Dollar Slot Broken. Hearts next.

Few thins break a young man's heart as much as a broken dollar slot. Some of them include: pregnancy scares, nuclear winter, castration, being fired, having food poisoning and poi (side note, don't misspell "Poi" as "Poy" and do an image search at work. They should really do some kind of web-filtering. Sweet Jesus).

But a broken dollar slot is a fate worse than any of the above almost (but not really), as it promises to make one's trek to a vending machine futile.

Who carries change aside from drifters and those who supply drifters with change? Not I. Not I.

When the dollar slot is broken, the universe is telling you not to eat unhealthy foods. Perhaps. Or perhaps it is saying something more.

That you will one day break down. That your heart is made of glass like that Blondie song or that your stomach will not be quenched with empty calories and endless chewing.

True fact,t he average vending machine snack requires 3,000 more chews than a salad. Unless it is a snail salad. Snail salad requires more chews than Charleston Chew. When I went to Charleston, South Carolina, I walked around with a Charleston Chew in my hand the whole time and pointed and winked at strangers as I took bites. No one winked back. They wore suits though. Same thing.

Anyway...what's the point.

The Atlantic Ocean. Delicious and Crescent Shaped.

There are some snacks too large for the confines of an office vending machine. Sure, they may fit in an over-sized specialty vending machine from Hong Kong, they may fit into one of those Cadillac shaped dolphin spaceships from 2342, but THEY DON'T FIT HERE NOW.

The Atlantic Ocean is one such snack. It is sometimes broken up into two parts; the crispy, chocolatey North Atlantic Ocean and the nougaty and and salty South Atlantic Ocean.

Whatever your preference, the Atlantic Ocean is large enough to satisfy even the hungriest trucker or husker (note: if your job title does not end in "er", please do not eat the Atlantic Ocean).

The Atlantic Ocean came about in 456 B.C. when Ira Glass said to Lander T. Williams "I want something to eat between lunch and dinner that is full of millions of creatures and a salty, almost disgusting liquid". Lander T. Williams, being the mythical and fierce creator he was agreed that a snack of that nature would be as irresistible as it would be indispensable.

In addition to the Atlantic Ocean and everything within it, Lander T. Williams also created Jupiter, the telescope, the iPad 4, the once semi-popular videogame Pitfall and the rabies vaccination that day. He was a prodigious inventor of great girth.

Ira Glass was the first human to eat the Atlantic Ocean as a snack. At the time his title was "broadcaster".

Who will be next?

Eating Ryan Gosling

There are some snacks that spoil your dinner.

Eating Ryan Gosling is more of a question of logistics than anything else.

Where should one start?

His piercing blue eyes? His perfectly messy hair? His beard that is to die for? Those juicy abs?

Ryan Gosling was created by the Mars Corporation as a way to market candy to women of all ages. Some would argue he's been too successful as a marketing tool. His perfect blend of sweet and salty skin, his chocolaty bone-bark? To die for.

Whenever I eat Ryan Gosling, I plan on skipping dinner. It would be foolish to assume one's appetite would desire anything more than Ryan Gosling. Once you've tasted Gosling, the thought of tacos for dinner seems preposterous.

I always start with the earlobes, an often overlooked (and perfectly symmetrical!) portion of Ryan Gosling. They are fleshy and ripe and often share a certain earthiness found in game animals.

I gurgle with Nyquil as a palate cleanser before I move on to Ryan Gosling's juicy thighs. They have a puffed crunch often associated with Nestle, but I feel truly perfected in Mars Corporation Presents: Ryan Gosling.

By the time I eat both thighs, I'm sweating and crying on the floor from sheer joy.

I know eating Ryan Gosling is controversial. Some critics have argued that one Ryan Gosling could feed the people of an impoverished village for days.

There's just something so decadent about Gosling. Knowing that it's wrong...it makes it oh so right...

Thumbtacks. The freshmaker.

Some people think that eating parsley after a meal will help make their breath not smell like onions and dead animal flesh. This is a myth. The Mayans proved it in 1957 (the very same year they created the original theme park: tortureland in South Carolina) by forcing thousands of seagulls to eat the remnants of baby diapers and then parsley. The parsley did not improve the baby shit breath of the seagulls. They were still birds. But thumbtacks? Well, when a control group of seagulls were fed thumbtacks, they died instantly and their breath was of no concern.

This experiment was a watershed moment for the modern American vending machine.

Americans eat more thumbtacks per year than any other civilization. I would add a footnote to that fact if there were any point in arguing its validity. Simply put, from Arkansas to Texarkana, Americans love Thumbtacks. The sharp taste, the bloody aftertaste, the broken teeth and the gasping for air are what we are known for.

In the vending machine here, you can order thumb tacks or their flat-chested cousin, push pins.

There are some things worth eating. And others worth avoiding. Thumbtacks certainly fall into one of those categories.