21 Jul This Week in Rage – 7/20/13
This Week in Rage, a blog about the top three things that pissed me off this week:
Blue Cotton Candy: I saw a commercial for the Orange County Fair with a kid eating cotton candy. I noticed it was blue and thought “Oh yeah. We’ve fucked that up too.” Blue is the color of cotton candy now. When the fuck did that happen? And why? Wasn’t cotton candy always pink? Why did we have to screw with it? For a century cotton candy has been the color of insulation and tasted like sugar. It’s not like the new blue version is blueberry flavored. It’s just cotton candy flavored except it makes your lips look like you’ve been blowing Papa Smurf. I’m just saying if you want something blue that’s shaped like grandma’s hair go invent something else. Cotton candy is taken. Put the weird paper stick down and walk away.
Speaking of that weird paper cone stick thing, I was also thinking about the guy who swirls the cotton candy for the kiddies. Does he eventually get “cotton lung” at some point inhaling that stuff all day? “Guy Who Makes Cotton Candy” has got to be the number one job where as a kid it seems like the greatest gig of all time and then as adult you just feel bad for the poor bastard. At age nine you think, “He must get so many chicks. And all the cotton candy he can eat. That guy has it made. What a life!” But then as you see him when you take your own kids to the carnival you think “God if they grow up to be cotton candy spinners I’ll take that little cardboard stick and stab myself with it.”
Zucchini: I’m sick of Zuchinni. There, I’ve said it. I don’t care what kind of backlash I get on Twitter. This is an important topic and we need to start a dialogue about it. I don’t need it anymore. And don’t give me that “what about when it’s deep fried?” shit. You can deep-fry a golf ball and it would be fine. If you cut off my son’s finger, rolled it in breadcrumbs, deep fried it I’d eat it. I’d probably need to dip it in ranch dressing but I’d still eat it. “Well what about zucchini bread?” Fuck off. That’s just a substrate, you can put anything in cake batter, toss in a bunch of sugar and chocolate chips and it’d be good. It’s like wrapping everything in bacon. It’s a culinary apology. And what the fuck is a zucchini anyway? It cannot stand on it’s own. That’s how I judge it. Grating it into something that’s already fantastic doesn’t count. Like sometimes you’ll get zucchini pieces in lasagna. But that lasagna would be fine without it. Zucchini has no flavor. Cucumbers mock zucchini in the flavor department. There are plenty of foods – like the lonely beet – that don’t get their due. But Zucchini is just using up space. And here’s how you know it’s worthless. No dietitian has ever saying “you need more Zucchini.” No vitamin commercial ever claims, “it has more Vitamin B than zucchini.” I think it’s kinda coasting on a cool name. It’s somewhere between Zeus and bikini.
No Dogs on the Beach: I was down at the beach on the Fourth of July and saw the sign that tells you what you can’t bring on the beach. It gets two feet longer every year. Eventually our society is just going to get into a state where our kids have to pass through a detector like they have at airport security that will determine if they’re wearing enough sunblock. Eventually we’ll just have a sign that says “Fun” with a big X through it. Of course among the list of “No-No’s” like “no glass bottles”, “no smoking”, “no fireworks”, “no kite flying”, was “no dogs.” Do you realize we now have a world where dogs are encouraged on aircraft but if you bring one on the beach to toss around a tennis ball you’ll get ticketed? Do you like this direction for our society? I don’t. I understand that every now and again you’re going to step on a glass bottle and that’s okay. Maybe put out some more receptacles instead of prohibiting the public – the people who own the beach and maintain it with their tax money – from enjoying it. 60 plus years ago many good men died on beaches at Normandy and Iwo Jima so that we could all enjoy the beaches of Malibu and Santa Monica. By not allowing citizens to bring their mutts there to toss around a Frisbee you’re trampling on their corpses.
-Adam