Bell Lap: In Search of El Dorito

Because it’s not a leap year, the Bell Lap has felt an overwhelming pressure to consume a month’s worth of food and beverages within the space of a foreshortened February. Needless to say, drinking every variety of Vitamin Water in a single day has pretty much been par for the course.

But when it comes to the more important subject of snacking, everyone knows that there is no better feeling than feeding a machine some money and having it reward you with delicious processed foodstuffs. It avoids the irksome “human” element of buying things from a store and makes you feel like if only they had electricity in Africa, maybe people wouldn’t be so hungry. It’s probably even cooler in Japan, where you can text message your choice to the vending machine, almost as if it were an actual friend! Incidentally, in Japan you can also buy used women’s panties to sniff, but that’s just a bit odd.

Fiending for snacks like those chaches in the “Lazy Sunday” video, Bell Lap decided to embark on a brave quest to find the best vending machines on campus.

Maxwell-Dworkin: If there were a God up there, it would make perfect sense for the best vending machine in the land to lie in proximity to the best deucer in the land, for he who eats the first Cheeto shall cast the first deuce. But alas, although it’s indisputable that Memorial Church is home to the best toilet on campus, there is a strict “no snacking” policy in the House of God. As luck would have it, turns out that Maxwell-Dworkin—second best deuce in the land—actually contains the best vending machines, featuring White Castle burgers, Red Baron Deep Dish pizzas, and $1 ice cream sandwiches. For us, that just about settles the whole God vs. science debate (science is better).

Widener Library: Punk the stacks, let’s have some snacks! Venture into the basement and you will discover something far more exciting than you’ll find in any book: a refrigerated vending machine stocked with Hot Pockets, yogurt, Cup o’ Noodles, Strawberry Quik (settle down), and a very suspicious-looking fried chicken sandwich (as our research assistant Trevor J. Walsh ’06 pointed out, “It looks like sand”). There is also a fridge for storing food if you accidentally “over order.” Just make sure to write your name on everything­—those bag checkers can be unscrupulous.

Science Center: These newly installed machines make a perfect stop-off for ill wanksters to cop some snacks before smoking a doob on the rooftop. Cream-filled Chocolate Cupcakes: Back of the net. Swedish Fish: Get in my belly. Two rows allotted for Nacho Cheese Doritos: Textbook. To put the nail in the coffin, the handsome drink machine offers “Fruit20,” a beverage which ironically defies the laws of nature.

Emerson: What would Ralph Waldo Emerson get if confronted with the choices offered by the modern vending machine? This classic snack assortment would certainly elicit some difficult quandaries. Knowing him, he’d probably bring a packed lunch, but in the end he’d just be eating his words, followed by a nice thick slice of Humble Pie. But wait, he can’t eat—he’s dead!

Conclusion: We realize that five out of seven days of the week, most people would rather push a button that says “Destroy the Whole World” than roll out of bed and face the misery that is life. But when you can type in “C6” and receive a pack of Cheese Fries in exchange, you just have to believe that maybe there’s a silver lining somewhere.