Fact-U-Like of the day 18/7/06

McDonalds Chicken McNuggets have a chicken content of… wait for it… wait for it… 53%! Not an urban legend, it’s straight from McDonald’s own nutrition guide.

The remaining 47% of the food volume is mostly taken up by Hallowe’en costumes.

Just how clever is YOUR little wife?

Clever enough to feed her own children? Let’s hope she’s this clever!

Ah, the comfortingly sinister food ads of yesteryear…

The Alien Origins of Bovril

A food like Bovril deserves to have some bizarre origins. And it does.

Straight outta Wikipedia, the world’s biggest game of Chinese whispers:

“In 1870-1871, in the war against the Germans, Napoleon III found that his armies could not ‘march on empty stomachs’. Because of this he ordered one million cans of beef to feed his starving troops. The duty to provide all this beef went to a Scot called John Lawson Johnston. The only trouble was that Britain did not have a large enough quantity of beef to meet the French people’s and Napoleon III’s demand. John Lawson Johnston’s first beef product was known as ‘Johnston’s Fluid Beef’.”

When it came to branding time, the Bovril name came from the latin for cow, Bos, plus Vril. Vril is the name of a mysterious liquid energy source from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1870 novel The Coming Race. Vril is used by strange, subterranean angel-like beings to do whatever they want. Don’t know about you lot, but we use Bovril in exactly the same way.

Perhaps the strangest thing is that since 2004, Bovril’s actually been yeast-based, like Marmite. Did anyone notice? Naah.

By the way, Unilever’s official site backs all this up. So it’s not just a load of processed cow-guts…

You Must Be Coking

On the side of US bottles of Coca-Cola: “Coca-Cola is a low sodium product.“

Oh, really, Coca-Cola? Cheers for that! Cheers for taking the time to remove all that salt from your sweet brown-flavoured drink! What did it taste like before, Bovril*?

This is ridiculous. Coke gets zero points for pointing this non-fact out. Other spurious feel-good pronouncements Coke might like to make on the side of their bottles:

Coca-Cola – uranium-free since 1927.

The only cola that’s guaranteed HIV-negative!

While Coca-Cola does not protect from lion attacks, it is extremely unlikely you will get attacked by lions while drinking this product. The Coca-Cola Company provides this service at no extra cost to you, the consumer. Please avoid lions when drinking Coca-Cola.

*Bovril is named after a science fiction energy source. No shit. More later.

THIS IS THE PART WHERE THE WRAP BREAKS DOWN.

The Scoffology Monday rant: Wraps can fuck off to space forever.

It’s like eating a bit of damp custard skin that’s clammy like the grave, you know? Ruining all the niceness inside of it. And what about that nasty scrungy bit at the bottom of the wrap, where there’s only wrap and nothing else? And you eat it anyway because your life is so shit?

Don’t get us wrong, we ain’t tortilla hataz. There’s nothing wrong with a fresh warm wrap filled with delicious squidgy things by your own two hands, at home or in the restaurant.

But putting it in a refrigerated casket and leaving it to dissolve under flourescent lights – that’s like putting Pinocchio in a cage*. It’s like that bit in The Dark Crystal where that little Podling guy there gets drained of its life. It’s like SIX KINDS OF BAD SHIT.

See?
*Did they put Pinocchio in a cage? We can’t remember. We’re just glad we remembered the extra C in Pinocchio. And if we got that wrong then we just don’t care.

Kobayashi Retains Yellow Mustard Belt

…for the sixth year running with a new world record, but the US contender Joey Chestnut wowed the crowd with an unprecedented display of courage.

That’s right wiener-fans, the results of the 2006 Coney Island Independence Day Hot Dog Eating Contest are in, and the tiny Japanese man wins again with a new record: 53 3/4 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Great white hope Joey Chestnut wasn’t far behind, with a majestic 52 dogs in the same time.

Here’s Takeru Kobayashi, bigging himself up (quite literally). How come his distended belly’s still smaller than ours before breakfast?

Joey Chestnut should be pleased, though, as his previous record was 40 hot dogs. That’s good form. Maybe we’ll lay down a wager next year.

Joey Chestnut! How can you not love a man called Joey Chestnut who can eat 52 hot dogs in 12 minutes?

We want to stroke his hair.

Wal-Mart steals the Smiley

As you may have read, ASDA’s parent company Wal-Mart are seeking to prevent anyone else using the yellow smiley face symbol. They’ve been using it since, oh, 1996, you see. That’s WAAAAAAY before anyone else.

Can you imagine the implications this has for society? Find out after the break.

URGENT: BOOZE SECRETS

Okay, not urgent. Whaddayagonna do? Yeah, exactly.

Anyway after the split, we spill the beans on how to work out HOW MUCH BOOZE YOU HAVE. Warning: contains blinding insights of the sort usually reserved for DARPA Chiefs, shamans or Marie Curie.

Pimp My Catchphrase – Snack Site Gets Slapped

Did you know that giant company Viacom bloody well OWN the phrase ‘PIMP MY’? OHMYGOD TRUE. In a less-than-brillaint Onion article come to life, snack-hacking website www.pimpmysnack.com has been strongarmed into becoming www.pimpthatsnack.com.

This is bullshit. Not in the untrue sense, either.

Anyway, the site’s still boss so check out the giant kit kats and turbo toblerones and what have you. Sigh.

Fact-U-Like of the day 4/7/06

Guess what faggots, that slightly disturbing British breed of meatball, are called in Provence? Gayettes. There’s obviously a conspiracy somewhere.