Today's hot take: despite what Kellogg's says in their current commercials, milk should not be "ice cold."

"Ice" is a fancy word (from Old English) for frozen water (32°F or colder, although the Old English preferred to measure temperature by testing whether water was solid enough to support their cans of furniture polish). Milk is mostly water, freezing at about 31°F, so there's not a lot of wiggle room between ice cold milk and frozen milk. And frozen milk is lousy (as the Old English can attest; back in their day, frozen milk meant frozen cows). There's a reason no one puts ice cubes in their Rice Krispies. In addition to being too crunchy, they're also too quiet. (No mooing.)

I like milk probably twice as much as the next guy, and yes, of course milk should be stored and served cold, but modern refrigerators are good enough for the job without additional solid-water support. Ice wagons went out of fashion with the Old English.

Which raises the question of what ice has to do with any part of breakfast? Neither bacon, sausage, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, potatoes, and tea (the traditional English Breakfast) nor porridge and leftovers (the Old English breakfast) are tastier if cold. And no American wants their pancakes, waffles, oatmeal or coffee served cold, much less ice cold. If you ask me, there shouldn't even be ice in a cup of juice. Especially orange juice. Only a monster would put ice in their orange juice.

Maybe the best solution is if everyone could agree from now on to hold all the "ice." If it only manages to make any situation worse, what good is it? If you want to eat a lousy breakfast, that's your prerogative, but keep the "ice" to yourself, you assholes.

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I have a Cub Cadet LX1040, and I have to say that its Kohler motor has been a truly unstoppable beast. However, I can't say the same about the cutting deck. It's been... temperamental. The mower has been in the shop for 4 of the past 11 months, and when it broke again last week, I decided that it was time I learned a thing or two about lawn mower repair.

Quite frankly, there's nothing complicated about the mower deck. Just some pulleys and springs that adjust the tension on the timing and PTO ("power take-off") belts. The biggest problem in repairing one is figuring the anchor points for everything, which would be easy if you'd ever seen one in full working order. But who takes the deck off a new lawnmower? Next time I buy one, I will.

I have to give full credit to Cub Cadet customer service. After I determined that my latest problem was a bearing failure that required a new pulley, their website helped me find and order the replacement part with little trouble. I had the part in less than a week and operating a day later. So how come every time I take my mower to the shop, it's there for at least a month?

So that was my day: repairing a mower, cutting the lawn, then going inside and making Rice Krispies treats before sitting down to watch some football. That's a manly enough day for anyone.

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After reading on the Mental Floss blog that Snap, Crackle, and Pop had a brother named Pow, I lost my afternoon trying to track down evidence. It was relatively easy to discover that the three elves (a baker, a band leader, and a slacker) were created in 1933 as a response to radio advertisement. It was somewhat harder to find evidence for the existence of Pow, who aparently appeared in animated advertisements. But here it is, as provided by John K Stuff. And all that proves is that cereal commercials have always been just fucked up.

[Note: that link above to shamuskrispies.mov is a Quicktime movie link. In my PC browsers, I can't see it, but downloading and watching it on a desktop (i.e. offline) application solved the problem for me.]

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