Week of May 22, 2005

May 27 2005 -- Green. The lime is such an underappreciated fruit. People don't call broken cars limes. People don’t spritz lime over their fish or chicken. People don't compare things to how sour a lime tastes. There is not a wide selection of lime flavored vodkas. People don't sit around in the summer time drinking limeade. Poor lime. Your life has been one of sitting in the supermarket and having people look at you with puzzled faces. A life of being brought out only when someone wants to indulge in some tequila. Your life has been one of sorrow and loneliness, much like Kermit told us, it's not easy being green. But Mr. Lime, your time has come. It is time to step out of the shadow cast upon you by your yellow cousin and take your place in the hearts of everyone. Celebrate your new found glory Mr. Lime and enjoy the spotlight. Show your brother Key Lime that he is no longer the only lime in the family who gets to have any fun. This is your time.



That's right! The age of lime is upon us. Showing up in Pepsi, Coke, hotsauce, and now pickles, this truly is the age of the lime.

But lime in pickles? I'm not sure who your agent is, Lime, but he must be a good one if you are getting into things like this. Putting limes into pickles was just something that has never occurred to me so finding this in the isles of my local store I thought to myself "Has that Vlasic bird gone mad?" quickly followed by "Why the heck is lime showing up in everything now?" But let’s not jump to conclusions, lets give it a shot and see if it works.

How about being used on a sandwich? These are sandwich stacker style pickles so I suppose it would be proper to put them to use there.

The victim: a turkey sandwich - mesquite turkey on a half an Italian roll, yellow mustard, American cheese.
The assailant: 2 lime pickles.
The verdict: Nothing. There was no lime flavor at all in any bite I took. It tasted like pickles, sure, but there was no lime or even a hint of lime. Maybe the other ingredients canceled out the lime. I am not sure how I should rate this. 4 cheeses if it was a plain pickle since that's what it tasted like and it was good, but 1 cheese for the whole lime experience since there wasn't one. Sounds like the pickle failed at it's one and only job - being a lime tasting pickle on a sandwich.

Okay, that did not work out at all. Good thing I tried that first or I would have never even bothered with it because trying them on their own did not yield much of a different result. I opened the can up and took a big sniff. Nothing. Smelled like pickles. I selected one, ate it, and tasted like plain dill pickle. I tried about 4 more times. They were good pickles but there was no lime flavor at all in them. So I had someone else try them. Nope, nothing there either. He tried another one just to make sure. Still nothing. He said I should write an angry letter to Vlasic. Maybe I will email them a link to this review instead.

As pickles go they are good. As lime pickles they totally fail on every level. If you remove the lime from the wrapper and sell them as normal ones no one would know the difference.

1 cheese. Sorry lime, but maybe it really isn’t your time to shine. Perhaps you should go back where you belong and shame yourself behind the fruit that knows how to work.

Posted by LordJezo

May 25 2005 -- Diet Cereal Hey kids! Are you ready for a fun breakfast cereal that takes away all the stuff you love and makes your parents happy you are not rotting your teeth as fast as the other kids? Who needs sugar in the morning? Not you, and that’s what Quaker is hoping.



1/3 less sugar Cap'N Crunch's Swirled Berries! Right there in big letters on the front of the box is the signal letters being sent out to shopping mothers everywhere. 1/3 less sugar! How exciting! Kids don't want a cereal that tastes good, they want a healthy bland breakfast to start their day. Long gone are the days of flavor and fun in the morning, we now live in an era of healthy food choices and exercise. At least it has an exciting box and pretty colors to hide in.

Diet foods seem to be all the rage now a days. Coke and Pepsi are now adding Splenda in their drinks to make them taste better. Fast food places are serving salads to make them selves seem more health conscious. The problem with diet foods is that they look mostly the same, smell mostly the same, promises you mostly the same flavor, but in the end they are a bland knock off of the original. But maybe we should go easy on the Cap'N. He's been around for a long long time and sugar at his age might not be the best thing in the world. With his buddy Tony the Tiger dying yesterday the Cap'N might be taking a look at his life and realizing that he needs to make a few changes if he wants to stay around for the next generation.




Looking at the box one would think that this stuff would be exciting and the lack of sugar would not be much of a problem. Even on the side of the box we see a happy child and a statement telling us that breakfast should be fun. I went into this cereal thinking positive. "Hey, who needs all that sugar anyway?" Maybe they managed to make it taste good and not be as bad for me. But who is buying Crunch Berries and thinking to themselves "Wow, this is one healthy breakfast!"? No one, and if they are then they need to think about their buying habits. Actually, I doubt this cereal is actually aimed at people in their mid 20s who are actually thinking about what they eat. I think (more like know) this is more for kids who just want something happy in their cereal bowl before they go off to school all day to be beaten up by other kids and come back home to an abusive drunk father. Yes, these cereals are meant to make kids excited to eat in the morning and keep them from throwing a tantrum when they don’t get what they want. So does this cereal deliver? Will it make the children temporarily forget about the bruises that cover their bodies? Lets find out.



It sure looks good. I wouldn’t think it is a low sugar cereal by just looking. But how does it taste? Meh. Just like I wrote above it's like a diet version of the original. You know what it is supposed to taste like, you know what it is trying to taste like, but it just doesn’t reach it. The lack of sugar really seems to kill it here. The hint of the original flavor is there but it just does not deliver.

That's what I thought on the first day anyway. By the end of the week and a bunch of bowls later I was actually starting to not mind it. Notice how I say not mind and not like. I think that’s generally the case with diet food. You never really like it but you don't mind it being less then the original, and that is where I stand now with this stuff. If I had to eat it instead of Crunch Berries I wouldn't really mind too much. I'd wish I had the real stuff but I would be happy I was eating this instead of something worse. Maybe if you start someone on this and never give them the pleasures of the good sugary stuff then they will never know the difference and eat it happily, guess you need to get them while they are young.

Rating? If I just ate one bowl it would have been 1 or 2 but since I spent a week with this stuff and learned to grow tolerant of it's ways I am going to give it 3. Not as bad for you and not really that bad, just different. Not quite good enough to make you forget about parental beatings, but good enough to get a little happiness out of.

Posted by LordJezo

May 23 2005 -- More Reese's Instead of my usual weekends of getting drunk and high off of whatever I can find around the house and then getting angry and depressed about ex girlfriends I decided to go for a little drive and spend some time with a bald man who wears slippers. While there I was gazing upon his noggin and though to myself "Hot damn, that is a perfect place to put something I can review." So, I did, and today I bring you the latest concoction from the Reese's laboratories.



Reese's Chocolate Lovers Peanut Butter Cups. Now if you all remember my review of Dark Chocolate Twix you will know that dark is in, and from the looks of things like MTV and the Billboard Ringtones Chart it seems like the darker the better and in order to capitalize on that Reese's has joined the fray and thrown out there a new candy. Us white folks can try to fight back but it seems the cards are stacked against us. The onslaught is on and we are losing.



Now would you look at that. See the top of the cardboard thing? "Experience Another Kind of Love". Now that's not even trying to be subtle. Here I am opening up a candy, already sad about my sexuality and they are telling everyone I am totally worthless and that women should only love black men. Pretty much ruined my night. Eventually it led me to drink whatever I found around the house and get angry about ex girlfriends, as per normal. But lets not dwell on that right now. We have some candy to eat, and if you can't beat them, join them.

The cups were loaded with chocolate, maybe a bit too much actually. Both the bald headed killer and myself thought the same thing, they were a step down from the normal Reese's Cups. The chocolate took away from the whole peanut butter flavor. But thinking about it now, maybe we are just not meant for the chocolate love. You know, I did try dating a black girl for a few weeks but things just did not work out. Maybe this candy was a microcosm of that relationship. You start of thinking it will be great, it sure looks good, but once you take off the wrapper and get to the meat of it all you say to yourself "Naa, maybe this isn't too good of an idea."

So this candy had some special meaning to me but that special meaning is just a sad memory, so even that can't really give it any extra points. 2 cheeses. Worse then the original and brings me back to a time of crushed dreams and hopes.



We did see Ricky Jay later that night (in-between the candy and the drowning myself in Jagermeister) in a small theater in DC and he way pretty good. 4 cheese for him. Actually, 5 cheeses because we were in the front row and a card ricocheted off a watermelon and onto my arm, which is the card over on the left there. Maybe I can sell that on eBay, hmm.... Very amusing guy though, I'd say go see him if you have the chance. But I am going to put 4 cheeses anyway because I am lazy and changed the rating after I made this the first time.

Posted by LordJezo

May 22 2005 -- Satan for a small girl. Here, watch this and have nightmares.

Bye.

Posted by LordJezo