1. IT'S OFFICIAL: PEOPLE ARE STUPID
The simplified design seems rather generic, say some of the kinder observers. Other pundits are calling it a bowl of cereal filled with tears. But the harshest critics say the new look seems more appropriate for a blood donation center.
Let's state the obvious first: the new logo looks like a bowl filled with tears, or rather, one giant tear suspended between the top and bottom of a bowl. I don't see any flakes or pellets of puffed rice indicating that it is a bowl full of breakfast cereal. Secondly, SB's new logo totally looks like a sign one would see outside of a blood donation center...if human blood was white! Obviously the new logo is meant to look like a faceless stick figure with a dollop of semen on its tongue. Duh!
But if I can get serious for a second: did you know that The Seattle Times took a poll of over 2,000 people and a whopping 68 percent hated the new logo? That's right, 68 percent of the people polled about Seattle's Best Coffee adopting a brand new logo were so bothered by the change that they felt compelled to say more than "who gives a crap" or "Seattle's Best had a different logo before?" I'm sure the new logo won't affect the mediocrity of the coffee, and I can say that with some authority as I am currently drinking a cup of Seattle's Best. For reals.
2. TOO MUCH OF A MEDIOCRE THING
The dangers of eating too much bok choy (there's a 'too much' now???) were explored at MSNBC.com's The Body Odd this week, through the retelling of this cautionary tale:
Eating extra veggies is a good goal, but an 88-year-old Chinese woman took the quest too far, consuming enough raw bok choy to send herself into a life-threatening, thyroid-induced coma, doctors say.
The woman showed up at a New York emergency room last summer, complaining she couldn’t walk or swallow. But the real trouble, according to a report in Wednesday’s New England Journal of Medicine, was that she’d been chowing down on 2 to 3 pounds of bok choy every day for several months in hopes of controlling her diabetes.
For those unfamiliar with the vegetable also known as Chinese white cabbage, that’s the equivalent of eating two or three large heads a day of the stiff, leafy stalks. And the woman apparently munched them plain, without a dab of dressing or a sprinkle of salt, according to Dr. Michael Chu, a resident at the New York University School of Medicine who helped care for her.
“I am not sure if she had trouble consuming so much bok choy,” Chu said. “It never came up that it was difficult to do so.”
See, that's how vegetables get you: they're so easy to eat! They're not covered in poisonous spines or equipped with other painful defensive mechanisms. You can pretty much just slice a vegetable up, throw it on top of a salad, and chow down. Plus, you've got your mom up your ass about eating vegetables every single day of your life, and what, your mom's going to lie to you?
Vegetables can kill, I mean, they didn't kill this Chinese broad, she came out of that coma and everything, but still, vegetables are dangerous, that's why they're called "Natures time bombs." The only way to avoid the life-threatening powers of the common vegetable is to fry it and cover it with cheese. Happy eating, readers!
3. CRAB-PEOPLE INVADE UK; HUMANITY IN DANGER
We love Olympic mascots here at GEP, especially when they're weird and effed up. And what could be weirder or more effing effed up than Wenlock and Mandeville, the official mascots of the 2012 London Olympics? They sort of remind me of the Pairans from Warning From Space, only more crab than starfish. They also kind of look like wacky sidekick characters that might appear on a Saturday morning cartoon from Japan and have a dubbed Tom Kenny voice.
But who are these stumpy, rainbow-colored, cyclops-faced beasties really? Perhaps this goofy, nonsensical video of Wenlock and Mandeville's origin story will help:
Nope. Didn't help.
4. THE GREAT COMMISSION 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
There are still people who say that God speaks to them. Some claim to have heard a still, small voice urging them to pray for a friend or visit an ailing family member. Others have claimed to have heard the Lord call them into the ministry or instruct them to drown their children in a bathtub. I actively avoid anyone who claims to hear disembodied voices instructing them to do stuff, but to those hearing the voices, the instructions seem very clearly to be coming from on high, missives from God that must be followed on penalty of eternal damnation. The Lord is not to be ignored, and that is why Shafiq Mohamed took a naked stroll through Thibodaux, LA this week:
A man who told police that God told him to walk the streets naked to save his soul has been arrested. Thibodaux police responded to an obscenity complaint around 2 a.m. Thursday and found Shafiq Mohamed walking nude down the street. When approached, Mohamed reportedly told officers that "America raped him" and added God told him to walk the streets naked to save his soul.
Listen, I don't want to be accused of speaking for God or anything, but I seriously doubt that was the Almighty Creator telling you to strip nude and parade around in your shame, Mr. Mohamed. We've all felt raped by America from time to time--my butthole hurts right now!--but that doesn't give us free reign to whip out our balls and skip down Main St. On the other hand, if God is telling people to get all naked and saunter down the boulevard, I'm even more convinced that my decision to shun organized religion was the right one.
We've all had to renew our driver's license, and usually the experience is the very opposite of funny. Not so for Ashlee Lineberger of Englewood, FL this week:
"They were prompt in sending it back, but when I got it back and opened it up, and just looked at the address, I was very shocked," Ashlee said.
Her name was correct. Her city and zip code were too. But her street address definitely was not. It read "EAT A**."
BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA! EAT ASS!!! OMIGOD! HA HA HA HA! Hang on...hang on. Oh, God, that's funny. Let me catch my breath. Oh, geez. OK. I'm good. Moving on:
Ashlee called the State DMV and hung up after being on hold for 35 minutes. So she went to her local DMV. "Even when I gave it to the lady at the DMV, she was shocked. She said 'I have to go show this to my manager, I can not believe this,'" Ashlee said.
They told her to fix it, she'd have to pay an additional $6.50. While she doesn't want to pay for their mistake, she knows she has to get it replaced. "Especially a mother of 3, if i were to get pulled over by a cop and show him my license, that's all I have to give him," Ashlee said.
She'll just have to deal with being the... butt of a few jokes for a while. "She could keep it, but we don't live on 'Eat A**' street," Charles said.
OMIGOD! HA HA HA HA HA HA! I can't breathe! We gotta stop...we gotta stop. Oh, shit. Oh, man. Let's just do the last story.
6. MORE DMV TOMFOOLERY!
Poor Kim Romano. She was forced to give up her beloved personalized license plate this week. Now the world, or rather, the citizens of Manville, NJ, will never know that Romano sees herself as a horrible bitch, or a "biotch," as the rappers like to say.
People know it’s her when she steers her dark blue Chrysler convertible emblazoned with the word "bioch," slang for bitch, through her small town.
"They say, we knew you were here, we saw your car," said Romano, 49, of Manville. "People know me by the plates."
Everyone, she said, has been in on the joke. But one person wasn’t laughing and filed a complaint, saying the plates are profane. Now, in a collision between slang and bureaucracy, the Motor Vehicle Commission wants the plates back.
As annoyed as I am by women who take the word "bitch" and repurpose it to empower themselves, I'm infinitely more annoyed by prudish busybodies who take it upon themselves to play the morality police. Romano had her personalized plates for four years, they apparently delighted everyone in the neighborhood, then one holier-than-thou Manvillian gets offended and Romano's got to give up her plates? That's bullshit!
Don't cry for Romano though, her new personalized license plate are in the mail. They read: WHAEVER. That is not a joke. That is real. Ugh.
