It Came From The Pantry

Breakfast. I'm not really sure what it means to "break fast", but I know it has everything to do with starting your day right.

After you wake up and shout angry threats of revenge against whatever higher power made you wake up, you proceed to engage in your morning ritual. Then you feel that tinge in your stomach, that special tweak. You're hungry and you've got to do something about it, damn it.

Everyone's daily routine is different, but ask most, and I'm sure that there are elements of the following: showering/cleaning, putting clothing on, creating non-embarrassing hairstyle or the delicate placing of ball cap, then the consumption of breakfast. Unless you're some kind of anorexic, breakfast really is important, and shouldn't be missed. You always have time for a solid meal, just like the ones you see on TV or on elementary school filmstrips. Is it so hard to eat a banana, or a fruit bar? Of course not. The easiest meal by far, of course, is cereal. I believe that there are a good many of us that should probably thank Will Keith Kellogg for creating such a tasty, convenient dish. You add milk, of the cow or soy variety, grasp a spoon (or fork for those who desire a challenge), and shovel that goodness down your gullet. And everyone is happy.

Unless that cereal is pure toxic gruel, wherein one taste of it sends the consumer into fits of rage and threats of revenge, not against some power, but against the guilty: Kellogg's, Post, General Mills, Quaker.

This morning I found myself to be void of bread, or it's more fun, outgoing cousin, the Eggo waffle. I was therefore relegated to buying something at work, or hunkering down with a good ol' bowl of cereal. The answer came naturally, as years of childhood pleasure came back with willful abandon. Especially when I see that my pantry has "Froot Loops". Ah, the 'loops. Stupidly spelled, but ever-iridescent with its bright colours and promise that only 7 essential nutrients are hidden within (I respect a lower nutrient level - shows honesty). I eagerly grasped the box, and received quiet approval from its poster bird, the uber-scented Toucan Sam. I also peered at the side panels and wondered if the "Twistables" or "Winders" would be a good lunchtime addition. I just knew that this breakfast would be 7 essentials of awesome, or at least something to just get by on. As I ascended the spoon, crammed past its natural limits with the "Cheerios on acid", into my mouth, I was overcome with a taste flood of a purely vile nature.

Hey, this stuff is fucking disgusting.

Maybe it's my age showing its wear and tear, or the cereal being past its best-before date, but this was shit. Old shit, like if work on a construction site stopped, and everyone left, but the port-o-potty was still there, uncleaned and untouched. For months. I'm trying to think what was the great draw when I was a kid, because this cereal is worse than Hitler Flakes (I may have made those up, but if they were real, you know they'd be bad. And evil). I can truly appreciate the fact that kids will eat pretty much anything if it's wrapped in colours so offensive it gives people aneurysms. If it also has a commercial during the kid's cartoons, you can guarantee that kid's going to have dreams about the cereal, where if he/she eats enough of it, he gets to fly (or something stupid like that - you know how kids dream).

I just don't know how this poison is still being produced. It should have to be removed from the house by a HAZMAT team and quarantined as an imminent danger to human survival. Along with Cap'n Crunch, Reese's Puffs, Grape Nuts and Marshmallow Alpha-Bits, they should be put in a ship and shot at the sun, if only to save the planet from their collective plague.

Are there any vomit-inducing cereals out there you hate, dear reader? Maybe you'd like to come to the defence of the rainbow diarrea I've mentioned? Regular Cheerios should probably be on that list because of it's purposeful lack of taste and subsequent insult to the population, but it's healthy, so I guess that evens it out.