Editor’s Note: While I never much enjoyed putting any body part against the gum-stained pavement caking this campus like environmental decay, the main reason I started the DF was to always, to some extent, keep my ear to the ground. As Colbert or Bee or any other late-night content peddler who DOESN’T traffic in viral games (and, specifically, whose name doesn’t rhyme with Gimmy Gallon) will tell you, the war on bullshit rages on, now more than ever. And while it’s currently impossible to invent anything more ridiculous than reality, those same people will tell you it’s important, now more than ever, to consistently skewer that bullshit like a burnt hotdog over a dumpster fire.

My piece here, which made the rounds late last spring and caused something of a stir, was the jumping off point for that goal. Despite one 4chan user calling it “10 lbs. of shit in a 5-lb. bag already inside a 3-lb. bag,” it felt prudent to put it here for posterity’s sake. It all started with this: a silly lark indicting an above-average fried-chicken chain. It morphed into something else entirely, and I’m still not sure why.

Here it is. Enjoy it, or don’t. You probably won’t. –NT

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People always say, “Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.” Marilyn Monroe also said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” As teens prone to indulge in Pringles or car-sized burritos or any food offering the slightest dopamine drip, we spend most of our free time trying to discredit the first platitude by devouring anything worthwhile. Being a part of this savage demographic means determining which pleasures rest safely under which version of that cliché.

Before Saturday, I believed one such unabashed pleasure was Chick-fil-A’s transcendent Polynesian Sauce. Before Saturday, I subscribed to the mythos (a personal one that, as you’ll see, transformed into a prison of my own perverse design) that their Polynesian Sauce made everything better. I have joked more times than I care to admit (read: six) that I would “Chick fil-LAY DOWN in a bathtub of Polynesian Sauce.” If you add Polynesian Sauce to a salad and take away the salad, you have yourself a pretty damn good salad. Such is the tremendous irony of the Neej-Sauce: it makes every food item better, because it renders that food item irrelevant.

Then Saturday arrived, as it’s wont to do, but not usually in the form of an apocalyptic confrontation. I’m prone to think I overreacted to the situation, but I only believe that because the cashier, an otherwise kind gentleman named Derek, under-reacted to the situation. In either case, I did what had to be done.

I was hosting a graduation barbecue later that evening, and the single packet of Polynesian Sauce the cashier provided was far too unacceptable for me to react with civility.

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If you closely examine Venezuela’s prosperity during the mid-2000s, you’ll find it’s about as strange and simple as a turtle walking without a shell. The fact that flammable black sludge, pumped from the soil underneath our ASICS and exported in the millions of barrels every day, singlehandedly kept South America’s largest economy afloat is questionable at worst and bewildering at best.

Such was the era of Hugo Chávez, a socialist leader whose policies have aged more poorly than The Lawnmower Man‘s CGI. The people loved him, and he loved the people, but with a cost. Such was the way of the Marxist-Lenin philosophy: give the people what they need, but market it to them as what they want and, additionally, force them to earn that “want.”

The origins of the Chávez cult-of-personality were his addiction to boosting the energy economy. The most oil-rich country in the world tends to hold the cards when prices near $150 a barrel, and with 297 billion barrels beneath their feet (topping Saudi Arabia’s 268 billion, which certainly still translates into Lamborghini police cruisers), everyday life seemed just fine under his tutelage. Venezuela jumped seven spots in the Human Development Index between 2006 and 2011. Bread was on the table, in homes and in the government C-suites.

But when you build a house of the cards you hold, eventually you lose track of the count. The economic principle of throwing oil at a fire until it erupts quite literally appears to be the current case in Venezuela. Oil prices took a more than 60% shit between 2014 and 2016, long enough for an oil-rich nation to go oil-poor, and in Venezuela’s case, just poor. Goods as simple and wholly necessary as toilet paper are in terribly short supply. Food is scarce. People are dying.

All the while, current President Nicolas Máduro continues to spark chaos as he suffers (a strong verb for someone feasting on his democracy’s flesh in the form of “Salt Bae” steak) a crisis of power, particularly as he wars with half the world over his legitimacy. The U.S. and allies have moved to delegitimize his power-hungry dictatorship, throwing their support behind interim President Juan Guaidó, who inexplicably has yet to be extinguished by Máduro’s loyal goon squad. Such is the state of affairs now, and I’m far from the person to rightfully speculate what may happen next.

Socialism, on its head, can essentially be defined as “one for all.” That’s exceptionally problematic for a variety of reasons, but primarily because Chick-Fil-A employs similar policies. And those are the facts, and that’s where it ends.

Sorry, were you seeking more resolution? And glorified bow on a sound and meticulously constructed argument? I don’t have one. I’m too busy cleaning the Polynesian sauce that my roommate stole from me then proceeded to spill on our carpet. Times are tough all over, people.