Cut it Out, Lucky Charms!

GUEST BLOGGER: Carla K. Thasman

I often wonder if it is possible for a cereal to bring you luck.

Hello, everyone! It has been quite some time but I am so pleased to be back on the "blogger scene" and able to share with you a letter about one of my favorite activities: cereal!

As you all know, I do love writing letters, lists and yes, even books! My early book 600 Ways to Eat a Spaghetti Squash That Don't Involve an Oven or Cooking used to be on Amazon but I can't seem to find it anymore. Please message me if you have a copy to share.

(Here is one way to eat spaghetti squash without an oven--roast in the sun for 3 days, sprinkle with olive oil and cumin, then enjoy! Serves 1.)

It is both delicious and convenient. The funny thing about this letter is that it also involves a food that you don't usually need an oven to make--a cereal called Lucky Charms. I tried this cereal and oh my, it perplexed me.

Lucky Charms is a cereal made by General Mills, a company that I spend a good deal of time thinking about. Now, I'm not very familiar with Lucky Charms but from what I can tell, it involves boring pieces that taste like oat and fun shapes that taste like marshmallows. And these marshmallows are in the form of talismans and objects meant to be lucky, which is most likely where the cereal gets its name, I suppose.

These are the things that are lucky:

Now, I honestly don't believe that any of these oddly-shaped charms could bring me any sort of luck.

And the more I stared at my bowl of Lucky Charms and thought about it, the more it just didn't make any sense. Red balloons that look like clots of blood aren't lucky. And some of these "lucky" charms were just downright exclusive. Pots of gold? Well, if I'm not Irish then it doesn't mean very much to me. I wish it did.

I thought about these charms so much that day that I was very distracted and got on the wrong bus. And then I bought the wrong kind of horse feed. I'm certain that in fact these charms brought me BAD luck! I was so distressed that I went home and wrote General Mills a letter.

I believe that I was simply voicing everyone's opinion here and stating the obvious. I don't know many people who carry around a shooting star in their pocket, but I do know plenty who have a lucky rusted nail (myself included).

Shooting stars can be the size of a boulder and would likely cause damage if placed in a cereal bowl.

I was very excited to hear back from General Mills, a company known throughout the land for their superior customer service. Just imagine a cereal bowl filled with all of your favorite talismans! What a wonderful start to your morning that would be! I was sure General Mills wouldn't disappoint me with their response. Corporate responses rarely do.

Wow! I just knew they would come through! I was so pleased that Mary White appreciated the time it took to share my comments. I knew that Mary would understand what it's like to be a working woman who just wants a few multicultural marshmallows in her cereal. I was also glad that she would be reviewing my ideas with the appropriate personnel. They sound like the right type of people to handle this situation.

Though I haven't heard back from Mary or the appropriate personnel in about two years, I suppose I will just keep couriering my sketches to them. I have used my time wisely and have since come up with 34 new charm ideas for General Mills. One of them is a beehive with golden honey slowly dripping out of it and the honey is as gold as a brand new coin. And let me tell you, if I knew how to make a twelve-grain-loaf-of-bread-with-a-single-penny-hidden-inside-of-it-shaped marshmallow, well then, I would just do it myself and make everyone happy!

(I also think that each box of Lucky Charms should have one lucky penny or rabbit foot hidden inside of it so it could actually be certified as lucky. I haven't shared this idea with Mary yet, though--one step at a time.)

But alas, we all know that change can take a very long time and this would be quite the change. I suspect that April 2011 will be a very productive month for General Mills though--so keep your eyes out for brand new multicultural marshmallow charms that will truly make every consumer feel as if everyday is their lucky day. Readers, what charms would YOU like to see in your bowl of Lucky Charms? Do you think the idea of "luck" even truly exists or are we the masters of our own destinies? And can anyone please provide me with a detailed sketch of a pure white calf under the Aries sky so I may send it to Mary? Urgent!

(I am picturing something like this but with a calf and on a marshmallow. Thank you!)

Cut it Out, Organic Flax Plus Maple Pecan Crunch! The Story of My Enormous Cereal Cluster.

As some of you may know, my favorite food group is cereal. Cereal of choice? I shouldn't have to say it. But fine. I'll say it. Great Grains (I'm so whipped by Post it's not even funny).

In my daily life, I hear a lot of "well, why don't you try different cereals?" "This cereal looks a lot like Great Grains; you should try it" and "you really need to get a life and stop talking about cereal so much." And you know what? I listen to all of these helpful suggestions. And I reach my open arms out to many different cereals and attempt to welcome them into my heart.

AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS.

(...read ahead to see what happens!)

There are certain things a cereal must have in order for it to please me. Minus availability in Canada (sigh), the second most important factor is the presence of clusters. Nut clusters, grain clusters, oatmeal clusters, I don't care, gather whatever ingredient you have into a small, condensed bunch and I will enjoy it. So naturally when I saw Nature's Path Organic Flax Plus Maple Pecan Crunch cereal, I was all like, whoa, I gotta try this cereal so maybe it can fill the gaping hole in my heart that is caused by the lack of Great Grains. I know that's a lot of pressure for a cereal but I don't care.

So I poured my first bowl of NPOFPMPC and stared in wonderment/fear at the site I beheld.

You wanna talk clusters? Holy cow.



I really wasn't prepared for this. That's the monster maple pecan cluster next to a normal flake. Notice the slight size difference.

Just to give you a bit more perspective on the size of this thing, I hired a hand model to pose for this picture.



It was the biggest cereal cluster I've ever seen. It was so big, it was bordering on obscene. It took over my cereal bowl and when I picked it up, I felt like I was holding a small, newborn kitten. Or a very underweight baby. That thing had weight to it. It was almost as if the cluster had somehow absorbed all of the other clusters and formed a giant, hybrid cluster. It took me at least half an hour (30 minutes) to eat it and then I was sad that it was gone.

And oh, how I loved that thing. I wanted more clusters like that. So I decided to write Nature's Path and share my story and ask all of the questions that were naturally running through my mind. Specifically, did God intend for ME to receive that cluster? And should I quit my job now that I've experienced something like this? I needed answers.


I hoped that Nature's Path would be able to give me some advice and guidance, and more importantly, more giant clusters. Did any of this happen? Read on.



As you can see, Nature's Path understood that this was a serious matter. And as suspected, Irene told me this was an extremely rare occurrence (which just gives more evidence to my "chosen one" theory, right?). Irene also told me that my giant cluster has led Nature's Path to try new oven cleaners and revise their sanitation plan. I guess it's true what they say--one person (or cluster) CAN make a difference in the world! I find this very inspiring. I'm also happy to see that Nature's Path workers must wear hairnets and clean uniforms. It's more than I can say for myself.



(A quick Google image search for "huge cereal cluster" brought this up. Please. My cluster could absorb that cluster in like two (2) seconds.)

I meant to reply back to Irene and tell her that no apologies were necessary--I was commending Nature's Path on the giant cluster, not complaining about it! But then I became too busy using up the $20.00 in coupons that Irene gave me. I've bought at least four (4) boxes of Nature's Path cereal since, hoping to discover another monster cluster. No luck yet. But, like seeing an angel or winning the lottery, events like that only come along once in a lifetime.

As always, I like to consult the experts on matters like these. So I did a quick check on Yahoo Answers to enquire about cereal clusters. While I didn't find any situations similar to mine, there were some important questions addressed. Like whether eating cereal will prevent me from getting six-pack abs. (Apparently not. Yay.)

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Alq6Wxfy6XgX1XvIYp99oT8jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20100226085342AA6xEhm

And here's a hot tip: keep an eye out for a hot new cereal to hit the market, as an inspired consumer is creating a fish-flavored cereal. About damn time!

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AiUYVlKm1HQStnt1vvJa.twjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=1006041803396

I'd go with Salmon Chunks, but hey, that's just me.

(A quick Google search for "Slammin' Salmon" informed me that apparently "The Slammin' Salmon" is actually a 2009 movie made by the guys who did Super Troopers. Who knew?! Slammin' Salmon received "mixed to negative reviews" and had the unfortunate tagline of"Bring a bib, it's gonna get messy.")



Chances of watching this one are....slim.

I'd like to thank Nature's Path for choosing me to experience this enormous monster cluster. I hope I haven't let you down. I'd also like to thank Irene for her superior customer service. With her coherent sentences and use of multi-syllable words, I am almost certain that she's not a letter-writing 'bot (I will also use this time to tell Micheal Carpenter of Post Cereals to suck it).

Have any of YOU have had a gigantic cluster in your cereal? If so, how did you handle it? If not, do you wish you had? As always, I wanna hear all about it!

The Buffy Project

Oh dear, it's been awhile since my last post. I'm going to try to update a bit more frequently; I don't want this to turn into one of those "one post a month" blogs. I know you all want (and expect) more than that.

October was quite a busy month for me, project-wise. The most exciting thing has been that my script was finally completed. Yes, I'm primarily a subversive collage artist, but in my spare time, I also like to write a few screenplays and bartend. For the past six months or so, I've been working on an episode of the (now cancelled) show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode is now complete and the real work can begin--I'm right in the middle of casting, props collecting and read-throughs. The script is 46 pages long, so it might actually be a bit longer than a normal episode, so I'm describing it more like a deluxe, bonus episode. I think the fans will appreciate the extra length.

Obviously I would like the original actors to reprise their roles for this episode, so I mailed letters and copies of the script to Sarah Michelle Gellar-Prinze (Buffy), Alyson Hannigan (Willow), Anthony Stewart-Head (Giles), James Marsters (Spike) and Alexis Denisof (Wesley, who is not actually in this episode, but I requested him to be the Understudy for Xander). I am still attempting to obtain Nicholas Brendon's mailing address (Xander). I am still awaiting replies and the pre-production deadline has been pushed back to November to allow for response time. As well, Sarah Michelle Gellar just had a baby so I know she might be a bit behind in script reading.

Here are the letters I sent in case you are interested in contacting your own favorite celebs to star in a personal project of your own (letters to be used for inspiration only, please!):

Sarah Michelle Gellar:

Alyson Hannigan:

Anthony Stewart-Head:

James Marsters:

and last, but certainly not least, Alexis Denisof:

Like I said, no replies as of yet, but I am confident they will be eager to get back to the Buffy grind. If the original actors cannot make shooting for scheduling reasons and my alternate cast also declines, I have a last resort cast consisting mostly of my friends and acquaintances. I will be playing Buffy in the event that Sarah Michelle Gellar-Prinze and Lisa Kudrow (understudy) decline. We will be shooting the opening credits and theme in November, so keep an eye out for some teasers!

If you're a Buffy fan, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever written an original Buffy the Vampire Slayer script and sent it to the cast? If so, what were the results? Any tips on creating vampire face make-up? Ever constructed your own vampire crypt? I want to hear it!

PS--If you happen to be also filming your own Buffy script and are panicked over what to do for all of those pesky tombstone props, or you just want to experience Halloween all year round, I'd recommend that you check out this great, informative site:

http://familycontactpresents.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-make-realistic-tombstones.html

It walks you through all the steps of making your own realistic (and easy) tombstones. Let me tell you, the picture steps have been a lifesaver. As well, the artist looks great in sweaters and has some fun blog entries, so it's definitely worth checking out.

Cut it out, Peanut M&M's

Since I received a lot of positive feedback about the Great Grains letter writing post, I decided that perhaps I should share some of my other letters as well. I was inspired by a dear friend to begin writing letters to companies, and now I find I really enjoy writing these letters, whether it's congratulating them on a new or especially wonderful product, or sharing my disappointment and letting them know they've let me down. I find that companies really enjoy receiving these personal letters, as I assume they are a bright spot in an otherwise dreary corporate day. If it's a complaint letter, I assume they enjoy trying to win me back (it's a very difficult thing to do; once my trust is broken in a product, it's almost as good as gone).

So here's a letter I sent to Mars Canada Inc. regarding a particularly disturbing experience I had with a bag of peanut M&Ms:

February 10, 2009

Mars, Incorporated
Customer Service Department
37 Holland Drive
Bolton, ON
L7E 5S4

To Whom It May Concern:
RE: DISAPPOINTING PEANUT M&Ms PURCHASE

I felt I had to contact you after a baffling experience with one of your products. To be more specific, I am referring, of course, to your peanut M&Ms.

I bought a bag of them last night while at the movie theatre. I was seeing “He’s Just Not That into You,” which was much better than I thought it would be! Ginnifer Goodwin really stole the show. I usually buy the chocolate (which is almost always peanut M&Ms; I’m as loyal as a dog) and my roommate, Velvet, buys the popcorn. That is our system and it works very well.

My strategy for eating M&Ms is biting down to the peanut, and then letting the chocolate dissolve off of it. I like to feel the crunch of the peanut between my teeth. However, I noticed in this particular batch that multiple times when I went to bite down, nothing happened. My teeth sank completely through the chocolate, which could only mean one thing: there were NO peanuts in them! That happened with at least 5 different M&Ms in the bag. It was a huge disappointment, to say the least.

Not only that, but I also noticed one instance where 2 M&Ms appeared to have merged into one HUGE M&M. How does this happen? Is it still safe to eat this bizarrely proportioned M&M? It was mildly disturbing, to say the least, and also a bit distracting from the movie.

Please let me know how something like this could happen. Doesn’t a worker weigh each M&M so it can be determined if it has a peanut in it? And how can 2 merge together? While it may be amusing at 2, can you imagine if 5 or more merged? It would be quite daunting! I sincerely hope there is a measure in place to prevent this.

Can you please try to ensure that all peanut M&Ms have peanuts in them in the future? There is a reason that I buy the peanut ones, and that is because I enjoy the PEANUT. I think it is fair for me to request one bag of peanuts from you to replace the ones missing in my M&Ms. I’m including the UPC so you can see I really bought them and I’m not just some nut (no pun intended!).

Yours Truly,

Samantha Clark

Shortly after, I received this response.







Well, thank you very much, Judy Russell, Consumer Affairs. I was quite pleased to see that they took the appropriate steps to remedy the problems. The Quality Team AND Brand Management will see a copy of my letter? Not bad. Not great, though. This is an issue that concerns every single customer who buys a bag of peanut M&Ms. That sounds like something the President of the company should be aware of. I haven't tested a bag of peanut M&Ms lately for quality control, but should I ever again have another alarming experience like this one, you can bet I'll be sending my letter right to the top.

As always, readers, I encourage you to make sure your voice is heard--send a letter to a company, any company. Look where it got me--I alerted Mars of a major product default and became the proud owner of a coupon for $8.00 off my next M&M's purchase. Here's to you, Judy Russell! I will think of you every time I eat a deformed M&M.