Puddintopia

1. Why doesn’t Caillou have hair?

   I’ve been pondering this one for awhile, and it just simply defies understanding. Caillou is a sweet, pleasant, theoretically four year-old kid, yet he’s as bald a baby’s bottom. So what gives? After considerable thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that his lack of hair is the result of one of two things: either the poor boy has had a nasty run of lice, or Canadian kids are just hairless by nature. Admittedly, I don’t know any Canadian kids, but you’d sure think they wouldn’t be so quick to play hockey with heads like a cue ball. 

2. Where does Handy Manny get his tools?

   Handy Manny is a well-intentioned handy man of Latino descent. He has a whole box full of sentient tools:

   • Pat, the hammer
   • Dusty, the saw
   • Stretch, the tape measure
   • Felipe, the Phillips head screwdriver
   • Turner, the flat head screwdriver
   • Squeeze, the pliers
   • Rusty, the wrench
   • Flicker, the flashlight

   So where do these fantastic, self-aware tools come from? Is Manny some practitioner of ancient and forbidden magicks capable of create living tools, or binding the souls of the dead to existing ones to do his bidding? I don’t know, but if not, how come you can’t get a hammer like that at Sears? Surely Craftsman wants in on the Self-Striking Autonomous Hammer craze. Of course, if Manny’s secret gets out, and everyone gets his/her own set of living tools, well, there won’t be much need for the Mannys of the world, will there? 

3. Shouldn’t Bob’s equipment unionize?

   Seriously, Bob the Builder is running some kind of operation there. He goes about town doing construction projects and generally being Johnny-on-the-spot for just about anyone who offers him a “good day”, but really, who’s doing all the work? That’s right, his bickering set of equipment trucks. They really need to put their differences aside long enough to realize that they guy is working them day and night for nothing more than a shed to sleep in while he builds an empire of wealth and power. It’s worse than being indentured. If they put together a strike though, and all that revenue dries up, you can bet his little strumpet assistant/girlfriend Wendy will be on him to settle things with the workers before labor issues cut into her jewelry, shoe, and martini budget.

4. Who made Sir Topham Hatt cock of the walk?

   Sir Topham Hatt, the Superintendent of the Railway, has been running the rail lines on the Island of Sodor for as long as I can remember. But can anyone tell me exactly from where his authority originates? He carries that “Sir” around like a talisman, but to my knowledge, there’s never been a King or Queen spotted on the island. Who knighted him, then? And who appointed him the despotic power that he so freely lords over those poor trains? Confusion and delay, indeed!

5. Shouldn’t Dora’s parents being under investigation by Child Protective Services?

   Honestly, this one is the most concerning. Dora, and to an even great extent her cousin Diego, are effectively sent out in the wilds alone on a daily basis. Dora is tasked with ridiculous quests, such as finding a way to make the Grumpy Old Troll do his Happy Dance, given guidance only from a sadistic talking Map, and sent on her way with no supervision beyond a boot-wearing monkey. So this young girl spends her days crossing the Angry Forest, sailing the River of Doom, and fixing the old Busted Bridge, or whatever other outlandish thing she’s told she must accomplish. Sure, she has a home and parents, but apparently they’re fine with the fact that their young daughter traverses the countryside regularly at the behest of a talking “Map”. It seems to me that either they’re trying to get her out of the house to cook up the daily batch of meth, or they need to talk about just saying “No”, even if it means saying adios to her myriad of talking object friends.

Yes, I am a terrible person.

Pud’n

The lovely and a talented Puddinette made a very tasty meal for dinner tonight, bending our hard working slow cooker to her indomitable will in the rending of a marvelous mexi-meatloaf. I’m not sure exactly where she came up with the recipe for it, nor do I know how she managed to produce it in a crock pot – a vessel that in my experience is useful only in the creation of soups, stews, and chili. The word on the street is that she’s found some clandestine website that suggests you can use the thing daily for a full year and never repeat a meal. I’m not sure I’m buying into all that, but I will readily admit that she definitely has some phat skillz when it comes to thing. That’s an entirely different post, though.

Anyway, so she made a mexi-meatloaf, and it was flat yummy. To accompany it, she made mexicorn and some “Mexican” mashed potatoes.

Anyone else sensing a theme here?

It was all quite tasty, but there was one particular thing I could have done without. One of the key ingredients in the potatoes was, incredibly, cream cheese. Yes, the Mexican potatoes apparently called for cream cheese. Can anyone explain this to me? Because this is my 38th trip around the sun, and I’m pretty sure that I haven’t seen cream cheese commonly used as an ingredient in Mexican cuisine. And yes, I’ve eaten me some Mexican food. In fact, I’ve eaten Mexican food in San Antonio, in a little Mom and Pop restaurant owned and run by people not too terribly far removed from Mexico themselves. Guess what? No cream cheese.

The fact of the matter is that, somehow, Kraft has managed to find a way to squeeze a block of the stuff into just about every recipe concocted in the continental United States these days.

Mashed potatoes? Oh, yeah, they’re cream cheese-ready.

Dip? Well, duh, cream cheese it up!

Cincinnati Chili? Sure, we can slip a few ounces of it under there; everyone will love it!

Hey…you know what that salsa could use, buddy? How about a block of Philly?

Cheesecake? Oh….well, wait, that was a bad example.

Really, though, do we need it in spaghetti sauce? I think not. And here’s a recipe for New York Strip with Garlic Cream Cheese Sauce. That’s just an affront to cattle everywhere. And don’t get me started on using it to stuff things.

Look, I understand that for some reason people dig the creamy tanginess, even if I don’t get it myself. Yes, I will admit to occasionally indulging in a piece of cheesecake, and a nice cheese Danish is sometimes good for the soul (if not the ole ticker). But we don’t need to find a way to hide it with everything we eat. Sometimes, the mashed potatoes should just be mashed potatoes, and the Mexican food only needs a cover of enchilada sauce.

Oh, and the brownies; they don’t need no cream cheese. Seriously, I mean it. Don’t mess with the brownies.

Pud’n

Let’s all take a short stroll down memory lane. It was right about this time last year, at the beginning of May, when fast-fried chicken purveyor, KFC, pushed a huge promotion to get everyone in the Free Known Universe 2 free(!) pieces of brand-spanking new Kentucky Grilled Chicken. Of course, they ended up postponing said promotion until slightly later in the year, fearing that the run on free chicken would leave nothing but a sea of trampled cardboard stand-ups of everyone’s favorite white-suited anachronistic icon and a host of catatonic employees needing therapy for post traumatic stress disorder.

So, anyway, sometime later, consumers were given the opportunity to redeem their vouchers for free grilled chicken because KFC legitimately wanted people to give this new grilled option a shot. For years, the company had been trying to shed the image that their patrons were destined for an early and cholesterol-clogged grave because Fried Chicken Is Clearly Evil. Finally, roughly a year ago, they released this new-fangled grilled variant of chicken, which they contended, was still as juicy and flavorful as the good-old death assuring fried stuff.

I’d like to take this opportunity to admit that I have so far avoided the technologically conceived bird. Fried chicken is probably not the world’s healthiest stuff, sure, but the last time I grilled chicken, it wasn’t mahogany and didn’t release “juice” like a punctured sponge. And lest you wonder, my skills at grilling a breast o’ chicken are not insubstantial, to which the Puddinette will readily attest. So, then, I’m of the opinion that the fried stuff, while not something I’m gonna shove down my pie hole daily, is at least mostly natural; I can reproduce it in my own home. This “grilled” stuff? I sense an unholy pact with the Devil.

So, Traditional Fried = deadly, while New Grilled = (sorta) healthy; are you with me so far? KFC wants you, the consumer, to believe that they offer healthy choices too, not just the Arterial-Clogging Chicken of Doom. With that idea in mind, can someone please explain which marketing genius decided to chuck all of the last year’s philosophical capital by creating and pimping this catastrophe? Seriously, the Double Down “Sandwich” has to be the fastest marketing back-pedal since Bill Cosby tried to convince me that New Coke was a good thing, and a month later was almost begging people to go buy to Coca-Cola Classic. Oh, and by the way, that thing does NOT qualify as a sandwich regardless of what you put on a menu board.

We all think fondly of the Colonel, because we love his chicken, in all its deep fried glory. In moderation, it’s no more dangerous than walking in a street. What we don’t need is fancy marketing gimmicks or The Sandwich That Wasn’t a Sandwich. We all love the memory of Harland Sanders, the very essence of the Southern Gentleman, because he had integrity and just wanted us to enjoy his fried chicken. So please, KFC, honor his memory; just give me 11 herbs and spices, extra crispy, and keep the BS to a minimum.

Pud’n

I was going to write some fiction tonight, perhaps see if the thirsty man could get up off the tile, but it turns out the fiction takes more effort than just spouting whatever nonsense comes to mind. So, instead, I’ve decided to break out a new, hopefully recurring feature here at Puddintopia: Questions I Want Answers To. The premise is simple: there are many, many things in the world that just don’t make any sense to me, and dammit, I would like some answers.

Several things have plagued me since my youth, but there’s only question that I can recall having all the back in first or second grade: could they not come up with anything better than the term “husky” for boys’ jeans with, um, a little extra room? I mean, really, when you’re a little dude kickin’ it up in the early elementary grades, life is rough enough without having to carry a label that’s simultaneously synonymous with dogs and pudginess. Your formative school days are spent trying to figure out why anyone needs to understand the “schwa” sound and then later having to dodge little “Jenny” on the playground (because she’ll kiss you, in the most embarrassing way possible, if she catches you), so clearly, no one needs to have to the carry the additional burden of a label that basically means “rotund”.

I know, I know. There are moms out there squealing delightedly about how their little busters are all burly and growed up now, and denim manufacturers cling to the idea that well, hell, it’s better than just smacking one of many other, potentially more derogatory, words on the label of those jeans. But really, isnt’ there a better way to address this, some method to avoid having shy 10 year-olds everywhere looking in late August at their respective new fall wardrobes and muttering to themselves, “stupid huskies”.

For adult ladies, we reward the little people with terms like “petite”, or “junior” but there’s no shame in shopping in “ladies” or “women’s”. For adult men, it’s simply S-M-L-XL plus as many X’s as you can fit on the tag. “X” is cool, it’s just a letter; if you look it up on thesaurus.com, it doesn’t carry any synonyms, let alone “big”, “whopping”, or “thick-set”. Sadly, though, for children, for some reason, we have to have words to describe the sizes: “slim”, “regular”, “husky”, or for girls, horrifying phrases like “pretty-plus”.

At this point, I know you’re wondering, so, yes, I, myself, bore the shame of wearing the dreaded label. Hello, my name is Puddin, and I wore “Husky” jeans. Was it really all that bad, though? Was I fearful, at the tender age of 10, that I might someday be relegated to life as a circus-freak novelty like those twins on the motorcycles from the Guinness Book of World’s Records?

Honestly, no. Little boys couldn’t care two ways what the back of their pants say. But, man, husky jeans did have stupid little kid snaps and big boy jeans had pull-though buttons, like Dad’s. I hated those stupid snaps and every time I read the label, the snap was all I thought about. When you’re a little dude, let’s face it, life is about attitude, and nothing gives your attitude a foundation like having clothes just like Dad’s.