keyword "whisper" title "let them eat chips" in misc. flash fiction

I was having these chips, I was eating these chips, I was eating these chips from a bag from the local convenience store. I was eating these chips called “A Hint of Lime” chips and I thought to myself, “Well, self, this is a very honest name for chips from a bag you bought in some store on a whim when otherwise being there to just get gasoline and purchase a couple of lottery tickets.”

The bag, you see, whoever made these chips, whoever designed this bag was being honest in the very name in big letters admitting that an actual lime has never gotten within a damned country mile of these chips, of this bag of imitation gas-station tortilla chips. The creators were upfront that the flavoring on the fake chips is some kind of exotic industrial petrochemical ester that… merely hints at the idea of being lime-flavored. This was honest and truly a bag of just “Hint of Lime” imitation gas-station tortilla chips.

It was not actual lime, not by miles, not by years, not even an extract. I was not even pulped-lime by-product fished out of bottles of bad Mexican beer discard behind some college bar around the middle of May. The chips really truly just hinted at lime and they at least admitted it to me.

A hint of lime, just an elusion toward the concept of lime-ness, only a hint of lime, I like it. The whole thing is so much more straight-forward in its perversion of the natural order of what foods for human being should be. At least they own it that this is just a hint of lime. I want a few more of these fessed-up flavors in my grocery bag. I want a little more of this brand of their bald-faced honesty within the American tradition of dime-store culinary fraud.

I want to eat something what admits to the Barest Suggestion of Lemon. I want to walk down the aisle of a Thrift-Mart and buy myself an Accusation of Chipotle sometime, an Allusion Toward the Vague Notion of Beef. Feed me please, a Whisper of Vanilla and an Insinuation of Cheese.

Give me fifty-cents off on all Educated Guesses at Carrot Cake, give me that thing on a toothpick at the free sample station that engages in Daydreams of Malt Vinegar. Where can I go to taste an Inference of Tomato? When will you sell me a Reminiscence of Mint Chocolate Chip? I want to explore a Goddamned Hearsay of French Onion and I want to feel that feel now!

“A Hint of Lime”. Jesus. Screw you, Tostitos, I will admit that you are not the cause of all our problems but damn if you aren’t one of the most acute and glaring symptoms of everything that’s wrong with our nation, our culture, our failings, our age. “A Hint of Lime”. Holy Christ. I cannot believe you’ve managed to get away with such madness this long.