Today when we went food shopping, I picked up a box of Cap'n Crunch Crunchberries (blue & red "berries" mixed with sugar corn crunchy) cereal. It's kid's cereal and it's full of sugar, and if you eat too much it hurts the inside of your mouth.
So we get home, unpack, we're doing our thing around the house, and I pull out the box, determined to snack on a few crunchberries, maybe even have a bowl. I notice there's a promotion going on featuring a popular cartoon character relating to the color in the berries. I start eating.
Within SECONDS, my fingers are turning blue and so is my tongue. Guy and I start discussing where the blue is coming from and whether or not the whole cereal is "laced" with the stuff, or if it's just the big blue pieces coloring everything else. We pour some in a bowl and hit it with milk. The milk instantly turns blue. And I mean BRIGHT BLUE. We run more tests on the "crunch" away from the "berries". Blue is present only not nearly as intense, and more like what I think you'd expect from a kid's cereal.
What kind of IDIOT thought this one up? Can you IMAGINE giving this to your 5-11 year old before school? You'd have to get a change of clothes ready and maybe some turpentine as well. I couldn't wash it off my hands.
The nice people who make this need a head check. I can feel cancer growing in me as I write this. Holy crap what alot of chemicals.
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On a lighter note: I was transferring some old concert tapes to CD today. Two Duran Duran concerts: one from 81 or 82 in London, and one from their Seven & The Ragged Tiger World Tour when they appeared at Madison Square Garden in NYC in March of 1984. It was a big show for them, I read recently.
Anyhoo, that World Tour was the first time I ever saw them live (I saw them in Philadelphia at the Spectrum -now the Wachovia Spectrum). I was 14 and I was beside myself. So much so that when I taped the concert a week or two later, I cried when it started on the radio.
Cut to, oh, say, 20+ years later...
I'm sitting on the floor snug between a big reading chair and the stereo. I'm set up to tape the second show and I get it rolling. The first notes of an instrumental ("Tiger Tiger") come up with a swarming buzz of screaming girls who were mostly all my age at the time, along with tuning noises on a bass and lead guitar...I smile...
Oh my gosh. It's them. It's the men I have posters of all over my room. I think about marrying their lead singer at least 10 times a day. I can't believe I'm finally getting to see them...
I have suddenly become that awkward, starry-eyed 14 year-old girl. I get goosebumps and my heart races, and when I try to laugh, I start to cry. I am 35 years old, married with a 13 month old and I am sitting there nearly bawling over my ultimate teen crush. Whoa. Was it the crunchberries? Probably not.
I seriously recommend finding some keepsakes, music, pictures or whatever, that bring you back to a time when you felt that pure euphoria. It's suprising how fast it all comes back.
"...the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart..."*
Thanks for the memories, fellas.
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* from "The Chauffeur", by Duran Duran, from the album Rio
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