Eating In Public

NOTE: I try to not use ZFS! as a medium to discuss all the wacky things I see during my daily subway rides (a lot of other bloggers do that already, and they probably do it better than I would), but sometimes shit happens that I can't just let slide all casual-like, especially when it can stand as an example to validate a larger point. Like this morning...

So I was on the D train, minding my own beeswax as a I listened to some music and tried to not think about all the work I have to do today, when I happened to glance across the car to the seats directly opposite me. Sitting there was this little Asian girl (with her family) and she was just absolutely going to town on a bunless, nude hot dog. Breakfast for her, I guess. No joke, she was eating the fucking thing like it was string cheese... peeling it, for lack of a better descriptor... and she had hot dog grease all over her face and bits of hot dog all over her jumper and the whole car was suddenly starting to smell like the men's room of a Nathan's on the 4th of July. Folks, it was gnarly; I know she's just a kid and I should cut her some slack, but... ugh... it seriously was somewhere on the Nasty Scale between that Gremlin getting blown up in the microwave in Gremlins, and that one part in Event Horizon with the eyeballs.

I bring this up because... well, actually for two reasons. One, it was icky and I like to share icky things with all of you (obviously). And two, it helps me to illustrate a long-held belief of mine, and that belief is this:

People Shouldn't Eat In Public.

Usually I like to qualify bold statements by saying, "maybe that's just me," or, "in my opinion, of course," but no... NO... not this time. People should not be allowed to eat in public. And no, smartass, I'm not talking about restaurants; everyone's eating in restaurants, or they're being paid to be there, so that's the exception to the rule.

What I'm talking about here is eating in public-public; on trains, on park benches, in meetings, basically anywhere that also includes other people who are not eating and, hey, maybe don't want to see you shove fistfulls of food into your gaping maw. Because I live in New York, the place that I encounter this phenomenon most often is, naturally, on the subways. I've seen people chowing down on full-on, five-course meals out of fucking Tupperware containers before and... ew, it's just weird.

I mean, have you ever watched someone eat? Like, actually looked at them as they open their mouths, bring a forkful of food to it, place it in there, start chewing, wipe their mouths, keep chewing, and then swallow it all down, only to begin the process again? It's horrifying. When you do it in public, it's like you're forcing people to watch a Herschell Gordon Lewis retrospective, one bite at a time; I'm not kidding about this, humans are so gross. Not to mention the fact that, when people are eating in public, it's never just like a candy bar or an apple or something inoffensive like that. No, it's always some fucking garlic-slathered, stinky cheese-covered, ethnically-spiced, pipin' hot monstrosity that you have to wash the smell of out of your hair later like it was cigarette smoke. It's disgusting and I'm just so sick of it and all of you can just got to hell! BASTARDS!!!

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!

Whew... that feels better. Man, I got really angry about that for no reason. Still though... Fuckin' little kids and their hot dogs. Bleh.