Horrible Product of the Month: Smart Start Strong Heart

Don't skip breakfast. It gives you lots of nutrients.

I made a terrible mistake. I got to work and hadn’t eaten breakfast, so I ran inside oh-so-glam Rite Aid across the street from my office and snagged a box of cereal. I saw “strong heart” and strawberry and oats and thought, “gee, that sounds yummy and healthy and I love strawberries and oats are so good and it’s on sale for $2.50 so I will buy it.” That was my mistake.

There are so many gross things about this product, I don’t know where to begin. But let me lay them out for you.

Lookin' mighty tasty.

Yep, there’s Splenda in this shit. After my first bite of the cereal, amply filling an ugly blue bowl (God knows who it belongs to, but it was in the office kitchen so I used it) and dousing it with fat-free Berkeley Farms milk, also purchased from Rite Aid, I took my plastic spoon (I know, it’s very environmentally unfriendly to use the plastic spoons in our office when we have freshly cleaned stainless steel spoons, but I was already feeling sort of cheap and dirty with my Rite Aid cereal, so I figured the spoon would complete the package), and dug into the bowl and plopped two or three of the little cereal squares into my mouth with a splash of slightly pink milk (more on that later). I took a bite and crunched it around my mouth. I felt the spiky strings of hearty oats mixing with the fresh aroma of strawberries, chewed it up, and swallowed. I noticed a mildly unpleasant aftertaste immediately – it was overly sweet but didn’t taste natural at all. And that’s when I saw my arch enemy had filled this crap with toxic, sucralose (aka Splenda). I suddenly broke out in a rash up and down my arms and legs, and my throat closed up and I started to gasp for air – in my mind. Fortunately, none of that happened and I thought to myself, “We’ll I’m hungry, so I’m going to finish the bowl of this terrible crappy Smart Start cereal.”

Fresh ingredients in every bite! Kellogg's!

There’s also High Fructose Corn Syrup. I love those advertisements by the High Fructose Corn Syrup people telling us how high fructose corn syrup is sweet and natural just like honey and sugar and maple syrup. Yeah, we’ve heard that before: from those evil Splenda tale-tellers. Well, Kellogg’s managed not only to shove Splenda particles into this healthy cereal, but also managed to make corn syrup the fifth ingredient in here. It sort of reminds me of when Burger King changed their recipe to include “real mayonnaise” on their Whoppers instead of the less expensive synthetic mayonnaise they had used for many years to save money. It sounds like Kellogg’s cereal creators are torn between the bad sweetener lobbyists.

Here I will interject that I don’t really have any respect for Kellogg’s. Many years ago, my friend Anne, who lived in Battle Creek at the time, and I went to a terrible indoor Kellogg’s museum and theme park. We entered the vast gift shop of Snap, Crackle and Pop beanie babies and plastic “Toucan Sam” mugs and Sugar Pops cowboy sheets and more. It looked like a bad idea all around, and a $15 per person charge at the door made us turn around and walk right back out into that very large but very empty parking lot.

Strawberry Crunchlets. I love cereals that put freeze dried strawberries into them. I love them so much that I dig through the flakes and pull out the strawberries and eat them by themselves. In fact, a few years ago, I decided I should look into ordering the freeze dried strawberries by themselves and found a creepy Mormon survivalist store in Utah that sold huge cans of them for cheap via the Internet. I downed several 10-gallon cans and decided it was time to start eating fresh things again and to stop peeing in red streams. Anyway, I thought that this cereal-like product would have those same tasty strawberries, but not until I had tasted that Splenda-Corn Syrup flavor did I notice that this cereal offered eaters “real strawberry flavor” in the form of “strawberry flavored crunchlets” made of sugar, corn cereal, corn syrup, modified cornstarch, soybean oil, citric acid, glycerin, natural and artificial flavor, and red and blue food coloring. That’s cruchlets, mama. That’s what Kellogg’s puts in healthy adult cereal.

These are strawberry crunchlets on a piece dissected.

Mmm. The milk reminds me of childhood. The wonderful thing about this adult product is that it does everything it can to be as crappy as a child’s sweetened cereal, but in disguise. But you get your full childhood treat at the end of the meal. After you take that last, now soggy, puff of slimy glycerin packed goo, and you peer into your bowl, guess what you see? Pink! Pretty pink. Just like that revolting Nestle Quick strawberry-flavored milk you guzzled as a child because you liked strawberry better than chocolate. I took the bait and swigged the milk. My mouth filled with a pink bismuth-colored swell of Splenda and corn syrup, a few squishy remnants of the cereal, and an acknowledgment of manufactured health food to the highest degree.

Do not eat Kellogg's Smart Start Strong Heart. Unless you like to torture your internal organs.

Pretty pink after-milk from a pink medicated cow.

Don't be alarmed

I think I have been spending a bit of time fretting lately. I should not fret. It is not good for the heart or the skin. Everyone has been giving me that look of chin-down, burrow-eyed deep concern, as if I am caught up in terrible traumas. But it is only a house remodel. And it is moving along. So here’s the update: Everything has totally been stripped, and then some if it has been rebuilt. But when you are (read that as “when your contractor is”) tearing apart sheetrock and ugly plastic closet doors and decking and boards and nails and paint chips, and you discard them in a 12-foot pile of debris in the back yard, certain things can go awry.

Because somewhere in the midst of that debris, a fire alarm may have been disposed, one that once clung to the ceiling on one of the floors in the house.

Yes, our neighbor Doug – one of those genuinely nice people whose friendly demeanor is elevated further by his Scottish accent – called me on my cell phone a little before 11:00 pm a week ago while the rain was saturating San Francisco. The call went something like this:

“Hello?” (Me in my harsh deep voice when the caller ID doesn’t tell me who it is).

“Hey Joey, it’s your neighbor, Doug. “

“Oh. Hi, Doug. How are you doing?” (now friendlier)

“Well, I’m calling to tell you that there is a bit of a loud noise, like an alarm coming from the back of your house.”

I was startled. The house was on fire or something had been broken in and stolen . “I’m so sorry, Doug. I’m on my way home and then will be right over.”

“Ok, that sounds good. The neighbors are sort of gathering around and wondering what’s going on. I can see a red flashing light in the pile that looks like it might be where the sound is coming from.”

“Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry. We’ll be over really soon to deal with that.”

I called Brad and told him about our predicament. He jumped in his truck with a flashlight. I hopped off the J-Church streetcar and he was there to pick me up and drive us over to the remodeling project.

Just driving up the street, the acute shrill of the alarm was mind-blowing. No wonder Doug had to call. There it was, the 12-foot pile of unsteady boards and sticks and trash, complete with sharp nails – the extremely rusted kind— with a high-pitch, high-decible sound being emitted like a newborn vulture that got lost in its creaky nest. Only this vulture was a smoke alarm pulled out in the demolition and this nest was not very well constructed. The rain soaked my hair and clothes and ears, but I could still hear the directions from our neighbor, Doug, who stood on his deck trying to guide me from above to the source of this neighborhood siren.

A few more dubious steps up the pile and I slammed my hand into one of those nails that makes you think, “Gosh, when was that last tetanus shot?” Brad kept yelling to be careful and to let him do it and that the pile was so unsteady and slipping. Meanwhile, I maneuvered a few more steps up the pile wanting to take the credit for being the hero that spared the eardrums of our neighbors.

With Doug’s neighborly guidance, I grabbed the noisemaker and flung it over the pile and down into the driveway near the street.

Brad and I went back to the ‘fretting studio’ to dry off and try to fall asleep.

Transportation problems

Aviation

The airlines are having problems. With so many cutbacks, I discovered my flight this evening had some reductions of its own. When I boarded the plane, I discovered the company had not only laid off maintenance workers and axed amenities, but it also had spun off its e and d, leaving me aboard nothing but a minor unit of the once great airline.

Just a Unit.

Transit

Poor bus advertising decisions. Who is minding the store at the Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority? Most agencies are seeking to build ridership. Most smart urban planners are doing everything they can to get people to leave their car at home and use transit.

So why would a transit agency accept such a stupid advertisement for one of its bus shelters?

Pedestrian

Pedestrians. A significant challenge for being a transit user or a pedestrian is that there is nowhere to use the restroom. This is something I hear from time to time from subjects in my focus groups: ”The problem with public transit is that it doesn’t let you pee.” Which makes me wonder how are all of these people in their cars so conveniently going to the bathroom? Do cars have potties I’m not aware of?

I was just pleased to see that the fine folks in Washington DC have made it so much more

convenient for pedestrians visiting the Smithsonian Institution.

First pull up; then pull down

Things don’t work as they should. I just left the airplane lavatory. In case you haven’t been in one lately, think of the smallest closet in your house, reduce its size by 50%, add the smell of blue substances and a whiff of unflushed bodily discharges under a curving fluorescent-lit ceiling with spots of liquid on the floor. They’re fun places, really. Amidst the amenities – H20+ products for spraying your face, washing your face, moisturizing your skin, and cleaning your hands—are the maxi pads and the plastic cups for drinking water from the little stainless sink. Research shows you shouldn’t actually drink the water from the sink, but the cups are there just in case. The lavatory also has toilet paper, and then it also has those incredibly annoying toilet seat covers.

Does anyone actually use those toilet seat covers? Does anyone actually know how to use those toilet seat covers? Has our restroom design industry gone so far that they produced big sheet metal holes and then some company had to figure out what to manufacture to stuff in those holes. Perhaps it turned out that one company created the toilet seat cover and then nobody ever revisited it.

Universal design. I’ve been at a conference the last several days where one of the most important topics was how to create tools that can be used by anybody: people with physical disabilities, cognitive disabilities, seniors, young people, tall people, short people, fat people, small people. We’re talking about how to make fool-proof transit information kiosks, street crossing signs, vehicles, navigation systems, etc.

Why can’t someone figure out how to apply the principles of universal design to paper toilet seat covers? In our office, we have a big sheet metal flat bin next to the toilet with a cardboard holder that is filled with tissue paper inserts. On the outside of the box, in view of the user, are directions that say “First pull up; then pull down.” I have tried that exercise so many times and failed every time. The results are any of the following:

• I pull up and the toilet seat cover slips right out so I have no opportunity to pull down with the center flap still intact.
• I pull up a little bit and then pull down in a big way and the toilet seat cover slips right down with the center flap still intact.
• I pull up or down and the toilet seat cover slips out torn in half.
• I pull up or down and five or six toilet seat covers fall out.
• I pull up or down and the toilet seat cover slips out with the center flap still intact so I try to delicately detach it from the outer “O” but it rips and the flap is attached to one side.
• I rip the toilet seat cover out and delicately remove the front part of the flap so it is only attached in the back, and place it on the toilet seat and the flap falls into the toilet and gets wet and drags the rest of the toilet seat cover in with it. So I start over.
• I tear two small pieces of toilet paper and place them on the toilet seat and am complacent.

Having toilet seat covers is like having a ‘hot dog cooker’ or a ‘breadcrust remover ‘ or an ‘electric foot soaker tub.’ It’s having a wasteful amenity that is more cumbersome to use than a microwave, knife, or bathtub.

Don’t get me wrong. I really like toilet seat covers. I use them often. Whenever I am in a restroom that has electric hand dryers, I march right over to the closest toilet stall, kick it open, pull five or six toilet seat covers out of the stall and dry my hands. They’re very absorbent.

Hey Mississippi: The election is over

I got a new laptop. I can finally post again in this New Year.

And to kick off my new laptop, here's an election sign I photographed in Mississippi last week. People haven't gotten around to taking down their McCain and Jesus election signs. I don't remember hearing much about Jesus in the recent election, so my hunch is he probably lost.

Yard signs should be removed after an election.

I've lost my laptop

No posts on this blog? Well, it's because I'm missing my laptop. I left it aboard a Delta Airlines flight from San Francisco to Atlanta and now am having a bitch of a time getting it back. If you happen to find it... it's a blue Dell XPS 1330 laptop computer in a black computer sleeve (with gray trim). My dull Netflix movie (Encounters at the End of the World) is inside.

I am told the aircraft went on to Copenhagen, but haven't had much luck reaching the Delta folks at the Copenhagen Aiport. Please email me at joey@splendasucks.com. A reward is waiting for you!

And then everyone will get to read more of my complaints.