The Lady is playing a Mario game. It looks very frustrating. Apparently there's a king in Mario. I mean, this makes sense to a point, given that there is a princess for any vaguely Italian plumber who comes to town. There are dancing palm trees and blocks that are jumping, but she leaves them (and by extension the distressed damsel) because she is frustrated. Kids today. They don't know how to rescue princesses from turtle things with hammers.

Now she's playing Super Mario Galaxy, which is an extremely colorful and well made game that is immensely frustrating to The Lady, because it will mess with gravity and platforms.

She points out that she would prefer to remain where she is, because it is peaceful. When pressed about Bowser taking over the Galaxy and kidnapping the princess, she said that she doesn't care about those sorts of things and just wants everything to be peaceful and fun and not scary.

But enough about Marios of various shapes, sizes, and pixelations. I had thought about liveblogging The Lady playing Mario, but I don't think that it would have gone particularly well, mostly because liveblogging rarely goes well for these sorts of things. I get too distracted by the shining lights, and it's frustrating for me to watch people make mistakes that I would probably make if given the opportunity (and probably did on my first playthrough). Also, she's not playing anymore, as she got frustrated and shut off the console. Bad for liveblogging, but potentially good for other topics.

Today, I discovered what is apparently the hot new hashtag with kids today. Now, I know what you're thinking- "Rob, why are you talking about drugs or breakfast potatoes?" Oh, reader. You're so old and silly. You need to start getting with the times and/or the lingo for the kids today. No, hashtags are... well, nobody's entirely sure what they actually are, but their mysterious power is able to drive the power of celebrity or music or news or what have you. But, by God, kids use them, and thus turns the world.

A lot of people give cafeteria lunches a hard time, and, to be sure, the food is not that great. I mainly got spoiled while I was in France, because, there, the school lunches are a friggin' ordeal and are actually legit food.

Usually it was fruit in place of flan.

I mean, look at that business. That is amazing. There's an actual main course that probably has  a fancy French name and has vegetables and real meat and everything. There's a cucumber salad- A CUCUMBER SALAD! There's bread and cheese and some sort of flan, and everything is great. It's filling, it's healthy, and it's just great.

The Lady is trying to watch a Hanson special. There is no God in the world. Wait, no, God is back, because the Oprah: Where Are They Now (which is an amalgam of two shows from the nineties that I have no desire to watch) that The Lady wants to watch isn't on for another 30 minutes.

We are now watching reality TV. It's something about somebody named Kendra. It showed for literally thirty seconds before cutting back to commercial. And now it's actually back. This is absolutely horrendous. There's drama over shoes and earrings and an utter lack of complete sentences.

Anyway, school lunches (before I dig myself into a hole over this if/when The Lady reads this). The quality of the food was pretty abysmal, but you can say the same about Taco Bell, and I will eat the bajeezus out of some Crunchwrap Supremes right now. I remember that every now and again, they'd have chicken wings. They were obscenely spicy and obscenely delicious to 16 year old Rob. Once, I was eating outside, and it had just rained, so there was a puddle near me. A little bit of chicken wing skin fell into the puddle. You could see the grease cascading off of the skin, and it was grotesque and disturbing, but mostly it was evidence of why the wings were so good. Even when there weren't wings, you could get enough to constitute an actual meal for somebody who needs to consume more calories because puberty. Personally, I was a big fan of the ol' chicken nuggets dipped in some sort of fruit slurry, because I was a strange kid like that.

Recently, Michelle Obama has decided to take on ending childhood obesity as her favored cause. Good for her- obesity causes all sorts of problems, and if it starts in kids, it's hard to get them back down to a healthy weight. It's a fine line, since kids need enough calories to grow and thrive and such, but once you get past a certain point, boom, you're the Michelin man, because in this case, you ARE the kids.

So how did she decide to fight obesity? Maybe get some more PE programs in schools? More athletic programs? Encourage more biking and walking programs for kids? Build some more playgrounds so the kids can be active during recess? Change up the infrastructure so there can be healthier school lunches? I mean, she wouldn't do something that might lead to the same vaguely crappy food but in smaller portions, right?

Hahaha no, the last one is totally what happened. I mean, I get it- that's certainly the easiest way to deal with the situation with the resources at hand. It's a lot easier to keep using what you're already using, but in smaller portions. I'd imagine that there are cafeteria food lobbyists who are just super persuasive. But, good God, that should not mean that high schoolers are being served this:

Everybody loves some cheesy bologna tortilla, right? That's all the rage! BUT YOU ONLY GET ONE.

I'm sure I ate way too much in high school, but I was still pretty obscenely thin. I think it took college for me to break 150, if even then. But I liked that I had the choice to say, "Why, yes, I think I WILL have double wings, a fruit cup, and some cookies today. Ring it up, my good fellow. Toodle pip." I was also very English in high school, which happens to have been in the 1880s, which is really lucky. I should have been mining for coal or something.

Bear costumes were never cool, but they were very warm in 1880s England.

And, you know, yes. Childhood obesity is a problem. It's a terrible thing that happens. In a perfect world, we could put forth the infrastructure needed to put French-style lunches in our cafeterias. Everyone could have cucumber salads (CUCUMBER SALADS, GUYS!), fine cheeses, and, I dunno, flan or some business, but because we cut P.E. out of the curriculum and keep everyone inside all day, they'd still get fat because they wouldn't ever get to be active.

Honestly, the stuff I'm seeing in some of these pictures is worse than anything I remember seeing during high school. Well, except for maybe the mac and cheese, which was somehow able to completely wreck anyone's colon, but even then, there's a picture of what appears to be radioactive sweet potato mac and cheese, which is pretty high up there as far as abominations go.

Is this what happens when you leave apple cobbler and macaroni and cheese in a room with some candles and Marvin Gaye?

I'm sure this is not reflective of what's actually available at any of these schools and that there are plenty of people who are satisfied with the overall flavor of the menu. The first lady (because, see, that's more words than Michelle Obama) probably got some solid expert advice on what constitutes a healthy lunch for different age groups. I'm sure that this will all work out for the best, and people will be able to complain about cafeteria food for years to come, and nobody will ever actually get cucumber salad (CUCUMBER SALAD, GUYS) with their school lunch. The bread will remain paradoxically inferior and superior to baguettes (because, guys, those rolls, especially if they weren't quite done yet? Oh my goodness they were so soft and bready you don't even know. You could take it and roll it up into a tiny little sphere of bread), and you'll still get little fruit cup things (well, maybe- I'm sure those have a lot more sugar, and carbs fat carbs protein fat carbs fat carbs carbs carbs spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam spam carbs are bad for you, so maybe they'll be on the way out). Hopefully whatever kinks are in the system will get ironed out, and kids will be lean and mean and ready to fight the red menace as it comes screeching across the skies from the East. What's that, comrade? Not ready for our healthy and strapping youths of the Wagener, South Carolina, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps and International Double Dutch Forces? Ha ha, we'll be sipping Yuenglings in the Kremlin by nightfall. I'd say Pabst Blue Ribbon, but I think that overemphasizes the European aspect of this battle of the wills (and, besides, Pabst Blue Ribbon was sold to a Russian company a few months ago. Is nothing sacred to the Ruskies?).

So, yeah. That's my post about cafeteria lunches and how they'll help us fight the war on communism (or something along those lines). I'm going to go and try to get some sleep before I try to donate platelets tomorrow and try to actually finish a movie (I got through the Blues Brothers' first gig last time I was giving. At least I got to see some Nazis get run off a bridge. Sorry, Illinois Nazis. My mistake.). With this last sentence, I should have completed my word count with a few words to spare, so I hope to see you THIS VERY WEEKEND when I post another post tomorrow evening maybe why not?

Aw, heck, if we're being meta about the word count, I'll throw in a few extra one, just for a rainy day. Don't need you spending all these words all willy nilly on clothes and such. That's an obligatory episode of a mediocre teenage sit-com from the early 90s. And we're better than that.