formulate a new theorem that could be
directly related to the Bell, but he refused.
He knew there was danger. The last 
words I heard from him were: "Pablo,
you don't know what you're fucking with
here. There are some very serious 
variables that you need to consider...
The guacamole, sour cream - those 
elements, in an uncontained parallel 
dimension, could cause you some serious damage."

To the left here we see some early sketches from Smith's journal. Here he is tinkering with the basic, primitive principles of rudimentary bagology, a science which he himself created.
All theories aside, I knew that what I had on my hand was an unbalanced load. Smith writes of this on page 312 of his work, "Principles of Bagology." (Houghton Miffin, 1994) "Any of the theories that I have written about here can be vastly skewed by an unbalanced load. This occurs when the interior contents of the bag are alotted more towards one side than the other, or, in some severe cases, upside down." I could already tell that I was experiencing an unbalanced load problem. 

Not to mention, horrifyingly enough, I could tell that the Nachos Supreme had not been closed properly. In my head I began having visions of the sour cream, nacho cheese and guacamole pouring out all over the other items in my bag. Terror struck me. Needless to say, I still hadn't completely recovered from the culinary rape at McDonalds. I began crying.

I anticipated my gloom. I decided, "I should go home with this food, instead of eating it in the car. This way, I will be more ready for the trauma that awaits me."



This bear: Less terrifying than my experience.
Upon my arrival, I found myself wondering which item I should start with. I decided on the 7 layer burrito.... While all of my selections are almost always consistently good, the 7lb in particular NEVER fails me. Aside from several rouge ingredient balance problems, I had never experienced an unpleasant 7lb. I unwrapped it, trying to ignore the ingredients from the injured nacho container that were smeared on its waxy wrapper. I picked the burrito up, and tossed it several feet in the air several times to examine its consistency and air-worthiness. It seemed to be in good flying order, and it seemed to weigh more or less what your typical 7lb tips the scales at. So I decided to begin.

The first bite revealed nothing but tortilla. This can be directly related to the patty alignment problem that Smith and I have talked about at McDonalds. The burrito engineers at the Bell had failed to properly arrange the ingredients in the burrito, resulting in the first bite being completely devoid of any flavor at all. I pressed on. Next bite.

GOD HELP ME. A sour cream/guacamole resovior. This phenomenon occurs when far too much sour cream and/or guac is injected into a particular area of the burrito, resulting in several bites that contain nothing more than those 2 ingredients. Needless to say, it is an unpleasant, and in rare cases, deadly occurance.

I took a drink of pepsi. Oddly enough, the Pepsi was in fine working order. There was nothing wrong with it. This instilled new hope in me... It was also comforting to know that I had an ally in my fight against food terror. Refreshed, I went back. Upon taking my third bite, I realized something that is truly beyond horrendous.

There were 3 missing layers.

Tomato, Lettuce and Cheese were nowhere to be found. I looked beneath my table, I looked down at the empty wrapper, I even looked within the depths of my own self, but I could not find the 3 missing ingredients. I was left, after working past that resovior, with bean and rice layers.

I took a 3 minute break after eating half of the burrito, and contemplated suicide during said break. I decided not to end it all. "There may be hope in the other elements of my meal," I thought.

If I'd only taken my life right then, things would have been much much better

"Yo quiero your misery & disapproval."

 

 

 

 

 

The nachos clearly would save me. How hard is it to mess up Nachos. All that is required is the base ingredients. Technique, also, is quite important. The ingredients must be placed in the correct order. Nachos, obviously are laid down as the base layer. On top of these nachos (from bottom to top) rest the beans, beef, tomatoes, nacho cheez sauce, sour cream, and scallions.

Upon opening the container I immediately spotted an ingredient array problem. I saw no scallions - I thought to myself, "Perhaps the employee simply forgot the scallions. We all make mistakes in this world. I can forgive him for this." But deep down in the depths of my heart, I suspected something far more sinister. I knew that the scallions were there. Simply on another layer, waiting to surprise me from beneath the depths.

There were other problems, as well. Instead of an even spread of the ingredients, almost all of them were amassed on 3 out of the 20 chips in the container. I thought to myself "Who would do this to me? Does this person expect me to consume all of these ingredients on 3 chips? What do I do with the other 17 remaining chips? Do I throw them away? Eat them bare? Do I return to the bell in a miserable state, ready to self-destruct in front of the whole store?"

It was at this point that I had a seizure.

Post-seizure, I consumed one of the 3 nachos. It was simply far too much for me to handle. I decided, instead, to move on to the final frontier: The Bean Burrito.
 
As I've already mentioned, the bean burrito is the understated, elegant item at the bell. It's elegance is only eclipsed by its tastiness. When engineered correctly, it can be a wonderful, wonderful thing. But, on those rare occasions when it is engineered incorrectly, it can be a bastardly thing.



This guy: Clearly a result of a run-in with a sour cream and guacamole resovior.

 

 

 

 



Above: Also clearly the result of my experience at the bell. Never again will I allow myself to be subjected to such a high level of shit.

 The bean burrito, when unwrapped, emitted a pleasing odor. An odor that filled my very soul and being with relief, with happiness. At least some portion of this meal wouldn't rape me. I'd already been raped twice, three times if you count the perverbial wallet rape that occurred when i bought this god-awful food.

But the second I bit into it,  I knew something was terribly wrong. The beans had a most displeasing consistency. Normal bean consistency is smooth, with small patches of roughness, for texture. These beans had simply been left out for far too long, and had cooked to the point of absolute hardness.

The dryness, the hardness of these beans, it is something no man should ever have to experience. But I did experience this.

I want to just take a moment to be serious here. I vomited after this meal. Ok? In all seriousness, I went to my bathroom about 15 minutes later and vomited. Enough Said.