Fake chips, immortal Peeps and moon missions

Dear Rachel,

This just occurred to me. Most of the tortilla chips available for purchase in the grocery store are not made of tortillas. They’re maybe made of a lot of the same things as tortillas. But they’re not tortillas cut up and fried or baked to a delicious crisp. There isn’t anything like the real deal. How long must we let this stand before we demand actual tortillas in our chips?

– Feeling Spicy

Dear Salty,

I had this idea that we also cannot call Pringles potato chips because they’re not made of potatoes. I guess they ARE made of potatoes, only pre-digested and re-congealed into weirdly stackable chips good for making duck bills. Even the Pringles site says they have “a savory potato taste” instead of claiming they are potato chips. Mmm, who doesn’t want a potato taste? You, I suppose. You want real tortilla taste. And I can’t blame you.

– Dipping in, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

Easter candy going on sale begs the same question every time: do the leftover Peeps just get dragged back out year after year? They’re so stale. They’re so bad. Yet they’re so terribly good. But let’s face it, there is no difference between last year’s Peeps and this year’s Peeps. They are eternal. Do they all come from one timeless stockpile of Peepage?

– Perma-Peep

Dear Peeple-Eater,

Valid question, but you’re ignoring the circumstances of capitalism. Storing Peeps year after year costs money. That’s valuable warehouse space that can be held by literally anything else. And Peeps must cost about $0.00017 each to produce. It’s literally cheaper to throw away Peeps than to shelve them for a year. Plus, who lets Peeps sit around when there are so many ways to torture them? My favorites are to melt them in hot chocolate or toast them on the gas stove.

– Ain’t saying peep, Rachel 

Dear Rachel,

The moon mission might be the greatest thing uniting the country right now. It’s also not that big a deal. Like, OK, cool, there are pictures on my Insta feed. Yay. We’ve gotten to where human beings are going to land on the moon again and most of us won’t know where we were when it happened. How have we gotten to this point where a moon landing is just one more thing distracting us?

– Moon Shot

Dear Cratered,

Landing on the moon is very cool! It’s also something we could do in the 1960s with actual 1960s technology. Really, we should EXPECT people on the moon by this point. I’m just glad we don’t have factories up there yet. You know that the food coming out of moon factories will not contain real potatoes. Or if they do… well, we’ve seen “The Martian,” and we’re not eating those.

– Lunatically yours, Rachel