Anne

Criminal defendants face a tilted playing field all over the country. If it isn't the frequent withholding of exculpatory material by prosecutors, it's everything leading up to it -- beginning with questionable interrogation methods and continuing with the admission of dubious physical evidence.

Virginia's playing field is more slanted than most.

Although prosecutors in Northern Virginia mostly make their files available to defense lawyers, that’s not true across the Commonwealth, defense lawyers said. “Justice is different in one jurisdiction than the next,” said Norfolk defense lawyer Douglas Ramseur. “You could be charged in Richmond and Norfolk and get a completely different amount of information. That seems to me completely inappropriate and unseemly for our system.” He added that prosecutors who like one defense lawyer may provide more access than to a lawyer they don’t like, giving prosecutors unfair leverage.

There's no consistency across jurisdictions. Even at its most accommodating, the amount of information available to defense lawyers pales in comparison to what can be uncovered in civil proceedings. Apparently, when it's only someone's freedom on the line, Virginia's judicial oversight feels "barely adequate" is more than enough.

It's gotten bad enough that the state's Supreme Court empanelled a Special Committee on Criminal Discovery Rules in 2013. In early 2015, a preliminary report was issued. This was followed by a letter from the state's ACLU, which highlighted some of the suggested fixes.

The proposed Rule 3A:11[b] would allow the defense to inspect "all relevant police reports," such as "reports of interviews of witnesses." The new rule would also allow the inspection of "all relevant statements of any non-expert witness," including written or signed statements, transcripts, or recordings.

The inclusion of police reports and witness statements in the routine discovery process will greatly improve the adversarial process. Under the proposed rules, defense attorneys will have access to the most basic information about their clients' cases. No person should have to stand trial without knowing basic information about the government's case against him. And in a criminal justice system that "is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials," defendants must have access to this critical information before trial so that they can make an informed decision about whether to take a plea bargain or go to trial.

[...]

Proposed Rule 3A:11(i) would, for the first time, formally enact the rule of Brady v. Maryland into Virginia criminal procedure. More than 50 years ago, the United States Supreme Court held that, as a matter of federal constitutional law, "the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution…

This proposal is consistent with Brady and with adversarial principles. By requiring disclosure of exculpatory evidence upon indictment, waiver of indictment, or before entry of a plea, and by requiring the disclosure of impeachment evidence seven days before trial, the proposed rule provides stronger protection to defendants than offered by current constitutional jurisprudence...

By making clear that prosecutors must make disclosures of Brady evidence before trial, the proposed rule would place appropriate emphasis on the duty of a prosecutor to seek justice, not merely to convict.

The discussion continued throughout 2015. The panel's suggestions were opened for public comment and the state's defense attorneys began looking forward to more equitable evidence sharing in the future. Virginia courts, where "trial by ambush" is the norm, would perhaps start moving towards something resembling the balance envisioned by the nation's founders.

Two years after the process began, the same Supreme Court that brought the committee into existence has rejected all of its suggestions. A single-paragraph announcement by the court states nothing will change.

On December 2,2014 came the Special Committee on Criminal Discovery Rules and submitted its final report, which included proposed revisions to Rules 3A:l1, 3A:12, 7C:5, 8:15, and which also proposed the adoption of Rule 3A:12.1. Having considered the Committee's report and the public comments submitted in response thereto, the Court declines to adopt the Committee's recommendations.

Not a single recommendation adopted. A project that lasted two years and gathered more than 300 pages of public comments is nullified by 63 words. The court's excuse for this? It would have been difficult to implement even one of the recommendations because so much of the state's judicial system is in dire need of an overhaul.

Virginia Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons said in a statement to The Washington Post that the entire proposal was simply too much all at once. While commending the report, Lemons wrote that “such fundamental and sweeping changes in the system, especially in light of the strong public comments opposing them, seem unwise at this time.”

[...]

“It would be difficult for the court to accept some of the proposals and not all of them as a package because the court cannot be certain about the interdependent nature of these compromises.”

"Difficult" maybe. But not impossible. Rather than engage in a task worth undertaking, the court has opted for stasis, because it's easier than dealing with the multitude of problems it has failed to address in the past. And it must be noted that the "opposing" comments the Chief Justice refers to in his cop-out were submitted by the beneficiaries of the broken system -- and those comments were in the minority.

[T]he Supreme Court asked for public comment and received 318 pages of letters and emails. The overwhelming majority, coming from defense lawyers and some defendants, supported the rules changes. But the Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney Services Council and Virginia State Police filed long, detailed objections.

When in doubt, defer to the "winning" team -- the one that always receives the lion's share of judicial deference. Better an innocent man do time than a few proposals upset the delicate balance of the skewed system by screwing with their "interdependence." No matter how the Supreme Court of Virginia spins this, the refusal to move forward is weak, cowardly and will do further harm to criminal defendants. And all the while, the judicial system will continue to pretend a "fair" trial can be had within the state's courts.

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I am talking about relationships with a friend in a dark restaurant. Rand has left the table for a moment, ostensibly to use the bathroom, though most likely to try to steal the bill. I have seen the two of them do this dance before, a race to see who can put down his credit card first. My friend is unperturbed by Rand’s absence; I will later learn it is because he has already handed our server his card. The meal isn’t close to being over, but Rand is already too late.

And in that moment, when it is just he and I – which never happens, because it is always the three of us, or the four of us, or the six of us – that is when he asks me a question that leaves me stunned.

“So … what’s the secret to being happy forever?”

Initially, I am unable to reply. In the context of a romantic partnership, this question has blindsided me. And before an answer comes to me, I am hit with several realizations at the exact same time.

The first is that this friend is asking me for advice, which feels strange because I have seen him regard life like a magic trick he has already figured out. He doesn’t spoil the illusion for the rest of us, but sometimes, when he can’t help himself, he smiles at our naivete. And so in this moment, when he reveals a tiny gap in the armor of his knowledge, I am surprised.

The second realization is that, on the subject of love and relationships and bliss, he considers me an authority. I find this touching, and am tempted to reach across the table and hug him, but I’ve had roughly 1/3 of a cocktail, which is enough to make me question my ability to do so gracefully. So I stay firmly put, and in the back of my mind I remember that this is a recurring problem of mine: outside of Rand, I rarely tell people that they are important to me.

And then there is the matter of the question at hand: how can two people remain together, happily, forever? The response I fumble for is this: Rand thinks that we’ll never get divorced. I think we might.

I should elaborate, because I’ve said this before in my husband’s presence and it (understandably) tends to unnerve him. For Rand, divorce is not an option – at least, not for the two of us (he thinks that it definitely is an option – and sometimes a very reasonable, responsible one – for other parties. Just not us. He’s made that clear – we’re never getting divorced). And since that choice is off the table, and we’re doomed to spend the rest of our days together, we need to make things work.

When he first said this, it terrified me. Because I didn’t know how to be happily married. I’d never really seen it done before. And I was fairly certain that there was some fatal flaw in me that would prevent it from working out. I was convinced that we were going to get divorced. That it could happen quickly, could settle in as easily as the flu. One minute you aren’t feeling 100%, and the next you’re puking into a bucket. One minute you’re fighting over which drawer in the kitchen to store the aluminum foil, and the next you’re trying to divide your assets.

People don’t usually get married thinking that the outcome will be divorce. I, daring to be different, was convinced that it was always just around the corner, lurking, waiting to strike. So I had to make sure that little fights didn’t grow into big ones. That anger never grew into resentment. Because the option of going our separate ways was always on the table, we needed to make things work. (Note: in the seven years since our wedding, I’ve become a little less paranoid about divorce attacking me while I sleep. But make no mistake: I remain haunted.)

In the end, Rand and I have the same goal: to be together forever. For him, it is inevitable. For me, it isn’t.

I try to explain this to my friend, but I’m full of curry and naan and maybe a little bit too much vodka. He is feeling intellectually generous, and tries to find more sense in my words than I’m able to convey in them. I will realize later, annoyed with myself, that my explanation has not answered his question. I’ve simply explained our motivation. I haven’t shed any light on how to do it.

Given the opportunity with a do-over, the answer I’d have given him is this: act like your spouse is a stranger.

(I promise, this is not a kinky sex thing. I mean, it can be, if you want. I have no problem with that. It’s just not the point I’m trying to make.)

Because have you ever noticed how sometimes we’re kinder to people we barely know than we are to the people we’re close to? That somehow friendship and love can cause you to take a person for granted, to treat them worse than you would strangers on the bus? That odds are, if you’ve screamed the words “I hate you” recently, it was not to someone you barely know from barre class (even though you do sort of hate them, because they have a six pack you could take to a frat party), but more likely to someone you’ve known and loved for years?

I think about this all the time. How there is often a sad trade-off to knowing someone cares about you. How easy it is to be a complete asshole to someone if you know they’ll suffer the awful things you are capable of.

Example: toddlers. Total dicks.

And yet if it’s someone you don’t know, you extend them all sorts of courtesies and niceties and display a level of patience rarely seen elsewhere. Can you imagine if a stranger did your dishes? If someone you barely knew grabbed you a glass of water? If the person in line ahead of you at the movies paid for your ticket and expected nothing in return? We’d be effusively, exceedingly grateful.

So why aren’t we like that to the people who care about us? Why does loving us entitle them to less?

I try to rectify the unfairness of that in my relationship with my husband. I thank him, every single day, for the infinite number of things he does for me. I tell him how wonderful he is and how grateful I am for him. I remember that while he’s told me time and again that he isn’t going anywhere, that doesn’t mean I can take him for granted. I think of how miraculous it would be if a stranger did all of these things for me and I remember that at one point not that long ago, he was one.

And that all of the things he does for me are still pretty miraculous.

Occasionally, I am a total dick. Sometimes, I march out of a room angrily and close doors more swiftly than I should, or I’ll shout “FINE” in a tone that suggests nothing of the sort. But I think even Rand would agree that those moments are pretty rare. That things between us are pretty damn good.

Last night, in the midst of writing this post, I asked him what he thought the secret to a happy marriage was.

“I never stop trying to be worthy of your love,” he said. That while my affection is pretty much unconditional, he was still endeavoring to deserve it. It’s not that dissimilar from my point of view. We both keep trying to deserve this ridiculous stroke of luck that fell into our pants.

But back to the table in that dark restaurant on the other side of the continent from where I now stand. Rand returns from trying to covertly snag the bill (having been thwarted), and I relay the parts of the conversation he’s missed.

“I was just saying how I think we work because I’m always convinced we’re going to get divorced-”

“What? NO. Baby, we’re never getting divorced. You’re stuck with me.”

I laugh. And I see us – the three of us, the four of us, the six of us – sitting around a table, years from now. I want to reach out and hold them all, and tell them I love them in a way that is wholly uncharacteristic of myself. I want us all to live happily ever after. I don’t think there’s any guarantee of it. I just figure you keep trying, you keep being grateful, and maybe we’ll all get there.

My e-book romance novella publisher, a self-professed white man, has asked me to write an “Urban romance.”

Read more I Wrote the Accent: A Black Writer Considers “Urban Romance” at The Toast.

It’s safe to say whatever you want on the Internet; nobody will know it’s you. But that same anonymity makes it possible for people to say all the awful things that make the Internet such an annoying and sometimes frightening place. This week: what happens when the Internet turns on you? (If you prefer, here's a bleeped version.)

'Tis the season for my inbox to be flooded with emails with the same subject line: "HELP! How do I remain body positive when I'm with my family during the holidays?!?!" Or something with similar keywords; you know what I mean.

And it is SUCH a good question. For many of us, there is something about being surrounded by those we (likely) have a complicated history with.... well, mannnnnnn... it can make some shit surface. Especially if we've worked hard to embrace body acceptance. Especially if those around us haven't. And especially if we're struggling with our relationship to food on top of it all.

Can you relate?
If so, I feel you so hard.

WELL OKAY THEN! WHAT TO DO?!?

Well, fortunately for you the internet is full of ideas. Nearly every website I follow has published a "how to guide" about this subject and I can totally write my own post on this (which would sound pretty similar to them all)... OR I can link you to a ton of different options and allow you to find the voice that works for you! Yeah, I love that option.

Below you'll find all kinds of thoughts on the subject- some specific, some general- and I hope that one of them will be just what you need to hear.


1.) "The Holiday Boundary Setting Song" by Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat. Performance of said song by Jeanette DePatie:



2.) 4 Tips to Stop Holiday Body Shaming Now by Lauren Marie Flemming (The Huffington Post)

3.) 5 Ways to Fight Body Shaming During the Holidays by Suzannah Wiess (Bustle)

4.) How to Heal from Fat Shaming Family by Corissa (of Fat Girl Flow)

"With the Holidays coming up, I think we all need a little guidance for how to handle the people we love getting in the way of how we love ourselves. Take care of yourself this Holiday season." -Corissa

5.) Self Care in the Time of Cheer and Cookie Dough: A Body Positive Survival Guide by Sabrina N. (Fbomb)

6.) How To Survive Your Family This Holiday Season by Erin Donnely (Refinery 29)

7.) Your Feminist Guide to a Body Positive Holiday by Talia Cooper (Ma'yan)

8.) A Body Positive Guide to the Holiday Season by Fiona Sutherland (A Healthy Paradigm)

9.) The Non-Dieters Holiday Survival Guide by Golda Poretsky of Body Love Wellness
Podcast version:

And, I would be remiss to not include the pro-tip from Ravishly's Kate Ryan:

10.) "The Only Tip You'll Need to Survive the Holidays: Masturbate."

Just, y'know, food for thought.

And I'll leave you with this amazing article by Melissa Fabello for the moment after the family events are over and you're contemplating New Year Resolutions: "50 Body Acceptance New Year Resolutions that Don't Involve Dieting."

Epic.

Have you read any articles on the subject that hit home for you? Do us all a favor and leave them below!

fatbodypolitics:

This is your (late) holiday (year round) reminder that food does not have moral value. There is no “good” or “bad” food. Food exists for multiple purposes. It’s used for comfort, when in mourning, to nourish, to care for others etc. It’s tiring and hard to navigate the world when you’ve been taught from such a young age that food is suppose to be something that’s hated, feared and controlled. It’s also hard to be around people when you fear they will comment about the food you’ve chosen to eat and make moral judgements about your health, body and how you live. So just don’t.

I still struggle after 12 years of being in recovery from an eating disorder to push those thoughts to the back of my mind on a daily basis. It’s hard enough fighting against my own mind and the anxiety / depression that wants to wrap itself around me on a daily basis to worry about how other people feel about food.

Build community around food that disrupts racist, classist, ableist, fat phobic etc discourse that only seeks to shame people for surviving. Better yet - build community around enjoying food no matter what.

It’s Halloweek :)

Happy Halloween!

As a lifelong pumpkin aficionado, I have a special place in my heart for the baccanalian gourd-fuckfest that is fall. From the end of September until Thanksgiving, I ingest so many orange-hued treats that my farts smell of cinnamon and nutmeg (“They do not.” – my husband, pumpkin hater and fart snob).  I remain, for the most part, a purist: spare me your butternut and acorn squashes. I will not be swayed by the downright seductively named delicata. I want only the original, though I will take it in whatever processed form it comes to me: mashed and baked into cookies and pastries, dehydrated and added to a bevy of beverages, reduced to an essence and dripped into my eyeballs (“That … that last thing is not a thing.” – once again, my hubby.)

Yet even with my proclivities I accept that there is a limit to how many things we can imbue with pumpkin. But that has not stopped the brilliant, twisted, and in all probability stoned people on the Trader Joe’s Food Development Team from including it in every conceivable product on their shelves. They are playing god. It’s like Island of Doctor Moreau, except with more pumpkins and slightly less swine people.

Naturally, my only recourse was to try every single abomination they’d created, in the name of science (“Please don’t drag science into this.” – my husband again). I initially wanted to buy every pumpkin-flavored product they offered, but this soon proved fiscally unreasonable. In order to not lose my “going to the grocery store unsupervised” privileges, I realized I needed to come up parameters on what I was going to buy in order to limit my spending.

In the end, I went with shelf-stable stuff, since I didn’t want to uncover some dried out pumpkin dessert at the back of my freezer come April, which I would then inevitably eat. And it also meant that I could put uneaten snacks in our emergency earthquake kit, because what fun is an apocalypse if you can’t taunt your beloved?

I also skipped out on anything that was too expensive, like the Pumpkin Spice Coffee, or that sounded really gross, like the Pumpkin Spice Coffee, or that simply existed to serve as the middle man between me and an afternoon of orange poop, like the Pumpkin Spice Coffee.

Some of you might argue that these aren’t so much parameters as me just buying a bunch of random pumpkin flavored stuff at the store, and that my lack of thoroughness compromises the integrity of my fake experiment. Fair point. This might all be a thinly veiled excuse to eat junk food while taking selfies. If this bothers you, I suggest you find a site that follows rigorous scientific standards when it comes to its fake pumpkin-eating experiments.

EXCEPT THERE AREN’T ANY. I’m the pinnacle of pumpkin science, you guys. I’m basically the Stephen Hawking of cinnamon and nutmeg (“Wow. That’s actually profoundly offensive.” – you-know-who again. I’m just going to stop quoting him, because he’s sort of a buzzkill).

Or at least, I thought I was until I realized that both Grantland and Serious Eats already tried to do this. I maintain that great minds think alike, as do slightly less-great minds whose faculties have slowly been eroded by the caustic properties of pumpkin.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Pumpkin.

Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin.

Since I didn’t actually want to subject my husband to the taste-test (or maybe because he adamantly refused and then locked himself in the bedroom. Whatever.) I decided to force my writers group to do it. Though to be fair, they aren’t so much a writers group as they are three women who sit around with me, eating cake while complaining about assholes. Together we’re changing the world.

Marika, hereby referred to as “the lucky one”, got food-poisoning and spent the morning vomiting, so she couldn’t attend. That left Pam of Nerds Eye View and Naomi, aka The Gastrognome, both of whom probably spent the afternoon vomiting. I suspect that after it was all said and done, their homes smelled like Santa’s workshop on the morning of December 26th, after all those cute little elves have kicked back, had a drunken orgy, and turned the North Pole into a vomitorium.

Pam suggested that we start at sweet and end at savory, and her naivete made me want to hold her in my arms and rock her gently while I whispered this sad revelation: There is no savory. There is only sickening sweetness. There is no escape, no manner of salt that can free you from this sugar-coated hell.

On to the taste test.

————–

Trader Joe’s Organic Pumpkin Toaster Pastries

Pop-Tarts, while barely constituting food, are universally delicious, so making a bad one is like finding an openly gay Republican – so rare that it becomes a noteworthy achievement. For this, I suppose, the good folks at Trader Joe’s should take a measure of pride. They purport to be organic, but then again so is gravel. Flavorwise, they narrowly beat out the box they were packaged in, but only because they were frosted.

Suggested Tagline: “Are these suppose to taste like this?”

—————

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s

Remember Apple Jacks? How they were so brittle, they broke into shrapnel-like pieces upon contact with your teeth, and still managed to seem vaguely stale? And they tasted nothing like apples, which at some point the company tried to turn into a selling point because honestly, what else was there? Trader Joe’s O’s are limply hanging from that same withered branch of the breakfast family tree.

The flavor is vaguely evocative of cinnamon (“There’s … there’s a little bit of a thing. There’s the suggestion of pumpkin.”) but this merely served to highlight everything that was absent in both this “food” and my life. Eat these, and you will find yourself sinking into hole of depression and chemically-synthesized flavoring. While I contemplated the futility of my existence, Naomi dispensed this wisdom: “It tastes like preschoolers peed on a pumpkin pie.” I did not ask her to elaborate on how she knew this, because some things should remain a mystery.

Suggested Tagline: “You probably bought these while hungover.”

—————

Trader Joe’s “This Pumpkin Walks Into a Bar” Cereal Bars

I initially found the punny name of this snack to be rather charming. Now I want to slap the self-congratulatory moron who came up with it.

These looked like a long, squishy Fig Newton, and when you find yourself wistfully thinking of how much better THE WORST COOKIE EVER MADE is by comparison, it might be time to reevaluate your life.

Pumpkin is listed rather low on the ingredient list, and a more accurate description of the flavor would be “Frozen apple pie that was heated over a pumpkin spice candle.” Just like grandma used to make when she was drunk.

“It’s got an excellent sawdust texture,” Pam noted, while Naomi and I agreed that it tasted the most like potpourri of any of the treats we encountered.

Suggested Tagline: “Slightly preferable to starvation.”

—————

Mini Pumpkin Tea Scones

“I’m hopeful about these.”

“Are you crazy? Scones are always terrible.”

The package says that the “best buy” date for these is November 13th, which suggests that these can actually decline in flavor and they are not presently at theoretical zero. I’m tempted to hang onto them until Friday to see if they actually get worse, but that feels like the Epicurean equivalent of slowing down to gawk at a car accident. Later, in an act of which I am not proud, I would systematically pick the frosting off of these and eat it. It was the best thing I had that morning.

Suggested Tagline: “Also doubles as housing installation.”

—————

Iced Pumpkin Scone Cookies

We all thought that these were pretty good, but it might have been that everything else that preceded it was so bad that our tastebuds now had Stockholm Syndrome. Like when you spend enough time shopping at Ross and all the pants have “LUSCIOUS” written across the butt or are marked “IRREGULAR” with alarmingly few elaborating details, so that by the time you encounter a Lycra bodysuit that’s two sizes too small, you think you’ve hit the jackpot.

Some fun takeaway quotes:

“I’m less offended by these than anything else we’ve tried.”

“But it’s like being the best looking monkey at the zoo. I mean, sure, you’re a good looking monkey but …”

“You’re still throwing poop?”

“Yeah.”

Suggested Tagline: “You will regret this later.”

—————

Pumpkin Panetonne

Perhaps the problem here is that we start off with something rather mediocre to begin with – Italian panetonne, which serves no purpose other than to fool you into thinking someone brought cake when really they JUST BROUGHT BREAD. The packaging said it was “filled with pumpkin cream and candied pumpkin pieces,” which sounds marginally better than the more accurate “filled with IT DOESN’T MATTER DON’T EAT THIS.”

I described the candied pumpkin bits – which bore a shocking resemblance to a cut up, scented candle – as “vaguely cartilagey”. Naomi equated the pumpkin filling to glue. Pam had withdrawn into a corner by this point and was gently rocking back and forth and talking to herself.

Suggested Tagline: “Didn’t the Italians also invent fascism?”

—————

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Cranberry Crisps

These were … shockingly inoffensive. Like that uncle who’s usually super racist but is presently too drunk to say anything bad about the Ukrainians (at the moment).

I wouldn’t go out of my way to get them, but if they were served to me at a party, I wouldn’t instantly assume that the host:

• hated me
• had lost their sense of taste and smell
• was preparing me for some sort of human sacrifice

Suggested Tagline: “The perfect cracker for people who sort of care about things.”

—————

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Tortilla Chips

These didn’t really taste like pumpkin, unless by “pumpkin” you mean “burned”. Pam said they tasted like nothing, but after the snack atrocities that preceded it, you begin to long for nothing. Fall at Trader Joe’s makes Nihilists of us all.

Suggested Tagline: “Your existence is meaningless. (Great with our Avocado’s Number Guacamole!)”

—————

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Seed Brittle

I didn’t buy this brittle for this taste test, because I purchased it last year and I still occasionally wake up in a cold sweat from the memories. Its distinguishing factor is that it’s been covered in pumpkin pie spices which recreates, with surprising verisimilitude, the sensation you’d get from dropping regular peanut brittle in sand and rolling it around. But I guess it’s nice that someone else has done the work for you.

Suggested Tagline: “There’s nothing wrong with the box you picked up. It’s supposed to look like that.”

—————

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spice Rooibos Tea

The inspiration for this product:

Step 1: Get really drunk.

Step 2: Inexplicably eat friend’s leftover jack-o-lantern.

Step 3: Realize, far too late to rectify the situation, that it is early November. Also, that jack-o-lanterns aren’t food.

Step 4: Vomit profusely.

Step 5: Now nauseated by the mere suggestion of food, make yourself a cup of tea. Swear it tastes pumpkiny, even though it actually doesn’t. It’s just that the pumpkin is now inside YOUR SOUL.

Suggested Tagline: “The pumpkin is calling FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.”

—————

Pumpkin Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

(Photo unavailable because I didn’t want you to see the teeth marks on the bag after I’d gnawed on it.)

The concept of this is circular enough to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. That being said, they’re delicious. I purchased a bag long before the taste test but I’d already finished it, shoveling pumpkin spiced crunchiness into my mouth with a glassy-eyed frenzy. I went back to the store to get more, but like most products that are actually enjoyable, the Trader Joe’s by my house stopped carrying it

Suggested Tagline: “At this point, you might just be drunk.”

—————

The verdict: consider hibernating until after Christmas. Even if you like pumpkin.

 

P.S. – I know that this all seems profoundly wasteful, so in order to avoid being a total asshole, I sent the rest of these treats to Rand’s office, where they will provide sustenance to hungry developers, and also made a donation to our local foodbank.

The cat character hasn’t been back for a while, but I’ve been babysitting my mom’s kitten so inspiration has been abundant.