Reflections From a Murky Pond

The Southwest Patty Melt at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s is a spicy twist on a classic burger, the new Southwest Patty Melt features a charbroiled beef patty, with sliced jalapeños, grilled onions, pepper-Jack cheese and spicy Santa Fe sauce, all on grilled sourdough bread.

Better, hotter, and definitely spicier than the patty melt in question, the commercial for this dish features Kate Upton really enjoying a Southwest Patty Melt at a drive-in cinema.  😛

I’d like One To Go, Please…And One Of The Burgers Too

Now, aren’t you gentlemen suddenly hungry and doesn’t Carl’s Jr. or Hardees sound like a good choice? 😆

Warning: Before ordering a Southwest Patty Melt please consult with your physician to make sure your heart is healthy enough for gastronomic relationships.

Oh humor – and drooling over Kate Upton – aside, this is one of the finest examples of television commercials I’ve ever seen. The drive-in setting, Upton’s pink sweater, hair bow, polka-dotted sun dress, and stockings and garters all evoke Americana and have a retro sensibility that pushes so many of the right buttons.

The modern cars and modernly dressed people around Upton just add to this. It makes Kate Upon and her patty melt a vision and gateway to an idealized time.

Add in the sex, and passionate enjoyment of food has always been a metaphor for sex and an indicator of sexual prowess and willingness, and you’ve got a perfect marketing storm.

Sort of sadly, the mousy brunette in the next car looks more the type to order the Low Carb It.® – Original Grilled Chicken Salad with Low-Fat Balsamic Dressing on the side – so it’s pretty obvious that Carl’s Jr. and Hardees are still not interested in the female demographic.

Obama has chosen to “repurpose” NASA as both a means of promulgating the AGW hype and as a Muslim outreach program, all the while cancelling its programs and cutting its budget. Insofar as Obama is concerned, NASA needs to look downward and inward not upward and outward. Space exploration is right out. It’s just too costly.

But if it’s that costly, how can we have this:

Boldly Going Where NASA Can’t Afford To Tread

If a space program is so expensive that the Obama Regime has to curtail NASA’s efforts, how could a small Washington DC metro area restaurant chain, Sticky Rice, with only for restaurants be able to afford to collaborate with RVA TV and Bark Marketing to launch one of their Godzirra rolls into space – and how could they manage to do it in the first place?

OK, for the sake of precision, Sticky Rice didn’t actually put a Godzirra Maki into space. They didn’t breach the Karman Line and only managed to send their sushi into the middle stratosphere.

Sticky Rice should rename their Godzirra roll. They should call it the Fukyu-Obama Maki.

If a small business can, using commercially available equipment and materials send, film, and successfully recover sushi to the edge of space then it’s disgusting to claim and laughable to believe that America needs to curtail space exploration.

Right up front I’ve got to say that this pic generated a strong approach-avoidance conflict in me. On one hand, OMFG the fat, the calories, the over-the-topness of this sandwich idea. On the other hand, a hamburger on grilled cheese sandwiches!

Now Just Add Some Bacon 😈

Then I realized that there wasn’t that much difference, nutrition-wise, between the grilled cheese burger and a normal cheeseburger. Given normal portioning, the only added calories and fat would be from the butter used to grill the cheese sandwiches.

So…Oh Hell Yeah! Two great American sandwich classics, the grilled cheese sandwich and the hamburger, concatenated into a single meaty, cheesy wonder. And you could even add some bacon to it.

In America the federal government demands that warning labels be put on all beers. These labels warn of the potential hazards that drinking too much beer can cause and were forced upon breweries by the The Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act (ABLA)

GOVERNMENT WARNING: (1) ACCORDING TO THE SURGEON GENERAL, WOMEN SHOULD NOT DRINK ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES DURING PREGNANCY BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF BIRTH DEFECTS. (2) CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES IMPAIRS YOUR ABILITY TO DRIVE A CAR OR OPERATE MACHINERY, AND MAY CAUSE HEALTH PROBLEMS.

The required warning makes it very clear to everyone exactly what the US government is concerned about.

Before & After – Gentlemen Beware

The Rinkuškiai Brewery in the Biržai region of Lithuania, while not required by their government to put such warning labels on the beers, chose to provide very practical warnings anyway on bottles of their Beers.

I don’t know about you, but I think that Rinkuškiai’s warning looks to carry a lot more weight with drinkers than what the US government requires. 😉

Gentlemen, drink responsibly or you may face some ugly consequences.

The Coca-Cola Company is pulling its special white holiday cans from the shelves months earlier than originally planned because of a backlash from consumers.

According to The Wall Street Journal, there were perceived taste differences and many found the white cans too easy to confuse for diet coke – because reading the can’s label was just too much work or took too much thought.

While not directly causative, this bit of stupidity is indicative of why America is in the piss-poor shape that it’s in. Too many people are too mentally deficient and too lazy to even begin to do for themselves but are seemingly always willing and able to complain and to demand that “the powers that be” make changes to enable their unmerited comfort.

It’s really no wonder that wealth, influence, and power are concentrated among the few when the many are little more than mindless drones.