Review #9 - Crio Bru Coffee Alternative

Well, my dear friends, the time has come again for yet another review. It's not often that a product is so bad that I immediately jump to my blog to express my distaste - in fact, I considered myself all but retired until I tried this next product. Introducing: Crio Bru 100% Ground Cocoa Beans Coffee Alternative.

Those of you who know me know that my favorite color is orange. You might also know that I quite enjoy coffee. Nothing wakes me up in the morning like my alarm, and nothing dulls the pain of waking up too early like a cup of joe. So you're probably asking yourself "why buy a coffee alternative, then, you dolt?" And to answer your question, I didn't buy it. Rather, I have a generous and wonderful friend who offered to pick me up some coffee while she was in Gardiner.

Gardiner, MT, for those of you successful enough to not work at Yellowstone, is essentially the Hogsmeade of the park. It is the nearest real town to the Yellowstone village of Mammoth Hot Springs, where I and a bunch of other wonderful weirdos work. If I run out of a crucial supply like coffee, I can either buy it from the general store between the hours of "screw you" and "get off work earlier if you want to shop, idiot" o'clock (Mountain Time) or take a hidden passageway underneath a statue to Gardiner. Without a Marauders Map, I was hopeless to venture to Gardiner myself. Luckily, other people were smart enough to bring a car, yet dumb enough to let me take advantage of their car-having. So I texted this lady, asking if she could pick something up for me.

"What do you need? "
"Just some coffee"
"What kind?"
"Doesn't matter"

The next scene opens with her hand-delivering the groceries to my room out of the kindness of her heart, only for me to absolutely roast her for buying coffee alternative. Why do people hang out with me? A question for another day, and many sleepless nights. Anyway, it turns out the coffee isn't real. It's disguised as coffee, hidden in a coffee-like bag, lurking in the aisles of the Gardiner market, just waiting to be picked by an unsuspecting victim like a mushroom that gives you real death instead of ego death. Regardless, I wasn't about to subject myself to the unknown abyss that is coffee alternatives just yet, and so I purchased genuine coffee while on my next outing.

Cut to me, a week or so later, finally brewing this stuff. I open the package only for my nose to be sweetly greeted with the delicious aroma of delicate chocolate. I have to resist the urge to eat the grounds straight like the little piggy I am. As I brew it, I'm delighted to see a wonderful bloom start to form over the grounds, typically a sign of some truly dank coffee. Could this imposter be even better than the original, like Oreos and that cleaning-solution-sounding other cookie they copied? I prepare my olfactory organs for the pleasure they're about to receive. I take a sip - my spine begins to contort itself into a knot and my head embarks on its voyage to travel 360° around my neck. I had just given my mouth the taste-equivalent of slamming one's finger in a doorway.

The taste of this coffee alternative is more akin to a lead fishing sinker than it is to any form of coffee. I've had influenza that tasted better than this - and with a better mouth feel, too. The stuff was thinner than a Soviet's food ration. It felt like liquid fiberglass insulation on the tongue, but without a lovable cartoon mascot to dull the pain. In my beverage power rankings, Crio Bru is placed just above hydrofluoric acid, and just below that carton of orange juice from 2007 I found beneath my bed in 2016. I highly recommend everyone double check their coffee bags at the grocery store next time they shop for coffee to ensure they won't legally assault their loved ones by serving them a cup of this hogwash.

4/10

TL;DR: This cocoa bean-based coffee alternative has delicious scents of chocolate and sweetness. This is contrasted heavily by the sour taste of what I can only describe as concentrated afterbirth and tree bark. There's a soft hint of chocolate if you can force your taste buds to ignore their alarms blaring with every sip. If toilets had taste buds, drinking Crio Bru is as close as humans could get to feeling their pain.

(This review was typed and posted on a smart phone, using the world's slowest internet, in Yellowstone National Park. Excuse any typos or formatting errors. As always, please address all complaints to your mother.)

In The Pines - An Opening To A Novel

This is another English assignment I decided to put online. The prompt called for an opening scene in which you develop character and whatnot. I may have taken some creative liberties when describing my home county, but the detective is a city-slicker from Seattle, so I'm actually patronizing everyone equally. 

          Walter Jeff hadn’t seen so much green in one place since he busted that eco-friendly drug cartel. The skyscrapers he was so familiar with were replaced with stories-tall evergreens. City blocks became square miles of jagged treetops, the green blanket covering Skamania County broken up only by forest service access roads. As Walter turned onto the first of many gravel roads he’d encounter, he had to think sweet thoughts of retirement to keep himself calm. His Prius was built for civilized roads, not these shaky gravel atrocities.

           It wasn’t until he arrived at the scene of the crime, a recent murder at a remote hunting camp, that he was truly struck with disdain for the slack-jawed inhabitants of this pathetic county. As he stepped out of his car, the native greeting of “howdy!” pierced his eardrums and the slow crawl of cringe worked its way up his spine until his shoulders were near his ears.

            “You must be the Sheriff of this… place,” said Walter, buttoning his wool suit. He placed a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, a habit he picked up once smoking was outlawed damn near everywhere in the city.

            “Sure am, mister. You must be that hotshot detective they sent down from Seattle,” replied the uniformed man through a three-toothed grin. Walter thought the vapid homunculus speaking to him looked a bit like an excited dog. He wondered if he still had a tennis ball in his car to keep the locals busy while he worked.

“The body’s over here,” said the Sheriff, walking towards a small clearing in the brush. “Local drunk hermit called it in. ‘Delirium Dave,’ they call him. Thought it was his wife at first, but we reminded him he’s never been married. Easy mistake to make, though. Kind of looks like my old lady, too, if I’m being square with you.”

            As Walter approached, the familiar stench of decomposition filled his nostrils. The sight of the body before him nearly kicked his feet out from under him and he grabbed the nearest deputy for balance. Sprawled out on the ground and covered in dried blood was the hairiest body Walter had ever seen. Perhaps even more remarkable was the size, which he estimated to be about eight feet tall.

            “Gentlemen, I don’t think that’s anybody’s wife. I think it’s a giant ape.”

            His retirement might have to wait a little longer than he thought.

What Even Is This Blog Anymore? I Don't Know But Here's a Poem

Pedantic Satiation

Whereas, my father told me a poem has to rhyme,

            And all else is nonsense,

Whereas, last year’s day planner is no longer useful,

            That’s planned obsolescence,

Whereas, I’ve been reading advanced books on solipsism,

            I’m the smartest person I know,

Whereas, poems should include some form of imagery,

            A shriveled dead flower in the snow,

Whereas, I don’t like talking about soccer player Jermaine Jones,

            That is, of course, unless he’s relevant,

Whereas, the joke gift exchange awkwardly failed,

            That in the room? It’s a white elephant,

Whereas, I failed a class because I was always sleeping,

            But I aced the rest,

Whereas, involuntary manslaughter can be hilarious,

            Just put a space after “s”,

Whereas, I assume near rhymes count,

            But I’m afraid to ask,

Whereas, my truck driver uncle got a ticket for going 62 in a 55, or maybe it was 63,

            Either way, he was only going semi-fast,

Now, therefore, then, I shall declare:

            Poems don’t have to rhyme, dad,

            So there ya go.

The Follow Me Don Chronicles #2 - The DC Horse Strangler

Welcome back, all four of you. On this installment of The Follow Me Don Chronicles, I'm cutting out a few of the less exciting tweets to our beloved leader in the interest of time. Also I have a huge backlog of tweets. Send help.

Don hasn't followed me back yet. I was desperate by this time. I stretched the truth. Have I been beat up at school? Not for a few weeks, but I wasn't going to tell him that. I told him that only his follow could prevent any further beatings from the cool kids, but I think he saw through the ruse. Once again he ignored the tweet like he ignores his children, focusing instead on steaks and a wall. Back to square one.

Maybe he'd respect an actual opinion. Maybe he'd appreciate a twitter follower acting as a member of his cabinet, giving him advice on how to run the country. Surely he doesn't have enough of those, right? I was the angel descending from on high that he'd been looking for - a smart person with good opinions and smart person traits and stuff. I called him out: regulations have done wonders for this country. I mean, isn't a government nothing but regulations? Regulations have kept children from getting their hands Anakin'd off by factory machinery, kept roads as a thing that even exist, and kept us from making extinct hundreds of species. Surely they can't be that bad in moderation, just like high fructose corn syrup and opposite-leaning news sources? But yet my target of obsession loomed just out of reach like the brake pedal for a midget in a run-away car.

If there's one thing Herr Trump loves, it's accusations. I thought I'd put on my best TMZ reporter impression and accuse him of something so sinister, so heinous, he'd have no option but to respond. I accused him, the leader of the free world, of strangling horses in his spare time. Not one to make such a pernicious statement without leaving an out, I offered him the option of agreeing that his hands are, in fact, too small to effectively strangle a horse. Surely a man needs large hands to strangle a beast with such a robust head mount. Wimpy dough kneaders aren't going to be enough: you need some serious man mittens to snuff the life out of Equidae. I added a request for a follow back, and a heart to show my willingness to hear out his side of the story, then sent my tweet. The Don Juan of Democracy didn't respond, or even follow me back. Cue sadness, despair, and Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings, Op. 11.

Simple misunderstanding here. Google says cabinet also means a body of advisers to the president. What I'm confused about is there's several people next to my boy Donald, not just one. Shouldn't it be bodies, or do they all just sorta legion inside of one guy at every meeting? I don't get politics.

Trump didn't follow me last after the last tweet, so I doubled down on the horse strangling accusation. I explained away the way out I left him last time so that he can't just be like "nah bro my hands are actually too small you're totally right and handsome and girls should be all over you like couches on trashy lawns". The only way I see our commander in chief asphyxiating a horse is by hanging on its neck. If he doesn't deny it, then it's surely true, or else he'd deny it. That's the whole point of denial. To deny, he'd have to reply to me finally and maybe he'd be like "wow this guy's cool and girls should want to date him like an archaeologist with an artifact" and then he'd follow me.

(If anyone wants to illustrate Donald Trump hanging around a horse's neck like a koala I'd be so grateful and maybe even pay you a few tens of dollars.)

My next stroke of brilliance came at 11:19 PM, when I realized that Mike "Thinks 'Convertible' is a Synonym for 'Gay'" Pence is my next best shot at getting that coveted Twitter follow by the pres. A proxy is just what I needed. Maybe Donald finds me annoying, as hard as it is to believe, but if a man he respects as much as Mikey tells him to follow me then surely he'll do it. A friend once told me to ask out a girl I liked so I did and she rejected me and her friends all laughed at me and I cried in the bathroom and then slipped on a wet floor and hit my head but I did what my friend said so this is a comparable experience. Still, though, Trump, Donald J. didn't follow me. Kyle remained a sad excuse of a human being who is also sad emotionally.

To be continued....

The Follow Me Don Chronicles #1 - Humble Beginnings

I have recently set a goal in my life. This goal is one I hope to accomplish sooner rather than later, but I will not stop until that goal is accomplished. I have recently set a goal to get the 45th President of the United States, Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, Protector of the Realm, Breaker of Chains, ya boy Donald J. Trump to follow me back on Twitter. This is the Follow Me Don Chronicles.

It started simply enough: I wanted Post Malone, an accomplished musical artist and memelord to follow me on Twitter. My initial idea was to ask someone larger to follow me, like DJ Trump himself, then offer it to Post. I figured Mr. Malone would be jealous and follow me back. The idea failed, and to this day my follower list has not been graced by the likes of Post Malone. 

After 24 hours, upon coming to terms with the fact that Post would not follow me back but instead ignore me like a soccer mom at a beggar's intersection, I decided to loft my goal. Instead of a memelord, I'd get the world's most powerful person to follow me back.

It's all about street cred. A person's worth is determined by their Twitter followers. I tried the same tweet again, this time replying to one of his tweets. Maybe a direct reply would catch his attention. But alas, the Trumpmeister didn't listen. On the bright side, four people liked it, and that's just great. You guys are great. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you.

The next two were still simple. A simple plea for recognition. I threw in a pinch of human interest to appeal to his soft interior lurking beneath an excess of orange flesh. My premise: I'm a sad, lonely man who just wants friends. The reality of the claim helped my story, too. But that didn't sway him either. Donald J. Trump was still not following me.

I grew angry with Don. I wanted a follow back. I lashed out at sweet Donnie. However, I stand by my statement. Political beliefs aside, his Twitter message is unclear and muddled with all the stagnant bacteria festering behind his largemouth bass lips, much like chew spit. His thoughts flow effortlessly from his noggin onto Twitter like musical notation from a prodigious composer tapping the well of inspiration. But they shouldn't. Regardless, DJT still didn't follow me. I pressed on, ever the wiser, ever the resilient.

Donald, the bill can wait. What could not wait, I'm afraid, were my exams. My finals were imminent, along with my stress. I needed luck, and I needed it from the man with the power to end the world in a fiery hailstorm of nuclear explosion. I figured by now Don and I were on a "cool initials instead of names" basis. He'd be DJ, I'd be KN. Together we'd chill on the stoop and wreck havoc in our neighborhood, all while wearing the flyest kicks and the phattest pants. But distaster struck before the dream became a reality: he didn't follow me back.

Now it was time to play politics; if the language of sympathy didn't jive with him, I'd have to speak a language he understands. Or doesn't understand, depending on which way you lean. Either way, I thought perhaps a nomination would clinch the follow back. There are few people in this elite club. It consists mostly of Fox News reporters who he knows won't make fun of him for his Twitter wordvomits, the White House Twitter, Mikey P. The Gayhater's Dream, the children he remembers exists, his businesses' Twitter accounts, and Vince McMahon, owner of World Wrestling Entertainment. Next to be added to the list: your boy Niles.

Well, chums, he didn't take the bait. Instead, he ignored me like he always does. It's like the tens of thousands of replies he receives to every tweet is too much for him to read or something. Next I wanted him to know I could be trusted. I've never leaked before, and I never will, should J. Trump trust me with his tweets. Maybe Don would even appoint me as the new FBI director? I mean I'm trustworthy enough, nearly as handsome as Comey, and the thought of testifying at a Senate intelligence hearing makes me so sick with anxiety that I would never do anything wrong. I can't even talk in a college class of 30 people, let alone a room full of old people who look at you like you took one too many of their butterscotch candies.

Perhaps the most sacred of days could convince him to follow me back. It was my birthday, and I went out all out with my appeal to his emotions. In this tweet, I was playing the role of myself, but without having received a birthday wish from any of my friends. Also my dog hated me. Nobody can say no to a sad, lonely man on his birthday, abandoned by his friends, loathed by his animal companion. Imagine, if you will, a man, alone, blowing out a single candle on a cupcake, his face dimly lit by flame's soft glow, his dog sitting the corner, glaring angrily at him. The man begins to sob softly. He ponders: how had his life come to this? "If only," he thinks to himself, "the 45th President of the United States followed me on Twitter." 

To be continued, since he has not followed me back yet. Donnie, if you're reading this, follow me back please.

Review #8 - We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film in which Kevin is never talked about, nor is the fact he needs to be talked about ever talked about. It's also not even a retitle of Home Alone. It’s a film about a woman who accidentally gave birth to the world’s smartest psychopath child. She was a bad parent, and he a bad child, so naturally this leads to him shooting up his school. There are several things I don’t like about this movie. I will thushenceforthyonder discuss what I don’t like. It’s 1:00 AM as I start this and I forgot all the names already. Let’s do this.

Kevin is the dude with the Jaden Smith lips.
Kevin's mom is the guy on top.

            I watched this movie because it was suggested in a Reddit thread entitled something like “[REQUEST] US Netflix’s most unsettling or disconcerting movies”. Now, you know me. I like to be unsettled and have my concert undid. I thought “Hey, I got two hours to procrastinate with! I’ll give it a go!” So I done loaded the Netflix machine up and watched it. Now let me tell you, folks, I was not as disconcerted as I had hoped to be.

            The movie presents the story by cutting periodically between the kid’s childhood, his mother’s life after he killed some people, and the night that he actually killed some people. Maybe it’s because I had just watched Memento the night before (which isn’t about memes or meme-ing into things in any way, much to my disappointment), but I thought that the whole “we’ll show you bits of a complete story from different periods of the story, so you won’t have the complete picture until the end” was lacking. There were large periods of the same timeframe, then suddenly it would jump around again quickly, then another large period of the same timeframe. If you’re going to build suspense through switching between timeframes and hiding something from your audience, do it consistently. Don’t move around when it suits you. It makes it feel less suspenseful and more annoying. Not to mention that this narrative technique is usually used to hide something good from the audience, which they find out at the end and go “Whaaaaaaat!”, but the only reveal in this film is that the kid shot up his school, which you can infer from the first several seconds of the film anyway. There’s a slightly more specific reveal, which was even worse. But that’s not my main problem with the film. I can forgive that.

            The main problem I have with We Need To Talk About Kevin is the fact that the childhood of the future-killer is just… dumb. When he’s born, he won’t stop crying, which makes his mom hate him. Before birthing Rosemary’s baby part deux, she travelled the world and was a free spirit gluten free indigo child or something. APPARENTLY she wasn’t ready to have a kid and give up that lifestyle, because the SECOND he acts like a normal child and cries, she hates him. This happens again and again as he grows up. He does something wrong, she hates him and wishes she could go back to living in France and contributing nothing to society. At one point, she even breaks his arm because he soils himself on purpose. WHAT THE HELL, LADY?

Apparently this is supposed to be justified because he… wait for it… he’s a psychopath that has it out for her and wants to make her life a living hell. He’s doing it all on purpose! Even from the young age of really young, he hates her. He pretends to like her when his dad is around, then acts out against her when it’s just him and mom. This creates friction between the parents, since the dad thinks the mom is making it all up. The kid is just a brilliant mastermind who plots his family’s destruction since the ripe age of -9 months. It’s like this film was originally written as the edgy reboot for Baby Geniuses but the production company decided to change the name at the last second and dumped the responsibility on Ted, the brand new intern with a fresh degree in art history from WSU. Kevin (I just realized his name is Kevin. The film is named after him. I need to go to bed) is never shown to be an actual human being. You know the kind. The ones who, ya know, go through a believable childhood and have to rely on his parents to not let him accidentally kill himself every 5 seconds. He just exists to hate his mom for not being a good mom when he was an infant or something.

Tomatoes are a symbol throughout this film because they're red. And blood is red.
Or maybe it's about communism. Who knows? Seize the means of produce! ('cause it's a grocery store)

Now this two-dimensional paper cutout of a character decides that the best way to get back at his mom for her existence is to kill his dad, sister, and schoolmates. The big reveal is that he does this not with a gun, but with a bow. A bow might seem like a strange tool to kill people with in this age of rootie-tootie-point-and-shooties, which it is. See, he chooses a bow because his mom read him a Robin Hood book once. That book inspired him to take up archery, and later use those skills to create moderately-educated porcupines in his school gymnasium. Get it? Do ya get it? GET IT? IT’S SYMBOLISM! The bow is just a symbol for how his mom led him to do all this! I solved it! 

 Except the mom wasn’t really all THAT bad. She didn't deserve to have raised a family annihilator and school shooter. I’d hate my kid, too, if he turned out to be the offspring of Albert Einstein and Gary Ridgway. But the amount of hatred she has for him wouldn't produce such awful products. Both the mother and son are just dumb and bad at being people.

The third component of the story (a far too large chunk of it) is the mother’s life after her son did all this nonsense and tomfoolery, but it’s overall uninteresting and unimportant. It’s more of a vehicle to launch the other two components than tell anything new. She repeatedly gets harassed by the local townsfolk for being the mother of a killer, as if that’s reasonable at all. If I were her, I’d just leave town, but what do I know?

Well, folks, I know that We Need To Talk About Kevin could have been better. It had a poorly thought out plot featuring an unbelievable and unrealistic plot point. I love films that deal with dark and macabre subjects, especially ones that are so psychological. I had high hopes for this film, but they were dashed across a wall and laid in front of Tywin Lannister. 

But it wasn’t that bad. I kinda liked it.  

I give it a 6/10. 

Review #7 - Hansee Hall

Welcome back, dear readers. I’m not dead, despite your hopes. Rather, I’ve just been floundering about, without creative spark. Blog post after blog post has been half-written, and fully deleted. These posts have been written from the comfort of my cozy little Hansee Hall room here at the University of WashingtscrewWSU. So for my next attempt at writing a post, I’d like to review Hansee Hall, UW’s oldest dorm.

            Hansee Hall is an Amazonian woman of a building. Made of brick, nothing can topple this building, save for the impending 10.5 earthquake that Seattle is overdue for. It’s situated in the University’s beautiful and wooded north campus, just minutes away from the north dining hall, tourist central the Quad, and the University Village Capitalism Center. The numerous surrounding trees means you can hear the soft sounds of birds chirping, drowned out only by the constant daytime construction and nighttime drunk frat boys and sorority girls. The Tudor architecture gives the dorm a homey, Ivy league feel, so you can pretend like you were actually accepted into your target school.

Hansee Hall in the winter months, covered in a blanket of downtown Seattle traffic accidents.

            The hall was built in the 1930s, which is evident from the interior. The four lounges are spacious and inviting, with secondhand couches and two grand pianos sitting atop the hardwood floors. There is a game room called “The Stagger Inn”, which houses a secondhand pool table, thirdhand pool cues, a ping pong table, and a foosball table. The room is far larger than it needs to be, leading to a vacant and empty feeling gnawing away at you as you fruitlessly knock pool balls around in an attempt to suppress the stresses of your college life. I mean, you’re only in college now, so the stress of daily life can only get worse, right? Existence is pointless anyway, and who’s to say you weren’t just placed on this Earth at this exact moment in time, artificially filled with false memories of earlier life? Not to mention the fact that you’re spending thousands of dollars to get a piece of paper that allows you to get a job which you’ll use to pay off your student loans for years and contribute to a fake and superficial capitalistic society in order to further suppress the feelings you have and attempt to replace them with material items like a new rug or a car you can’t really afford but it doesn’t matter because that’s what society tells you to do so you do it. There is also a TV lounge.

            The rooms are chock-full of amenities, such as a radiator for heating, shelves, a desk, a dresser, a mirror to hate your appearance with, and a beautiful antique armoire. Every room has a harsh overhead light that contributes to your insomnia, but the two outlets in the room means you can plug in a lamp if necessary. Also included in the rooms are ethernet and television hookups, both of which are included in the exorbitant cost of living here.

The average Hansee female's habitat. I downloaded this from the official HFS website. I'm not a creep. 

            Male and female bathrooms are separate, and their positions were apparently determined by a random number generator. It is often the case that two same-gendered bathrooms are literally beside each other, while the nearest opposite-gendered bathroom is farther away. Each bathroom has two stalls, a shower, and a bath. The shower and bath are each in a separate little room to allow for maximum privacy and maximum frustration wHEN PEOPLE CLOSE THE SHOWER DOOR AFTER FINISHING THEIR SHOWER LIKE I CAN JUST SEE THROUGH IT TO TELL IF SOMEONE IS IN THERE! DID I MENTION THEY DO THE SAME THING WITH THE STALL DOORS WHICH REACH THE GROUND SO IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL IF A STALL IS OCCUPIED? DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON LEAVING THE BATHROOM ENTRANCE DOOR OPEN WHILE I’M IN THERE, AS IF THEY WOULD WANT SOMEONE TO LEAVE THE DOOR TO THE HALL OPEN WHILE THEY’RE USING THE TOILET THEMSELVES. OH AND THE LIGHTS CAN JUST STAY ON ALL THE TIME ACCORDING TO MY FLOORMATES! WHO NEEDS TO TURN OFF THE BATHROOM LIGHTS IN A DORM WHICH HAD ITS ELECTRICITY INSTALLED IN THE 1930S?! Hansee Hall is the smallest dorm on campus, yet also consumes the most energy. Please turn off all lights when not in use. And as a courtesy to the next person to use the bathroom, leave all unused stall doors open. Thank you.

If you look closely, you can see a hidden door in the wall behind the pianist.
Kept behind the door are the hopes and dreams of every freshman intended-CS major.

            My final piece of consideration when it comes to living in Hansee is the social atmosphere, or the sense of community. Hansee houses roughly all of the socially awkward residents, and a few who just don’t like roommates. Due to this, the sense of community in Hansee is about as strong as my love life – weak, sad, and littered with failed attempts at fostering it. Don't even try. It's all a sham.

            Overall, I give Hansee a solid 8/10. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better per dollar spent than any other dorm, plus you get your own room in which nobody can tell you that your Star Wars Death Trooper action figure is lame and nerdy.

            This is Niles, signing off. Until next time. Stay cynical.