TO OUR LOCAL READERS: By all means, see the Bumbershoot visual arts exhibition at Seattle Center this weekend. Edgar Leeteg’s South Seas black-velvet nudes (exquisite and sensual); the group exhibit More: A Show About American Consumption (highlighted by Ellen Forney’s lovingly-painted tribute to Pam Anderson and Anna Hurwitz’s plastic “gingerbread house” covered by baby dolls), scary oils by Alexi Kolesnikov, and a retrospective of Seattle’s greatest living painter Jacob Lawrence (I could mention how much his solid-figures-of-color style now seems like a precursor to the South Park look, but Lawrence would undoubtedly hate it if I did).

I’VE SAID IT BEFORE and I’ll say it again: Junk food (the things we eat or drink for pleasure rather than strictly for sustenance) just might be the most telling tangible artifact of a culture, especially ours.

Herewith, some links to astounding fun-food related items throughout the Net.

• Food favorites that, alas, are No Longer Available; from a site that tries its best to get once-famous brands (including Clark bars!) your way.
• A tribute to Ferarra Pan candies, without which Evan Dando would’ve had to have found himself another band name.
• The Gallery of Regrettable Food is your one-stop source for mid-century corporate-cookbook imagery, from 7-Up pancake recipes to an ad for a “Sack O’ Sauce in a Can O’ Meat!” It’s part of the Institute of Official Cheer, offering “Irony-free imagery from the golden age of American culture.”
• Bong Water Soda, the most disgusting-sounding soft drink since Bubble Yum Bubble Gum Flavor Soda.
• As my brother the former Alaska tour-bus driver can assure you, tourists will buy almost anything. (This comes via Cruel Site of the Day.)
• The Phoenix New Times presents your very own guide to everything Gummi.
• Yogurt made with biological cultures from cosmonauts’ bodily fluids. (Thanks, but I’d rather have Tang.)
• “Bowls of delicious mac and cheese with spoons stuck in them.”
• “My name’s Veektoastia, and I’m a toastoholic.”
• An apparently-true urban legend set in a dog-eat-dog world.
• “Why TV Dinners are the best things in the world.”
• WARNING: This site may contain trace elements of peanuts.
• A trademark dispute that’s gone on for decades. Now that’s what I call a sticky situation.
• I dare anyone to make, and actually eat, the Coffee Crystal Sandwich. “Add Sugar and Cremora to taste. Cover with second slice of bread.”
• Other foods have virtual shrines on the web, but this one has its own real-life museum.
• A few of our favorite things: “Vanilla ice cream with chocolate Quik powder. Regular Pringles. Frozen peas. Mr. Goodbars.”
• “The prepared sandwiches actually taste different at different locations.”
• “Don’t use a cloth napkin to wipe your mouth when eating a hot dog. Paper is always preferable.”
• “The fine folks at the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens have, through decades of experimentation, gotten the recipe down to an exact science, a low-budget alchemy of shocking perfection.”
• An alleged original formula for Coca-Cola (and one for Pepsi-Cola as well).
• From a totally non-South Park-related site calling for “Canadian World Domination” comes a page of “Delicious Recipes of Dominating Doom,” including “Nanaimo Bars of Deadly Strength” and “Maple Syrup Pudding of Strategic Policy.”
• Do you really want to associate newborn infants with something brown and soft?
• And finally, this just might be the greatest invention in world history…

TOMORROW: One more how-to-save-baseball quick fix.

ELSEWHERE: As found by Anita’s LOL, some comic book covers with “perverse themes…”