Keep Your Eye on the Fruit

Hey, it's breakfast time. Are you hungry? Would you like some waffles? Well, both of these choices by Van's are wheat, gluten, dairy, and egg-free, are made with whole grain, and are sweetened with fruit juice, so it will be a tough choice.

What it comes down to is, do you want the blueberry or the strawberry?

TRICK QUESTION--the one the right is not strawberry! There isn't any strawberry juice injected into that waffle at all--it is only sweetened with pineapple, peach, and pear juices! Unless you want to cut up the strawberries out of the cardboard packaging, you won't be eating any red fruits with your waffles this morning. The waffles in the blueberry box has all those juices too, but actually does contain dried blueberries as well as blackberries.

I still buy a variety of Van's waffles anyway because there's no dairy in them (and they're often on sale) but their boxes can be tricky. There are many different flavors of waffles but none of the boxes with red banners have a strawberry in them. In fact, all of the red banner boxes have a non-fruit word associated with them: either "totally natural" or "homestyle." Yet each one of those boxes has a picture of a red fruit on it.

So which came first--the picture or the egg? Wait, there's no egg. Which came first--the picture or banner? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt because they seem like a cool company and guess that they just chose a banner color that matched something in the picture, and having the strawberries there was poetic licence. But with all the varieties they have that actually do contain ingredients that match the banner color (flax is gold, apple cinnamon is dark red, chocolate chip is brown), it probably would have been more appropriate to select a neutral color for the ones that don't.

Now here's the real kick in the pants--the "Berry" box labelled with the purple banner contains the same berries that the "Blueberry" one does (dried blueberries and blackberries). No peach, pineapple, or pear juice, but definitely no raspberries as pictured.

And none of these waffles even taste remotely like sneakers!

Flawless Failure

My super power has returned. Two light bulbs down. Snap. Crackle. Pop. The hallway in front of the bathroom and one of the lamps in the living room's many tentacles shorted out rather spectacularly when I grabbed its bendy neck to direct the light. My body is filled right now with a potent chemical cocktail of unhappy sauces: prolactin, cortisol, and adrenaline. It is not responding well to this, and I guess my electromagnetic field is shorting out on certain frequencies. All of us here at Princess Central (me and the voices in my mind) have been strung out on love hormones like a fucking junkie. I am jonesin' for the body's natural opiates, the enkephalins; I don't want to kick the endorphins and the dopamines. I want to be high on love all the time, but kids, sadly that high can so rarely stay. It passes, and you feel a little sick, a little shaky, a lot raw. The upside to crying your eyes out? Sssh, it's nature's chemical peel, as well as, a way to purge that overdose of negative hormones out of your body. I am secreting my despair and thus purging myself of it, and once my face has healed from the slight prolactin, sodium chloride, and potassium chloride burn, my skin is going to look be-yoo-ti-ful. This time around, I took note of the emotions coursing through my body when the light bulb sparks and burns out, and it is straight up despair, a river of angst pouring through my chest. I just wanted to turn my brain off yesterday, so I wouldn't feel. Too late. Apparently, I broadcast across a wide spectrum. All artificial lights will feel my wrath and tremble.

Why the long face little bear? Well, I met a man or a robot (it's entirely possible) on the internets. We laughed, we loved, we conducted a relationship entirely made of pixels and electrical bursts. We entered into a year-long family plan cell phone contract. Do you take this 404 area code to have and to hold as your own even though you live in Sayton, Ohio? He did, and there was much chatting and texting and rejoicing on the full keyboard of the Sidekick. We named our future children. In fact, if it was possible to be impregnated via sms protocol, I would be 6 months pregnant right now. Alas, it was not to be, and I come now to you, the blogosphere, to bury this cyber-relationship. For truly, it is over.

There are ways to end a relationship that require tact and delicacy. Some go for more of a burn the bridge and salt the earth approach. I have experienced many finishing moves that were awesome in the scope of their douchebaggery. There was the boyfriend who left me while my mother and BOTH my cats were dying of cancer. There was the boyfriend who went to the beach with his buddies for New Year's Eve rather than spend that magickal moment with me; though, I begged and pleaded with him to go on a trip with me anywhere, my treat. He later met a new horse-faced makeup beast and flew to London the next year to celebrate New Year's Eve with her. Ah yes. Still, it burns. Today. Today, I have experienced a new finishing move, a move worthy of Mortal Kombat: the Douche-ality.

Let me set the stage for you. It was Xmas, and I was working 3 jobs to ensure that when my dearest cyber-love winged his way to me that I would have enough money to be able to not work during his visit thus ensuring that I could stay home all week and have violent monkeysex and bathe in the aura of our love. We could not be together at Xmas, or New Year's Eve for that matter (foiled again), because he has a child and shared custody and needed to save his money to make a little girl's Xmas special. All perfectly understandable, I gave him props for tending to his child and having his priorities in order. Did I expect a present from him at Xmas? No. Would a $2 card and a $.25 plastic ring have sufficed? Yes. Yes, it would have been enough for me as I am a cheap and sentimental date, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I bought him a small gift and waited to give it to him in the flesh. I kept the light of our love alive in my stupid, stupid heart.

Sadly, it truly was the beginning of the end. Things were amiss. He became wishy-washy. I mean we had only kept this thing alive for 6 MONTHS without ever meeting one another for real. Everytime he was supposed to come visit me (and there were 3 separate incidents all to be paid for on my dime), he would get cold feet and come up with outlandish excuses...like teeth. Yes, TEETH. Not mine but his. Apparently, he was afeared to meet me because his teeth weren't perfect, but kids, I had seen pictures of his teeth, and they were fine for my purposes. Plus, I was IN LOVE, and frankly, he could have been purple and had tentacles for all I cared. I just wanted to touch him and love him and perform unspeakable sex acts upon his naked flesh. BUT NO. It was not to be. Teeth. My birthday rolled around Feb. 2nd, Groundhog's Day. We had been squabbling a little and expectations were low. A phone call would have been nice; a 2 word text saying "Happy Birthday" would have even been acceptable. Nothing. Friends I had not spoken with in 2 years took the time out to text me Happy Birthday. People I have never met made an effort to leave me glittery birthday comments on my mspazz page. There were phone calls and life-sized Wonder Woman pinatas --(Dear Spanish language, I apologize, but I cannot find the enyas and tildes on this damn non-standard keyboard)-- and cake and plastic rings and many Lonestars, but there was nada from the cyberboy. Nary a peep nor a pixel was to be found. I got a phone call a few days later. His excuse? I had said my bday was not a "big deal", and he didn't want to be an asshole. Seriously? But, you are being an asshole by not calling so how are you not being an asshole again? Oh that's right, you are being an asshole and you KNOW it; you just don't want to have to deal with why you are being an asshole. You can't hide from the truth because the truth is all there is. Classic move straight out of the Douchnozzle Twatwaffle Handbook. Let me explain the ultimate triple ice burn subtlety of this move. Acting like the ultimate asshole forces me to preemptively break up with him right before Valentine's Day thus pulling the perfect no-gifting trifecta of Xmas, my bday, and Valentine's Day. Your plan sir is fiendishly simple yet cowardly implemented. It would have been easier and more humane to rip the band-aid off this thing months ago pre-holiday season, but, and here is the kicker, he didn't even realize he had pulled the Classic Ultimate Douche-ality until I pointed it out to him, and he had the grace to kind of act SORRY. Listen, DUDE, I GET it. You didn't think about it. You didn't even bother to think about me. In fact, you had already stopped thinking about me altogether. God, at least if he had done it on purpose, I would have known that he had spared at least 2 FUCKING seconds of concern and thought for me. I TOTALLY get the message; we has received it loud and clear. Thus, sir, I crown you the winner in this round of the Mortal Kombat that is love and romance in this digital age.

Ultimate Douche-ality: Flawless Failure.



(I tried to make a snappy Photoshop pic of Sub-Zero ripping the spine out of a bleeding unicorn to go right here. It just wasn't in me today though. I have even lost the will to form Voltron. Tragic. Ask and ye shall receive. This lovely graphic is courtesy of Moo. Much Love.)

I name thee wonderkiller, unicorn maimer, butterfly crumpler, doubt sower.

What's the moral of the story kids? Don't put yourself out there? Don't try? Make better choices with your heart? Expect the best but prepare for the worst? Don't meet people over the internet? All plausible, but I don't think so. I'd still walk this heart over the lava pit, no net, for the right person. What do I know though? I'm just the dumbfuck who fell for it all. To borrow the much finer words of Mr. William Faulkner, "'Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying...nothing."

(via XKCD click pic to make bigger)