Overrated: Lunch

Lunch is frustrating at best. It has no real purpose but to serve as a buffer between breakfast and dinner. Lunch is the abusive uncle that nobody in the family likes to talk about.*

Take the weekdays for instance. Some may tend to overstate the importance of lunch because it provides a short respite from the workday, a small glimmer of hope in our otherwise and glum and joyless existence. But in this case, it is the 'break' part that we value, not necessarily the 'lunch' part. Let's examine the lunch part a little more closely as it relates to you, the reader.

Lets see what are your options? Hmm...here is this shitty turkey sandwich you packed that got flattened in your bag when that sweaty fat lady on the bus pushed past you to get that last handicapped seat. Not that the sandwich was any good to begin with. When you opened the package of long-forgotten turkey the night before you noticed that is was starting to get slimy and had an odd smell. But you said "Fuck it, lets live dangerously", and besides, "I'm trying to eat healthy". Too lazy to cut up a tomato and not wanting to take a chance on that browning lettuce, you just slap it between two undersized slices of Wonder and lather it in mustard. Lets call it a night shall we?

You wake up the next morning and decide that your sandwich absolutely must have a side dish. You are out of chips. A bag of pretzels left over from your last Super Bowl party stares at you, mocking you. You hate those pretzels, but you're running ten minutes late as it is and you haven't had your morning coffee yet, so your brain is unable to comprehend proper alternatives. You hastily shove a handful of those stale, brown sodium chips into a plastic bag and now your hands smell like pretzels until you get to work. Your good intentions get the best of you and you grab an apple. You know as well as I do that you're not eating that thing. When you finally do decide to eat lunch, your Catholic guilt, stemming from you spending all morning checking your fantasy football team, leads you to eat this shitty lunch at your desk so you can 'work' at the same time. You're getting crumbs and pretzel dust all over your already disgusting keyboard. You start to cry.

You make me sick. This lunch is a metaphor for your pathetic existence.

What are your other options? Frozen dinners. When are those ever good? You might as well shove a Hot Pocket up your ass. Fast food? Ah, fast food. The quick adrenaline rush of a Big Mac and fries is followed immediately by a depression spiral and a greasy forehead. The stench of a drunken Ronald McDonald and his association with dog fighting and labor malpractice is a stench that can linger.

As we all know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Whether it is a full on orgy of eggs, sausages, hashbrowns and crispy bacon or a simple bowl of sugared cereal, time and time again breakfast delivers.

Dinner, the accomplished older brother who is always offering you sound financial advice, offers a whole world of possibilities, replete with appetizers, drinks and desserts. There will be no dessert with your lunch sir. A big 'fuck you' to the old man if there ever was one. Name any food and you can have that for dinner. By contrast, you can't eat steak for lunch. Well technically, you can, but it's frowned upon and considered to be in bad taste. Have a little class for Christ Sakes.

To add insult to injury, now a lot of people order 'brunch', a combination of breakfast and lunch, which, lets me honest with each other, skews heavily towards the breakfast side. Brunch is essentially people saying, "Well, it's actually lunch time, but lunch sucks and I would enjoy some breakfast, even at this advanced hour of the morning."

Lunch is slowly being replaced by 'snacking' and rightfully so. In today's post-9/11 society, one cannot compromise their good taste for outdated practices such as 'lunch'. I don't have time for this shit and neither should you.**

*Sure, no one talks about him, but every Sunday morning when you glance over the police log you exchange a knowing glance with your spouse. Not in front of the kids.

**It goes without saying, neither does Tommy Buzanis.