So, as sure as mid-February comes every year, I help make little girls’ dreams come true.
That’s right, I buy box after box of Girl Scout cookies. I worship at the freaking altar of Girl Scout cookies. I love the Tagalongs (now called Peanut Butter Patties, for some reason), the Thin Mints (as my wife says, the only question about Thin Mints when you open the box is “do I eat one sleeve or two?”), the chocolate chip ones, all of ’em.
So last weekend, as I went shopping, I of course ran into three adorable Girl Scouts and a grown-up at a table in front of our Publix supermarket, and of course I bought three boxes.
And it got me to thinking about this post I wrote last summer, about my least favorite corporation, the evil Walmart, and how they had decided to start making knock-off versions of Girl Scout cookies. This pissed me off for several reasons: A, The Girl Scouts don’t deserve to be undercut by a billion-dollar corporation,; 2, it’s just so damn mean-spirited, and C, the Girl Scouts make a huge percentage of their operating budget from selling these cookies.
So, with it cookie time again, I decided to try to find out if Wal-Mart went ahead with their plans. I didn’t have a ton of time to research this today (hey, I’ve got a job, you know), but I checked Wal-Mart’s website, and, hmmm, there’s something called a Fudge-covered peanut butter filled cookie for sale, which is exactly what the Tagalongs from the Girl Scouts are. And some Fudge Mint cookies, which are suspiciously identical to Thin Mints.
So, yeah, nice job, Wal-Mart. Hope your sales of those cookies are spectacular, so some nine-year-old in Idaho never gets to go on her dream trip to Washington, D.C. this year.
**OK, now for the fun. If you only watch ONE rock video this year starting an Olympic women’s curling team, this should be the one you watch: The attractive ladies of Sweden’s curling squad (and can we have a moment of silence to acknowledge that BOTH U.S. men’s and women’s curling teams have now been eliminated? Thank you.) starred in a video with a band called Hammerfall.
Words can’t do justice to this epic work of film. It’s beyond strange, but I’ve watched it four times already. Curling rocks!
Wide World of Stuff 