Seriously Cereal

To cut into the huge cold cereal market, generic major distributors, through testing various blends of grains and sugars, have tried to come as close to the originals as consumers will accept. Names of the original cereals have been trade marked so the counterfeit cereals need to be called something. I can imagine marketers sitting in sterile boardrooms with bowls of the copy cat cereal sitting in front of them trying to come up with an identity. Looking at the names they came up with I think they surveyed first graders.

So, to test your cereal savvy I’ve created a list of a few of these “off” brands. See if you can identify the real, original cereal that the mock cereal is trying to imitate. Some of the cereal names seem to have drifted into the “public domain” category such as Bran Flakes. I’ve made some of these pretty easy. So, test your skills. The original cereal brand is listed below. I don’t mean to ruin anything but my favorite name is “Apple Dapples.” It’s just fun to say. In fact I’ve been saying it over and over again…apple dapples, apple dapples, apple dapples…. Good luck, yeah good luck getting apple dapples out of your head.

1) Golden Puffs 2) Honey & Nut Blenders

3) Berry Colossal Crunch 4) Blue Berry Muffin Tops

5) Crispy Oat Squares 6) Cocoa Crunchies

7) Frosted Fruit Rings 8) Apple Dapples

9) Golden Corn Nuggets 10) Cini-Mini Crunch

11) Magic Stars 12) Crunchy Rice Squares

13) Crispy Berry Crunch 14) Crisp ‘n Fruity Rice

15) Chipmates 16) Cocoa Roos 17) Honey Crisp Medley

18) Nutty Nuggets 19) Frosted Mini Spooners

20) Crispy Rice 21) Active Lifestyle 22) Shining Stars

23) Alien 24) Hexa Grains 25) Fruit & Toasted O’s

26) Corn Flakes 27) Crispy Rice 28) Wheat Pockets

29) Rice Pockets 30) Oats & More 31) Oat Wise

32) Golden Puffs 33) Berry Crackles 34) Cinnamon Toasters

35) Tootie Fruities 36) Marshmallow Mateys

37) Dino Bytes 38) Honey Nut Scooters

39) Silly Circles 40) Frosted Flakes

41) Marshmallow Magic 42) Honey & Nut

43) Cocoa Nuggets 44) Cinnamon Crunch

1) Honey Smacks/Honey Puffs; 2) Honey Nut Cheerios; 3) Captain Crunchberries;

4) Blue Berry Muffin; 5) Life; 6) Cocoa Krispies; 7) Fruit Loops;

8) Apple Jacks; 9) Corn Pops; 10) Cinnamon Toast Crunch;

11) Lucky Charms; 12) Life; 13) Captain Crunch Crunchberries;

14) Fruity Pebbles; 15) Cookie Crisp; 16) Cocoa Puffs;

17) Honey Bunches of Oats; 18) Grape Nuts;

19) Frosted Mini Wheats; 20) Rice Krispies; 21) Special K;

22) Lucky Charms; 23) Combo of Lucky Charms and Trix;

24) Crispix; 25) Fruit Loops; 26) Corn Flakes, duh;

27) Rice Krispies; 28) Wheat Chex; 29) Rice Chex;

30) Honey Bunches of Oats; 31) Life; 32) Honey Crisp/Honey Smacks;

33) Captain Crunch Crunchberries; 34) Cinnamon Toast Crunch;

35) Fruit Loops; 36) Lucky Charms; 37) Fruity Pebbles

38) Honey Nut Cheerios; 39) Fruit Loops;

40) Frosted Flakes, pretty smart answer; 41) Lucky Charms;

42) Honey Nut Cheerios; 43) Cocoa Pebbles;

44) Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Hornets Nest

It was Saturday morning and I needed to mow the lawns before the summer heat flared. After the grass catcher was taken off I wheeled the mower through the gate into the backyard. As I lifted the lid of the garbage bin to dump the grass out of the catcher hundreds of hornets shot from the inside of the bin and swirled around me like a buzzing yellow tornado. I whirled back through the gate with arms flailing, swatting and slapping at the enraged attackers.

The mail man slammed on his brakes as I ran into the street. Poking his head out the window he asked, “Hey! Are you ok?”

“They’re after me!” I screamed, “Hornets are after me!”

The mail man continued to stare, now with an inquisitive look on his face.

Wild eyed, I stopped and scanned the air.

“There were hundreds after me!”

“Sir, I don’t see anything. I uh..uh better get going on my route.”

I didn’t see any either. My incredible hornet martial arts defense must have taken care of them.

I crept back through the gate, crouching low to make myself a smaller target from the marauding stingers. I’d left the lawnmower next to the bin with the hornet hutch.

I needed to sprint, clutch the handle of the mower and shove it toward the back lawn. Because the path to the back was pot holed and pivoted, great care was usually taken in navigating the mower to the lawn. I would now need to make it fly.

A few hornets landed on the fence, watching me, their wings humming like electric wires.

I froze. The only movement was my eyes shifting from the hornets and back to the mower. Counting to three I leaped to the mower. The wheels pitched and rattled over the pivots as I tried to keep it straight.

The hornets launched from their perch and lunged toward me, bodies curled, stingers exposed.

With adrenaline pulsing I pushed the lawn mower to the trees. The hornets continued their pursuit. My arms slashed the air and wildly smacked my shirt to keep them off.

Even though I’ve been losing weight I keep my larger jeans for working outside. The problem with losing weight too quickly is that the once tight jeans now hung loosely on exposed hip bones, and I wasn’t wearing a belt to cinch the baggy jeans tight.

Leaping and running across the lawn, the loose jeans began to slip. I tried to grab them but it was too late. The pants dropped to my knees, throwing me to the ground like a bull hobbled by an Argentinean bolo. Somersaulting and rolling through the grass I came to a stop beneath the maple tree. I lay motionless, pants now down to my ankles.

Again I searched for signs of the assailants. None on the tree, none in the air, none on the fence, and most importantly, none on me.

I stumbled like a drunk as I tried to pull up my pants and walk toward the house.

Jan poked her head out the back door. “What are you doing?”

“Hornets, hundreds were after me!”

She scanned me up and down as I held my partially pulled up pants, shirt twisted around my body, and fear in my eyes.

She shook her head, rolled her eyes and plainly stated, “Just don’t let the neighbors see you.” Then she shut the door.

“OK!” I shouted back. “Maybe there were only two or three hornets, but they were fierce!”

I decided to leave the mower where it was. The lawn could wait.

Protesting Protesters

As I was working in the conference room at the Mail Tribune the retail manager ran in and gushed: “We have protesters.”

I was crossing the street between the press warehouse and the business building when an unmarked police car drove up. Unmarked police cars are supposed to blend in with all the other vehicles on the road. The giveaway that this is actually a police car are the bars between the back and front seat. This could also be the car of a mother driving through town with 3 rowdy kids in the back seat.

A few minutes later a motorcycle officer pulls up. I was afraid the building was under siege and tried to remember my exit strategies. Then I remembered I was already outside which is the end result of my strategy of fleeing the building if the newspaper came under assault.

Once in the building one of the managers ran up to me and gushed, “did you see the protesters outside?”

“No, I hadn’t. What are they protesting?”

“We ran an editorial from the Oregonian that questioned the value of medical marijuana. They apparently didn’t like it.”

In Oregon it’s legal to possess or grow a small amount of pot if it’s used for medicinal reasons.

As I watched the protesters walk slowly in front of the building carrying their hand scrawled signs I wondered why those who protest an issue always seem to look like what I have in my mind they should look like.

For example, ultra conservative men seem to wear business attire with cowboy hats and drive gargantuan pickup trucks.

The liberal protester has long greasy hair, dresses in holey jeans and drives a VW van.

These pot protesters looked like they had been time warped from the sixties, or from Ashland, southern Oregon’s equivalent of Haight-Ashbury.

They were dressed in tee shirts and shorts that were too small. Body types were either very thin or very large. We watched as some of them had trouble walking a straight line or “marched” with an occasional stumble. But they did look blissful.

I think one of my coworkers put it best:

“I don’t think any of them had to take time off from a job in order to come protest…”

I began to think in marketing terms concerning these protesters. Their marketing was flawed. If they really wanted to have impact they shouldn’t exemplify what everyone sees as the typical pot smoker. If they had dressed in business attire people would relate more with their cause and perhaps pay more attention.

I’m always impressed when a guy who looks like a hippie or is highly tattooed or pierced and supports conservative issues. The same for a liberal in a business suit with a cowboy hat and pick up.

Those who passed by would then read the signs instead of reading the protesters.