Keebler Shat on My Childhood Dreams

It's a well-known fact that the butter-cookie-exterior-and-chocolate-fudge-interior E. L. Fudge cookies are Mankind's Greatest Achievement. Everything about them is perfect, right down to the consistency of both the cookie and the fudge creme, as well as the relative stickiness of the creme. The cookies are such a work of art that it is very easy to separate the top half of the cookie, remove the fudge creme, and make your own de facto double stuf-style cookie. Or as I call it, valhalla.

One day, the folks at Keebler (a subsidiary of Kellogg's) got a wild hair up their collective ass, and clearly in a fit of jealousy against Nabisco's Oreos (a subsidiary of Kraft), decided to steal the idea of Double Stuf-ing E. L. Fudges. If you told 10-year-old me that one day I would be eating double stuf E. L. Fudges, I would have kicked you in the shins for making up impossible shit that's too good to be true.

Now, it works on Oreos because here's the Double Stuf recipe (SPOILER ALERT!): Same cookie, twice the Stuf. Somehow, Keebler couldn't crack this code. Right off the bat, you can tell Keebler fucked it up. Behold:

That's not some forced perspective shit I'm pulling here. The original cookie (left) is far larger than the double stuf (right). And the double stuf (or DS, as I shall type it henceforce -- same initials as dog shit) cookie part is the wrong color. Perhaps the extra stuf in the DS will make up for it.

Why is the stuf on the DS so shiny? Why was it deposited onto the cookie differently? One taste and all is revealed: the new stuf tastes like someone took a waxy shit in my mouth. And there's not way on Odin's Midgård that there is twice the stuf on the DS than on the original. The cookie is ruined, too. It tastes a cheap knock-off Vienna Finger. It's dry, it crumbles all over the place, and doesn't taste good on its own. (Real Vienna Fingers are fine, but not when you're trying to eat a goddamned E. L. Fudge.) This cookie doesn't even taste good if you eat both the cookie and stuf together. More like double fail.

Keebler, please change the name of these cookies to "Not E. L. Fudge and Not Double Stuf: Smaller, Crumbier, Shittier"

Keebler needs to get this abomination off the market. And if they even think of fucking with the regular E. L. Fudge recipes, 10-year-old me is going to come kick the shit out of them.

Please note that "Stuf" is only capitalized when referring to Oreo-related Stuf. The E. L. Fudge double stuf stuf is not delicious and therefore does not deserve the capital letter.

RC Cola Theory

Theory: RC Cola has exactly one truck that just constantly goes around the country fulfilling the orders of the half-dozen RC vendors nationwide.

The Bargain Channel

Hey, I've got a great idea! Groupon... on the radio!

Someone actually said that at some point. And now, in Jacksonville, FL, 92.1 FM is The Bargain Channel. They basically took a bunch of no-talent, hack DJs and have them sell coupons on the air. The coupons are usually something like $75 off Al's Stump Removal. You call up the request line and buy the coupon for something like $10. The radio station makes $10 and Al honors the coupon.

I stumbled upon the station last night since I forgot my AUX cable for my MP3 player. The DJ on at the time reminded me of O'Dell from the Cutlery Corner infomercials I used to watch late at night in college. You know, this show.

Now the DJ isn't there alone. There is always a sidekick type person helping move the show along. This other person, for some reason, has dialed in. That's right, they have one guy on a microphone and one guy on the telephone hosting the show. It makes no sense.

The hypnotizing thing about the radio station is listening to these terrible DJs attempt to entice you into buying whatever deal they have at the moment. This morning, they were selling a coupon for Beachside Seafood in Jacksonville Beach. (Quick aside: This station is on 24/7 with the same programming the entire time. Seriously.) I've been to Beachside Seafood. In fact, here's my poorly written review on the place. I wouldn't go back even if I did pay $3 to get $10 off my entire order.

But I digress. Since the DJ didn't have many callers, he started to read the menu from Beachside Seafood (which, by the way isn't on the beach, as he repeatedly claimed). It went something like this: "Aw check it out, they got um, they got snow crab clusters and uh snow crab legs, and let's see dungeness crab, and yeah look it, uh, that crawfish platter, and mm yeah they got uh, they got uh, beer battered cheesesticks and corn nuggets, and fried pickle chips. I love those." It's like listening to a trainwreck.

The good news is that they have a Ustream channel. Unfortunately they haven't touched it in two years, but you can hear an old broadcast here.

Lengua

So, I was in San Diego (which may or may not have been why I was flying over El Paso) and had the joy of eating at Tacos El Gordo. Now, if you ever eat anywhere that claims it's an authentic Mexican place, I want you to find the first waiter you see, punch him in the throat, and spit in his eye, because they are fucking liars.

Tacos El Gordo IS authentic. Basically, you order at a counter to guys who probably don't speak English. What do you order? Tacos, goddamnit! They are about half the size of Taco Bell tacos on a corn tortilla or two (but they're not crunchy). They cut of whatever meat you choose and add (usually 2) predetermined toppings, depending on what you ordered. Each one is more amazing than the last. I had a pork one, a chorizo one, and a steak one.

When I went back up to get more, I decided to go for broke and got the beef tongue taco. It. Was. Amazing. It tasted kind of like flank steak, but fell apart as you ate it because they had cooked it for probably upwards of 17 hours. I was the only white guy in the place to get it. I highly recommend it.

What's going on in El Paso?

So, I was flying across the country as I do from time to time. As I approached El Paso, TX, I noticed one of those undeveloped cities. There is a large network of what appear to be unpaved roads without any buildings or anything. It's creepy from the air, so I can only imagine what it's like on the ground.

Also, there was this:

...which I'm clearly not the first person to notice.

WTF is going on at RennFest?

At the Maryland Renaissance Festival last weekend, there were people in Star Tretk uniforms walking around. I don't know what's more distressing: that I noticed the captain's (red guy's) uniform had pockets, which made his costume inaccurate, or that I was upset by that fact.

Iced Earth's Songwriting

I gave Iced Earth songs the same analysis I gave Dream Theater songs: who wrote how much of each album. Iced Earth's results, as expected, look quite different than Dream Theater's:

Horror Show happens to be my favorite Iced Earth album. Clearly I prefer Barlow's lyric writing and Jon's music writing. Burnt Offerings has the least music that Schaffer wrote, which may explain why that's his least favorite Iced Earth album.

Anyway, I'll stop nerding over songwriting credits... for now.

Note: I was going to do the same for Opeth but the vast majority of their music is credited to "Opeth" and most if not all of their lyrics were written by Åkerfeldt.

Jon Arbuckle's Feet

Recently, I've been watching old episodes of Garfield and Friends, which originally ran from 1988 to 1994 on Saturday mornings. Some of it just doesn't hold up these days, especially the musical numbers about self esteem and such. Anyway, I noticed something pretty disturbing in one episode:

Jon Arbuckle only has 3 toes per foot.

You will never unlearn this fact.

Dream Theater's Songwriting

The next Dream Theater album, A Dramatic Turn of Events, comes out on September 13. It will be the first album without Mike Portnoy on it. I wondered how much of their songs he actually does contribute to, and if it will make any difference in how the songs will come out. In the free time I used to have several months ago, I made this chart. I'm just now getting around to posting it.

Clearly this is by no means a perfect was to determine Portnoy's impact on Dream Theater's songwriting. Nonetheless, Portnoy contributed to a vast majority of the music. However, Petrucci has been writing the majority of the lyrics for a while. Portnoy only got into the lyric writing heavily when he could add his own singing parts that pretty much ruin every song they're in. So, I'm glad to be rid of his vocal parts.

Now I just hope the new album is good.