Arts & Leisure
Food Love in a Time of
Financial Crisis
As the auto industry crashes and the global
financial system crumbles around all us, we all need a little bit of love. All
those economists who you read on the New York Times and the Washington Post,
ranting about how banks need to be nationalized? All their economics-schmonomics
are based on the premise that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. That's
a flaming load of monkey poop! They've evidently never been here. There's always
a free meal to be had hanging around the hyper-globally-involved-semi-utopian
academic bubble known as Fletcher. All the unconditional love you need can be
had from the free flow of food from raiding receptions! Think of this article as
a primer on how to start scavenging food for n00bs. We'll even discuss the
various kinds of food you can hunt down in the ecology of Fletcher free flow
food.
Gettin' Some Food Lovin'
1. Get on Social List.
2. Wait.
3. Search the following terms: lunch, food, dinner, pizza, reception.
4. Food bills decline. Love ensues. Fletcher rises to #0 in the FP rankings to
be the highest ranked IR Masters program of all time (disclaimer: even though,
of course, we don’t care about juvenile stuff like that).
Optional:
5. Draft a schedule of free food events in your electronic calendar.
6. If you've got an expensive chunk of technology that schedules your day (but
you’re too cheap to buy food - go figure, huh), sync your palm scheduler for
even more efficiency! See Social List for various plugs of sketchy software to
download in order to ameliorate your technological illiteracy.
Here's a sample of what a typical week should look like:
Free meals exist in complex competition with one another. Sometimes there are
two free meals at once! What should you do? Free meals are not created equal.
Considerations that you must be cognizant of are quantity and quality of food,
expenditure of effort, and expenditure of time. The key to having a tasty time
of free food love is to maximize access to quantity and quality of food, while
minimizing expenditures of effort and time. Free Fletcher food can be
categorized into the following two tiers:
Non-Pizza
Non-pizza is, well, anything that’s not pizza. Most non-pizza food items you
will encounter will have nothing to do with pizza. Self-respecting receptions or
luncheons will serve non-pizza. Non-pizza is part of a daily balanced diet.
Pizza
Pizza, diplomatically speaking, is in a class of its own. Undiplomatically, too
much of it just blows. This is by far the most common food found in the hallowed
halls of Fletcher. My jaws are being slowly gummed shut by those greasy,
tomato-soggy gastronomic monstrosities as I chew through them day after day. The
unquestionable prevalence of pizza in Fletcher free food occurrences is a
worrisome development, proliferating even in semi-legitimate events like lunches
with faculty.
The hegemony of pizza in terms of free food access is undoubtedly subliminally
shaping our nascent foreign policy minds. The overrepresentation of this
American food form combines with the fantasy of the perfect division of the
pizza as a metaphor for the equitable distribution of world territory under a
multipolar power structure, marginalizing pro-American supremacy
neoconservatives or advocates of a risen Global South. Pizza marginalizes other
food cultures, threatens valid intellectual frameworks and undermines American
national security.
You scoff at the indubitable evil of pizza? Laugh? Post your derision on Social
List, you ignorant culinary chauvinist! Your ridicule only proves that you are
acclimatized to this insidious pizza hegemony. You propagate these damaging
norms, and understand not the plight of marginalized food cultures! Be vigilant
the next time you are lured by pizza’s cheesy delight! If you are a global,
open-minded individual, I propose with utmost urgency your participation in a
panel to study how we can increase the representation of non-pizza at Fletcher
events. All are welcome, though ignorant conflict resolution types who propose
compromise by putting dumplings/hummus/korma on pizza will be pelted with
leftover cheese cubes.
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