4 April 2001 
 
Quick thought -- I've been hearing more about people trying to come up 
with a term for this current decade.  Some try to be cute, erudite, 
etc.  Still, if you saw '00s written down, how would you pronounce 
it?  Because that's how people are going to refer to this 
decade.  Personally, I would say "zeroes" or "double o's".  Simplicity 
people! 
 
Next thought: food nostalgia.  When one is a consumer of heavily processed 
foods (yes, I had a Chef Boy-Ar-Dee childhood, along with Kraft Macaroni & 
Cheese (for all their "the cheesiest", there's really not much cheese in 
it.  I finally got sick of the taste two days ago, and tried to improve it 
with Worcestershire sauce.  Minor improvement.)), one will often find 
one's favorite foodstuffs leave the arena.  So, bye bye Fruit Bars, so 
good and UGLY!  Bye bye, Gatorade Gum.  Bye bye, D'lites hamburgers. 
 
About that last one: D'lites was an attempt at "healthful" fast food in 
the mid 80s (started by a football player, or some such).  I remember only 
two things about D'lites - the hamburgers, and the frozen yogurt (this was 
before TCBY picked up the charge (btw, frozen yogurt isn't better for you 
than ice cream.  The best frozen yogurt has as much, if not more, fat than 
ice cream.)  There was one near where we lived in Marietta, and there was 
a D'lites in Augusta, where my parents would stop to drop us off to get 
picked up by Uncle Ed or Grandma.  Their burgers were so yummy.  Stu has 
told me that these burgers were low-fat and more healthful because they 
were made of a soy-beef blend.  That's just such a good idea.  Does 
anybody know where I can get some good soy-beef burgers?  Not soy burgers, 
cause I really like my beef; I want these not so much for the health 
value, but the =taste=.  The only other burgers I remember tasting so good 
came from the Wienerschnitzel in the mall in Savannah.  MMMM. 
 
Other food news: killer tomato sauce made by Stu... we used the recipe 
from the show Good Eats (Alton Brown, you're our hero!) on the Food 
Network.  You should go over to foodtv.com and check it out. 
 
Let's see, other thoughts, hmm, okay -- subway tokens.  So it seems some 
people are trying to make the MTA keep tokens for the subway/bus system; I 
believe the motivation is that it's harder to change price for tokens than 
for Metrocards. 
 
Well, bucko, I don't know how many people hoard tokens, but I betcha that 
if a fare change comes through, I, Metrocard user, would be less burned 
than a person who has hoarded a month's worth of tokens.  Why, you 
ask?  It's called Unlimited Ride Pass.  For about $60 I get to ride the 
subway and busses as many times as I want in a 30-day period.  One can buy 
several of these ahead of time, if one wishes, for they aren't activated 
until you use them for the first time (there's an expiration date on them, 
but one can always trade them in for a new one).  If a fare change is 
coming, I can hoard up several month's worth of Metrocards, and the new 
price won't hit me until I run out of the cards. 
 
What about token holders?  They will simply run out of tokens, and then 
have to buy new tokens at the higher price.  So what if there are people 
with $1.75 tokens and people with $1.50 tokens?  There will be some 
entrepeneurs who think to buy lots of tokens ahead of time so as to make a 
profit after the fare change, but still the lifetime will be 
reasonable.  It's so easy for someone to buy a whole bunch of One-day fun 
passes for 4 bucks each, and should the price ever go up to $5, they can 
make alot of money the same way.  Now, if we didn't have any Unlimited 
Ride Metrocards, I would agree that changing fare price would affect 
Metrocard holders more than token users, but the way the system is 
=actually= run, having tokens will have no effect on desired fare 
changes.  Forget it, suckers, tokens are on their way out. 
 
I was going to write about this month's issue of =Natural=History=, but 
I'll hold off til later.  This is plenty for you for one day.