Bad News Central

Burger King has an application on their website that lets you make your own custom hamburger.  It got posted to the Something Awful Forums, where we had our typical bit of fun with it.  Then we got wondering whether or not Burger King would actually make some of the monstrosities were coming up with.  I volunteered to find out, and this is the result.

I’m at a total loss of words to describe the experience of eating the Noah’s Ark. It tastes like rubber, smells like a slaughterhouse, and contains enough grease to run your car.

No one at the Burger King I went to knew if they were even allowed to make the damn thing, but it was eventually given the okay by a very confused manager. It came wrapped in six Whopper wrappers and I had to carry it out in a family-size take-out bag. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the smell out it of my car.

I was able to fit the thing in my mouth by squeezing the hell out of it, which caused the ketchup and mayo to mix with the grease and form a constant stream of orange goo to leak out the bottom. The first thing that hit me was the grease. Then the taste kicked in, and it honestly felt like I had a mouthful of rubber bands and melted plastic. The different consistencies of the meat made them all mix together into beef and chicken chunks in a fish and veggie gravy. My body rejected it on the first bite, but I managed to eat nearly a quarter of it before I started getting the dry heaves and had to put it down.

The Noah’s Ark costs $16.89 and is available at Burger King’s everywhere.

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Oh shit, you were supposed to cook dinner tonight, weren’t you? It’s 5:30, your wife is home at 6, and she’s gonna be seriously pissed if you try to take her to Wendy’s again. She’s catching on that you’re incompetent in the kitchen, you’d better come up with something quick!

 So, what are you going to cook tonight? Quick, try to remember what you have in your freezer! It’s no use, all you ever take out of there are frozen pizzas and Popsicles. Screw it, you’ve probably got some chicken in there, and you remember seeing a box of spaghetti next to those canned raviolis you always eat at 2am when you come home drunk and the all the pizza delivery places are closed. Punch “chicken pasta” into Google and see what happens. Bingo! Alright, let’s see what we’ve got:

 Angel Chicken Pasta

 

 Ingredients

6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1/4 cup butter

1 (.7 ounce) package dry Italian-style salad dressing mix

1/2 cup white wine

1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed golden mushroom soup

4 ounces cream cheese with chives

1 pound angel hair pasta

 

Directions

1.Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

2.In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Stir in the package of dressing mix. Blend in wine and golden mushroom soup. Mix in cream cheese, and stir until smooth. Heat through, but do not boil. Arrange chicken breasts in a single layer in a 9×13 inch baking dish. Pour sauce over.

3.Bake for 60 minutes in the preheated oven. Twenty minutes before the chicken is done, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil. Cook pasta until al dente, about 5 minutes. Drain. Serve chicken and sauce over pasta.

Well, that doesn’t sound too hard! And there’s booze in it! Go root around in your freezer for some chicken. No, put the drumsticks back, those probably won’t work. Wait, those kind of look like chicken breasts, what does the label say? Pork chops? Man, that’s a lot of freezer burn! Someone should throw those out! Put them back in the freezer and dig a little deeper. Ah, chicken breasts, there you go! You only have four of them, but fuck it, she probably won’t be that hungry.

 Now you need to preheat your oven. Don’t panic, you’ve seen her do this hundreds of times. Try that button right there. Shit, now it’s on “broil”. No, I don’t know what that means either, but you’re not supposed to ever use it. No, I don’t know why they put it on there either. Maybe it’s one of those self-cleaning ovens and “broil” means “clean”. Try that button over there. Bake, that’s it! What does that digital display read? 225? Is that Fahrenheit or Celsius? Go with Fahrenheit, if you’re wrong then your dinner will be done that much quicker. It’s a no-lose situation! Crank up the temperature. Man, you’re pretty good at this!

 Alright, while we’re waiting for the oven to get hot, we’ve got to find a way to thaw that chicken. Try running it under hot water. Damn, that’s not going to work. Pop it into the microwave for a few minutes and see what happens. Well, it looks thawed, try poking it with your finger. Is it spongy? Is that good? The middle feels a little frozen still, pop it in for another five minutes. Much better!

 Okay, she’s going to be home in ten minutes, you’d better have all that stuff in the oven when she walks through the door. We all know what happened last time. What was step 2 again?

In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Stir in the package of dressing mix. Blend in wine and golden mushroom soup. Mix in cream cheese, and stir until smooth. Heat through, but do not boil. Arrange chicken breasts in a single layer in a 9×13 inch baking dish. Pour sauce over.

 What the fuck is a saucepan? Is that like a frying pan? Screw it, just use the frying pan! It’s not in the cupboard? No, I don’t know where it is, why the hell are you asking me? Is it in the dishwasher? How about the sink? Wait, isn’t there some little drawer under the oven that’s got, like, cookie sheets and stuff? Aha, there it is! Put it on a burner and toss some butter in there. Or margarine, it’s all the same. Root around your kitchen for some some dressing mix, golden mushroom soup, and white wine. You don’t have any dressing mix? You’ll have to mention this to your wife later, she should have picked some up at the store if you guys were out. It’s okay, you’ll just have to substitute it with whatever you find around your kitchen. Ah, there we go! Garlic powder, bacon bits, and nutmeg! She’s gonna love this!

 Now, you don’t have any “golden” mushroom soup, but you’ve got condensed regular mushroom soup, and that’s probably close enough. Do you need to un-condense it? Probably, so toss a little bit of water in there too. How about that white wine? No, red wine probably won’t work, and that champagne is too expensive. Crap, you don’t have time to run to the store now! Wait, don’t people cook with beer all the time? Like, beer batter and stuff? Well shit, you’ve got plenty of that! Toss in a can of your favourite beer, and keep one out for yourself. You’ve earned it.

 Okay, now we need some cream cheese. No, that’s sour cream. Don’t you have any cheese? No, not that big brick of cheddar, you’d need to use the grater and that thing’s a bitch to clean. Wait, there you go, an entire unopened package of Kraft Singles! You don’t even need to shred them, just toss those babies right in there! You’re really good at improvising, you could probably be on that Top Chef show if you really wanted to. Take a victory swig.

 Wait, aren’t you supposed to be stirring it? Give it a couple of swishes with a fork. Good enough. Now you’re supposed to put the chicken into its own dish and pour the sauce on it. That’s kind of a waste, the sauce is already in a perfectly good dish. Toss the chicken in the frying pan. Now she’ll have one less dish to wash later! Nice going, women appreciate stuff like that. If only all men were as thoughtful as you! Take another swig.

 Now for step 3:

Bake for 60 minutes in the preheated oven. Twenty minutes before the chicken is done, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil. Cook pasta until al dente, about 5 minutes. Drain. Serve chicken and sauce over pasta.

 60 minutes? She’s gonna be walking through the door any minute! Shit! Okay, here’s what you do – crank up the temperature as high as you possibly can, and reduce it back to normal when you hear her key in the lock. Speaking of that, go lock the front door. Now put the frying pan in the oven. You’re done! You don’t have to start the pasta for another 40 minutes, and she’ll probably take over the whole thing when she walks in and sees what a good job you’ve done with the chicken.

 Somebody’s getting laid tonight!

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Speaking from my lofty throne as a genuine Z-grade internet celebrity, I have to say that life up here is pretty sweet.  I get free stuff for no discernible reason, I get into various events for free, and I occasionally find myself being quoted in far-off corners of the internet.  There are drawbacks, however, like the fact that my web hosting costs more than the combined value of the free crap I get, or that most of the people that send me stuff only do it because no respectable website will touch it, and they operate under the assumption that bad publicity on a website barely anyone reads is still better than no publicity at all.

I may be on the bottom of the Internet Celebrity ladder, but believe me, it’s thrilling just to be on it.  One day, however, with a lot of hard work, a little luck, and a metric tonne of self-whoring, I’ll climb right to the top, at which point I’ll be on the bottom rung of the Real Celebrity ladder, and on my way to actually being famous.

You see, internet celebrities aren’t actually famous outside of the internet, no matter what you may have heard on Tosh.0.  The current head of Internet Celebrities, Perez Hilton, is still barely a pseudo-celebrity in the real world, and I’m 25 ranks below him.  To show you how this all works, I’ve drafted up this little graph, which clearly shows that the entire Internet Celebrity Hierarchy is nestled snugly between the Y and Z grades of the Real Celebrity Hierarchy:

In summary, please send me more free stuff.  Email me at bulletriddled@badenewscentral.com, I’ll tell you where to send it.  If your company produces something no one could possibly want, we here at Bad News Central will take it.  I really need new office furniture.

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I’ll freely admit that I know absolutely nothing about cars.  Whenever I take my car in for a tune up, I fully expect to get royally fucked up the ass.  I accept it, bend over, and pay my bill.  My talk with the mechanic afterwards usually goes something like this:

Mechanic: “So, that’s $60 for the oil change and tune up.”
Me: “Sounds good.”
Mechanic: “Plus another $40 to replace your air filters.  They were pretty clogged.”
Me: “Of course.”
Mechanic (realizing I have no idea what he’s talking about): “We also had to rotate your tires.  One of them was on backwards.”
Me: “Oh no!”
Mechanic: “Yeah, so that’s another $75, plus $20 for replacing your lug nuts.  They were pretty corroded.  Another 10km and they would have burst into flames.”
Me: “That could have been dangerous.”
Mechanic (getting more confident): “Plus another $50  to adjust your ailerons.”
Me: “Yeah, it’s been a while.”
Mechanic: “And your flying buttress was covered in marmalade.”
Me (frowning): “That’s what I thought.”

So obviously I’m no mechanic.  Neither are the fine folks who work for Fountain Tire, apparently.  I took my car in to them today for a quick oil change, and now the engine won’t start.  I’m not even sure how that’s possible.

I dropped my car off at 9am, walked the half-hour trek back home, and made some breakfast.  Right as I was finishing up, I got a call from Fountain Tire.  They needed to replace my air filters (they always need to replace your air filters, even if you just stopped in to use the bathroom), and they told me they were going to clean some gunk off of my battery terminals that was causing a low voltage.  It seemed pretty reasonable compared to the usual gouging I get when I take my car in, so I agreed.  It looked like I would have my car back in no time.

An hour or so later I got a call from the mechanic again, although this time he seemed slightly distressed.  I needed to bring in my remote starter right away.  Things had gone horribly, horribly wrong since I had dropped my car off nearly two hours ago for a routine checkup.  I rushed right back to find that my car wouldn’t start, my remote starter wouldn’t remotely start, and my remote locks would no longer remotely lock.  My battery was dead.  My car’s computer was spilling out of the dashboard, and there were meters hooked up to everything.  You know those hospital scenes in war movies, where they show some guy with his guts hanging out as half a dozen doctors pump him full of morphine and wheel him behind a curtain?  That’s what my car looked like.

Let me remind you that I was having my oil changed.

According to the manager, this wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t mine.  This was just one of those things that happen from time to time.  Then he let me fix my own car right there in the drive bay (using my own tools) as the rest of the staff went to fix a problem with the Fountain Tire Courtesy Shuttle.

I swear to God I’m not making this up.

A customer came in to have a flat tire fixed, but they waved him away because they were too busy fixing the Courtesy Shuttle.  I needed to look up a certain company so I could get help rebooting one of my car’s components.  They didn’t have the white pages handy and the mechanic didn’t seem to understand Google, so instead I used the yellow pages and spent an hour playing “guess the category listing”.  My car still wasn’t working by the end of the day, so I had to call up a client to tell him I couldn’t make it to his house for our appointment, thus costing me several hundred dollars in lost work.  Then the helpful Fountain Tire staff put my car into neutral, rolled it into the parking lot, and went home.  So did I, but I had to walk.  Apparently I hadn’t quite earned Courtesy Shuttle privileges.

I’m supposed to be driving to Las Vegas next week, but as of right now I don’t have a car.  I can’t go to work either, because I’m an electrician, and they don’t allow you to take a hundred pounds of tools and wire reels on the bus.

On the other hand, maybe I don’t need all those tools and supplies to do my job.  I could always just do it like I was a Fountain Tire employee - go into the client’s house, pull the lights out of the ceiling, turn off the main breaker, and leave.

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