Today has been an educational day of lessons and learning. Unpleasant ones, to be sure, but lessons nonetheless. I could tell you about them and the shitshow that was my morning and early afternoon (or should it be "shit show," for the sake of my word count if nothing else?), but I don't think that you really want to hear about the joys of stomach bugs and/or hangovers, nor how some cosmic forces (be it God or random chance) seems to want me to not give platelets (and I mean, come on- they're kids (and probably some adults, too) with cancer! What the fuck?), nor how Denny's seems to be my stomach's favorite place to just throw a freaking rager. No, these aren't things that I think you actually want to hear about, so I won't talk about them.

Of course, that leaves me without a ready-made topic for the night.

Unless we count cereal. Does cereal count? That's a tough call. I guess I can only leave it in the hands of one man. I would go for Prof. Harold Hill (he's a professor, after all, and they're supposed to be here to answer the important questions, perhaps regarding boys' marching bands), but he's off ranting about how he's looking for the emo DeviantArt girls rather than the bubbly Tumblr types.

He didn't say anything about his feelings regarding trans women, though.

 So who could I go to for some sort of nod of approval? Maybe someone with a rugged beard whose name starts with a J? Perhaps a character with an alliterative name from some sort of period piece?

Sorry, Dad. I was trolling you HARD right there. Jeremiah might appear later.

Well, with Jon Hamm's approval, I guess we'll talk a bit about cereal. By a bit, I mean, of course, that we'll talk for about one thousand more words or so. By we, of course, I mean I. I will talk. You will listen. What do you think this is, some sort of actual dialog? Have you not gotten used to my sudden shifts among (not between, what with the three options, or so I would imagine) first-, second-, and third-person? This is just some crazy dialog between me and my bizarrely abusive inner voices. And by cereal, I mean maybe we'll talk about cereal, and maybe we'll just talk about that for a little while and then flow into other topics as they arise.You know, the standard operating procedure for this blog (if not all blogging in general).

And here I thought that it said, "Erect Blog," which would really confirm some of my early suspicions regarding its etymology. I'd also wager that I don't really follow anything in this mini guide, albeit more from incompetence than from rebellion.

So. Yes. Cereal. Maybe. But quite likely, what with signs pointing to yes. Time to change the blog's name to Magic 8 Blog. That and, you know, write a post about cereal.

Not about cereal conventions, though. No need for that degree of GAH.

Cereal like, for example, CRACKLIN' OAT BRAN.

Artist's rendering.

Cracklin' Oat Bran is pretty great. It would probably help if I'd averaged more than one word per minute on this post so far. WHY AM I NOT ABLE TO WRITE FASTER? Ha. No, we all know why that is. It's because I keep insisting on having Netflix on. Who could have guessed that it's terrible for creativity?

But great for looking for pineapples.

Yes, Cracklin' Oat Bran is delicious and (probably) nutritious. OR SO KELLOGG'S WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE! And we all know that you can't really trust Kellogg- the man thought he would live forever because he has a clean colon. Plus, he was played by Hannibal. Not the Carthaginian general or the guy from A-Team, mind you. No,we're talking full on Lecter.

"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some corn flakes and a nutritiously balanced breakfast."

Let's see... more fat than I might like (11% of your daily value, including 15% of your daily value of saturated fat, but no trans fats and a greater overall amount of unsaturated fats), but a fair bit of fiber and B vitamins. So, okay, yes, they're pretty delicious and nutritious. They also have coconut in them. Who has coconut in cereal? Preposterous. I will confess that it makes the texture a bit odd, and you DO run into some flaking in the bowl, but it still retains a good bit of crunch. AND WHO DOESN'T LOVE CRUNCH?

Okay, fine, I'm honestly not a huge fan of the crunch. I mean, if you want your cereal crunchy, why would you even put milk in it? I'd rather it be a bit easier to chew. You know, think Cheerios, Froot Loops, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Rice Krispies, etc. after about fifteen minutes in a bowl of milk.  Apparently I'm an old man who can't chew things. That's a thing now.

You're about to enter a world of soggy. Sweet, delicious soggy.

But, yes. Cracklin' Oat Bran, despite its mild textural flaws, is wonderful. "Wow, Rob," you're probably saying (but you're not because, as I said, this isn't a dialogue, because that would just be absurd for a blog), "you seem to have strong feelings about cereal. You must eat them a whole lot." To which I say, of course not. That takes way too much time and milk, and it doesn't pair nearly as well with orange juice, which is an important source of vitamin C. When the hell else am I going to get substantial amounts of vitamin C? With my lunch? Don't be absurd. Lunch is clearly a carb and fat soluble vitamin meal. Breakfast is all about the water soluble business.  Also, the text keeps disappearing, which is making it very difficult to keep writing this post.

So, somehow I got really effusive about Cracklin' Oat Bran when I don''t eat a lot of cereal (and frankly, rarely even eat Cracklin' Oat Bran- that shit is expensive, and I can be much better served by toast on most nights). In this case, for once, advertising worked. Man, did it work. It wasn't even a good ad by some standards. It says nothing about the actual cereal. It pretty much just repeats "Cracklin' Oat Bran" in various sentences that make varying amounts of sense for about two straight minutes.

It occurs to me that before I continue elaborating about the ad, I should give you a chance to find it. If you go to Youtube, and if you enter the search criteria "Cracklin' Oat Bran," and if you pick the result that has puppets generated from Dr. Seuss and Jim Henson's worst nightmares, then you've probably found the right ad. That first image from the page? Straight from that ad. Well, at least, it's a screen capture straight from the ad that I found on a Google Image search. Also, for proper credit, the ad is by Filmcow, who also did Charlie the Unicorn, Detective Heart of America, and charlie teh unicron (slightly less well known, but still extremely funny). It is not associated with Kellogg's in any way, which is really a shame. I have a strong suspicion that sales of Cracklin' Oat Bran in the 18-35 demographic SKYROCKETED after that ad came out, because the box itself isn't particularly distinctive, and we're far too jaded to buy cereal just because there's an apostrophe. We at least need a funny/beloved mascot (see: Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, Sonny the Cuckoo, and the Cinnamon Toast Crunch guy), a good catch phrase (see: "Reese's for breakfast," "Hey, kids, these don't taste like apples," (or alternatively, "We eat what we like!" which is possibly the most inane catchphrase ever. No, kids, you eat what you hate, and then you become what you hate, and the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon is doing something unspecified in the lyrics that I remember (Rob is bitter at 3 in the morning, apparently)) and "They're grrrrreat!"), or both. Cracklin' Oat Bran, officially, has none of these. I mean, it does have pretty decent box art?

But, really, are you more focused on the nicely airbrushed cereal in glue or the doll-eyed killing machine that thinks it's just playing a nice, friendly game with you? That's what I thought.

This video added in a sea of soulless, Lovecraftian puppets that shill Cracklin' Oat Bran like it's the reason C'thulhu naf'l f'thaghn. Don't get me wrong- the cereal has enough of its own merits to work, but it needed a foot in the door of our stomachs. Our terrible, terrible, churning stomachs.

So, I guess what I'm getting at (because there's TOTALLY an underlying theme to this blog post that has taken me over three hours so far, go Rob and Netflix) is that Cracklin' Oat Bran is people. Wait, no, that's not what I'm getting at at all, because I certainly have not been replaced by a representative of Kellogg's Black Ops Cereal Division to prevent any of these sorts of baseless accusations which dishonor a proud family business (for families, by families) that has been around for well over a century. Nope, I am certainly the writer of this internet writing log just writing his or her internet writing log like a normal male or female does (it sure is hard to tell after the totally nonexistent Black Ops Cereal Division doesn't finish that work that it doesn't do on males or females like me, your internet writing log writer). The totally existent underlying theme to this post to this "blog" (we're guessing that's what the kids call these internet writing logs) is that
Kellogg's cereal is your friend and you should buy more Cracklin' Oats.

Fuck you, General Mills. Nobody cares about Post.