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I'll just have cornflakes...
Oct. 22nd, 2006 06:45 amThe Train of Thought now standing at Platform Four is the 06:45 to nowhere in particular, stopping at a number of vague places. I wish it hadn’t stopped here, though.
While scrummaging through various friends pages, I encountered something courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
megamole and krabbe, and by extension the original source, X-Entertainment – which despite the name seems work-safe enough – and Did Not Believe What I Was Seeing. It’s labelled as the “Swanson Hungry Man All-Day Breakfast”. However, after reading the post all the way through, I wasn’t hungry at all. Not even peckish. But mildly queasy, oh yes...
I actually went looking for the date, hoping that it would be 1st April. Something this ludicrous had to be a joke, right? No such luck. This is real. Note the “target diner”; he’s supposed to be no more than a husky big truck-drivin’ sort of guy whose eyebrows just happen to meet in the middle and whose pointing finger and humourless "you messin' with me, little man?" expression aren't intended to detract from his amiable fondness for gross overindulgence in whatever takes his fancy. The fact that his belly completely obscures his feet must just be a bad camera angle. See Snark Hunting for another opinion.
The photos look like escapees from James Lilek’s Gallery of Regrettable Food, except nastier. To be absolutely fair, it is fairly difficult to take really attractive photographs of food; that’s why there are well-paid professional food photographers, and why they Do What They Do with varnish, glycerine and various other ingredients and treatments not mentioned in the recipe. A corollary to this is that it’s much easier to take thoroughly unattractive food pictures, especially if making them look unattractive is the point of the exercise. That said, I doubt if the best Food Cosmeticist on the planet could get any of this stuff into a fit state for its close-up, and photos good, bad or indifferent do nothing to alter the Nutritional Facts information.
It’s possible to hear food refused by someone who’s “afraid of it.” My first question would be, “How can you be afraid of food?” Except for some Japanese sushi restaurants, it’s not usually alive enough to be much of a threat to anyone. I personally have never seen a piece of fried chicken leap from its plate and savage one of the diners, but maybe I’ve been going to the wrong restaurants. Or the right ones. But if someone said they were afraid of this, I wouldn’t blame them at all. Coming from Northern Ireland, home of the Ulster Fry (aka Heart-Attack-on-a-Plate) I should be the last person to point an accusing finger at other Unhealthy Breakfasts – but in this case I do point, and point hard, because the Hungry Man thing gives me the active creeps.
This X-Entertainment post first went up in February ’03, when the item was new. I wonder how many silhouette kill-markings could be painted on the box by now...?
While scrummaging through various friends pages, I encountered something courtesy of
megamole and krabbe, and by extension the original source, X-Entertainment – which despite the name seems work-safe enough – and Did Not Believe What I Was Seeing. It’s labelled as the “Swanson Hungry Man All-Day Breakfast”. However, after reading the post all the way through, I wasn’t hungry at all. Not even peckish. But mildly queasy, oh yes... I actually went looking for the date, hoping that it would be 1st April. Something this ludicrous had to be a joke, right? No such luck. This is real. Note the “target diner”; he’s supposed to be no more than a husky big truck-drivin’ sort of guy whose eyebrows just happen to meet in the middle and whose pointing finger and humourless "you messin' with me, little man?" expression aren't intended to detract from his amiable fondness for gross overindulgence in whatever takes his fancy. The fact that his belly completely obscures his feet must just be a bad camera angle. See Snark Hunting for another opinion.
The photos look like escapees from James Lilek’s Gallery of Regrettable Food, except nastier. To be absolutely fair, it is fairly difficult to take really attractive photographs of food; that’s why there are well-paid professional food photographers, and why they Do What They Do with varnish, glycerine and various other ingredients and treatments not mentioned in the recipe. A corollary to this is that it’s much easier to take thoroughly unattractive food pictures, especially if making them look unattractive is the point of the exercise. That said, I doubt if the best Food Cosmeticist on the planet could get any of this stuff into a fit state for its close-up, and photos good, bad or indifferent do nothing to alter the Nutritional Facts information.
It’s possible to hear food refused by someone who’s “afraid of it.” My first question would be, “How can you be afraid of food?” Except for some Japanese sushi restaurants, it’s not usually alive enough to be much of a threat to anyone. I personally have never seen a piece of fried chicken leap from its plate and savage one of the diners, but maybe I’ve been going to the wrong restaurants. Or the right ones. But if someone said they were afraid of this, I wouldn’t blame them at all. Coming from Northern Ireland, home of the Ulster Fry (aka Heart-Attack-on-a-Plate) I should be the last person to point an accusing finger at other Unhealthy Breakfasts – but in this case I do point, and point hard, because the Hungry Man thing gives me the active creeps.
This X-Entertainment post first went up in February ’03, when the item was new. I wonder how many silhouette kill-markings could be painted on the box by now...?
