TU/TD

A TU/TD Exploration of Vending Machines

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Last Week’s Weather – Maybe we’re alone in this opinion, but last week had the best stretch of weather we’ve seen in ages. That perfect mid-50s gloom with a slight drizzle. It sends chills straight up our tail—I mean, spine—to think about it. Every day was like stepping out into a gray wasteland. Everyone was unenthusiastic and slightly unhappy as they walked quietly through the haze. It was beautiful. For once, we could sit in front of Gasson and mutter quietly up at the clouds without bothering all those confused, slightly scared folks lounging on the grass.

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Cash-Only Vending Machines – If you happened to see a strange-looking little man in a stained white T-shirt and khaki-colored jeans huddled up against a vending machine weeping like a small child, then you saw firsthand how the thumbmeister spent his entire Tuesday night. After a hard day’s work judging other people’s faults while totally ignoring his own, this intrepid woodland elf of a man just wanted to eat a couple bags of candy to fend off the darkness in his brain. Instead, when he walked up to the vending machine he saw the cruelest words ever to be displayed in small, green letters: “Cash Only.” What kind of godforsaken place is this, where we are charged 175 dollars in mandatory dining bucks and are faced with “Cash Only” vending machines? Just the day before, this same machine was accepting cards. What kind of game are they playing with us?

The Anti-Theft Device in Vending Machines – Do you know what’s wrong with America these days? I do. It’s that small bar that comes up to block the vending machine when you retrieve your snack from the dispenser. This little liberty-blocker prevents people from reaching up inside the machine and stealing. But at what cost? At. What. Cost? The spirit that inspires a man to steal from vending machines is the spirit that built this nation. Everyone knows this famous quote from Samuel Adams: “The British may garrison their tea supplies in the machines of vending, but they shall not stop the sons of liberty. We shall reach up under there and yank it out, by God.” This uniquely American spirit, a spirit of vending-machine thievery, has been squashed by The Man. No wonder us millennials are a bunch of lazy, pansy do-nothings who all got participation trophies in school and don’t care about anything except the twitters. They took away our one chance to truly become freedom fighters when they put in those pursuit-of-happiness-crushers.

Candy Bags Where the Part You Rip off at the Top Includes the Calorie Count – We’re onto to you sneaky little bums. After our debacle with the cash-only vending machines, we did the only thing anyone could do: we dug into our buried stash of sour gummi mole rats. After ripping open the fifth package, we realized that this might not be the best thing for our health, so we turned the bag around and took a gander at the Nutrition Facts. Funnily enough, the top half of the nutrition facts happened to be exactly the part that rips off with the little indent at the top. Ha ha. Tried to pull a fast one on us, huh? Good thing we stopped caring about our physical being a long time ago and are now just watching ourselves decay with the same apathetic nausea that haunts our every waking hour.

Featured Image by Kelsey McGee / Heights Editor

October 6, 2016