Pancakes

pancake |ˈpanˌkāk| -- noun

A thin, flat cake of batter, usually fried and turned in a pan. Pancakes are usually eaten with syrup or rolled up with a filling.

People ask me all the time how I could possibly hate something as "wonderful" and "American" as a stack of buttermilk pancakes. Let me break it down for all you flapjack lovers: Pancakes are disgusting. They are so disgusting and bland that you have to douse them in sugary, maple tree sewage to make them appealing enough to consume. Again, as I've pointed out before, I am an average American, and like most average Americans I LOVE sugar. But all that liquid sugar really does is turn a hot-stack into a hot mess. I don't see the point of eating something if, in order to make it edible, you have to turn it into a soggy cesspool of liquid saccharin waste. Frankly, the idea of pancakes wouldn't be nearly as repulsive to me if people weren't shellacking them with Diabetes-inducing amounts of maple syrup. Syrup makes an already unhealthy simple carbohydrate exponentially more detrimental to your health. For all you math-letes out there, I'll illustrate the grave danger pancakes represent to humanity based on one simple fact: Pancakes taste like cardboard, thereby necessitating the use of sugary additives like syrup, whipped cream and chocolate in order to make them edible:

Pancakes can give you Diabetes: Pancakes = Diabetes

Diabetes can kill you: Diabetes = Death

Therefore, by the transitive property: PANCAKES = DEATH.

Without getting too dramatic, I think it is safe to say that pancakes are the devil's food. Lucifer took one look at our fat, lazy, modern civilization, fueled by processed and fast foods, and realized the whole forbidden fruit thing he pulled with Eve wasn't exactly going to cut it. If he was going to get us to disobey God, and willingly kill ourselves while doing it, he was going to have to tempt us with something that would appeal to our rapacious appetite for foods with zero nutritional value (e.g. simple carbohydrates doused in a kiloton of liquid sugar). If you need actual evidence that pancakes are the devil's food and will eventually bring forth the fall of mankind please click the following links --> Pancakes are a threat to national security AND Pancakes cause small scale domestic violence. Without delving too much into biblical mumbo jumbo let it suffice to say that God does not want you to eat pancakes. Satan wants you to eat pancakes, get Diabetes and die so that you can join him in the 9th circle of Hell with the rest of the traitors.

To take it a step further, what Dante fails to mention about the innermost circle of Hell -- primarily reserved for Traitors and Betrayers (cue Judas and my good man Cain) -- is that the frozen lake Cocytus is actually a frozen river made entirely out of syrup. Victims find themselves submerged in an icy syrup hell with good 'ole Lucifer chillin' in the middle flippin' flapjacks. No joke. What do all you people think IHOP stands for anyways? (I)n (H)ell (O)nly (P)ancakes. Ever noticed how the employees there always look like the undead? And what about the fact that they are "conveniently" open 24 hours a day? If the Church/Mosque/Temple/Your Body is the house of God, then IHOP is the Infernal Hell Of Pancakes and the house of Satan. I repeat: God does not want you to eat pancakes. You will die and go to hell and it will look a lot like IHOP.

Bottom line is: Pancakes suck. Adding syrup to them doesn't make them suck any less, it makes them suck astronomically more. And to all you a-holes trying to "convert" me with preposterous accoutrements like powdered sugar and chocolate chips and whipped cream and unicorn dust: Stop trying to give me adult-onset Type 2 Diabetes, you sick freaks.

Spiderwebs

spiderweb |ˈspīdərweb|--

noun

A web made by a spider.

So this post is really two-fold: I hate spiders (who doesn't?) and I hate the goddamn webs they weave. Especially the ones they weave in Toluca Lake.

According to the ever reliable Wikipedia: "Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every habitat with the exception of air and sea colonization." This, my friends, is BULLSH*T. Shutup, Wikipedia. First, let's tackle the "sea" issue. Those little monsters have definitely found a way to conquer water (see: Diving Bell Spider), and while the Diving Bell Spider does not inhabit the sea, per say, it is well on its way. Secondly, I am no scientist, but I am pretty sure the whole point of creating a web is so they can catch their prey in the AIR. Have you ever seen a spider make a web on the ground? No. They weave their webs above the ground which technically means they have conquered the air. In case you have any doubts concerning the validity of the aforementioned conjecture, you are an idiot, and please click here --> THIS IS TERRIFYING. Ergo, spiders are scary and will eventually take over the world, one neighborhood at a time, starting with Toluca Lake.

Picture this:

It's dusk on a warm summer day in Toluca Lake, CA. The vibrantly colored trees and mountains of daytime now muted, enveloped in the sublime haze of impending darkness. A jogger sets out on her merry way -- equipped with an iPod and pepper spray (hey, you can never be too careful ladies) -- to relieve the stresses of a long day. She eases into a comfortable pace, her soft footsteps and disciplined breathing coalescing into the harmonious sounds of a cardiovascular symphony. She is happy. She is relaxed.

As she rounds the corner of mile 2 of her jog, she approaches a row of beautiful young pear trees lining the side of the leaf-stained sidewalk. She bows her head slightly to pass under the lower branches and foliage and to her horror, her face is instantly engulfed in an invisible web.

She breaks her pace abruptly and begins flailing her arms and wiping her face to thwart the invisible assailant. Passersby stop to witness the epileptic episode taking place across the street, watching incredulously as she frantically shakes her head, flips over her hair and scrubs violently. Onlookers, unable to identify what is vexing her, ascribe this seemingly random meltdown to sheer insanity. Little do they know, her attacker is stealthy, cloaked in the cover of dusk, each night weaving a silvery web and waiting patiently for prey to unsuspectingly jog by. Now, thoroughly exasperated, she spends the remainder of the run in a state of acute paranoia, swatting imaginary spiders all over her body.

A peaceful run, sabotaged by an airborne arachnid that rebuilds the same web in the same trees every night. Unable to escape the webs on her jogs, and tired of whiplash and failed attempts to relieve stress, the girl stops running outside. The girl stops running entirely...Andturnsintoafatlardwhoneverleavesthecouchgetsdiabetesandheartdiseaseanddies.

Case closed. Spiders win.

Someone get me some Raid.

Stuffed Animals Displayed in Car Windows

stuffed animal -- noun

A toy sewn from cloth, plush, or other textiles, and stuffed with straw, beans, plastic pellets, cotton, synthetic fibers, or other similar materials.

Newsflash: If you are an adult driving around with a teddy bear you bought for $0.50 at a yard sale or a gas station in your rear window, you are either a Mexican woman over the age of 50 or a rapist. Now if you are the latter, my fair ignoramus, it's blatantly obvious, because nothing says "I Think Toddlers Are Sexy" quite like a warped teddy bear holding an "I Love You" heart in the back window of your car.

First of all, there's the problem with your overall approach: If you are trying to attract the kiddies, you may want to start with something that doesn't look like it traipsed through a nuclear radiation plant. The decrepit thing sitting in your window is probably stuffed with crappy cotton balls and covered with chemically produced fur that makes polyester feel like 5000 thread count Frette sheets; It's practically radioactive. We're not talking about a teddy bear sewn with love and care, this thing looks like it was sewn together as part of a macabre ritual -- i.e. craftsmanship so grisly that only Mary Shelley, or perhaps Ed Gein, would appreciate. Add this to the fact that the thing has been sitting in the sun, transmogrifying from a rich brown to a discolored, yellowed, wraith-of-a-bear, and TA-DA, I bring you: Chernobyl Bear. You have a better chance of finding the Lost City of Atlantis than using the aforementioned monstrosity to lure a kid over age 3 into your car. Try taping "Fantasy Animal" Silly Bandz all over your window instead, sicko.

And by the way, proudly displaying Chernobyl Bear in your window isn't earning you any points either. The damn thing looks abused, isolated and imprisoned in your "Crazy Car". This is a HUGE RED FLAG to paranoid parents and even kids. Every self-respecting kid knows that the rear window of a car is roughly the equivalent of stuffed-animal-Auschwitz. You NEVER leave your plushies in the car; they get lonely or they might even suffocate in the heat. Clearly, Aspiring Pedophile, you are not the "friendly adult" or the "big kid" you are trying to portray yourself as. You had a messed up childhood that involved no affection, no toys, no love and no play-time otherwise you would know these things. You might as well be driving a big white Danger Van with the windows painted over. The fact that you are completely oblivious to the nuances of happy childhood would explain why you've incarcerated an innocent bear in your rear window that looks like you've been force feeding it hexavalent chromium instead of going the candy/ice cream route or even exhibiting something more appealing, like Zhu Zhu Pets. Congratulations, not only are you soulless, but you're also an imbecile, and every kid that sees that stuffed specter in your car knows it.

For the record: Your mother never loved you and neither does that bear, regardless of what the red heart says.

Doughnuts

doughnut |ˈdōˌnət| -- noun

A small fried cake of sweetened dough, typically in the shape of a ball or ring.

Ew. Dough fried in fat. Enough said.

Twitter's Low Capacity

twitter -- noun

A huge waste of time.

I don't think this even requires an explanation. Get your shi* together, Twitter.

Raisins

raisin |ˈrāzən|-- nounA partially dried grape.

Ok. I hate raisins. I hate their chewiness, their lack of nutritional value, their abhorrent appearance and the disproportionate amount of sugar they harbor in those disgusting little wrinkles. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE grapes. Nothing makes me happier than biting into a crisp, juicy, purple grape; a fruit that good 'ole Zeus, the king of the Gods, wouldn't even scoff at, and the guy had access to ambrosia.

Now, that being said, can someone please explain to me why one would take said "crisp, juicy, purple grape, fit-for-the-gods" and DRY IT OUT to turn it into a withered, sugar-filled fossil of a fruit?????? Sure, this technique was great for people in 100 B.C. who didn't have the luxury of modern irrigation or--gasp!--refrigeration and therefore had to find ways to stockpile and store their harvest for long periods of time to avoid STARVATION. But common people, since then Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins and voila -- cue modern technology -- a brand new mini fridge goes for as low as $50 and, hell, on Craig's List you can get one for $0.20 cents. And furthermore, let's be real, just because the "Jesus sandal" is back in style, none of us are in any apparent danger of starvation. I think it's safe to say more than half of us could benefit in the waist area if our food spoiled just a little bit faster.

So if famine is no longer a threat, why in God's name are we still eating raisins? Must be because they taste good, right? WRONG. The raisin is a culinary abomination. How can something that has so much sugar in it taste so crappy? Everyone likes sugar. Sugar is like crack-cocaine -- you can never get enough. The average American consumes an astounding 3-5 pounds of sugar per week. I am an average American and all that sugar concealed within a raisin's repugnant skin can't even get me to like it which means raisins really must suck. Case in point: Ever met a crack addict that didn't like the taste of crack? I think not.

Raisins are also aesthetically unappealing to me. A raisin is essentially a 3 week old grape that fossilizes in the sun. Wouldn't you rather eat something fresh off the vine that is maybe 2 or 3 days old (taking into account transport from vine to grocery and grocery to fridge) than something that is now 3 weeks old and has been sitting in the sun its entire life? The wrinkles alone should be deterrent enough. In relative terms, liking raisins is like saying you'd prefer Donatella Versace over Jessica Biel. If you have to think about this even for a second -- congratulations -- in addition to liking shitty raisins, you're also probably a necrophiliac.

Aside from their unappealing flavor and appearance, raisins also waste my time. Take trail mix for example; why the hell does nearly every bag of trail mix contain raisins? I'm not talking about just a few sprinkled in with some cashews and almonds; THE NUTS ARE ALWAYS SWIMMING IN GOD DAMN RAISINS. Instead of calling something that is nearly a homogeneous blend of raisins "trail mix", it should be called "A Bunch 'O Raisins With a Few Almonds Mixed In". It takes me half an hour to pick out all the raisins before I can uninhibitedly shovel handfuls of trail mix into my mouth. Where is the fun in delayed gratification? And don't even get me started on the implications my raisin "mining" has on breakfast. For a girl that loves breakfast muffins--bran in particular--the widely practiced [and accepted] bran muffin recipe makes eating them a total time suck. Why? Because bran muffins are raisin mine fields. By the time I gingerly pick through an entire muffin it's almost lunch time, I'm still starving and over half of the once grapefruit-sized muffin is now a collection of crumbs either in my lap or on the floor. "Hey raisins, way to ruin the most important meal of the day." In what must be a cruel joke of biblical proportions, a food that was initially created in an effort to prevent starvation is now the main cause of it.

To sum it up, grapes should only ever be altered from their original state to make wine. Why make a shitty raisin if you can make Syrah? Please pass the vino.

NOTE: I may hate raisins BUT, being a woman with an open mind, I can tolerate Ocean Spray's Craisins and am willing to forgive their judgmental lapse in chosen nomenclature and the resulting (unavoidable) association with the aforementioned abomination on a case by case basis. Ergo, my solution to the raisin trail mix epidemic: Trader Joe's Happy Trekking trail mix.

Trash Day

trash day -- noun

A day on which people place their garbage outside of their living quarters to be picked up by a waste collector and brought to a landfill.

In Toluca Lake, Trash Day falls on a Wednesday each week. This means that every Wednesday at 7am I am pleasantly woken up by the incessant [precautionary] "truck-in-reverse" BEEPING, loud sprays of ozone annihilating exhaust, and the jolting screech of the breaks at every stop.

Can we not find a QUIETER alternative to the garbage truck? Seriously. I know this is very un-American [read: un-Republican] of me, but why doesn't Toyota create a Prius garbage truck? Aside from the fact that every garbage man would be completely emasculated and probably quit his job as a result, I don't see a downside. This is a city filled with unemployed would-be actors and models and let's face it, there just aren't enough restaurants to employ them all. Let's use our human capital wisely, Los Angeles.

Animal Crackers

animal crackers -- noun

A popular children's snack, in which the sweet crackers are shaped like zoo animals.

"Sweet" my a$$. Eating an animal cracker is roughly the equivalent of eating a piece of cardboard. I don't care if it's shaped like a polar bear, it still tastes like crap. It's not like M&Ms where you pick out your favorite color and (somehow) your brain convinces you that the blue M&M tastes better than the brown. With animal crackers, the polar bear tastes just as sh*tty as the donkey.

And what the hell are they thinking when they pick the species of animal shapes to feature in Nabisco's "Barnum's Animal Crackers"? Have you ever seen a sheep in the circus, or a koala for that matter? Stick with the circus showbiz theme of animal incarceration and abuse. Interestingly enough, PETA hasn't made any arson attempts (to date) on a Nabisco factory which means it considers Nalgene and Paris Hilton to be greater threats to the animal kingdom. Call me crazy but this reeks of a PETA conspiracy to curtail carnivorous activity in young children. Picture this:

[Upon eating an animal cracker in the shape of a cow]

As you lift the cracker to your mouth you see the little bovine creature and your eyes send signals to your brain that you are eating something that looks like a cow. As you begin to chew, your taste bud receptors signal to the cranial nerves that you are eating a disgusting cracker and they, in turn, carry that crappy taste up to the brain. The brain then associates consuming "cow" products with the taste of crap thereby reducing children's natural proclivity to eat meat. Case closed. Bravo, PETA, bravo.

Oh, and to the marketing geniuses at Nabisco: Your asinine claim that your "crackers" are a "Good source of calcium" can only be explained by the fact that people associate "calcium" with things that are white (e.g. milk, cheese, etc) and you can make that claim because your crackers are made primarily out of chalk. Please pass the Jules Destrooper Almond Thins.

Butterflies

butterfly |ˈbətərˌflī|-- noun ( pl. -flies)

An insect with two pairs of large wings that are covered with tiny scales, usually brightly colored, and typically held erect when at rest. Butterflies fly by day, have clubbed or dilated antennae, and usually feed on nectar.

I hate every member of the Lepidoptera order. Big, small, colorful; they elicit the same response as a cockroach -- disgust.

Have you ever had 300 of these [seemingly] harmless vermin land on you simultaneously? One or two seem pretty innocuous but when they all start landing on you and not on any of the other 20 people in the walk through habitat, it's hard not to start indiscriminately swatting and smashing every set of colorful little wings that's landing all over your face and hair in a fit of hysteria. All I have to say to the habitat curator who had the pleasure of escorting me out after the butterfly bloodbath is:

"I don't care if you warned me prior to entering the exhibit that touching butterflies' wings with our oily fingers kills them. Those glorified roaches should know that touching my face with their dusty feet is what will kill them."

If you don't want to be blacklisted for life from a butterfly habitat, then I suggest you never go to the Saint Louis Butterfly Museum while wearing a custom blend of Tom Ford perfume. Personally, I'd rather be covered in South American fire ants than a horde of rainforest butterflies.

Mayonnaise

mayonnaise |ˈmāəˌnāz; ˌmāəˈnāz|-- noun

A thick, creamy dressing consisting of egg yolks beaten with oil and vinegar and seasoned.

I hate mayonnaise of any kind, especially of the bottled Hellmann's variety. I hate the color, the texture, the flavor and especially the exorbitant amount of calories it adds to any meal. Keep if off my burgers, BLTs and out of my salad dressings. If there is mayo touching any portion of my meal, you better believe that I am not eating it.

The poor servers who mistakenly deliver a burger or sandwich with mayo on it after receiving a clear directive to bring me my meal sans that creamy, eggy, highly caloric substance often underestimate my abhorrence of it. In response to their negligence I can only say:

"No, I am not satisfied with just SCRAPING the mayo off the bun [how lazy could the kitchen and the waitstaff possibly be?] because in addition to soaking into the bun, it has has also soiled my meat."

Hellmann's mayo is so unnaturally disgusting that they have to qualify their product by calling it "real". Call me high maintenance but frankly, I'd rather starve to death than eat something with mayonnaise on it. Please pass the mustard.