Arts and Farts and Crafts - Week 4 - Prison Clouds
Arts and Farts and Crafts is a weekly artistic challenge. Every Thursday, a new prompt will be posted here on Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude. Then, you will create some sort of media based on the prompt. Is it a rhyming couplet? A ten-page story? A photograph? A drawing? A recipe? Whatever you’d like. As long as your piece of art is a new creation and it’s vaguely inspired by the week’s prompt, it’s in!
To enter, post your entry on your blog. Then, e-mail me at MSTrox@gmail.com with a link to your entry. I will then make a round-up post sharing your art on my website, as well as the requisite linkage.
This week’s theme?
My attempts at reason and quiet diplomacy fell on deaf ears as they began to wrap themselves in toilet paper from head to foot and chant “We want women.” I retreated to the relative quiet of my room and read the writing of a monk who lived alone on a mountaintop for thirty-seven years in search of a deeper understanding of the world. His main conclusion, when he came down, was that you can see very far on top of a mountain unless it is cloudy. Imprisoned for his radical ideas, he died several years later in jail. The only writing from this time period that survived is the line: “There are no clouds in a prison.”
-From The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (as heard by Scott Frost)
Inspiration is a funny thing. This week it was my turn to pick a theme, and I thought this one was pretty neat. I sat here and stewed over the prompt, and then I began writing. I guess what I’m saying is, don’t judge me for coming up with a piece that is all about poop jokes, and which has no tangible ties to the actual prompt. The piece did spring from the prompt (in some twisted way), but that’s about where it stops.
This is a dialogue, which I may use in the future and may not. Either way, it’s plain to see that I need to work on the unnatural nature of my dialogue.
Untitled Dialogue
(Phone)
A: How’s summer camp?
B: Stephanie just came into my cabin to talk to me, except I was in the bathroom pooping. It was…
A: Bizarre.
B: …bizarre. It was bizarre. It was bizarre.
A: I know just what you mean. The other day my boss pissed at the urinal next to mine. Started talking about American Idol.
B: Weird.
A: I know. I don’t even watch American Idol, but I had to play along. He’s my boss.
B: Uh huh.
A: Plus, things would have gotten weird if I’d stopped him.
B: He was talking to you while you were urinating.
A: Oh.
B: Weird, right?
A: Yeah. Time and a place, man. Time and a place.
B: Uh huh.
A: What did Stephanie talk to you about?
B: I told her there were alligators in the shower house.
A: That doesn’t make sense.
B: It does not. There were not alligators in the shower house. Just a plumbing problem.
A: Yep.
B: In case you were wondering, alligators do not live at this camp.
A: Yeah, no. I am aware of the alligator situation in central Pennsylvania and it is quite dire.
B: Really.
A: Did it strike you at all to make as many loud farts as possible? You know. End the conversation in one foul swoop.
B: I think you mean ‘fell swoop.
A: No, it would most decidedly be foul.
B: Well I didn’t. I felt self-conscious and stopped.
A: Oh. I would poop extra hard.
FIN
_____________________________________________
Welcome to our newest member, Conor Schaefer, who gives us his first submission! The piece is called “A Joining,” and it falls in the Short Fiction category. If you’re looking for a piece inspired by the prompt that doesn’t involve a lot of poop and pee, you’ll be well-met to click this link and read Conor’s fantastic entry. Here is a brief excerpt, although there is so much more at his site.
Otto Gottlieb is a rusty old lamppost of a man. A lit cigarette in the rain. The ash collects like fallen snow in the crevices of his worn leather jacket and the rain sullies it. He stands articulated on a square in a nonexistent European town, waiting for a bus already come and gone.
He doesn’t want to answer his door. Without peering out the window, he knows the jaguars are walking about on two feet again. In the den, a clay sculpture of a Sphinx is pushed off the mantel and dashes itself against the stone beneath. Its head breaks off, rather than just the nose. Yet again, the universe fails to be as poetic as it could, if it cared.
_________________________________________
Here is my friend Nichole’s piece. She doesn’t have a blog of her own, and I am reposting this with her permission. She takes the most straightforward extension of the theme, and plans to develop this further. Pretty darn good, huh?
My attempts at reason and quiet diplomacy fell on deaf ears as they began to wrap themselves in toilet paper from head to foot and chant “We want women.” I retreated to the relative quiet of my room and read the writing of a monk who lived alone on a mountaintop for thirty-seven years in search of a deeper understanding of the world. His main conclusion, when he came down, was that you can see very far on top of a mountain unless it is cloudy. Imprisoned for his radical ideas, he died several years later in jail. The only writing from this time period that survived is the line: “There are no clouds in a prison.”
The relative quiet became real quiet as a sudden hush made the skin beneath my fingernails crawl. I looked up from my dog eared college textbook to see a pudgy face pressed against my glass door, lips bloated obscenely against the glass. And was that a wiggling tongue? Well it at least explained my co-workers behavior in the lunch room, and the evidence room, and the records room. Contrary to popular belief FBI agents did not spend their work day hanging from fluorescent lights or chanting about their desire for women. Especially, Alice Cooper. She was six months pregnant with her second child by the same man. Somehow I doubted she wanted women.
The grotesque face pulled away from the glass to show a fairly nondescript man. Shit brown hair, coal eyes, and a green polka dot tie decorated the man, who wasn’t really a man. Okay, so not as nondescript as I first thought, but to be fair his clothing choice was the only thing making him stand out at all. I looked wearily at the textbook before closing it with a loud WHACK. I waved him in and avoided watching him move. He looked human, but didn’t move like one. It always made me a little queasy watching muscles and bones move where there shouldn’t have been either.
One gum covered sole rubbed goo onto my desk and I gave it and it’s owner a look. A chuckle that echoed with hundreds of voices was all I got for my effort. The shoe remained.
“What do you want? And my co-workers?”
Loki shrugged. “They’re enjoying themselves. And we want the usual my nephew.” He smiled widely showing dagger like teeth. “We want you to stop Ragnarök.”
Well it wasn’t every day the god of Mischief asked you to save his life. This definitely topped my captain growing donkey ears during a meeting with NSA.
Next week’s theme is from Nichole.
An amnesiac man wakes up naked standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour. He doesn’t know how he got there, and his only clue is an iPod strapped to his arm in a runners band. It contains the audiobook of Dante’s Inferno, a jingle for Wrigley’s, every work done by Beethoven, and the sound of a door shutting on an infinite loop.
Sounds pretty straightforward to me.
Entries can be submitted in any medium. The end-date for submissions is Thursday July 10. Be sure to notify me at MSTrox@gmail.com!
Tuesdays with Dorky (and the temple of chocolate)
Gold, I tell you! Everything I touch turns to gold! I’ve been winning grand awards left and right!
I recently won a contest at Tuesdays with Dorie, giving me a free baking cookbook (and a seat among the hallowed TWD blogroll). TWD is a baking event. Every week, a recipe is picked from the pages of Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Then, every blogger and their mother bakes their own version of that recipe.
I’ve not done a particularly good job of baking in the past. Most of my baking is f’aking, and then there’s some that just kind of falls apart (Chocolate Cherry Dr. Pepper Cupcakes, Amazing Black Bean Brownies).
Until I receive the book in the mail and get to babble endlessly about my failures as a baker and as a human being, here’s a mega-update about my adventures in chocolatey things.
I’m a…hungry girl? That can’t be right!
In my neverending quest to eat delicious treats that somehow don’t bust my gutline, I stumbled across a newsletter called Hungry Girl. Is it run by a hungry girl? Is it a site for hungry girls? Either way, I’m emasculated by e-mail messages five days a week.
Now that we can put aside all of that macho posturing, I’ll inform you that Hungry Girl is the real shizz. I’ve been perusing years and years worth of bizarre recipes and bookmarking almost every page. The recipes are fast and easy; frequently they are made with junk you have laying around.
My first completed recipe was Yum Yum Brownie Muffins (click that link for the recipe). It’s pretty simple–a box of dry cake mix and a can of 100% pumpkin. I used Pillsbury Reduced-Sugar Devil’s Food Cake Mix, which is sweetened with a mix of sugar and Splenda. In the end, the muffins were each 153 calories. That, my friends, is a drop in the bucket. The muffin bucket.
The muffins were dense, and fudgy. Nothing in the flavor indicated that they were “diet muffins.” They were subdued enough to eat as a breakfast treat, but substantial and chocolatey enough to frost in cupcake form.
Reactions weren’t glowing, but generally positive. My mom and sister scarfed them down, and coworkers enjoyed them too. For a quick-fix recipe, that’s really all you can ask for!
More photos of Hungry Girl’s “Yum Yum Brownie Muffins.”
Mano Amano
You may remember that I blogged about $21 of free Amano chocolate that I received. I asked for suggestions as to what I should do with the bars, and I received some interesting ones. While I considered Conor’s suggestion of intravenously feeding myself, I ended up following Joli’s advice and letting the shizzle dissolve in my mouth. It’s about as close as I’ll ever get to snooty “chocolate tasting” given my level of patience.
Amano creates chocolate in three forms–Madagascar, Ocumare, and Cuyagua. All three bars have 70% cacao content. Texturally, these chocolates were heads above “similar” items from both the mass-market brands and the more widespread organic options. When it comes to flavor–eh. Some were better, some were worse. The Madagascar was revelatory. Amano says it “includes hints of citrus and berry,” and I’ll be damned if my untrained palate actually found them! This is by far the best dark chocolate I’ve ever eaten. The Ocumare was pretty good. Although the tasting notes mention “hints of plums and other red fruit,” this one tasted (to me) pretty close to a generic dark chocolate bar. Cuyagua (including “notes of spice”) was my least favorite of the three. The spice seemed to be nonexistant. The chocolate seemed somehow blander than the other products.
Are any of these products worth $7 for a bar? I don’t think so. I can appreciate the amount of work and care that went into each of these bars, but when you can get a (larger) bar for $2.50 in the organic section of your supermarket it seems like an awful waste to pay triple that for similar quality.
More Free Chocolate Crapola
I received a free sample of Betty Crocker Warm Delight Minis: Molten Chocolate Cake. It’s the Easy Mac of cakes! Just add water, stir, microwave, and you have fresh, steamy cake.
The pack comes with a small packet of cake mix, a condom wrapper filled with fudge sauce, and a small plastic bowl. Prep was fairly easy, requiring only two minutes of work. The end result wasn’t bad. It was cake-mixy and clearly not baked from scratch, but the fact that it was fresh from the “oven” improves the little cake’s value tenfold.
At 150 calories, it’s a nice (albeit expensive) calorie-cheap dessert. It has trans fats, with partially hydrogenated oils in both the cake mix and the fudge. Despite its caloric value (which is more a measure of its diminuative size and not its “healthiness”), this is not for the dieter.
More photos of Betty Crocker Warm Delight Minis: Molten Chocolate Cake
In the near future, you’ll be seeing a lot more failed baking (and, presumably, a little bit of success)
And…well, maybe everything I touch doesn’t turn to gold. I have a feeling there will be a lot of baked goods that turn to black before this strange, mystical journey is over.
Arts and Farts and Crafts: Week 3: Heroes
Arts and Farts and Crafts is a weekly artistic challenge. Every Thursday, a new prompt will be posted here on Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude. Then, you will create some sort of media based on the prompt. Is it a rhyming couplet? A ten-page story? A photograph? A drawing? A recipe? Whatever you’d like. As long as your piece of art is a new creation and it’s vaguely inspired by the week’s prompt, it’s in!
To enter, post your entry on your blog. Then, e-mail me at MSTrox@gmail.com with a link to your entry. I will then make a round-up post sharing your art on my website, as well as the requisite linkage.
This week we worked with a prompt, chosen by my friend Nichole.
“Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy — common clay, if you like — eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can’t imagine dead. And then there are the others — the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.”
-Jean Anouilh
I’m not entirely sure what my “sloppy copy” has to do with the prompt, but it’s what came out of me as I was thinking about it. Like all of the best rough drafts, it’s unfocused and full of loose ends! Without further doo doo:
Dear Hero Imprisoned
You don’t want to be liked in prison. Even if you’re the nicest person in the world–the Pope or Ghandi or Ben Affleck. When one person likes you, all the people that hate that person automatically hate you. It’s not rocket science, Bromar. It’s simple math. The associative property, now with 90% more brutal showerbeatings. Still, it’s hard to complain about prison. It’s got a two-to-one ratio of hots to cots. They give you a bed in prison. They give you toilet paper. They treat you better here than in active warzones. If you’re in Iraq you have to wipe with a cactus or something.
Of course, it’s still not The Ritz. The latrine is literally one foot away from the bed. Ask any doctor–you’re supposed to leave a good six-to-eight feet of empty room around the toilet for a truly sanitary bathroom environment. But, as my endearing cellmate so succinctly put it, “Son, you gon’ get shit in yo’ mouth every day up in here. What’s a little more?” Point. Counterpoint.
If you want to survive prison, you have to look at nature’s survivor–the cockroach. Roaches have existed through numerous ice ages and extinctions and come out not the worse for wear. What makes the cockroach such a resilient creature? Number one: it eats…well, it eats leaves or something. I don’t know. Number two: it has a really hard shell, so it’s hard to squish. Number three: everybody hates them. So there you go. Three simple rules.
I live by these rules. I eat leaves or something. I have a hard shell. Everyone hates me. I am one of the resilient. I am a cockroach.
Is this how you envision your heroes? Do you see ignoble, inglorious bastards like me–happy to eat, breed, work, count pennies, and piss? Or are you enamoured with the traditional vision–the chisel-chinned noble that you can envision lying shot, pale, tragic–one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes?
What makes the latter a hero anyway? Valor? Unmussable hair? Expensive designer underpants? Humbug. I’m six-foot-tall and a-hundred-eighty-pounds. I can punch through a wall with my fist. I’m gap-toothed, ugly as a mug, alive, and well. They’re pretty and pale dead. In the end, I win.
I’m fairly certain I’m invincible. I mean, I have not died yet. Not even once.
_____
NEXT WEEK’S PROMPT:
My attempts at reason and quiet diplomacy fell on deaf ears as they began to wrap themselves in toilet paper from head to foot and chant “We want women.” I retreated to the relative quiet of my room and read the writing of a monk who lived alone on a mountaintop for thirty-seven years in search of a deeper understanding of the world. His main conclusion, when he came down, was that you can see very far on top of a mountain unless it is cloudy. Imprisoned for his radical ideas, he died several years later in jail. The only writing from this time period that survived is the line: “There are no clouds in a prison.”
-From The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (as heard by Scott Frost)
Entries can be submitted in any medium. The end-date for submissions is Thursday July 3. Be sure to notify me at MSTrox@gmail.com!
Arts and Farts and Crafts: Week 2: Outdoors
Arts and Farts and Crafts is a weekly artistic challenge. Every Thursday, a new prompt will be posted here on Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude. Then, you will create some sort of media based on the prompt. Is it a rhyming couplet? A ten-page story? A photograph? A drawing? A recipe? Whatever you’d like. As long as your piece of art is a new creation and it’s vaguely inspired by the week’s prompt, it’s in!
To enter, post your entry on your blog. Then, e-mail me at MSTrox@gmail.com with a link to your entry. I will then make a round-up post sharing your art on my website, as well as the requisite linkage.
This week’s theme: Outdoor Photography.
Here is my entry:
I got the colors I wanted, but I have a few problems with my final entry. We came up with the theme last week when it was sunny and beautiful, and this week was overcast and rainy. Furthermore, I got a little overzealous with the effects of Photoshop Express, so this is a bit too sharp and oversaturated. However, I got the colors I wanted when I snapped the picture, and it captures a bit of a weird moment.
Here is the entry of my friend Nichole:
Here is next week’s prompt, chosen by Nichole.
“Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy — common clay, if you like — eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can’t imagine dead. And then there are the others — the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.”
-Jean Anouilh
Entries can be submitted in any medium. The end-date for submissions is Thursday June 25. Be sure to notify me at MSTrox@gmail.com!
Arts and Farts and Crafts Week 1: Writing - “Tar and Feathers”
We’ve decided to take a more “mixed media” feel to our artsy-fartsy challenge (once called “Writer Wrong”), so I’ve decided to call it “Arts and Farts and Crafts” in reference to one of my favorite films.
Next week’s medium is PHOTOGRAPHY. The theme is OUTDOORS. If anybody would like to play along, create some new art by Thursday following these rules, blog about it, and let me know.
For this week, our theme was based on an e-mail from my friend Nichole.
Peering through Venetian blinds I got my first look at the fuchsia demons. They perched innocently upon my Kentucky Blue in numbers approaching a hundred. Pink Flamencoes. Evil in plastic form.
In Florida there is a boy scout fund raising gimmick where they stick a lot of plastic flamencoes into some persons yard. They helpfully provide a sign stating “You have been Flocked by Troop#___” And then you are asked to “donate” to the troop in return for having the flamencos removed from your lawn.
Using that as inspiration, I freewrote this. Not great. I’m a little rusty, but I should be getting back into it soon. For now, I’ll just Frankenstein the pieces I like out of this and use them elsewhere.
Tar and Feathers
I pull down a slat in my Venetian blinds. Behind the blinds: nothing but a sea of blazing pink swimming with vacant, black eyes. Maybe a tree here or a rock there. Some grass–Kentucky Blue. But mostly just plastic pink flamingos standing ever-motionless with legs crossed in figure-fours. Fuschia demons basking in both the brightness of stagnant Frankfurt sunlight and the joy of blinding me.
The neighbors must be going batshit insane. The neon birds clash with the peeling, pale-blue paint of my ranch house like some terrible cotton candy concoction. Nothing I can do about it now.
There was a time when I could have stopped it. I would look through the blinds every morning to see houses and fields and sky and eventually, in some far-off place I’d never venture–mountains.
Then it was there.
Just a stupid lawn ornament. Some idiot kid probably stole it off the three-square-foot lawn in front of some ramshackle trailer from that community outside of town that’s filled with so many telephone poles it’s practically canopied with wires. It wasn’t worth the time and mental anguish to leave my house and remove the eyesore. Over the ensuing days, the collection grew and grew and grew and grew and all I could do was stare through the slats. Now there’s nothing else. Only pink.
There’s an old folktale about the creation of the earth. My mom used to read it to me at bedtime. Some ancient deity created the world in seven days. He started with the land, followed shortly thereafter by the sea and the sky. Threw some plants into the mix–palm trees and potatoes and those stupid spiky things that get stuck to your clothes. Then he created the animals, starting with the dumber amoebas and working his way through bark beetles, buzzing bumblebees, teeny-weeny mice, redheaded woodpeckers, bushy-tailed squirrels, raccoons with masks, until finally he ended with humans. Then he created Richard the Lionhearted, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Colonel Sanders, and your grandma. On the seventh day, he was exhausted so he took a vacation. On the eighth day, he realized that the teenagers had nobody to make fun of, so he created me.
No matter where I go, the hooligans always find me. The teens tire pretty quickly of the dumb old favorites–ding-dong-ditch, poo-in-a-flaming-bag, what-have-you–and come up with some dumb new favorites to take their place. They place fresh fish under the windshield wipers of my beat-up old Plymouth Breeze, so that when I eventually exit my house the fish are baked onto the window, covered with flies, and filled with maggots. No matter where I go. I seem to be made to suffer. It’s my lot in life.
I look back out the window. Can it be that there’s even more pink than previously? It’s hard to tell now. There are so many birds. Where are these things coming from? Kids must be calling all K-Marts across the country looking for damned lawn ornaments.
My pops used to tell me tales of amazing rains. Once, he told me, the world was actually covered entirely in water. Some vengeful god was tired of the sex and the drugs and the rock and roll, so he pissed all over the earth until everybody drowned. Then, one guy and his wife repopulated the whole of humanity. He saved us from drowning in water, but doomed us to an eternity drowning in overpopulation–an ocean full of incest-bred siblings.
My pops used to tell me lots of tales. Used to drink a lot of whiskey, too.
My refrigerator hums to me. I hum back. Passes the time. I used to sing, but I forgot the words. I’ve been speaking later and later in the day. Sometimes I don’t talk ’til maybe eight o’clock at night. Later. Never. Doesn’t matter. Not much that can’t be said with a well-placed grunt. Or a hum.
A rustle. Brief. Then longer. Louder. Longer. Louder. This is not a normal sound. It is not the humidifier; the furnace; the mice; the humming. This is papers shuffling–an ever-nearing taxtime accountant. The rustling gets louder and louder until my windows shake. Until my teeth shake.
Just as creation myths are made for every belief system, destruction myths are par for the course. I’m a little bit muddier on them, just because everyone in my family died before they could finish reading that book. Or maybe they just got bored around the part where everybody begat everybody else. I think the end of the world will have something to do with a team of horses, and a big fire.
The noise is coming at me now. There’s not much left of the windows, and not much left of my teeth. Feathers are everywhere, pink and glorious and beautiful and horrifying. And those eyes–those eyes, black as coal, judging me and my every thought. My face is bloodied and oozing from wounds I didn’t know I’d gotten. Maybe they’d always been there. When was the last time I looked in a mirror, anyway? Must have been years ago, shortly after I’d seen that first bird. The Alpha Bird. I close my eyes. I open them. I close my eyes. I open them again. The noise is still here. Nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes.
I close my eyes and open them one last time. I spy the door. I make my way through the noise and through the feathers, and I step outside.
Inspiration
I am writing again. And not silly blog-writing, either (although that will continue at my normal, leisurely clip). I’m going back to my training in creative writing and actually putting things down on paper.
I was inspired, in a way, by a lot of these weekly/monthly food challenges on the Internet (see especially: Tuesdays With Dorie, Cupcake Hero, Vindicate the Vegetable). If I had to fall flat on my face coming up with a title as clever as the above, I would call it something like “WriteRight” or “Write or Wrong.” Or “Writer Wrong.” What do I know?
Here’s the skinny. My friend Nichole and I are writing a piece every week in response to a prompt (which one of us originates every week). The piece could be a story. It could be a poem. It could be visual art. Anything. Just creative output springing from the prompt.
I decided to jump right into it and do a short story (or, I guess, a “short short story”). It’s due on Thursday, and by posting this I’m obligating myself to posting writing her every Thursday from this point forward, no matter what happens to this silly challenge thing.
Other things that are inspiring me:
Joli’s blog, which is full of fantastic stuff lately. Even the posts she uses as filler until she writes new stuff are incredible.
THE AMERICANS ARE THE ONES WATCHING OUT THE WINDOWS TO SEE IF THE PLANE IS BEING LOADED. THEY ARE THE ONES SCOWLING AS THEY SPEAK OF BABIES GROWING UP. THEY ARE THE ONES ANNOUNCED ON THE INTERCOM WITH NAMES LIKE “ELEGANT”. THEY ARE THE ONES SINGING NURSERY RHYMES. MY PASSPORT SAYS SO MANY THINGS NOW BUT THE BIGGEST ONE IS STILL UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I AM EATING BELGIAN CHOCOLATE THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SOUVENIRS.
Violent Femmes’ cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” Gnarls Barkley covered the Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone” on their first album, and I guess this is the Femmes’ way of returning the favor. I have the 12″ single in hand, and the CD is forthcoming. The music is raucous and unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. They’ve even managed to work the theremin–best known for kitschy ’50’s sci-fi instrumentation–into the mix. I’m not the biggest Gnarls Barkley fan (although “Crazy” was a fun, easily-digestible pop song), but I’m a huge Femmes fan and was not disappointed by this release. I’m also generally encouraged by the fact that they’re recording again after an ugly lawsuit between the lead singer and the bassist regarding music rights.
That’s it. Be back on Thursday-ish with a story about flamingos.
Ugly Movies!
Click on “Ugly Movies” on the right (or on this link) to see my constantly-updated reviews of movies. They’re just one-paragraph baubles, but it keeps me writing and maybe it will keep you infotained.
Kashi Granola - Mountain Medley
I love Kashi. I can attribute a great deal of my 130-lb. weight loss to their GoLean and GoLean Crunch cereals. They manage to make tasty cereals that are packed with essentials (protein, fiber, whathaveyou). For my three-plus years as a vegetarian, they were one of my favorite protein sources. Additionally, their instant oatmeal is the best instant I’ve ever eaten.
Oooh la la! I received a package in the mail from Kashi recently. I’d like to revel in the fact that I receive free review samples from companies due to my super-popular Internet web site, but really I just signed up for their mailing list a few years ago.
The Package asks: “Ready to get off your rump?”
I reply: “No.”
The paper inside the box confuses things even more: STEP 1: Eat Granola. STEP 2: Get off your rump.
Using this handy chart, it is now possible to see how one can “get off of their rump” the Kashi way!
Using this even-handier chart, it is possible to see how one can “get off of their rump” and cut out that pesky, delicious middle man!
In the end, though, I did decide to get off my rump. A week later, I took Kashi Mountain Medley Granola where it was destined to be consumed–an overnight on a local stretch of the Appalachian Trail with my friends Brad and Tom.
Kashi Mountain Medley Granola is okay. Don’t get me wrong–in a lot of cases, granola is granola and that is that. Mountain Medley is a quarter-step above your run-of-the-mill granola. The raisins and c’raisins are plentiful and the grains are as tasty as the rest of Kashi’s oeuvre. I guess maybe I’m just spoiled by the goodness that was Dingeldein Bakery’s homemade granola, which is some of the finest I’ve ever sampled.
According to Kashi’s official web page, there are three other varieties of Kashi granola–Cocoa Beach, Orchard Spice, and Summer Berry. The Orchard Spice (mixed with apples and pecans) sounds exquisite, and I’ll probably pick up a box sometime to taste.
Fresh granola–especially at exorbitant bakeries–comes at a price. Kashi’s is the best off-the-shelf granola I’ve had. If you are looking for a slightly-more-economical substitute in your granola life and you don’t have time to make your own, Kashi Mountain Medley is where it’s at. I’ve got two turn tables and a microphone.
Here are some pictographs of the gorgeous scenery I encountered.
Sweet and Sweetener
Aspartame done effed me up.
For a while I was–with the exception of a diet soda every day–eating “naturally.” I wasn’t ingesting any of those silly chemicals. My diet consisted solely of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and dry cereals.
So when I jumped back on the “artificially sweetened candy” train, I wasn’t expecting what I got. I’ve been doing about seven sticks of “Extra” sugar-free gum daily to get myself through work. It may not seem like a lot–35 calories, but those chemicals do something special to you.
To put it lightly, Intense, daily gastrointestinal distress. Like, you have to hightail it to the bathroom or you’re done for! Thanks to freaking delicious bubble gum, I broke my streak of “No Twosies in Public Restrooms” for the first time in five years.
I used to say “p’shaw” to the clowns that talk smack on my good friend the calorie-free sweetener. I’ve seen the error of my ways, and it’s manifest in the error lingering around the bathroom.
At the moment, this is just aspartame. I haven’t noticed any detrimental effects with Splenda (and I consume a lot of it), but I wouldn’t be surprised if Splenda winds up turning my ears into butts that poop other, smaller butts onto the shoulders of my friends. Or something.
DEAD
Okay. I’m not dead. But my car is.
On Sunday, my girlfriend and I were driving down a four-lane highway (2 lanes for each direction of traffic, natch) toward my sister’s college graduation. As we were passing a tractor trailer (fully in view of his mirrors), he flipped on his turn signal. He immediately and quickly began to merge into our lane. I slammed on the brakes, but it wasn’t enough.
My poor car was slammed by the semi in two places–the front of the hood and the rear passenger door. We were sent careening across a raised median and into the two lanes of oncoming traffic.
The truck driver did not stop.
Since the accident happened, I’ve been known to say, “With the exception of being hit by a tractor-trailer, things could not have gone more perfectly.”
1) We were in a tiny, 1-mile stretch without any walls dividing the highway. Had we run into a median wall, we would have been killed.
2) The two impact points directly sandwiched my girlfriend. If the truck had hit where she was sitting it would probably have been the end of ol’ Rachel.
3) We somehow, miraculously managed to miss all oncoming traffic.
4) Despite coming within feet of it, we avoided the guard rail on the opposite side of the highway.
5) When the car eventually screeched to a stop, we were sitting atop the median, completely out of harm’s way.
I feel incredibly lucky to be here today blogging obnoxiously. Soon I will be the owner of a brand new car (I’m looking into the Prius at the moment). At the moment, money is going to be tight and a lot of the more extravagant recipes and foods I have bookmarked to try may not happen as fast as I had planned. Thank god for $21 worth of free artisan chocolate!
On a related note, when I had to kick the car door open, I felt like an action hero.