The offending item:

First, these are all shitty choices. Dairy Queen can be good if it’s July, you’re in the Midwest, and you’re resigned to being fat and happy for the next seven days. Baskin Robbins gives shoddy portions, and Coldstone Creamery employees make me want to shoot myself. It was suggested by someone I thought cared about me that I apply for a job and work there for a few weeks for research purposes, singing to the customers and shouting out my name in cheer form with key anecdotes about myself. Dude, I have a blog for that.

Yes, it would be hilarious and I might even get to write a bestselling novel about it, but who needs millions of dollars when you can have, instead, ice cream dignity and $14 an hour to watch for product placement in television? Not me, that’s who! Besides, I’m still planning on getting a job at Starbucks for a few months, just long enough to pen my debut novel, Lots of Lattes. Or maybe even Latts o’ Lattes. It’s gonna be about, like, espresso and stuff.

Secondly, I don’t appreciate the way “Rob Jefferson” has preselected Baskin Robbins for me. I remember those “Clown Cones” from Baskin Robbins. Did every store have those, or was it just the one at the Garden Market shopping center in Western Springs, IL? This was an ice cream cone with — again — a severely low amount of ice cream in the actual cone and (here comes the “clown” part) little florets of thick, multicolored buttercream icing dotting the cone and the ice cream itself to form a “clown face” that never looked anything like a real clown but tasted really, really sugary. Most of my naive little playmates would eat all the florets at once because they were all anyone cared about. I was all “WTF?” to such children because I preferred to eat my florets gradually, with a balanced ratio of ice cream to icing in each bite. I’d feel sorry for one part if I favored the other unfairly. The textures of both clashed so violently that it was just a tumultuous experience in general. In fact, I’d really rather not repeat it or even think about it ever again. And yet I’m writing about it. You can tell it’s almost six in the morning. Maybe you can’t, and I’ve just outed myself. Whatever. Look, I just found an article which mentions the Clown Cone. The writer seems to think the CC was a once-a-year birthday treat. Wow. Either they became too popular for that rule to hold, or the Garden Market chain’s employees just got way too overzealous with all the floret fun. I’d like to bet on the latter, but again, with the shoddy portions… those employees (always the same man, woman, and teenage daughter — it’s like they slept behind the counter) didn’t seem like so much fun at all. What am I talking about? Look how long this paragraph about florets is! Am I really going to post this?

Guess so.

I wrote the TV Watch for LOST on EW.com today. That’s why I am awake. It’s not my fault, except it really is.

Just realized the date is 05/05/05. DUDE.