Our breakfast cereals use mind control.

So it's been a fun-filled week of hauling 2x4s, watching Avatar in 3D, hand-mixing concrete, hosting Dungeons & Dragons, filing for unemployment, Watching 30 Rock until 2 AM, and not having access to my PC whenever I want to type because I don't want to boot people paying the rent off of it.

I used to have free time like this all the time, it just never felt so aimless and jumbled. Even excluding those weeks in Baja. Or maybe I'm thinking Okinawa.

Anyway, so it's Friday afternoon when I'm having a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats (with Almonds) for breakfast, and I realize something:

You ever notice how, in General Mills' Lucky Charms, all the sugary, delicious, but unhealthy marshmallow bits are not just obviously 'lucky charms', but pagan lucky charms? Stars, the moon, four-leaf clovers, iron horseshoes...

...Yet what do all the icky, healthy, 'good' oat pieces represent? Close your eyes and think real hard, you might remember seeing them: crosses and fish and eucharists. Catholic good luck charms.

And what was the name of the mastermind behind this marketing plot? John Holihan. I know an Irish O'surname when I hear it (due to being French/German and thus being able to also smell social class at 50 parts/million), and I know for certain they're all born Catholic. It's in their genetics. I looked it up.

Now, I'm not saying this is inherently a bad thing; Catholicism in my book is up there with Kabbalism, whatever George Harrison was into, and Tzeentchian chaos magic in terms of 'cool factor', but this here is clearly a case of religious judgment calls being mixed with cereal and milk.

So what does this mean for everyone eating frosted Lucky Charms, including their claims of being 'magically' delicious?

Nothing really; nobody eats those damn oat bits anyway.

Besides, I eat Honey Bunches of Oats (with Almonds) dry. But often with craisins. I dunno, I guess I'm kinda weird about my cereal.