MRE Review: Menu 15, Southwest Beef and Beans

In a previous review, we sat down and had an awkward talk about where MRE's come from. (Remember, kids: the only surefire way to avoid buying a civilian MRE is to wait until you're married to someone who works in the packaging plant.) Now let's dive into the contentious issue of whether an MRE's nutritional value begins at conception.

Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) R&D takes place at the Department of Defense (DoD) Combat Feeding Directorate (CFD) at the Army Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) in Natick, MA.

In other news, Pentagon bureaucrats now being paid by the acronym.

Candidate menu items are developed by food science chefs and designed to meet nutritional guidelines provided by the Surgeon General. Whatever dishes the chefs come up are first evaluated in the food lab by “sensory panelists" who, I'd like to think, are moderated by Dana Carvey playing John McLaughlin. Anything that makes it past the panelists is then submitted to a full field test and sampled by actual soldiers, sailors, and marines.

Magnets not Healing You Enough? Try Adding Jesus.

This is a real advertisement that actually happened:

Penetrating Power of Magnets!
Soothing Power of Copper!
Healing Power of Jesus!
Quacksalving Power of Bullshit!

Yes, for only $9.97, Dream Products Catalog, Inc. will send you a copper bracelet with magnets and Jesus in it. And if you can find a better Jesus inside a better magnet inside a better bracelet? You buy it.

Because, really, why make some people think you're gullible, when you can make everyone think you're gullible? Whether your friends are Christians, Atheists, or new age crystal humpers, there's something in this product they can belittle you over.

Motivational Cookies

My employers recently had an Employee Appreciation Day. (In other news, Employee Appreciation Day is apparently a thing. In other other news, Employee Appreciation Day is in March, not July, but my employers refuse to submit to the tyranny of the calendar.)

Anyway.

They approached me and said, "Hey Robyn, you're creative. Why don't you bake some cookies for the break room, and put motivational messages on them?" Because I guess being creative also means that you bake? Whatever. I agreed to their proposal with an enthusiasm that should have tipped them off.

Here's what I delivered:

File this one under "The People I Work With Are Poor Judges of Character."

Job Interview

I am not good at job interviews.

I used to be even worse, but I've recently found a way to significantly reduce my anxiety levels. I call it “purging myself of all hope.” Before I discovered this surprisingly useful trick, I was a total train wreck.

Even now, I have some pretty bad interview habits, the worst of which is thinking too much. (Indeed, this may be the central problem of my life.) On an interview, I tend to filter every word I speak and every answer I give through every piece of interview advice I've ever received.

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, Part II

Last month's guide to surviving a zombie apocalypse was so easy to write popular that I felt I must expand upon it. Please enjoy these bonus tips for use during an uprising of the undead:

Choosing a Melee Weapon

You may have seen crowbars recommended in that other zombie survival guide. Well, I guess that’s the kind of cut-rate advice you expect from an author who never had to fight their way through a mall full of ghouls on the way to looting a Spencer’s Gifts.

The problem with a crowbar is that, while a strike with the hook end is powerful, it’s also liable to get stuck in the zombie. A crowbar also lacks a proper grip, and will certainly slip out of your hands if you’re sweating. (And you will be sweating, because the mall lost air conditioning when the power went out.) Either way, your weapon’s gone and now the zombies are swarming you. Within seconds, you're being eaten alive and some gristled old survivalist has taken the last “Who Needs Big Tits with an Ass Like Mine?” t-shirt.

It's a disaster.

Why?

This is the stall in the ladies room where I work.

The janitors keep putting fresh rolls on the dispensers, long before the last roll is finished. But, in an admirable-but-misguided attempt to reduce waste, they move the half-used rolls to ever more distant corners of the stall, further and further away from the one place where they might actually get used.

I don't know why they do this. They're like... squirrels or something, scurrying around the stall with rolls of toilet paper stuffed into their cheeks, looking for somewhere to bury them.

By next week, I expect to see toilet paper rolls in the sink and, shortly afterwards, propped outside the bathroom door. My long-term projections indicate that, within three years, our janitors will be quietly placing half-used toilet paper rolls in your living room.

Suspicious Activity on Your Credit Card: Reading

You ever have one of those days, when even your own financial software is dogpiling on you?

"Unusual Spending on Books," huh? I especially love the bit in the middle: "Might want to look into that." You can almost see Mint.com looking suspiciously over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and saying, "Someone's been using Robyn's credit card to buy books. She's never bought books before. And look at this. Her spending on vintage pornography has dropped nearly to zero. Someone's obviously stolen her credit card."

Digestive System, Part 4: B-12 as Temptress

Have you ever lost anything, Homo sapien? Your purse? Your car keys?

Well, it’s rather like that. Now you have it, now you don't.

We lost a vitamin that’s critical to our survival. And good luck trying to find it now. The last time anyone can remember having it was at least 2 billion years ago. Yes, that's "billion" with a ba-ba-billion.

It's vitamin B-12. We need it to live, but we can't make it ourselves.In fact, the only naturally occurring creatures that can make vitamin B-12 are bacteria and archaea, the simplest organisms on Earth.¹

So how the hell do animals survive? I mean, I don't usually browse the archaea aisle at my local supermarket, so where does my B-12 come from? Well, if you eat enough veggies, you can get your B-12 from the soil bacteria clinging to them. Some herbivores can even supply their own B-12 needs, with bacteria living in their stomachs.

But what if you're a carnivore?

Remember that Time... Pt. 2

Remember that time Mahatma Ghandi decided that the only way to achieve Indian independence was to kill Superman?

Yeah, that was weird.