Last Saturday, I announced to the world that I was embarking on a quest to find an “Almond Joy” lover. Today, I am announcing to you all that I have achieved that goal.

But first, allow me the pleasure of detailing all the intense preparation that went into my success…

First and foremost, I had to find a suitable hunting ground. I couldn’t just go to the nearest Costco and expect to find my quarry, while at the same time fighting through the crowds of people who had gathered around the guacamole sample station (note to self: quest # 2 should be about finding a Costco that has an easily-accessible guacamole table). It would be impossible to focus on both getting a dime-sized piece of tortilla chip laden with free smashed avocado and hunting down an “Almond Joy” lover. I am just not that strong.

Instead, I did some extensive research on how to find a starting point for a quest no one cares about, i.e., I watched a lot of those shows where people try to find Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, etc. It appeared that every “investigator” started his or her search in places where evidence of these mysterious creatures was abundant. Big Foot = forest where a clump of fur was found on a tree limb; Loch Ness Monster = large body of water with lots of unexplainable ripples and bubbles; UFOs = “Star Trek” convention.

And “Almond Joy” lover = my law school campus, because recently the vending machine started selling “Almond Joy” candy bars. Coincidence? Probably No! Vending machines only sell unhealthy snacks people will buy. If no one was buying a chocolate-coconut-almond bar, then the company restocking the machines would not have displaced giant “Kit Kat” bars to make room for them. And “Kit Kat” bars are a staple in every junk food diet!

Now that I determined my “Square One,” I next had to devise a plan to lure the “Almond Joy” lover out. I had originally planned to hand the candy bars out to random students, but there was a definite risk of danger: for some of us, receiving an “Almond Joy” candy bar is like finding a severed horse head in your bed, i.e., it’s a really bad sign. Whoever gave it to you wants you to know you’ve moved up his or her sh*t list. And if I ended up giving them to people who felt this way—and there was a good chance I would—I could become public enemy #1 by the end of the day because, let’s face it, no one is afraid of a girl who thinks completing an easy-level Sudoku puzzle in under five minutes makes her a badass.

No, if I wanted to achieve my goal without compromising my personal safety, I had to put some serious thought into my plans. And what better way to do this than extreme mathematical computations! Mwahahahaha!

Uhh…I mean this one:

Mwahahahahaha!

Based upon my extreme mathematical computations, I came up with this awesomely awesome contraption of awesomeness!

Oh man, sometimes I can’t believe how much of a genius I am!

With all this in place, it was smooth sailing from here on out, right? Wrong! So wrong! Do you know how hard it is to find rope around here? Very hard! Even “Home Depot” could not help me, which was sad because I thought they, of all people, would have realized that spare rope is a necessity for every household.

This major setback meant I had to scrap the idea of using my awesomely awesome contraption of awesomeness. Luckily, I was smart enough to come up with a second plan that was even better than the first! I was going to start an “Almond Joy Lovers’ Club” at school! And who would attend? “Almond Joy” lovers! Yes!

And then, another setback: it occurred to me that in order to start this club, I would also have to be a member—and that would require me to present myself as someone who liked to eat “Almond Joys.” There was no way I could be absolutely sure I’d find any “Almond Joy” fan at school at all. For all I knew, the entire student body consisted of anti-“Almond Joy”-ists and I could be ostracized from society if I pretended to be pro-”Almond Joy.”

Again, my own genius sometimes surprises me, as it did when I came up with a solution: I would wear a disguise! That way, I could conduct an “Almond Joy Lovers’ Club” meeting without exposing myself to lifelong ridicule.

And obviously I drew a diagram of my new plan for success:

Having completed the planning and preparation phases of my journey, all that was left was to put it in motion, right?

Fortunately, I can answer that in a negative: the quest to find an “Almond Joy” lover ended before it even began. And good thing, too, because it saved me from making an ass of myself filing all the paperwork needed to start a new student organization.

Turns out that the “you” in the “Almond Joy” jingle could be found right here! On Xanga! And this “you” is *coconut-shell-drum-roll* you! Yes, you! You are “you”! Well, no, only some of you are “you.” The rest of you are…perhaps wondering why I am making you read my inane internal drivel? Maybe all of you are wondering that though…

Hooray for anti-climactic questing!

I hate “Almond Joy” candy bars.

An “Almond Joy”—which I think should instead be called an “Almond Sad”—is a chocolate-covered block made of shredded coconut and almonds. Biting into this nightmarish concoction is like biting into a wad of old, chewed-up, gum with bits of raw asparagus: it has a strangely crunchy texture even though the coconut is gooey and somewhat “sweaty” looking.

I have eaten maybe a total of five of these unsavory “candies” in my entire life. The first time must have been when I was an innocent, gullible child. I say “must have been” because I don’t actually remember the experience. My brain has suppressed the memory to prevent me from punishing myself for ingesting toxic waste, but I am pretty sure it went down like this: an adult I trusted to look after my best interests probably gave me an “Almond Joy” to avoid having to eat it herself. And she, knowing that I held her in such high esteem, most likely told me to try it because it was “yummy.” And so I did. I listened to her. I ate that disgusting mass of compressed filth because I trusted her. And what did she do? She betrayed me!

The other four times I had an “Almond Joy” was to see if my tastes had changed as I grew older. Perhaps my taste buds were maturing the same way my body was, so that now those chocolate-covered-coconut-and-almond turds tasted more like deliciousness and less like defecation. Unfortunately, I was always wrong: “Almond Joys” never tasted better; they actually tasted worse. Not only that, my periodic taste tests always left me with a deep sense of self-loathing.

As disgusting and unpleasant as “Almond Joy” bars are, Hershey’s continues to sell them. The company even goes so far as to include it in its bags of assorted chocolate candies. Imagine finding in the midst of delicious “Nestle Crunch” bars, “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” “Kit Kats,” chocolate and peanut “M&M’s,” “Butterfingers,” “Snickers,” and “Baby Ruths,” a handful of “Almond Joys.” Extreme vomitty madness would ensue!

But someone must be buying them, and this someone is the “you” in the “Almond Joy” jingle: “sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. Almond Joy’s got nuts. Mounds don’t.” I want to find this “you,” this elusive Big Foot of the confectionary world. And so, starting right now, I am on a quest to find one person whose favorite candy is the “Almond Joy”! I’m not talking about the guy who will eat one because he’s hungry and just grabbed the first thing he saw in the office candy bowl. I mean the guy who goes to a store, heads straight for the stack of “Almond Joys,” and pees his pants when he sees they are on sale. I want to find “you”!

Wish me luck!

All television commercials are annoying, but I tend to give “As Seen on TV” commercials a break. Yes, I know they are basically the visual definition of “lame,” and feature either that bearded guy Billy-whatever-his-name-is or a bunch of really bad actors overreacting to everything. But we’re talking about 30-second endorsements for products no one would ever want or need–which is a daunting task that surely deserves the lenience one wouldn’t normally give to commercials for necessities.

A standard-issue “As Seen on TV” commercial is full of stanky cheese because the product is usually a solution for problems no one actually finds problematic. What we would consider a trivial inconvenience of everyday life, the “As Seen on TV” commercial instead views as being a near-death dilemma that will inevitably lead us to our doom if we don’t buy the product being advertised. Do you have to lug around a watering can everyday as punishment for your love of houseplants? Stop that this instant! You could get super tired! Get some Aqua Globes instead! Do you use oven mitts when taking things out of your oven? Well, you should stop doing that too! You could harm yourself because oven mitts are, um, mitty! Go get yourself the Ove-Glove!

Clearly, I have fairly low expectations of “As Seen on TV” commercials. In fact, my standards are so low that even the commercial for the “Snuggie” was able to meet them—and the “Snuggie” is a freaking blanket with sleeves! A blanket! With sleeves!

So imagine my horror when I discovered that there are two “As Seen on TV” commercials that supremely fail to fulfill my dirt-low standards. These commercials are so bad they’re douchie—and not just regular douchie. They are douchie-up-the-butt.

Silver Sonic	Loud-N-Clear

The “Silver Sonic” and the “Loud-N-Clear” are both personal sound amplifiers you wear on your ear like a Bluetooth headset, and can be used to do things like “hear a pin drop from across the room.” I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or because there is only one director who specializes in commercials for personal sound amplifiers, but the spots for the “Silver Sonic” and the “Loud-N-Clear” are both so bad I actually thought they were fake commercials produced by SNL. Seriously, the creators had to have been purposely aiming for the douchiest advertisement ever because no one could ever unintentionally come up with an “As Seen on TV” commercial that’s actually worse than the “Snuggie” ad.

I’ll admit I’m not very experienced with marketing. I took a marketing class in college and fell asleep during most of the lectures–but even I have an idea of what to put in a “Silver Sonic” or “Loud-N-Clear” commercial. These things are like cooler-looking hearing aids, right? And everyone knows that hearing aids = the elderly, because hearing can deteriorate with age. Therefore, it would make sense to feature old people successfully living independent lives because they have “super sonic hearing.” Maybe have a scene where grandma is working in her garden, suddenly pauses because she hears a group of people talking excitedly about religion, and then dashes into her house, locks the door, pulls her curtains, and watches as the group’s shadows appear at her front door. The group rings the doorbell a few times, but grandma stays motionless and silent. Finally, when it appears that no one is home, the group slips a “Joys of Cultish Living” pamphlet under the door and leaves. Grandma is safe!

What old person would be able to resist buying a personal sound amplifier after seeing that commercial? I bet those things would sell out in seconds if the “Loud-N-Clear” people went with my brilliant idea. But no, instead they decided it would be better to show this:

I don’t know if Grandma’s “ugh! I had it!” meant she had B3 or she had “Bingo,” but I do know that she appears to have contracted sudden deafness because she didn’t seem to have any problems hearing up until that moment:

Way to go, “Loud-N-Clear.”

Just because old people are the most obvious target consumer group does not mean I’ve forgotten about the young people. They can have difficulty hearing too, and would find the personal sound amplifiers useful for their own needs.

The “Silver Sonic” tried to demonstrate how young people could benefit from its personal sound amplifier by showing a group of college students attending a lecture. If you’ve ever had to attend a lecture in a huge auditorium, you know that sometimes it can be hard to hear if you are sitting in the back—especially when the overachiever in the front likes to participate in the discussion but won’t raise her voice above a whisper, so all you hear is:

    PROFESSOR: What are the exceptions to the requirement that police officers obtain an arrest warrant?

    OVERACHIEVER: Psst…psst…psst…

    PROFESSOR: Excellent, Ms. Overachiever.

I hate that b*tch. The college lecture scene was a good start…until this:

See, now I can’t relate to this situation anymore. You are sitting in the third row right in front of your professor, douche bag! You should be able to hear what he is saying…and so should your classmates who are sitting in the second row! You guys don’t need the “Silver Sonic;” you need a doctor!

Okay, so the commercial people ruined the possibility of making any money by creating a commercial that is neither appealing to the old nor the young–and I think they knew this and tried to pander to one more target group: the eavesdroppers. This group of consumers would benefit from using the “Silver Sonic” or the “Loud-N-Clear” because they can “turn up the volume on what people around [are] saying.” Who knows? In the middle of eavesdropping on other people, you might hear some of them talking positively about you–and then you will catch a sudden case of Douche Face.

The “Loud-N-Clear” demonstration:

The “Silver Sonic” demonstration:

You know what I think is extremely tacky Xanga behavior? When people advertise their blogs on someone else’s comment section.

The really shameless losers will just leave a comment like, “visit my blog.” They aren’t even trying to hide the fact that their only purpose for visiting your Xanga is to gain readership.

The less shameless losers try to downplay their attempts at leeching off your Xanga by complimenting your site, e.g., “nice blog! Visit mine!” The compliment is usually very general because the commenter didn’t actually bother to look at your blog. He was only visiting in order to advertise his own.

I’ve received a handful of both types of advertisement comments–let’s call them Advertisement Comments–and have deleted all of them. And I will continue to do this until I die…and maybe even after that. It’s not because I don’t have anything better to do with my time (although that will be questionable once I am dead…unless you count rotting away as a productive activity), but I regularly devote a chunk of my schedule to cleaning comment-house for several reasons:

I.    I Am Preserving Your Dignity

Someone has to do it, and since it’s not you it might as well be me. When you leave Advertisement Comments on someone else’s blog, you are giving everyone the impression that your site is a steaming pile of garbage that no one would visit on his or her own. Your comment also tells everyone that you are fully aware of your steaming-pile-of-garbageness, hence why you are desperately trying to lure visitors onto your site by promoting it on someone else’s blog.

This, of course, might not be an even remotely true assessment of you or your site. You could actually be incredibly engaging and a worthwhile read–but no one is really going to assume this of someone who has to troll the “Featured Weblogs” list for potential readers.

You are pretty much committing blog suicide if you leave Advertisement Comments, and most people will just relegate your site to their mental Doodoo Ditch and avoid it at all costs. So to prevent you from tainting anyone else’s impression of your site, I will voluntarily erase your comment before anyone else sees it. Yes, I will take it upon myself, out of the goodness of my heart, to save your Xanga soul by wiping your shameless self-promotion off my page. No, no, no need to thank me. I am just doing what all fake genuine guardian angels would do.

II.     I Am Protecting Readers

On the other hand, assuming your site really is the steaming pile of garbage your Advertisement Comment makes me think it is, I don’t want any of my readers to click on your comment and end up being brutally assaulted by whatever crap is posted on your page. And it clearly must be stanky crap considering how low you are willing to go to get attention.

III.    I Am Not Vincent Chase

I’m not Vincent Chase, and this isn’t an episode of “Entourage.” Therefore, even though I am fortunate enough to have subscribers, that does not mean you can hang around my comments section and try to soak up some residual exposure. You will just have to start from the beginning like every other Xangan: your friends are your only subscribers, and your Footprint counter never reaches above 100 per month.

I have been advised not to take this crap too seriously, and to instead view it as a positive sign that my blog has achieved a level of popularity. People tend to advertise their blogs on high-traffic Xangas because they believe more people will see their comments and then visit their sites. Thus, I should actually feel good whenever I receive a “visit my blog” comment because it means someone thinks my Xanga is one that has a healthy flow of Footprints.

Umm, no. I will never think of those comments as a good thing. And by “never” I mean there is a greater chance that I will fart Smurfs before I find an iota of positive value in the Advertisement Comment–and Smurfs don’t even exist.