Because some of the Tiny Gods are extremely passionate about “unboxing” photos and videos I decided to capture a recent unboxing event of my own.  The box in question is something of a case. Some are said to crave its contents.  I present for your edification the Crave Case, Unboxed:

Crave Case Unboxing

This is less of a blog post and more of a public service announcement. World, this is Mandrake. I’d like you to take a good long look at the picture below:

gross

You see that? That’s Joose. You might spot it hiding on shelves in the beer aisle at your grocery store, or maybe in a cooler at a local gas station. Whatever you do… DON’T FUCKING DRINK IT. EVER!

That is all.

I recently purchased a Weber Smokey Mountain charcoal smoker, and this past weekend I was able to get in my first attempt at cooking on it. I decided I was going to make some pulled pork, so I picked up a 6.5 lb. and a 4.5lb pork butt from the grocery store, mixed up a rub, made some barbeque sauce, and then got up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to get things going. It was the earliest I had been awake in quite some time, but the end result was totally worth it. (more…)

Arby’s has unshamed itself out of any future Hall of Shamings.  I am giving Arby’s a “Get Out of Shame Free” card.  Other TinyGods can dispute this, but doing so only proves that they have not yet tasted the Roast Burger. 

Here’s what some braniac at Arby’s’ Executive Chefatorium thought one day, presumably after putting down the bong but before getting off the futon: “I want a roast beef sammich, but I’ll be damned if I don’t ALSO want bacon. If only there was some way to have-” and then he blacked out from the concussive force of such a profound idea.

They took a burger and replaced the beef patty with roast beef.  That sounds like a nice idea, eh?  Some ‘maters, some lettuce, maybe some mayo on their already exquisite roast beefer.  But they didn’t stop there, friend, oh no.  They added that peppered bacon.  They added your choice of Bleu or Cheddar cheese.  Bleu fucking cheese on top of roast beef underneath bacon!

Could it get any better?  How about “Double the beef for a buck”?  What the fuck are you gonna do when somebody asks you if you want to double the roast beef for a mere dollar?  Say ‘No’?!?!

Let’s recap.

• Bacon Cheddar Roastburger
• All-American Roastburger
• Bacon & Bleu Roastburger

OK. I can handle that.  Just don’t throw any more surprises my way and I won’t freak- hey WTF does it say on top of this Roastburger box?  It’s got punchholes for the 3 above burgers, plus a hole for double beef.  But it’s also got:

• a mysterious “Special” box that might include anything from blood pudding to Jamocha shake
• a BBQ Bacon box, which makes my mouth water
• a BBC Bacon Cheddar box, which makes my mouth runneth over
• a Jalapeno BBQ Bacon box, which made me drool myself into dehydration

They are coming out with MORE tasty burgers.  MORE! TASTY! ROASTBURGERS!

They just had to push their luck! Right when I was starting to feel like revoking their temporary Hall of Shame membership, Burger King had to go an do this.

Yes, friends, Burger King is now in the cologne business. That on its own isn’t too terrible. It could just be a ridiculous little marketing stunt. Hell, I might have even been tempted to buy a bottle just for the sake of novelty. But they had to take it a step too far with this:

The King's New Clothes

That isn’t an image that I want in my head! It is especially bad considering that they are releasing these ads along side their Whopper Virgin campaign. What does this say to me? It says “The King is going to rape the planet!”

For disturbing advertising, I hereby extend Burger King’s Hall of Shame membership!

I love Burger King too much to demand that they become a permanent member of the Tiny Gods Hall of Shame, but they earned themselves a temporary spot yesterday. I will probably revoke their shameful status the next time I eat a Double Whopper and remember that it is the most delicious thing on the planet.

A Burger King was just recently built right down the street from me. It was the only major fast food franchise that wasn’t already within a convenient distance from my apartment. It is now the closest fast food restaurant to me, which is excellent because it also happens to be my favorite.

I was having a relaxing day at home and enjoying the remnants of the weekend with a beer and some Fallout 3. I decided to grab some lunch at BK. Ok, so I was drinking beer before lunch. DON’T JUDGE ME! I got to the drive-thru and prepared to order my standard #2 combo with onion rings and a Coke. I didn’t get to, though.

“Welcome to Burger King. We are temporarily out of burgers, would you like to try some chicken or fish today?”

Of course I didn’t want chicken or fish! I wanted a flame broiled heart attack! I sat there, stunned, for probably a full minute. I said nothing. “Sir?”

I had to make a decision. The #8 looked like it was chicken, so I asked for that. “I’m sorry, sir, that sandwich is grilled. We can’t grill it right now.”

I felt my face crinkling up in a look of bewilderment that the kid at the window must have seen, because he immediately said, “I’m really sorry. Is there something else that I can get you?”

I had seen the commercials where Burger King tells people that they no longer serve the Whopper. Shit like that makes people upset. I never thought it would happen to me. I was being let down by The King, and I wasn’t even on TV. This was real. I looked sadly at the speaker and said, “Never mind. I guess I won’t get anything.”

I was trapped in the line with cars on both sides, so I had to wait for the line. Before I pulled away from the speaker, though, the kid came back and said that they would grill up my chicken sandwich for me. I smiled and thanked him, I paid for my food, I took it home and sat back down in my gaming chair. I was pleased that they had at least helped me out that little bit. Then I opened the bag.

The fries were stale. So so stale. I have worked in fast food before. I know what it looks like when you refry old fries. Also, they had dropped the fries into the bag upside-down, so they were just all over the fucking place. Thanks, Burger King. Jerks.

I’m at work and I have a lot of stuff to do, so let’s cut straight to the chase.
Things in this thing:

• Dog-cloning should wait until the housing market improves.
• Tiny Gods talk genetics?
• Batman’s deep, sexy voice.
• Bonus Dark Knight spoiler @ 11:28-11:32
• Maggie Gyllenhaal, hot or not?
• Citag is the new bitch.
• We’re fresh out of fajitas in this piece.
• Indie games (Braid, Crayon Physics, Choke on my Groundhog, etc.)
• Dr. Horrible is back.
• Why didn’t anyone tell me Birds of Prey existed?

Listen to it or something. I’m out.

Oh, wait. I’m not out yet. Download the stuff: tiny-godcast-ep05.mp3

Ok. Now I’m out. For realsies.

I’m on a new diet that I call the “Too Busy Playing GTA To Eat Diet”.  It’s basically just like anorexia, but accidental.  Also, you steal a lot of cars and kill a lot of cops.  I’m not sure if I’m losing weight, but if your dietary goal is to be too exhausted to get out of bed in the morning, this is the diet for you!

I’d write more but I’m too fucking tired.

One love, Нико Белић!

Check out this Biofuel comparison chart.

So what do you think?  Nevermind that corn ethanol is indirectly cutting our precious Tequila supply, it’s clear that we don’t have a solution now.   Do any of these look good long term?  Sure, if we get the algae burning automobiles with “gas” tanks that actually incubate the algae internally we’ll truly be living in The Future!

But that’s all beside the point.  Look, we’re going about it slightly wrong, and I’ll tell you the right way(s).

1. Gas is actually a biofuel anyway, the problem is that it’s such a wicked old biofuel that it’s nonrenewable.  Let’s try to make crude oil into a renewable resource.  If we simulate dinosaur decomposition then we keep the (awesome) cars we have.  That’d be ideal (and would bankrupt the OPEC too!) but it probably won’t happen since they shut down Jurassic Park.

2.  Try the biofuel options like ethanol and biodiesel.  I am definitely jumping the gun here, but let’s just call it a miserable failure, get our tequila production back on track, and move on to something more interesting.

3.  Biofuels for mechanized people movers?  Illogical.  Look at the biofuels that we have technology to use: corn, sugar, soy.  What’s the problem with those?  We use them for food.  We, organic critters, use those items as “fuel” for our own movement and operation.  See where I’m going with this?  Grow us some fucking cars!  Get some mad scientists on the job and let’s shift the paradigm from “fueling up” to “feeding” our rides.  Catbus anyone?
PS I am aware that “My Important Thoughts” is redundant.

Last night I downloaded the Amazon music downloader program for OS X and bought the new Gnarls Barkley album, The Odd Couple.  Rather than comparing the experience against that of iTunes or Oink I’ll just compare it against 2 other things I did last night.

First, the details.  For $8.99 American (roughly 6 Pesos w/ the current exchange rate) you get 13 songs encoded as 256KBps MP3s w/o DRM.  Pretty good!  But how does it stack up against the crepes I made for dinner?

The crepes featured real butter, while the MP3s were fat free.  I had a raspberry spread between crepe folds, but no whipped creme.  You might think the lack of whipped creme was a deal-breaker because the Amazon downloader automatically imported the songs into iTunes, but you underestimate the powdered sugar I sprinkled on top.  Crepes win.

That’s fine and dandy, but how does digital music purchasing compare to a massive nosebleed?  The Amazon downloaded hid any download speed info, but the entire album was finished in under 2 minutes.  My nosebleed was epic and extremely inconvenient.  The inconvenience made me mad, and the madder I got the faster the blood squirted out of my nose.  It was difficult to throttle blood download speed, while I would never throttle MP3 downloads.  Also, the Gnarls Barkley album didn’t leave my bathroom a bloody mess.  Amazon wins.

Now it is clear:

Crepes > Amazon music downloads > bloody noses

My advice to you is that you go fetch some Egg Beaters and Nutella from the store and make yourself some lovely crepes.  While you are digesting, go download The Odd Couple, which is clinically proven to sound delicious.