Fruit Uppercut

Mountain Dew recently released a new line of drinks branded Game Fuel. Clearly and unabashedly aimed at gamers, these new beverages will help rockets fly faster, guns reload more quickly, and frag grenades do more damage to opponents.

12 pack container of Mountain Dew Game Fuel drink. [Formatted]

PepsiCo icon-external-link-12x12 , the drink’s creators, designed the cans to have a re-sealable lid and a no-slip grip to prevent spills on expensive gaming hardware—this is important because nobody likes shorting-out an $800 graphics card with a $3 can of soda.

Game Fuel features a special combination of caffeine and theanine to reduce the unique kind of fatigue that is caused by zero-movement marathon gaming sessions. Intake of large amounts of theanine also increases the frequency of rare item drops.

Current flavors include Charged Cherry Burst, Charged Berry Blast, Charged Tropical Strike, and Charged Original DEW. Additional flavors are currently in development and available for preorder: Napalm Nectarine, Headshot Watermelon, Pomegranate Plasma Grenade, and Nuclear Winter Chill.

Of Mops and Buffalo Jerky

I was in Bed Bath & Beyond this afternoon buying a mop so I could clean my kitchen—truly exciting stuff.

To describe my state of mind whilst buying said mop, I had been shopping at Target minutes earlier to get razor cartridges and a large container of liquid hand soap, but decided not to buy any of the mops there because they were all really cheap and of exceptionally poor quality. I actually stood in the mop aisle for five to ten minutes, and kept going back and forth on what I should do: “It’s just a mop, who cares? They’re inexpensive and I’ll buy another one if this one breaks.” and then “Oh my gawd… I really hate shopping for mops. This is the worst thing ever! I never want to do this again for as long as I live!!”

I became so confounded that I left Target and went to Bed Bath and Beyond in hopes that I would find a better mop. Fortunately, I was able to get one that wasn’t 100% junk. It came in at whopping $29.99—almost double what most of the mops cost at Target—but it seemed to be slightly sturdy, and I am able to take the scrubber pad off and wash it in my washer machine when it starts to get gross.

When I was standing in line to pay for this slightly less-shitty version of what I was looking for, I saw packages of buffalo jerky hanging off the side of an endcap. After the ordeal with the mop, I found something unusual about this particular impulse-item icon-external-link-12x12 , and kept focusing on it. I’m not a huge meat eater, but I do have a small weakness for jerky. I have also noticed buffalo jerky in various stores many times before, but never purchased it for whatever reason. I then thought, “Why not buy buffalo jerky today? I deserve a treat after all I have been through… and hell, it might even take the edge off of all this business with the damned mop.”

Then I realized why I have never eaten buffalo before: I have never actually seen a buffalo in real life. Are they clean animals? What do they smell like? What do they eat? Is it okay to eat an animal that I have never seen before? Buffalo are supposed to be a lot like cattle, and I have seen lots of cows, so maybe that makes it okay to eat them..? But wait, I don’t eat red meat anymore. Is this regular buffalo or organic buffalo? Wouldn’t all buffalo be organic, even if it doesn’t say so on the packaging? OMG I’m thinking about this way too much. Aaahhhh! Get me out of this horrible place!!

So it’s another day without peace of mind because Target peddles garbage and BB&B pretends to be fancy and so it doesn’t sell plain old beef jerky.

Commander Bulletfoot and the Thrill-Kill Brigade

If I were to run for president, my campaign slogan would be: “The United States of America—never before in history has so little been done with so much. Let’s fix that!”

It doesn’t roll off the tongue as well as I would like, and has at least one grammatical issue, yet for some reason I can’t imagine a more appropriate way to phrase it.

Were I somehow elected, my cabinet would be composed of fiscal tight-asses and proponents of small but effective government. The primary campaign promise would be to decommission the role of the president in its current form and replace it with three presidential-type roles. These new government officials would offer much more flexible public representation in the executive branch: like the senate, they would be elected every two years for six-year terms. Only two of the three sitting officials could ever be re-elected—if two were in the middle of their re-election terms and the third’s term was about to finish, he or she would not be eligible for re-election. These officials could be re-elected only one time, and those who were excluded from the re-election process would be allowed to run again in the future with a renewed opportunity for two consecutive terms.

Significant funding would be spent on schools and public services to ensure that at least 80% of Americans are highly literate. (Apparently in 2013, nineteen percent of high school graduates couldn’t read icon-external-link-12x12 .) First class citizens would be allowed to vote after passing a voting license exam, which would be similar in function to a driver’s license exam: it protects the public from reckless endangerment; in this case, the rampant uninformed decision-making that occurs during presidential elections. Second class citizens—those who are actively receiving most forms of welfare and/or those who do not have a voter’s license—would receive free access to remedial classes at high schools and community colleges.

UC Berkeley and many other bloated and inefficient public higher-education institutions would transition into private universities. All recovered funds would go toward the expansion of community college systems across the country, and allow for the proliferation of free educational services to those in need.

I would direct the FDA to create a “Healthy Foods” certification, not unlike the certifications or labelings for organic and non-GMO foods. Only nutritious foods would be eligible for purchase with food stamps or whatever the hell they call the program these days. People with self-inflicted health problems would not be eligible for government health insurance; instead, they would be required to come up with their own solutions for medical care and treatment, or go without.

Major League Baseball would lose its antitrust exemption icon-external-link-12x12 and professional baseball (and other professional sports) would be greatly expanded. Funding for parks and recreation would be temporarily increased to facilitate the country’s new emphasis on local private and community sports programs.

Costs for concealed weapons permits and arms for women would be paid for by federal funds, if not already paid for by state funds. States that did not already have such accommodations in place would be pressured to adopt them. Semi-automatic weapons would only be allowed to those who had clean records and carried permits that were kept up to date—all others would be forced to surrender such devices.

My press secretary would be a stand-up comedian with a cadre of the finest writers in the entertainment industry. His reports (or monologues) would help smooth over all the unpopular news that would be delivered on a nearly daily basis. Most people would be totally pissed every day of the four years I would be in office, even though the country would be strengthening and people’s quality of life would significantly and genuinely improve.

Finally, and most importantly, the assholes who created and host the The Voice, along with anyone else involved in equally offensive musical/artistic calamities, would be stripped of their American citizenship and deported to whatever third-world country they find to be the most objectionable. Before deportation, each person would have a month-long stay at GTMO where I would personally waterboard them as a necessary form of catharsis and stress-relief. (A round of golf couldn’t possibly be enough to take the edge off of having the heinous gig of being POTUS.)

Satan’s Snacky Cakes

What’s scarier? Locking eyes with ravenous werewolf feasting on freshly torn human flesh? Crossing paths with a wraith on a dark night at a lonely bridge? Awakening in your bed from the stirring of an unfamiliar phantasm? Or the current lineup of Hostess twinkies and cupcakes?

This Halloween, don’t call it quits after amassing your usual hoard of Twizzlers and stale candy corn—compliment your trove with a box or two of Chocolate Scream Twinkies. These are just like regular Twinkies, but they are filled with a sickeningly sweet brown mess inside.

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If over-processed cake products that look a little too much like Fluffy’s unattended sphincter aren’t your thing, consider the more conventional Hostess Scary Cakes. These are the standard diabetes-causing Hostess cup cakes with organ-damaging orange food dye mixed into the frosting to exude seasonal cheer.

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Do you prefer eating food that glows in the dark? Well, who doesn’t?! Fortunately, Hostess Glo Balls have you covered. These little treasures are made out of equal parts sugar, dye, bleached flour, and recycled glow sticks.

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One particularly neat trick with these Glo Balls is that if they are eaten fast enough and with minimal chewing, a person’s belly button will light up during the nighttime. Hostess claims that this is a good thing, as it provides yet another way for motorists to gauge their distance from careless children who are out trick-or-treating well after the sun sets.

Too much good stuff, right? But what are we supposed to do when all the Hostess Halloween fun is over? Are people going to be left to suffer a debilitating combination of sugar and processed-food withdrawals? Don’t worry… the Hostess-with-the-mostest has the solution: Deep-Fried Twinkies! Yes, that’s right, twinkies that have been submerged in boiling fat and oil. And what’s more, these little saccharine sludgies are available all year round!

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And really, how could they not be? There are just too many incredible things going on here for these to be relegated to seasonal distribution. Hostess even made a Double Chocolate variant for its customers with increasingly refined palates.

So it seems that Halloween these days is less about scary things and more about inventing extreme ways to activate a person’s sweet tooth. I guess it’s safe to say that the only thing scarier than a blood-thirsty demon is one with a weight problem, poorly-fitting trousers, and a glowing belly button.