Spare a thought for this poor girl.

This isn't a very topical post, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't recognise her at all. I'm sure she wouldn't mind too much either, she's a fictional character. But we'll pretend she's not, I've a post to write here.

This girl was featured in a television advert for Splenda some years ago. Splenda is an artificial sweetner. Splenda likes to think it's just like sugar, but it never will be. You could have your tongue surgically replaced with a strip of leather and you still wouldn't believe it's sugar.

This poor girl wanders into a diner, asks for a coffee with sugar and the waitress looks a her like she ordered a cheesecake made of laser beams. A family nearby sniggers and laughs at the girl. The waitress asks around the diner if anyone's heard of this crazy stuff and, after the entire diner shrugs its shoulders at the crazy lady looking for coffee, a nearby Morgan Freeman stunt double suggests she might actually be looking for Splenda.
Ah, yes, Splenda. The woman had obviously lost the run of herself for a minute, there. Maybe she had a mild stroke. Of course she was asking for Splenda. What the fuck is sugar anyway?

Light hearted, maybe, but if was the girl above, I would PANIC THE FUCK OUT. Sugar's sugar. I've been hoovering up the stuff for twenty six years. I remember putting heaps of it onto my Rice Krispies and ending up with entire tablespoons of the stuff at the bottom of the bowl which I was only too happy to crunch through. I melted it in a frying pan to try and make sugar glass like the have in the movies. Then I ate that too. Telling me sugar never existed would be like telling me there was never a James Bond Jr cartoon, or telling me that my oldest friend Niall never existed. My entire history would have been rewritten. I'd run home to look at old photos of birthday parties, trying to see if there was a bag of sugar in the background somewhere. I'd go online and type in 'sugar' and hope to high heaven I wouldn't only find stuff about the Apprentice.
I like to think of myself as a rational man but, if the entire world forgot about sugar tomorrow morning, I'd probably tattoo the word across my chest, run onto the stage at the X Factor final with no shirt on and blow myself up. I'd never know if my actions had any effect but surely, surely, somebody out there would see me, see 'sugar' and remember something.

Anyway, there you go. Oh, that ad? You don't remember it? Here you go. I should point out it's a work of fiction. It's not real. Sugar's real. Go eat a big spoon of it and thank fuck for that.

Something I already wrote on facebook, but it's long enough to warrant its own blog entry.

On my way home this evening I took a quick diversion into the Co-op to get something to eat. I'm in a little bit of a hurry this evening, going to see Skyfall again at seven so I went with the easy option. Pizza. You can't go wrong with pizza. Well, maybe you could put it in the oven upside down but if you're that kind of person I'm surprised you managed to make it onto facebook without putting your laptop in the shower.

It's cooking as I type.
I grabbed my disc of bready cheesiness and made my way to the checkouts. There, I was once again HARASSED by the sweets section. Recently, I've had a weakness for peanut M&Ms. I'm fooling myself by thinking the protein in the peanuts balances out the chocolate and sugar shells and makes them someway healthy.
So far, I'm totally fooled. Good job, me.
Anyway, I saw the label on the edge of the shelf "Peanut M&Ms 40p"
"Forty pee?", I thought to myself, careful not to say it out loud in case I sparked a riot, "That's wild cheap". (That's how I talk in my head.) So I grabbed a bag without another thought and approached the checkout with a big smug head on me.
Outside, I looked at the bag I'd bought and I was instantly disappointed. Downsizing had struck again. The bag, I now saw, was much smaller than what I'm used to, maybe two thirds the regular size. Groping it a bit led me to believe it was mostly air, a trick Nestle no doubt picked up from Walkers' Crisps. I opened the bag to see a pitiful amount of sugar coated peanuts staring back at me.
Maybe they were a promotional size, I'm not sure. I can only hope they go back to normal bags but, with Cadbury's taking 4g of chocolate off Dairy Milks in the past few weeks, I won't keep my hopes up.
M&Ms? Would've been more accurate just calling them "Ms"