Snack of the Month - Oreo weirdness

Oreos divide opinion. I've heard several negative comments about them. Personally I quite like them although I think I liked them more when they were harder to find in the UK. Now they are almost everywhere and in almost every format - mini, 'double stuffed', chocolate covered - and in a host of flavours.

And then there's this.

Yeah, that's right. Cookie flavoured pop.

I tried it so you don't have to. It is most definitely fizzy pop that leaves an aftertaste of Oreo cookies. (Which makes me wonder how artificial the flavour of the actual cookies are if they can replicate them in a drink.) 

This isn't some bizarre import, either. That's the British spelling of "flavoured" printed on the can.

I couldn't drink much of this, simply because after each mouthful it felt like I had eaten an Oreo. And there are only so many biscuits I feel I should eat in one go. 

Meanwhile, how about some actual biscuits? Cathy bought both these flavours for me, along with the can. 

Oreo Red Velvet and Oreo Gingerbread. Bit of a departure from the regular flavour.

Is this really a trick? Everyone knows about this with Oreos, don't they?

They tasted different. I'm not sure what red velvet cake is meant to taste like. They sort of tasted like red velvet cake. 

I wasn't very keen on them and didn't finish the packet.

The gingerbread ones, however, were absolutely delicious. They didn't have too much ginger in them but they had enough to give a little zing. 

And the pattern on the biscuit was delightful too!

Overall verdicts: undrinkable pop, meh red velvet flavour biscuits, cracking gingerbread flavour biscuits. 

More litterpicking tales from the streets of Grangetown -

Sunday morning. The promise of rain. Half the city is still blockaded in the aftermath of the UEFA Champions League final security clampdown. And I was off to a Tidy Grangetown litter pick along the south-western river-edged border of G-town.

I've blogged before about how you learn a lot about an area by picking up its trash. This time I learned a lot about the people who drive through Grangetown as well, particularly the ones who drive along Ferry Road. They eat McDonald's and throw their Big Mac boxes, their Chicken Wrap wrappers, and their drinks cups out of the window, Seriously, they can't possibly take them home and put them in the rubbish like civilised people would.

The big news is that now litter pickers get the option of one of the new high-viz vests. I felt I had to wear one, really, and Sara, one of my lovely neighbours from my street obliged me by taking a photo.

It's important to pick a yellow vest, explained Dave as he pulled out the big bag of vests, because the orange ones are for people doing community service.

There are always odd things to find while litter-picking. This time round I found a pair of gloves, a dashboard hands-free mounting device for a mobile phone, a coat-hanger, a Romanian coin, and a troll.

Little lost troll

There was an awful lot of rubbish associated with smoking. Mainly cigarette butts and packets, but people just chuck away their e-cigarette liquid bottles as well. Alcohol-wise, there was a bottle that once contained very cheap cider and several cans, but most of the cans I picked up were soft drinks and those awful energy drinks that stink to high heaven. Even the bugs don't touch them. In terms of other drugs, this time I only found two nitrous capsules, but lots of suspicious little baggies. Sara used a sharps kit to sort out a syringe, which is a bit more serious.

I finally got to pick up one of those plastic multi-rings that hold together cans of lager. They are always the thing you see on environmentalist memes trapping fish and other marine life. Well, this one was safely bagged, so who knows, I might have saved a sea-turtle.

It's hard to tell how long some trash has been sitting there. From the depths of a hedge I pulled out a Cherry Coke can that was completely faded on one side.

It was also home to a family of woodlice, but I shook them out safely before bagging the can. I don't know how long a can has to sit in undergrowth before it is bleached by nature, but I'd guess it had been there a couple of years. It was next to a Calippo Shots tub. I thought Calippo Shots had been discontinued a while back, but a quick Google shows they can still be bought, so that gives no clue as to how long the Cherry Coke can had sat there.

But regardless of how long it had been there, it's not there now. And that's all that really matters!

Does sex sell?

Adverts I’ve seen in the past 24 hours which have used sex to sell…

Tesco.com
“So what do you have planned for later?” asks Martine McCutcheon, plumbing the depths of corporate soul-selling, and visiting a random bloke in a flat to advertise Tesco. “Nothing,” says the bloke, as two guys from Tesco.com struggle to get a mattress up the stairs.

Red Bull
Two cans of red bull are investigated by a pigeon as various items of clothing rain down around him, accompanied by giggles. Just how would you have sex in mid-air anyway?

Christina Aguilera perfume
“Sometimes it’s all you need to wear,” breathes Christina. Put some clothes on love, you’ll catch your death.

Diet Coke
Three girls jam themselves in the lift so they can be rescued by the hunky maintenance man. Now, if that was me and chicks kept jamming the lift for fun, I’d leave them there.

That godawful advert for Organics shampoo
The best bit about this is the cockatoo telling the aroused woman showering on the beach to ‘keep it down, love’. Cockatoos are cute. But a woman coming in the shower because she’s rubbing glorified soap on her hair raises all kind of Freudian questions.

Random mobile phone company
(see I don’t even know who this is for)
The tagline runs “Don’t let work steal the best bits of your day” as a bloke keeps leaving the office at lunchtime and is just about to kiss his beloved when he finds himself back at his desk. It’s a nicely worked advert, but then you see the bits he’s ‘missing’, including his post-coital, doe-eyed lover lying in bed, the two of them making out in the sea etc. etc. etc.

And in eschatalogical news...

Newsbiscuit is certainly a strong contender to be my favourite website, and if you haven't visited it yet, then perhaps this post about how Coke are sponsoring the Second Coming of Christ will convert you.

As someone who writes press releases on a regular basis, I think the quotes from the company spokesperson are particularly inspired.

Santa's secret identity

Cath claims that I post things she’s said on here and take credit for them. So, to assuage her accusatory nature, I feel duty bound to point out that most of today’s post was her idea.

Have you ever wondered what Santa does the rest of the year. Well, maybe he’s moonlighting as the Jolly Green Giant. Consider the evidence…

1 – both Santa and the Green Giant say ‘ho ho ho’… but to mask his other identity, Green Giant always adds “Green Giant” at the end of his ho ho ho-ing
2 – you never see Santa and the Green Giant in the same place
3 – Santa used to wear a green outfit until he was famously outfitted by Coca-Cola in an ad campaign that changed popular culture
4 – we know from Lord of the Rings that elves are tall, but in Santa’s workshop they seem really small, which makes sense if Santa is really a giant!