On Recommended Serving Sizes

I've joked for years that a Real Serving Size is the recommended serving size multiplied by 1.5. Two cookies you say? You will not be satisfied by less than three. Eight ounces of soda? There's a reason they switched to twelve ounce bottles. It's not even a joke anymore, really. I've retired it. It is now simply a fact of existence.

Yet I still seem to hold to the percent daily values on my foodstuffs. Calcium still has a recommended dosage, even if a fat American wouldn't be sated by the paltry sum of matter bequeathing it. It was even in attempt to follow these guidelines that I discovered the reason my nutritional intake a few years back wasn't helping my attempt to build muscle: I was getting close to 100% of most vitamins and 200% of my protein, but only consuming 1700 calories on average; I was literally too full of food mass to fit in more for the calories. I had to add back sugars and fats.

Though I try now to maintain a balanced if not numerically happy diet. Moderation and mild indulgence. That sort of thing. So I'll allow myself, to dabble in experiments. I haven't touched that 327% sodium "Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowl" since college, but I'll try an organic energy shot I find in Mrs. Green's.

Yummy looking. Actually, it tastes like weak, strained cough syrup. Utterly horrifying. I think perhaps wheat grass juice constitutes a major portion of the product. But at least it's full of vitamins!

If you don't feel like click-to-enlarge-ing, that is 15 calories and 4g of sugar for 333% your Vitamin C, 300% your D (I already had 250% for my day per doctor's orders), 75% Niacin, 100% B6 and Folate, 13% Zinc, 143% Selenium (pretty sure this is what killed the aliens in Evolution with David Duchovny), and 100% Chromium.

Oh, yeah, and 33,333% B12.

Yes. Recount. Five threes in that one. Comma isn't in the wrong place. One giant B12 shot right to your gut. So fine, it tastes atrocious. At least it's healthy and gives you energy, right?

As expected, nope. Not at all. Nada. Zilch. No hyperactivity, no even moderate activity. Just normal activity at best. So EBoost organic energy drink: complete failure. But at least I shouldn't worry about whether I got enough nutrients while getting over my cold.

GI Joes: Reassassination

G.I. Joe: Retaliation is set to come out soon. Again. It was about to come out this past year, but they delayed it by months at the last moment, ostensibly to convert the entire fricking thing to 3D. Early test audiences, though, suggested it might have been because the movie was at that point a huge steaming pile.

Originally, Marlon Wayans and Channing Tatum, protagonists Ripcord and Duke from The Rise of Cobra, were killed in the first 20 minutes of the movie along with 98% of the Joe team, thus instigating the Retaliation part of the movie.

Channing Tatum since became a huge success late this year, after releasing 21 Jump Street (a guys' comedy) and Magic Mike (a chick-flick schlick-fest). In between he also starred in a wildly successful Nicholas Sparks adaptation and the equally unrealistic–yet in this case based-on-truth–The Vow. Unsurprisingly, Tatum is now featured prominently on the new poster and in the new trailer for Retaliation, very much alive, and has reportedly filmed a few "updated" scenes. You know, like a whole new plot.

The funny thing is, this isn't the first time Duke has been saved from the cutting room floor.

In 1987, G.I. Joe: The Movie was released by Hasbro, following the original animated Transformers movie, in which Optimus Prime drove off to that great big parking lot in the sky. Duke, it was decided, was going to bite the big one as well. However, after getting shot and "dying," fans were pretty violently outraged.

So when Duke got shot, the script was quickly rewritten to include dialogue about Duke being "in a coma" and–I shit you not–at the very end of the film, as the Joes defeat the forces of Cobra-La and cheer, a character reporting they have heard through off-camera radio transmission that "Duke's awake!"

"Scarlet, I need you to know … that I've always … loved … Bob's Big Boy."
"And … GO NAVY!…" *Dies*

You know, you think one Lazarus act should be enough to convince a studio not to kill a character, but they had to unkill Duke twice. At least Optimus came back within the same movie this time. Sheesh.