Third world product reviews: Millac

Welcome to the first installment of what will hopefully become a semi-regular feature on this digital monument to spare time. To further acquaint the reader with the mind-numbing minutia of existence without a TV, I have decided to begin a chronicle of the various goods and services that I have occasion to use. Basically anything that I spend money on is subject to inclusion, so if anyone has any particular questions/suggestions, just comment them on over. In a year and a half, maybe we'll even have a budget Gridskipper (Marcin, allow me to direct your attention to the middle of today's front page) or Superfuture on our hands. Ahh, irony.

On to the goods. What is there to be said about a product whose name so perfectly embodies the very essence of its being? Say it aloud: Mil-lac. As your tongue rolls into the second syllable, you can almost feel the thick, white, mucusy whole-milk saliva collecting in the soft, fleshy back section of the roof of your mouth. Mil-lac. Spit bubbles fortified with lactic enzymes, grown up and capable of life independent from the lips. Mil-lac. Taste the resultant bubble born of overeager pronunciation immediately post-libation.

I remember one early afternoon, sitting with the Miller family around Kyle's couch, pounding McDonald's, in which Katie turned to me and asked (to paraphrase), "John, why are you drinking a half-gallon of milk?" and Kyle immediately interjected, "John always drinks milk." From that statement was born a golden glow in my heart of hearts, as I knew that with this acknowledgment milk and I had created a bond, inseparable, undeniable, forever tied in a holy matrimony that even a move to the Dark Continent couldn't tempt with divorce.

Inland, electricity is often far from reliable, and refrigeration is an unfathomable luxury. Hence, in Kaedi dairy products were limited to the long-life variety. The ol' pasteurized, homogenized variety would arrive steaming in the back of a pickup, in a consistency whose only defining feature could be described as "unpourable." Faced with hardcore dairy cravings and a total lack of options, and after much thought, I lowered my standards and accepted my new milk. And she grew on me. Oh Rose milk, the times we shared...

Nouadhibou being a cosmopolitan epicenter, not only is fresh cow's milk available, but there is camel's milk as well (stay-tuned). At the earliest chance I quickly re-embraced my former lover, and it was good. We shared a passionate honeymoon, tacitly intensified by the unutterable knowledge that the magic couldn't last. Then the rolling blackouts commenced. I continued to purchase the "fresh" milk in frenzied self-denial, flinging money at the cashier with the contumacious air of one who could not be bested by the city's ailing power grid. But the end was nigh, and I knew it. I would open each carton breathless, and as I took the first tentative sip the sickly sweet smell of death would rush my nostrils before the liquid even touched my lips. Sometimes I'd continue to drink, hoping beyond hope, and the chunks would lumber across my tongue like pallbearers under the weight of a wasted existence. And finally, after days of the same, twisted waltz, emotionally exhausted, I decided that continuing to sleep in the same bed as the corpse of your dead lover just isn't healthy.

Now I drink Millac. Soccer moms could leave this stuff in the back of their Plymouths until the little ones have a B.A., and still serve it at the graduation party. Of course I didn't wander pell-mell into another heartrending relationship; I shopped around for a variety of long-life milks, and decided that Millac tasted least like its chemical life-support system. Also, according to the box (proudly stated directly below the picture of two ridiculously Aryan children), it's good for the heart, which I think is important in these trying days. With time, maybe it will make good on its claim and begin to repair mine.