Popeyes Peanut Butter Banana Pie -- A Review

Remember when you were a kid and you'd get that big pack of popsicles with all the different

Lies! Deception!

flavors? Remember how they were all great except for the banana ones? Do you furthermore remember how there would therefore be one banana popsicle left in the package and it became a standoff between you and your sister as to who would eat it because you were only allowed one per day and Mom wouldn't let you open the next box until the first was empty so you knew if you ate that nasty-ass banana popsicle your sister would get a good one and you wouldn't get another until tomorrow?

If you answered "no," perhaps you haven't retained the irrational hatred for artificial banana flavor into your adulthood that I have.

I'd been eating like an anorexic chipmunk for three weeks to get a little less squishy and hadn't cheated once. It was my first day back into "eat whatever I want" mode, so there I sat in the interminably long Popeyes drive-thru line to try their new chicken sandwich (WHICH THEY WERE OUT OF, GODS CURSE THEM) and "peanut butter banana pie" sounded pretty good. 

I'm not much of a dessert guy usually--especially from a fast food joint--but figured what the hell. It sounded good and the picture of actual bananas must have clouded my usually impeccable food judgement.

Long-forgotten images of banana popsicles flashed before my eyes as I took the first bite. My popsicle PTSD had been activated. Damn you, artificial banana flavoring! You are an affront to the good name of bananas everywhere! Unlike artificial watermelon flavoring (which tastes better than the fruit itself) you embarrass your namesake and taste of disappointment, plastic, and evil.

Long story short, this pie was a good idea in theory but poor in execution. All they had to do was use actual bananas instead of fake banana flavor and it would have been great. 

Fake peanut butter? Sure. Tastes fine.
Fake banana? Garbage.

Rating: 1.5

Rating system:

1 (Poor) - Holy shit, don't eat this.

2 (Mediocre) - Grievances are likely significant. Avoid in most cases.

3 (Average) - Take it or leave it and probably forget it.

4 (Good) - Has definite appeal.

5 (Great) - Any time not spent eating this will be spent thinking up excuses to eat it.

Your "Emotional Support Animal" Doesn't Belong On a Plane

It has recently come to my attention that people experiencing anxiety or other mental illnesses are often allowed to bring "emotional support animals" on planes. These aren't just your classic "blind person dog," even freaking ponies can be found in this role.

Lest the ridiculousness of this pass you by:
THERE ARE PEOPLE BRINGING PONIES ON PLANES TO MAKE THEM NOT FEEL SAD.

Now I'm not usually one to offend the mentally ill as they're the only ones who like me but if you can't fly without bringing some critter to snuggle, maybe flying isn't for you.

Consider this: dancing seems like fun for most folks, but for me it's stressful and makes me self-conscious and anxious. Despite this, you don't see me dragging my goddamn emotional support wombat along to weddings. I just don't freaking dance. Some people just aren't meant to do some things.

I shudder to think where this could lead.
College is rough and finals have you stressed? Move a few desks over; this is a job for Stompy McGee the emotional support elephant.
Had a bad day at work? Looks like my emotional support ostrich Dr. Peckingston will be joining us in the office tomorrow. Hope everyone's OK with that. Oh, and keep your hands away from his mouth; he's been sorta bitey of late.

It's not just ridiculous, it's inconsiderate. I don't want to be on a flight with something that poops [yes, I know humans poop too; I stand by my statement] and the airlines shouldn't have to deal with a cabin full of terrorized passengers because therapy, drugs, and good ol' willpower weren't enough to get you through a flight--you had to haul along Elizardbeth Taylor the emotional support Komodo dragon.

If flying stresses you out, just do what everyone else will be doing--getting horribly, horribly drunk.


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Disclaimer: This probably isn't as big a problem as I'm making it out to be, but the fact that it exists at all is simultaneously infuriating, hilarious, and sad.

You're All Awful (Vol. I)

These are NOUNS: 
Walkout, hangout, workout, hangup, setup, startup, kickoff [et cetera].

These are VERBS + ADVERBS:
Walk out, hang out, work out, hang up, set up, start up, kick off [et cetera].

"Breath" is a NOUN and rhymes with "death."

"Breathe" is a VERB and rhymes with Mike Tyson saying "freeze."

These things are not interchangeable. They aren't examples of "either one is fine" or "they both work."

This is some basic elementary school shit and you're awful for screwing it up.

Have a nice day, jerks.

Ghost in the Shell and the "Whitewashing of Hollywood"

So... I'm racist because a robot wasn't Asian? Really?

As often happens with movies I was late to the party on this one, but I just watched Ghost in the Shell. It's been out for ages now, so there will be spoilers herein and I won't feel any remorse for them. You've been warned.

For background purposes, I'd never seen the original comic book or movie or whatever the hell it was. All I knew was that it was some sort of animated Japanese thing.

The verdict, in short, was that I very much enjoyed it. Will it be on my top 10 favorite movies list? Probably not. Would I watch it again some day? Sure.

From the very little research I did, it seems that people's biggest reason for not enjoying it (among those who actually watched it; more on that soon) was that it didn't live up to or was unfaithful to the source material.

Again, I know nothing of the source material so I'm cool with that. And in broader strokes, it really kind of hacks me off when people bitch about that. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for example, was a lovely little film that veered pretty wildly from the source material (to the chagrin of morons everywhere) but you know what? That's fine. I've already read the books. I don't need to see them again. In fact, I watched the British TV version of Hitchhiker's and it was line-for-freaking-line the exact same as the book. I was bored to death. It was awful.

Movies should differ from the source or they risk being stale.

Ghost in the Shell gets my official Walrus of Approval. There's my review, and it was short because there's something else we need to talk about here.

When this movie came out, I remember there being a major uproar about how Hollywood was being whitewashed because Scarlett Johansson was playing an Asian person. My response to that was "Yeah, that seems a bit wrong. Bad move on the studio's part, but..."

People get roles outside of their race all the time in the movies, and right or wrong it's honestly not shocking anymore.

My feeling was that it was silly and maybe a bit of a turnoff, but in a country where Asians are nowhere near the majority of the population, the big name actresses aren't going to be Asian. Therefore, while I expected it to bug people, I figured it was just a business decision to get a big name actress into the lead role so people would see this very expensive effects-laden movie and the studio wouldn't lose money.

The rest of the world, of course, took it a little harder than I did. After all, it's 2017 and everyone's hobby seems to be some combination of staring at their phone and getting offended by stupid shit, so why stop now?

In one respect, my assumption was correct--the studio wanted Scarlett Johansson instead of an Asian actress because she's a major name that will draw attention and fans.

Here's what I didn't know: Scarlett's character isn't an Asian person. It's a robot.

For those of you who need a slap or two to figure out why this is relevant, robots don't have race. They're robots. What race is your microwave? Your fridge? Your iPhone?

Scarlett's character is a robot with a human brain. Yes, that human brain turns out to have belonged to an Asian person, but with the people who built her wanting to obscure her past, why is it hard to believe that they'd put her Asian brain in a body that doesn't appear Asian? Wouldn't that actually be more likely so as to throw her off the trail of her true past?

"Durr but it's Japanese source material taking place in Asia so the lead character must be Asian!"

Firstly, the movie has British people, black people, Asians, white people of unknown descent, and people of indeterminate race all inhabiting the same area. It's pretty diverse. Scarlett isn't out of place.

Secondly, are we really going to say that changing the apparent race of a character to something different from the original is racist? 
Ford Prefect in the earlier-mentioned Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a regular white British fellow in the books, but he's played in the movie by the obviously black Mos Def. If I say that's wrong, I'm pretty sure the racism police would be at the door in a flash.

A recent remake of the Broadway classic Annie had multiple characters (including the lead) transmuted to black. Again, if I say that's wrong and bad and an affront to the source material, I'd rightfully be labelled racist.

In more recent times, the previously white Wonder Woman was played by Gal Gadot--an Israeli--to near-universal acclaim.

So why is it racist for Scarlett to play a character that once appeared (appeared not was, mind you, because she's a raceless robot) to be Asian? It seems that the toxic notion that only white people can be racist is rearing its ugly head again.

One can only assume that ignorance is to blame for this. A handful of morons began shrieking "Injustice!" and the vast multitudes of ovine dimwits that populate the internet parroted the complaints without bothering to check any facts or use their brains at all.

My apathy led me to similar ignorance, so in that respect I suppose I'm not entirely blameless, but you can be sure if I'd felt the need to join the hordes trying to drown you all in a river of righteous tears about Scarlett's alleged misdeeds I would have read up on it a bit first.

Another thought for your consideration: this movie underperformed at the box office.
Now Scarlett Johansson isn't about to go broke; she made millions for this film alone. The studios are likewise probably doing fine. But there are a lot of people involved in a movie with vastly differing situations. What if someone lost their job because of your idiotic protest against nonexistent racism? What if this was someone's only chance to work on a movie set and now that chance is blown because the movie didn't live up to financial expectations because you and your fellow cattle boycotted it and spread half-truths and outright lies about it?

Maybe everyone's fine. Maybe these protests are just a foolish little grain in the sands of time. Either way this culture of self-appointed martyrs, pathological victims, and imagined racism continues to make me ill.

So now that the Rams are gone...

The defeat in their eyes...

Well, the Rams moved to Los Angeles.

This is old news, but for anyone who missed out on any of the details I'll recap:

Before the move was officially announced and was still assumed to be in the "rumor/preventable occurrence" stage, a group of people got together to prepare a plan for a new stadium to keep the Rams in St. Louis. They had an architectural plan, a plan to secure funding, the property (mostly) acquired, etc. There were some details still needing to be ironed out but that's irrelevant for purposes of this discussion.

When this was all announced there were people who were vehemently opposed to the idea, saying "I DON'T WANT MY TAX MONEY GOING TO A FOOTBALL STADIUM! THEY COULD SPEND THAT MONEY ON FEEDING THE HOMELESS INSTEAD OR BUILD A NEW AARDVARK SHELTER OR WHATEVER!"

My response to that was "But they won't."

"It's not like there's a bucket with a billion dollars sitting in it waiting for someone to decide which project it'll be thrown at," I said. "Almost all of the funding is coming from new hotel taxes, stadium naming rights, and other new taxes that are related to the stadium. Either this money is used for the stadium or it's not used at all. Even the revenue streams that aren't related are only going to be created if this stadium is built. If there isn't a new stadium, they aren't going to feed the homeless or build a park or bring back Firefly. NOTHING will happen except people staying in St. Louis hotels will save a buck or two."

Well, now that all has been said and done, stadium-opposers, I'd love to know what altruistic ends that money has gone to.

Now that we don't have a stadium to build, I'm sure the homeless of St. Louis are feasting gleefully upon the lambs and sloths and marmalade and orangutans and breakfast cereals that have been purchased for them with the money that would have been wasted--WASTED I tell you!--on a football stadium.

I'm only being partially snarky here--it's possible that something actually has been done, in which case I'd love to hear about it. I truly do hope I'm proven wrong. 

I'm asking the stadium opposition to come forward with the information because since they were so fervent about not wanting their money to go to a stadium I'm certain they've been monitoring where else it might be going and are keeping very well-informed about municipal fiscal matters.

So I ask you again--where did this money go instead of being WASTED on a stadium?
Was it put to good use, making everyone's arguments against building a stadium valid or was I [gasp!] right again?

I'm disappointed that the Rams left, but as Christina Aguilera sang in the theme from Pearl Harbor, my heart will go on.

The problem is that they didn't take all the assholes with them.


Image stolen from stltoday.com

"Adulting" Isn't Hard.

Inspirational quotes seem to have gone the way of the dodo and have been replaced by complaints about how hard "adulting" is. If you were watching me type this you'd see the squiggly red lines under "adulting" because it's not a goddamned word.

Ignoring my desire to rant about how annoying it is when people turn nouns into verbs, I can't help but wonder how being an adult is so hard for all of you.

The complaints aren't about legitimate things like "omg the coal mine was so hot today" or "today was the fifth day in a row that rabid okapis savaged my village" or even "my dog ate my cat."

It's "I have a kid to take care of?!? When did this happen?!? I'm still a kid and I'm supposed to take care of ANOTHER kid? And I have to PAY BILLS? OMG mailing envelopes is hard AF!!!"

Shut up. You don't even have to mail envelopes anymore. 

The actual process of being an adult is easier now than it's ever been. You can do the vast majority of your paperwork online and likewise find pretty much any information you could ever want in five seconds' time.

When I first became a parent I had my moments of "what the hell do I do with this thing?" Everyone does. In days gone by you'd guess and end up giving your kid malaria or whatever. Oops.
Now you can just do a quick Google search for whatever color fluids are spewing from your kid's body and you don't even have to go to a doctor.

"BUT I HAVE TO GET UP AND GO TO WORK EVERY DAY AND DO STUFF!"

Did you not have a job before you got out of college? Even if you didn't, grades K-12 are basically your job until you graduate high school. You've had to get up on time Monday through Friday every day since you were five. Why's it a challenge now?

You can try arguing that it's for humor's sake but I don't believe that people are posting this crap without on some level believing it.

What happened? Are we a generation raised by overbearing helicopter parents and now we can't handle simple stuff like getting up on time in the morning and paying an electric bill without them standing over us telling us how to do it?

At best it's inaccurate. Raising kids isn't hard at all. It's pretty simple to make sure they don't die. Raising them well is a bit harder, but honestly everyone blows that out of proportion too. 

Similarly, going through the grind of being an adult isn't hard, it just sucks. It's like saying "Walking 1000 miles is hard." Well, no, it really isn't because you're doing it a bit at a time. It just takes a long time and your feet are going to hurt.

At this point you're probably wondering why this bugs me so much.
The problem isn't that people are complaining, it's the implication that this isn't fair. It isn't fair that life has been thrust upon them and they have to do stuff. It isn't fair that they have student loans to pay. It isn't fair that they have to raise kids who are so poorly behaved. It isn't fair that they're fat.

Who forced you to go to college?
Who applied for that job you hate so much?
Who forced you to have kids? 
Who raised your kids to be such shitheads?
Who bought that car that you're lamenting having to make payments on?
Who keeps jamming donuts into your mouth?

All of the "adulting is hard" memes are rooted in our unwillingness to take responsibility for how our lives have turned out.
Yeah, sometimes you get dealt a shitty hand, but for the most part if your life sucks it's because of the choices you've made.
You did this. You raised your kids to be assholes. You made yourself fat. You ran up a huge credit card debt.
"Adulting" isn't hard, but you've failed anyway. It's no one's fault but your own.

So stop saying that being an adult is hard, and practice the following phrase: 

"I regret everything."

It's a start, at least.




Images stolen from wherever. Who cares. Sue me, you idiots.

Yoga Pants -- A Public Service Announcement

Ladies, we need to talk.

This is going to be hard for you but I assure you it's just as painful for me to have to be the bearer of bad news.

I've come to the realization that many of you are deeply confused about what should be a completely obvious fact, and I've taken it upon myself to clear up the misunderstanding.

Brace yourselves; maybe take a deep breath or two. This may come as a shock.

You look like absolute trash walking around in yoga pants all the time.

Especially if you're fat (which is more than likely, statistically speaking).

Especially if you're not on your way to or from yoga class (you probably aren't).

I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. It's a free country and all that. I'm just trying to help you come to grips with reality.

It absolutely baffles me how many of you are going out in public wearing yoga pants instead of proper trousers as if it was a completely normal and rational thing to do. If all the men of the world suddenly took to walking around in pajamas wherever they went, what would the general reaction be? Probably something along the line of "What a bunch of lazy asses" (which would be entirely accurate).

It doesn't look good. It looks lazy. It looks like you just fell out of [some desperate stranger's] bed and landed in a sweaty pile of apathy, which you then decided to haul up your oversized gams and strut around in at the grocery store.

Furthermore--and this is the bit that I think you're all missing--nobody else thinks it looks good. Not even the other yoga pant-clad belugas like you.

Horror.

"Well, I don't care what anyone thinks about me," you may say, and if that's the case then good for you. Honestly. If you're comfortable enough in your [overabundance of] skin that you're not worried about what others think of you, that truly is admirable. I'm not telling you to care what people think of you, I'm just here to make sure you understand what they think of you.

Your decision to knock about in what is essentially sleepwear shows that you really couldn't give a llama's arse about making yourself presentable and leads anyone who sees you to draw further unsavory conclusions about your self-maintenance. "If she can't be bothered to wear actual clothes, has she bothered to bathe recently? To brush her teeth? Comb her hair? Fend off her various infestations of lice? Anything?"

Don't think I don't get your reasoning either. I understand that it's comfortable and women's clothes--especially the fancy ones--often aren't. I get it. However, while I'll often come home from work and go straight into my pajamas for the rest of the day, unless my house is on fire I'm not leaving it without putting on something that doesn't look like I stole it from a Salvation Army donation bin.

"But I bet if it was some hot girl you'd be OK with it!" you moan, desperately attempting to convince yourself that I'm wrong.

No. I really wouldn't be OK with it and try as I might I can't think of a time I saw an attractive female wearing yoga pants anywhere other than the gym--one of the few places it makes sense to wear them. Part of what makes a woman (or anything else for that matter) attractive is the presentation. Yoga pants' presentation is akin to that of a grilled cheese sandwich that you scraped off of the floor and garnished with dead beetles.

I know--you're upset. I'm sorry.

You don't have to change anything. Maybe you're happily married, have a bunch of kids, have a job that you love, don't need anything more from life, and don't need to care what anyone thinks. That's totally fine. Just to reiterate, I'm not here to try and stop you from doing what makes you happy. If you're not worried about whether or not people take one look at you and assume you've got a five-foot stench radius and a buildup of moss between your toes, by all means wear whatever you want.

But you look like crap. Just sayin'.