Welcome to the Satur-deja Vu for the week ending November 12th. I realized about three items in that I have an unusual number of food related bits so we’re just going to look at all of those and then see what’s left. Thanksgiving is coming up and Americans celebrate by eating too much, you know, just like every other day. So unfasten the button on your jeans and let’s get to it.

Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes Ice Cream – I realize this breaks my no Christmas until after Thanksgiving rule. In the case of Christmas Tree Cakes they are available for such a limited time that if you wait until December you might not get any. When I find them, and I haven’t yet by the way, I will buy three boxes and two will go in the freezer*. In the meantime I discovered Christmas Tree Cake ice cream might be a suitable replacement if worse comes to worse. It’s vanilla ice cream with red frosting swirls, green candy sprinkles and bit of yellow cake batter thrown in. It takes exactly like Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes. My wife described the flavor as “way too much sugar” which is exactly what Christmas is supposed to taste like.

*One year I put two boxes in the refrigerator at the same time. I opened one and put the individually wrapped cakes out where they were visible. I stuck the other box in the back of the fridge but when the first batch of cakes were gone someone in my family started in on the second box. They looked at me like I had two heads when I said we saving those for later. So now my precious goes in the freezer… at church.

Cookie Monster geode – Another great discovery, which also involves way too much sugar, is this Cookie Monster looking geode discovered in Brazil. It seems highly unlikely but as Jack Palance used to say “the truth is stranger than fiction.” There is video footage and multiples outlets, including Snopes, that confirm this is real.

Raleigh, North Carolina – Debbie Holt has been the owner of Clyde Cooper’s Barbecue for 15 years, a business first opened in 1938. She knows how to smoke meat, let’s establish that fact. When a customer named Annie Cooke tried to return her order saying it needed to be cooked some more, Holt explained “Oh honey, that is the pink from the smoke.” Other nearby customers tried to explain the smoke ring and what happens when porked is smoked. Holt explained that if were cooked longer it would still be pink. After leaving the restaurant Cooke called 911. The police of course were obligated to show up but the officer rolled his eyes, Holt said “the food is done,” the officer said “I got you” and then left. Cooke says she is considering filing a civil lawsuit. Here is here one star Google review, that has since been deleted:

For the record, the Mac and cheese has a smoked Cheddar added to it for flavor that does not melt but the other cheeses in their Mac and cheese base do melt. Now look – I am not making of this woman or anyone else for what they don’t know. But there is none so blind as the one that will not see. My favorite history teacher in high school would call this aggressive ignorance. Bruce Lee said a wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool learns from a wise answer. None of us called this lady out, she is the one seeking attention by calling the police, interviewing with the local TV news, posting a review on Google and possibly filing a civil lawsuit. She may have trouble finding a lawyer but never say never.

“McDonald’s launches new sandwich for the first time in 15 years.” That’s what the headline said but it’s not a new sandwich as much as a variation of the classic quarter pounder which they come up with all the time. The Oreo Fudge McFlurry sounds good but I bet the ice cream machine is broken. Let me know if you try either of these. My friend Dudley likes his bacon in the milkshake.

Does this person not get the joke or this just a troll? It’s hard to tell anymore these days.

This concludes the food portion of our post.

Gallagher, whose real name is Leo Anthony Gallagher, Jr., has passed at the age of 76. He was a clever standup comedian with insightful wisdom regarding politics and personal relationships but perhaps best known for smashing watermelons and other objects with his patented Sledge-O-matic. You gotta dance with the one the brung ya.

Jeff Cook, a founding member of Alabama, has also passed this week at the age of 73. Even if you are not a fan of country music you have to respect their success; 26 studio albums, 77 singles on the Billboard Hot Country charts and 75 million albums sold worldwide.

Elon Musk is just making friends all over the place. Half of Twitter’s employees have been fired. Several celebrities were kicked off the platform after changing their pics and name to Elon Musk and in some cases posting foolishness pretending to be him. He plans to introduce a premium paid tier of service called Twitter Blue. One critic says he acquired a social media platform that was already having problems and immediately made everything worse.

Netflix, on the other hand, is rolling out a cheaper tier after pricing themselves out of profitability. There will be ads and a cap on video quality at 720p. But after raising their rates earlier this year, becoming the most expensive streaming service on the market, customers were leaving in droves regardless of how many screens and lines of resolution they were offered. This is consumer sovereignty at work.

This is (probably) satire. But I’ve seen ideas first appear as satire that later turned into reality. Paul Wilkinson should patent that idea before it’s too late. Then later he can’t say things like “If I had a nickel every time somebody…”

These rankings are from the College Football Playoff Committee, the people that determine who goes on to the postseason. The system may not be perfect but it is light years ahead of the previous Bowl Championship Series (BCS) that it replaced. Expect at least one more major shakeup in the top four when Ohio State plays Michigan in a couple of weeks. Today Ohio State plays the unranked Indiana Hoosiers at noon, Alabama plays Ole Miss at 3:30 and Georgia plays Mississippi State at 7:30. I expect all of those games to be very one-sided with no surprises but some bold predictions have Ole Miss giving Alabama a third loss.

Tom Scott is one of the YouTube channels I follow. He travels the world, mostly Great Britain and the United States, sharing interesting things most people have never seen before. This particular video is three years old but this is his first stop at a location I have been to with fun facts that I did already know about. I have eaten at the McDonald’s location several times they drive though with the golf cart.