Yesterday was a sad day for my stomach and stomachs all over this glorious nation. Did you hear about the lawsuit against Taco Bell? It's literally the saddest stomach-related news I've gotten in ... well, years, actually.
Okay, so here's the issue: They tested the "beef" and it does not contain enough beef for them to legally call it beef. Ugh. To legally call it beef, it has to be 70% meat and 30% fat. However, it doesn't even meet the standards for "taco meat filling," which only has to contain 40% meat. Double ugh. It contains ... 35% meat.
I don't really eat at Taco Bell that often, but I love it so much I really wish I did. Like, if I suddenly came down with a serious wasting disease and was ordered to consume thousands of calories at every meal? Eh, it wouldn't be all that bad.
Also, I don't actually eat the beef at Taco Bell, and usually don't eat any meat there at all (except when I was pregnant and chicken Nachos Bell Grande saved my life), but if they can serve beef like that, what the H-E-double-hockey sticks are they putting in the cheesy bean burritos??
The worst part, really, is that Taco Bell is denying it, even though there is evidence to the contrary. Taco Bell claims "We start with 100 percent USDA-inspected beef. Then we simmer it in our proprietary blend of seasonings and spices to give our seasoned beef its signature Taco Bell taste and texture. We are proud of the quality of our beef and identify all the seasoning and spice ingredients on our website. Unfortunately, the lawyers in this case elected to sue first and ask questions later and got their facts absolutely wrong."
Why couldn't they just be like, "My bad. We'll call it what we legally have to call it or change the recipe. We love our customers and will do anything to keep them around."
It's a bad day for the Bell and a bad day for my taste buds.
Showing posts with label grossness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grossness. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Thursday, May 6, 2010
This All Ends With Me Praising My Husband, If You Can Believe That
Driving home from work today, I was doing what all the cool kids do -- listening to NPR -- when I heard BP was going to "solve" the oil spill problem in the Gulf of Mexico by putting a DOME over the broken pipe that is spitting oil.
Well played, BP. Not only are you drawing on The Simpsons in the time of crisis,
but you managed to ignore the fact that the oil is already all over the freaking place and floating on the surface of the water. Way to go.
So, I didn't really have a whole post ready to go on this ... that was as far as I got. You know, that I think that idea is stupid.
But watch this: Okay, the oil spill is a big, gross problem that is not being fixed. You know what else is a big, gross problem that is not being fixed? My HUGE SWOLLEN FEET AND ANKLES.
I have never seen such a thing is all my life. I guess whenever I heard about swollen feet before now, I was always like, "Heh. I bet that won't happen to me." Burn, former self. Burn.
I have a girlfriend who was mad about her swollen feet because she was angry with herself and irrationally thought there must be something she could have done to avoid it. I am not mad so much as horrifically disgusted. I can't stop staring at my feet, which look disturbingly like hams on toothpicks, and I get the major voms. I am feeling the biggest vomity-vom-vomitness of all time.
I am repulsed by myself. I mean, you couldn't SEE my nausea every waking moment of my first trimester. You can't SEE my stiff lower back. But these Flintstone feet. Oh, you can see them. And I just want to hide in my house with my feet propped up on a pillow while I stare at my deformed body and cry.
So, much like the horror that is the oil spill, I am not finding a solution to the problem. My dome is convincing my husband to rub my ham feet when I get home from work. He is really racking up his sainthood points lately. I mean, even *I* won't touch those nasty feet.
I guess the moral of this story is that my husband rocks the casbah. Well played, Dimick. Take a bow.
Well played, BP. Not only are you drawing on The Simpsons in the time of crisis,
So, I didn't really have a whole post ready to go on this ... that was as far as I got. You know, that I think that idea is stupid.
But watch this: Okay, the oil spill is a big, gross problem that is not being fixed. You know what else is a big, gross problem that is not being fixed? My HUGE SWOLLEN FEET AND ANKLES.
I have never seen such a thing is all my life. I guess whenever I heard about swollen feet before now, I was always like, "Heh. I bet that won't happen to me." Burn, former self. Burn.
I have a girlfriend who was mad about her swollen feet because she was angry with herself and irrationally thought there must be something she could have done to avoid it. I am not mad so much as horrifically disgusted. I can't stop staring at my feet, which look disturbingly like hams on toothpicks, and I get the major voms. I am feeling the biggest vomity-vom-vomitness of all time.
So, much like the horror that is the oil spill, I am not finding a solution to the problem. My dome is convincing my husband to rub my ham feet when I get home from work. He is really racking up his sainthood points lately. I mean, even *I* won't touch those nasty feet.
I guess the moral of this story is that my husband rocks the casbah. Well played, Dimick. Take a bow.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Smells, Science, and Olives
You may or may not know this about me, but I have some serious issues with science. Like, I hate it from time to time.
Way back in 2001 one of my Italian 201 classmates, who was lamenting the fact that her legs always got wet in rainstorms, no matter what angle she held her umbrella, once said, "can't science FIX that?"
Those words have stuck with me, and I am forever getting mad at science for not getting smart enough to make life easier for me.
Like, are you one of those people who smells a smell and gets disgusted by the smell and gets all angry at the smell and then, because of SCIENCE, that smell stays with you all day and won't leave your nose ever and then you want to throw up all the time and then you start thinking that maybe you are going crazy or something might be wrong with your brain, but then you're like, NO, I'm not crazy, SCIENCE is forcing me to smell this smell all the time, and FUCK SCIENCE?
Anyway, an entire jar of kalamata olives got dumped into my purse on the way to work, and I had to smell the smell all day and was afraid all my students would go home after their first day in my class and say, "Man, my teacher smells like OLIVES." And they were one of the four foods I could actually eat, and now I can't eat them anymore AND I had to throw my favorite purse away.
The purse I always get compliments on.
Talk about a tragic day.
Way back in 2001 one of my Italian 201 classmates, who was lamenting the fact that her legs always got wet in rainstorms, no matter what angle she held her umbrella, once said, "can't science FIX that?"
Those words have stuck with me, and I am forever getting mad at science for not getting smart enough to make life easier for me.
Like, are you one of those people who smells a smell and gets disgusted by the smell and gets all angry at the smell and then, because of SCIENCE, that smell stays with you all day and won't leave your nose ever and then you want to throw up all the time and then you start thinking that maybe you are going crazy or something might be wrong with your brain, but then you're like, NO, I'm not crazy, SCIENCE is forcing me to smell this smell all the time, and FUCK SCIENCE?
Anyway, an entire jar of kalamata olives got dumped into my purse on the way to work, and I had to smell the smell all day and was afraid all my students would go home after their first day in my class and say, "Man, my teacher smells like OLIVES." And they were one of the four foods I could actually eat, and now I can't eat them anymore AND I had to throw my favorite purse away.
The purse I always get compliments on.
Talk about a tragic day.
Monday, December 21, 2009
How I Learned Physics is a Cruel Mistress
The other day my mother-in-law told me what is possibly the world's grossest/creepiest story.
Apparently, when her grandfather was a little boy, one sunny morning (well, I imagined it sunny) he was minding his own business, sitting at the table and eating his breakfast when all of a sudden his sister (or maybe he did something to provoke her. Who knows, they were kids, after all) threw a spoon at him. It hit him in the face. More specifically, it hit him in the eye. To be as specific as possible, IT WENT INTO HIS EYE SOCKET AND POPPED HIS EYE OUT OF HIS HEAD!!!
Please take a second to re-read that. It is for real. He had an eyeball dangling from his optic nerve and flopping against his cheek.
That spoon scooped his eyeball out like it was digging into a bowl of ice cream. Too far? My bad.
Since his family lived up in the frozen tundra far from civilization, they had no access to a hospital. So his mom PUSHED HIS EYE BACK INTO THE SOCKET AND PUT SOME GAUZE OVER IT AND WAS LIKE, OKAY, MY JOB HERE IS DONE.
Please take a moment to re-read THAT little nugget too.
Thankfully, it turns out it healed and his eye was fine. But the story shouldn't REALLY end that way if it is going to have a moral, right? So here is what I will tell my children:
... His mom tried her best and nursed him day and night, but because they had no medical attention, the eye kept popping back out. Then he spiked a fever and his eye became infected and eventually the optic nerve that connected his eyeball to his brain disintegrated and his eyeball fell off altogether. Then his other eye suffered from sympathetic blindness and he lost vision in THAT eye too! He was ashamed and unable to do anything he used to do, so he withdrew from his family. Eventually, he became a hobo, and one night when he was trying to hop a train to San Fransisco, where he thought he could start over and he happy, he was crushed by the train because, well, he was BLIND. And the sister who threw a spoon at her innocent brother? She was shunned, cast out from the community, and fled to the woods where she spent the remainder of her days hunting and eating rats, possums, and raccoons and forgot English and spoke in grunts and snarls and began walking on all fours. She was never heard from again. This, my children, is why you should never throw a spoon at anyone, especially at his or her face.
I mean, It is really important to learn that all-important life lesson: Physics is a BITCH and she will wreck you when you least expect it. You shouldn't sugar coat it for kids.
Maybe my brother Tommy could put out some physics informational videos that show kids the consequences of their actions. Here's why: When my outrageous brother was taking high school Physics, he had a young teacher who encouraged them to think of creative ways to complete assignments and apply physics to everyday life. Big mistake. My brother decided to complete one of his assignments by making a video that showed the properties of impact. How does a normal person accomplish this? Get one of your friends to HIT YOU WITH A MINIVAN while the other one VIDEOTAPES it all.
From what I remember, he asked my mom permission and she gave it to him. I think she told the driver to keep it under 5 miles per hour. I'm guessing she had given up telling him no at this point and figured he should learn some lessons that involved broken bones. Plus, we had awesome insurance, so it was no skin off her back if he got a little scraped up.
My brother's videos became legendary, but now that I think about it, it showed physics in action, but did NOT show the terrible consequences of taking that lady for granted. After he was hit by a minivan in the middle of our street, he bounced back up, grinned at the camera, and shouted something like "IMPACT!" while waving jazz hands.
His videos did not properly illustrate how all the angles and velocities and thingity-bobbers can really screw you over. I mean, I'm no scientist, but getting hit by a car can be bad.
After hearing the story of my great-grandfather-in-law getting his eye poked out with a flying spoon, I began to wonder when I really learned not to mess with the forces of physics. I narrowed it down to two stories.
Apparently, when her grandfather was a little boy, one sunny morning (well, I imagined it sunny) he was minding his own business, sitting at the table and eating his breakfast when all of a sudden his sister (or maybe he did something to provoke her. Who knows, they were kids, after all) threw a spoon at him. It hit him in the face. More specifically, it hit him in the eye. To be as specific as possible, IT WENT INTO HIS EYE SOCKET AND POPPED HIS EYE OUT OF HIS HEAD!!!
Please take a second to re-read that. It is for real. He had an eyeball dangling from his optic nerve and flopping against his cheek.
That spoon scooped his eyeball out like it was digging into a bowl of ice cream. Too far? My bad.
Since his family lived up in the frozen tundra far from civilization, they had no access to a hospital. So his mom PUSHED HIS EYE BACK INTO THE SOCKET AND PUT SOME GAUZE OVER IT AND WAS LIKE, OKAY, MY JOB HERE IS DONE.
Please take a moment to re-read THAT little nugget too.
Thankfully, it turns out it healed and his eye was fine. But the story shouldn't REALLY end that way if it is going to have a moral, right? So here is what I will tell my children:
... His mom tried her best and nursed him day and night, but because they had no medical attention, the eye kept popping back out. Then he spiked a fever and his eye became infected and eventually the optic nerve that connected his eyeball to his brain disintegrated and his eyeball fell off altogether. Then his other eye suffered from sympathetic blindness and he lost vision in THAT eye too! He was ashamed and unable to do anything he used to do, so he withdrew from his family. Eventually, he became a hobo, and one night when he was trying to hop a train to San Fransisco, where he thought he could start over and he happy, he was crushed by the train because, well, he was BLIND. And the sister who threw a spoon at her innocent brother? She was shunned, cast out from the community, and fled to the woods where she spent the remainder of her days hunting and eating rats, possums, and raccoons and forgot English and spoke in grunts and snarls and began walking on all fours. She was never heard from again. This, my children, is why you should never throw a spoon at anyone, especially at his or her face.
I mean, It is really important to learn that all-important life lesson: Physics is a BITCH and she will wreck you when you least expect it. You shouldn't sugar coat it for kids.
Maybe my brother Tommy could put out some physics informational videos that show kids the consequences of their actions. Here's why: When my outrageous brother was taking high school Physics, he had a young teacher who encouraged them to think of creative ways to complete assignments and apply physics to everyday life. Big mistake. My brother decided to complete one of his assignments by making a video that showed the properties of impact. How does a normal person accomplish this? Get one of your friends to HIT YOU WITH A MINIVAN while the other one VIDEOTAPES it all.
From what I remember, he asked my mom permission and she gave it to him. I think she told the driver to keep it under 5 miles per hour. I'm guessing she had given up telling him no at this point and figured he should learn some lessons that involved broken bones. Plus, we had awesome insurance, so it was no skin off her back if he got a little scraped up.
My brother's videos became legendary, but now that I think about it, it showed physics in action, but did NOT show the terrible consequences of taking that lady for granted. After he was hit by a minivan in the middle of our street, he bounced back up, grinned at the camera, and shouted something like "IMPACT!" while waving jazz hands.
His videos did not properly illustrate how all the angles and velocities and thingity-bobbers can really screw you over. I mean, I'm no scientist, but getting hit by a car can be bad.
After hearing the story of my great-grandfather-in-law getting his eye poked out with a flying spoon, I began to wonder when I really learned not to mess with the forces of physics. I narrowed it down to two stories.
- STORY 1: I was maybe about 8 years old and my little brother was about 5 years old. He was taunting me or something and driving me INSANE. He was across the room and I wanted to show him immediately that what he was doing should stop. So, my slippers being the only weapon currently in my arsenal, I pulled off one of my awesome Garfield slippers and threw it at him. It hit him in the face and he started screaming. My parents started yelling. I started screeching "It's a FLUFFY slipper! It can't hurt him!!" Turns out the slippers had little plastic eyes, and those eyes had somehow managed to smack him at just the right angle, whacking him in the face and leaving a welt the same shape as the eyeballs (which I personally thought was kind of cool). What are the odds, right? Well, that's because it was NO coincidence. Physics wanted to make an example of me and ensured the slipper would hit him at that specific angle.
- STORY 2: Me, my parents, my two younger siblings and my grandmother had just finished eating at a Chinese restaurant. My mom was in the bathroom and my dad was up at the register, about 5 feet away, paying the bill. We had reached a fever pitch of hyper annoyingness and had run out of things to misbehave with ... until my brother realized the divider between our booth and the one next to it could be lowered. He unhooked the latch and let it drop. What none of us realized was that a knife was sitting VERY close to the divider, and when it dropped it hit the VERY tip of the knife, sending it flying in the air ... ONE INCH FROM MY GRANDMA'S FACE. Luckily, she was ignoring us because of how rambunctious and terrible we were being and my dad's back was turned. In this instance, physics was reminding us to mind our p's and q's and respect her. (Oh, and mom and dad -- if you had forgotten about this, I truly apologize for reminding you)
I think I've learned my lesson, and I will always imagine the worst case scenarios when it comes to trajectories, angles, and ... shoot, I told you I was no scientist.
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