I have a friend who is a connoisseur of all dive restaurants. Mind you, it isn't that she doesn't know how to eat well--her sugar daddy takes her to The Palm and other fine dining establishments, she has been to many a state dinner and she is most assuredly at ease in any elegant restaurant. But this friend has a dirty little secret--actually it's not a secret now that I think of it--she LOVES the greasiest, grossest, most unhealthy foods possible.

Fried twinkies? Check! Barbecue joints with dirt floors? Check! Pig pickin'? Check! Scary fair food? Check! Drinking grease straight out of the bottle? Che--

You get the point.

While I used to mock her, I have quietly now joined her. I have come to recognize the beauty of simple, yet disgustingly unhealthy foods. The little half-restaurants in gas stations. No, not the old hotdogs that have been rolling for hours, I haven't degenerated that far. But the little places that cook your food for you. The french fries that soak through their brown paper bag with grease. The hamburgers that leave a rivulet of juices down your chin. The food that just tastes of grease older than you are.

More often than not, the portions are huge and the service is great. And while some may want to point fingers at my lack of health or support of obesity. You cannot fault me for supporting a local and independently owned establishment, rather than a fast-food chain.

What I find most attractive about the whole thing is not the guilty pleasure or the fact I am creating a premature heart attack. I love the fact it is a simple enjoyment. It is a calm happiness.

It is greasy spoon religion.