Beware the wild buffalo!

So I was down in St. Catharines last night and my buddy wanted to stop at Wendy’s for dinner. I hadn’t been in quite a long time. I saw that the menu had changed a bit. The old chicken nuggets - once marginalized by the new chicken strips have now made a come-back I see.

They’re now called “New crispy chicken nuggets.” I saw there are new sauces as well. I ordered the born again nuggets and a new sauce called Wild buffalo sauce.

“Whooh!” my buddy exclaimed. “I tried that stuff once. Hot going in -- and hot going out!”

“I’ll take a regular barbecue sauce with that too please,” I then instructed the counter-boy. He was happy to comply. The little counter-boys are very agreeable at this particular location. They’d probably empty the till into a sack for you if you asked nicely.

Well ee-gads! The wild buffalo sauce was indeed on the wild side. Quite the kick. Tasted like Buffalo style chicken wings (go figure). Problem is that chicken nuggets are far too bland to stand up to this sauce. You taste the sauce and nothing else. The compliment factor is right out of the equation.

Actually - that’s not the problem. The problem is… This stuff tore me apart. I mean - tore me to pieces. On the way home from St. Catharines to Caledon I stopped at every Tim Hortons on the way - to use the bathrooms. For those who aren’t familiar with Ontario geography or the obscene prevalence of Tim Hortons donut shops - that is a whole lot o’ stops. And of course I had to buy a bunch of small crappy decafs along the way because I’m terribly self-conscious about using restaurant bathrooms without demonstrating I’m a customer.

Insane I tell you. I’m still a little woozy. Probably the dehydration.

Tim Hortons - by the way - is American owned. I just like to remind people that because it’s such an irritating goddamned Canadian icon. I’m not nationalistic about this. I support free trade. It’s just the irony of it. Probably half of middle class Canadian families spend 4 figures a year on the world’s shittiest donuts and coffee - the coffee mostly - and they’re of course paying for the name on the store. The products are dirt cheap to make which I suppose is why they taste like dirt in the first place.

Tim Hortons advertises all these sweet little drippy Canadian iconic vignettes on TV as if to say Tim Hortons = Canada. Plain and simple. I think I’m the only sonofabitch not buying into it.

Oh my god! I just realized! Tim Hortons and Wendy’s are the same company! Now I get it. The whole wild buffalo thing is a conspiracy! A cross-branding initiative!

“Come to Wendy’s for the wild buffalos. Go to Tim Hortons for the toilets!”

Bastards. And it’s probably all designed to get me. Me! The last hold-out from a kinder gentler civilization where coffee tasted good and a donut filled your whole hand. Gosh. This is exciting. I feel like the hero from Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or George Orwell’s 1984.
Wow. I’m on the lam.

FWG