Ordinary consumer cravings persist amid national crisis and occupation

Evidence

Meanwhile, United Nations inspectors were busy scouring the country for weapons of mass destruction, hotfooting around the desert at the same time that Lina sat at home aching for all the things she knew while growing up in the United States. She craved certain foods. While the inspectors searched for banned computer chips, she pined for Doritos. They sought yellowcake uranium. She sought butter pecan. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 587

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The parallel structure — inspectors hunting WMDs while a teenager pines for Doritos and butter pecan — is a vivid juxtaposition of geopolitical scale against intimate private desire that could anchor a scene or essay.
• CANDY: The Doritos/butter pecan vs. chip/yellowcake parallel is a quotable, low-context bit.