pileofcrapola

If you're headed to a D.C. United game this weekend at RFK Stadium, you'll be sharing the parking lot with lions, tigers, wolves and camels.

That wacky, backwards-sunglasses-wearing, frost-tipped celebuchef Guy Fieri is at it again, and this time he seems to be intent on murdering cheesecake and serving it up to the masses. If half a cheesecake stabbed with potato chips and pretzels and bleeding chocolate drizzle in an apparent food-on-food crime can be called a “Cheesecake Challenge,” well, we’re not sure if the cake itself was challenged and lost, or if it’s your mortal body at stake here.

The “huge mountain” of cake is enough to inspire fear in even the strongest-hearted out there — just check out the leering skull on the plate with that huge knife casually sticking out of the thing:

Brave soul Andrew Kiraly at KNPR (h/t to Eater.com) experienced this terrifying dessert behemoth at Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen & Bar, which opened back in April.

Without bothering to detail how the thing actually tasted — or reveal whether or not he accepted the apparent challenge of ingesting it, Kiraly nonetheless doesn’t mince words about its appearance. And it’s pretty darn funny:

Instead of sitting flat — commonsense, quotidian, even jejune — the cheesecake is set on its edge like a wheel, so it presents itself as a sort of runaway half of a dirty and broken Thundarr the Barbarian moon that’s been ripped out of orbit by cosmic forces beyond our reckoning. And, by now calorie-drunk, swooning with surfeit, I imagined Guy Fieri straddling that ragged crescent cake-moon like a motorcycle, riding into a cold and inscrutable universe, crying for an answer, a connection, somebody, anybody, with his painted flames and chocolate-sauced potato chips, his pepperoni armor and outsized burgers: Is anybody out there? I’ve got cheesecaaaaake!

Note to cheesecakes: Do not walk into dark kitchens alone. We still don’t know what happened to the other half of the one above, but it likely met a similar fate at the hands of this madman and his snack henchmen.

Notes From My Dinner At Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen & Bar [KNPR]

Ray likes Roadninja, a free mobile app that tells users what amenities and gas prices are available at the next highway exit. He doesn’t think it’s perfect, though. That’s why he was kind of annoyed when it prompted him to leave a review…and his options were limited.

“I like the app but it does have some issues that, to me, would keep it from getting a 5 star rating,” Ray writes. “Allowing only 5 star ratings gives me a further incentive to rate it lower that I otherwise would because of the not completely forthright way in which it is soliciting its rating.”

Users probably can adjust their rating once the app sends them to the review page. The ratings for the current version of RoadNinja make it clear that reviews with less than five stars are getting through.

Still, it might make someone who isn’t inclined to give a good review but didn’t think this all the way through to dismiss the prompt because they don’t want to post a five-star review.

We wrote to the RoadNinja sensei (really, that’s what his or her e-mail address is) to ask why they’re being so picky. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

Companies want perfect scores or not to hear from users at all, since various systems reward only perfect reviews. This reminds us of the feedback survey paradox: businesses from car dealerships to chain pizzerias do their best to keep customers from giving them anything but a perfect rating on feedback forms.

It was “Wing Night” at a bar in Kansas City last night, but we’re pretty sure that doesn’t mean that wings were mandatory. That’s what we would have assumed, anyway, but one bar patron acquired a bird costume before stopping in. Because…well, it’s not all that clear why. What is clear is that he didn’t have permission to borrow the feathered hat and cape.

The Kansas City Star has photos taken by a bar patron, because most people would take a picture of a guy in a bird costume who walked into the bar they were patronizing. Police say that the man started his night by breaking into a costume shop. “He got into the costume shop, took the costume and then walked down the street to the bar,” a police spokesperson told the Star.

The man was arrested, and we can only hope that Harvey Birdman, Esq. steps up as his public defender.

Man wears bird outfit at bar after allegedly burglarizing KC costume shop [Kansas City Star]

While Facebook loves sharing incredibly detailed information about users’ interests and web-browsing habits with marketers, the social media network isn’t so keen on making massive amounts of user info available to prosecutors, presumably because the district attorney’s office isn’t looking to buy ads. Facebook announced last night that it’s currently fighting warrants from authorities in New York who are looking to get data on a group of 381 users.

The company says that the warrants, which represent the largest single demand for user info from the site, seek “nearly all data” from the accounts in question, “including photos, private messages and other information.”

Facebook believes the warrants, all involving a large investigation into allegations of disability fraud, violate Constitutional protections against illegal searches.

“We fought forcefully against these 381 requests and were told by a lower court that as an online service provider we didn’t even have the legal standing to contest the warrants. We complied only after the appeals court denied our application to stay this ruling, and after the prosecutor filed a motion to find us in criminal contempt,” explained Facebook’s deputy general counsel, who says the company was under a gag order for several months that prohibited it from speaking publicly about the warrants, or to notify those affected.

The lower court held that, when looking at a large-scale investigation “the relevance or irrelevance of items seized within the scope of a search warrant may be unclear and require further investigatory steps.”

In an attempt to undo the damage, Facebook took its case to an appellate court last week, arguing that the “vast scope of the government’s search and seizure here would be unthinkable in the physical world.”

While the appeal is still pending, the warrants were subsequently unsealed and Facebook says it has since alerted those users whose information was gathered using the warrants.

Prosecutors defend the warrants, which have thus far resulted in 62 indictments.

“This was a massive scheme involving as many as 1,000 people who defrauded the federal government of more than $400 million in benefits,” a rep for the Manhattan DA’s office tells Ars Technica about the warrants. “The defendants in this case repeatedly lied to the government about their mental, physical, and social capabilities. Their Facebook accounts told a different story. A judge found there was probable cause to execute search warrants, and two courts have already found Facebook’s claims without merit.”

Arguably, single grapes and cherry or grape tomatoes are already perfect, bite-sized foods. There are reasons why you might want to slice them in half, though: so you can include them in a chicken salad, to make them easier to catch with a fork in a fruit salad, or because you’re serving them to small, choking-prone children. Here’s a method to chop a dozen or more at the same time.

The technique is simple: all you need are two plates or large, flat lids, a knife, and those small, round foodstuffs. Put the grapes or tomatoes on one plate, cover them with the other plate, and cut through the middle.

The grape method went viral after one woman, Laura Mullins Goodhue, posted a video to Facebook of her husband using the method to slice a plateful of grapes in one stroke. Some people have trouble with the Facebook embed, so you can go check it out on Facebook here.

(via Scary Mommy – thanks, Briana!)

People like wine, I’ve heard it said. And people like coffee, I say to my morning cup of joe every day so it knows I appreciate it. But do we really want to mix our booze and our morning buzz, and in a can, no less?

After all, a lot of bad can happen to good things when you put them in into can form. If you’re feeling brave and confident that you can keep your stomach lining from exiting your body, just search for “turkey in a can” if you’ve never seen it.

DailyCoffeeNews.com brings the newest offering from Friends Fun Wine, which has been peddling 6% ABV “Fun Wine in a Can” for a while now, in its foray into the caffeine world with Cabernet Coffee Espresso and Chardonnay Coffee Cappuccino.

Based on that naming style, shouldn’t it be Cabernet Wine Coffee Espresso and Chardonnay Wine Coffee Cappuccino? Though it’s unclear if there’s actually caffeine in the beverage, or just a coffee wine flavor. Which, yuck.

Anyway, these “easy-to-drink” combos feature things like the “rich flavor of fresh cabernet grapes, espresso coffee and a hint of chocolate,” and the chardonnay wine coffee wine coffee whatever sounds like a sugary booze dream, with “sweet, refreshing Chardonnay grapes with vanilla cappuccino coffee and smooth hints of chocolate.”

“We are proud to be the first-to-market with our Fun Wine In A Can, and look forward to introducing the new coffee varieties to our Fun-Loving Fans,” Friends Fun Wine CEO Joe Peleg said in a product announcement.

Congratulations?

Get Half Naked, Grab Some Friends and Drink Coffee Wine (It’s a Real Thing) [DailyCoffeeNews.com]

It’s nice to hear that a restaurant has high standards, but one cafe in Perth, Australia took things too far by docking workers’ pay for minor infractions. How minor? Fining them AU$100 (about $94) for being five minutes late, $30 for sticking the tomato slice on the wrong layer of a club sandwich, and $12 for overcooking a waffle. While subpar waffles are a shame, these deductions are illegal.

The employees whose paychecks were docked were guest workers on sponsored visas, who had traveled to Australia from India and Nepal to find work. Other charges taken from their paychecks make it clear that this was not so much a case of a demanding boss, but taking advantage of workers in a legally and financially vulnerable position, who depended on sponsorship from the café to stay in the country. They were also charged as much as $1,200 for cooking demonstrations by the restaurant’s own head chef.

Restaurant owners here in the U.S. are allowed to deduct workers’ pay for breakage, dine-and-dash on their watch, and short cash drawers, but not to the point that it brings their pay below minimum wage. The U.S. Department of Labor guidelines say nothing about subpar club sandwiches and waffles.

The workers have since left the country, but each received AU$5,000 in compensation. The restaurant also had to pay a substantial fine, and is on notice for any future violations.

Subiaco cafe punished for illegally docking workers’ pay — $100 for being late, pork belly dish ‘not crispy enough’ [The Australian] (via Foodbeast and LA Times]

Earlier this year, a new California state law banned restaurant workers from touching food with their bare hands and required that bartenders and cooks wear rubber gloves. But following a backlash from the public and the foodservice industry, the state legislature has voted to repeal the ban, going back to rules that simply ask workers to minimize the touching of customers’ food.

The idea behind the ban was to prevent the possible spread of germs from employees’ bare hands to the food on the plates, but as many people have pointed out, there’s nothing preventing the germs on the gloves from getting onto the food.

Think about it. If a customer gets sick because a careless and ill-trained chef thoughtlessly coughs into his hand and then goes back to slicing a tomato, it doesn’t matter very much if the coughed-into hand was bare or gloved. Whatever he coughed up is on the hand that then touched the tomato.

Additionally, a report from the Centers for Disease Control found that the wearing of rubber gloves leads some workers to be more careless about their hygiene. If someone’s bare skin gets crud on it, the natural reaction is to wash up. But working under the protection of latex might give some foodservice workers the false impression that their hands are clean when they aren’t.

Beyond that, there is the waste, cost, and environmental issues involved with the use and discarding of millions of additional gloves.

Oh — and there’s something oddly creepy about a bartender putting on rubber gloves just to garnish your gin and tonic with a lime wedge.

The restaurant industry, and many outside of the business, contend that that the best way to prevent restaurants from spreading pathogens is to be strict about hand-washing, kitchen sanitation and food storage. The foodservice world often moves very quickly and deals in large volumes; all it takes is one person in the kitchen to forget to wash his hands after using the bathroom to put people at risk.

Restaurants in California had a six-month grace period before they were required to make employees wear the gloves. The repeal action is coming just at the end of that grace period, so a number of eateries will never have had to deal with the nuisance.

[via Eater]

We’re sure McDonald’s employees have seen all kinds of characters come through the drive-thru: there was the drunk guy who fell asleep and then the person who punched another customer in the face for cutting in line. But a recent incident at a Texas McDonald’s was a little more reptilian in nature – and all kinds of weird.

Employees of the restaurant received a decidedly different customer Thursday night when an alligator was spotted making its way through the drive-thru, News 92FM reports.

But before the gator could pick up his extra value meal, a local sheriff was able to use a dog leash to move the animal to a nearby creek.

The ordeal was over in a flash, but local law enforcement officials had enough time to snap a few pictures and have a little fun on Twitter.

Alligator Visits McDonald’s Drive-Thru in Fulshear [News 92 FM]

If you’re still one of those people pish-toshing the idea that buying counterfeit or unapproved electronics and accessories can be dangerous, you should learn something from a recent tragedy in Australia. A 28-year-old woman was killed there while talking on a phone that she’d plugged into a faulty USB charger, prompting authorities to warn consumers everywhere against using such devices.

The woman was found dead while wearing headphones inside her home, according to Fair Trading New South Wales, the group that oversees consumer issues such as this, after it’s believed that the $4.95 faulty charger sent high voltage through her body.

Officials with Fair Trading NSW said the phone had been charged into a wall outlet while she was talking, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

“The voltage seems to travel up through the faulty charger into her phone and she was wearing earplugs and also operating a laptop which was also plugged into a power point,” a spokeswoman said. “So the (electricity) traveled back down through the earphones to the laptop and into the power point.”

“Two-hundred-and-forty volts (then) travelled up into the phone which obviously the phone isn’t designed to handle.

The Fair Trading Commissioner says the business that sold her the non-compliant charger could now face fines up to $875,000 and a two-year sentence. It’s been shut down, with hundreds of allegedly faulty USB chargers seized by officials.

“We will certainly be further investigating an outlet which we have detected have supplied theses types of non-compliant articles [chargers] with a view to prosecution,” he said.

He added that there were a a lot of cheap chargers available for sale, something authorities weren’t really aware of until busting the mobile accessory business.

“This is the first time we’ve been aware of them in large numbers,” he said, urging the public to not buy these kinds of unauthorized or unapproved products.

Faulty USB phone charger blamed for woman’s death [Sydney Morning Herald]

Just imagine realizing that you’d won a million dollars — after you’d already thrown away the ticket. No one’s gonna believe that one, right? But two New Jersey men say they’ve got proof they won, after throwing out their tickets in error, and they want their Powerball money.

So how does someone throw away a winning lottery ticket? The guys claim that when they checked the winning numbers of the Powerball on the lottery’s website, it hadn’t been updated with the new numbers, unbeknownst to them, reports NorthJersey.com. So they tossed the ticket in the trash.

But they realized later that the ticket had every correct number except the Powerball, a prize worth $1 million.

“I was losing my mind. We were both losing our minds,” one of the men said, after realizing the ticket was in the trash, which the garbage company said had been picked up and brought to a landfill in Canada.

The men said they could prove the win without the missing ticket: One of the men bought three tickets at a Mahwah 7-11, where it was reported that a $1 million ticket had been sold.

He kept the first and third tickets, and gave the second to his friend. That one was the winner, and that friend was the one who tossed it when he thought it was a dud. But the other man kept the first and third tickets, which meant the missing ticket’s serial number would line up right there in the middle with his purchase.

At first they were told by the Lottery Commission last year that they could just submit a claim form along with the remaining tickets.

“They even told me, ‘You don’t need a lawyer, don’t get one. We know you’re in the right,’ ” one of the men explained.

Fast forward to a year since the drawing, and nothing has happened> So the twosome filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Trenton this week to demand that the lottery pony up their cash, as it’s at fault for failing to update its website in a timely manner.

The Lottery Commission has commented on the situation, as it’s pending litigation.

Lesson learned: Don’t throw out your lottery tickets until you’ve checked, and double-checked, and then probably triple and quadruple checked those numbers.

Two men say they threw away a $1M lottery ticket, sue NJ to collect [NorthJersey.com]

A U.S. postal inspector and 2012 Federal Employee of the Year award recipient probably won’t be getting a trophy for his latest noteworthy achievement, as he stands accused of stealing pills, jewelry, passports, Playboy magazines, knives, marijuana, and an autographed Joan Rivers collectible from the mail he was entrusted to protect.

Unlike previous postal pilferers that we’ve featured on the site who did their thieving in secret, this 52-year-old was apparently making little effort to cover his alleged theft.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, he directed his employees at a San Jose, CA, processing and distribution center to alert him whenever things like collectibles, cash, drugs, electronics, jewelry, rare coins, precious metals and other memorabilia were found loose in the mail.

The employees were led to believe that these items would be returned to the proper parties, but as you’ve probably guessed, authorities say the inspector was keeping them for himself. He would either take the items home or stash them in caches around the distribution center.

Authorities say he attempted to discover all the locations of security cameras in the center so that he could steal these items without leaving a video record of his crimes, but investigators were still able to find images of what they claim is the inspector stealing mail since 2013.

But just a year earlier, the San Francisco Bay Area Federal Executive Board, which coordinates federal agencies in the region, recognized the inspector for his “responsiveness in dealing with the media on issues involving criminal and hazardous situations,” and named him a Federal Employee of the Year.

Now he faces federal charges of delaying and destroying mail, theft of mail and possession of stolen mail.

Here are some previous stories about sticky-fingered folks at the USPS:
Postal Carrier Accused Of Stealing 20,000 Pieces Of Mail, Collecting Credit Cards And Stacks Of DVDs
Mail Carrier In Big Trouble Because Stealing Checks Sent To Charities Is Definitely Illegal
Postal Worker Accused Of Stealing Meds From War Vets, Selling To Others On Her Route
Postal Employee Caught With 10 Years Of Stolen Bulk Mail Wants To Keep Job

People always joke about fast food meat — especially deep-fried fast food meat — maybe not being from the animal it claims to be. And while we’re pretty sure that KFC generally does indeed serve up actual chicken, one family in England ended up buying a Colonel’s Original Recipe hand towel.

A woman from Newcastle tells the Daily Mail that she recently bought some KFC chicken for her 7-year-old stepson, but when the youngster went to chow down on the fried bird, it revealed something blue and inedible inside.

“I got a shock,” says the stepmom. “I thought the actual chicken had gone off.”

She says it was actually worse to discover that it wasn’t spoiled chicken, but a deep-fried hand towel.

“If it was bad chicken they might have just had a bad batch or something,” she explains. “But the blue roll could have been used for anything – it could have bleach or disinfectant on it… Had someone wiped their hands on it, had it been used to wipe the floor?”

She says that when she took the hand towel and its 11 herbs and spices back to the KFC, she was told to contact KFC customer support. She did, but even then, the company wasn’t terribly responsive.

“I had to keep ringing them and keep following it up,” she says. “It felt like I had to do all the work when it was their mistake.”

KFC eventually investigated the matter and issued an apology, along with an offer of a free meal for their troubles.

“The blue tissue has most likely originated from a tissue roll used for KFC hygiene purposes,” reads the explanation given to the family. “The store assume it must have fallen unseen into the breading lug that is under the sieve and was not noticed by the cook.”

Reminders of the Granite Mountain Hotshots are spread throughout Station 7.

A monthlong national effort to capture sex predators led to 275 arrests in Southern California that included a teaching assistant for special needs kids, a retired sheriff's deputy and a U.S. Army soldier, authorities said Thursday.

Court records show that a second Baltimore police officer has been charged in the cutting of a pet dog's throat.

A number of school systems, non-profits and other organizations make sure that kids don't suffer a "nutrition gap" when school is out.

Shady charities pop up after a disaster, and the standard advice at such times is to donate instead to established, trusted organizations like the Red Cross. Only the Red cross, which raised more than $300 million after Hurricane Sandy isn’t keen to have the world know what they spent all of that money on.

The Charities Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s office asked the Red Cross for detailed information about its fundraising and spending after the Superstorm, and the organization complied…eventually. The AG has this data, so the investigative reporters of ProPublica filed a Freedom of Information Law request to get a copy as part of their ongoing investigation of post-Sandy spending. The Red Cross asked that large portions of the document be redacted as “trade secrets.”

While one could probably make a legitimate argument that some parts of the document that describe the Red Cross’s fundraising practices or other internal information really are trade secrets, some of the requested redactions are baffling. We know this because the Attorney General’s office denied some of their requests, and the letter telling them so is public. For example, the Red Cross’s lawyers asked to have the title of one page redacted. That title consists of two lines, one of which just says “American Red Cross.”

Where did the more than $300 million go? Donors have a right to know, but the Red Cross refuses to even separate out how much money budgeted for certain expenses was spent during the disaster, and how much allocated for future efforts.

Red Cross: How We Spent Sandy Money Is a ‘Trade Secret’ [ProPublica]
Long After Sandy, Red Cross Post-Storm Spending Still a Black Box [ProPublica]

Get a flaming cake out and take a deep breath, party people, because it’s time to feel old: The Universal Product Code was first put into use only 40 years ago, when a $0.67 10-pack of Wrigley’s gum was scanned by a cashier at an Ohio grocery store on June 26, 1974. Yes, bar codes have only been on the things we buy for 40 years.

Before the design by IBM engineer George Laurer was first put into use, grocery stores had to change out price tags every time the cost of something fluctuated, and input prices by hand when customers were checking out, notes CBC News.

Those blocks of black lines and numbers has spawned many offshoots — including 2D QR codes — in industries around the world for uses that reach far beyond paying for a pack of gum.

“I did not even envision that happening,” Laurer told CBC News. “It was designed for the grocery industry. It proved that bar codes … were the way to go.”

That 10-pack of gum is now on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, as well as one of the first 10 scanners used at that supermarket.

It wasn’t the first bar code ever invented, however — that honor goes to a bull’s-eye bar code created out of the need for an automatic checkout system. That one never caught on, so IBM turned the job over to Laurer and asked him to design a standardized bar code.

In order to make sure the bar code wouldn’t smudge on the printing presses of the day, Laurer made his design so that any smears would only lengthen the code’s bars, which wouldn’t interfere with scanners trying to read it.

Happy birthday, bar code. You don’t look a day over 0 0204 9273 4.

Bar code turns 40: Next-generation codes move past grocery stores [CBC News]

Uninvited guests who crash parties and eat all the treats are the absolute worst, am I right? Darn treat scarfers! But a black bear took it to a literal extreme in Alaska, falling through a home’s skylight only to land in the middle of preparations for a kid’s birthday party. And he was rude enough to gobble up as many cupcakes as he could get his paws on, to boot.

The bear landed in the middle of the living room, but fortunately the party guests hadn’t arrived yet for the 1-year-old’s birthday party, the homeowners tell JuneauEmpire.com.

“I was literally in the room, and I heard this cracking,” the dad says of the bear’s weight on the skylight. “And the next thing you know, there’s this bear that, I mean, literally, fell right from (the skylight). It was like three feet away from me.”

He says the two locked eyes briefly, before he yelled to his parents to take the baby upstairs to safety. He ran into another room and closed the door.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bear took his time, recovering from his fall and wandering over to the living room table and helping himself to lemon blueberry and peanut butter cupcakes. Which do sound delicious, so who can really blame him?

“The bear walks over and puts its paws up on the table and starts licking his birthday cupcakes, and I’m just like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” said the mom, who saw the whole thing go down from behind closed glass doors in the kitchen.

While he was licking up red and green cupcake frosting, she opened another door that leads to the backyard. The couple then yelled at the bear and showed him out the door, explaining afterward that he seemed used to humans and didn’t put up a fight.

After his banishment, the bear loitered around a bit and peered inside the home.

“It was up by the window like, ‘I want more cupcakes,’” the woman said, with dad adding, “He wanted back in, that’s for sure.”

The couple eventually borrowed bear spray from the neighbors and sprayed him, at which point he ambled back into the woods.

SPOILER ALERT: If you’re the kind of person who gets sad at the part in Bambi with his mom and hunters and etc, stop reading now. Because wildlife officials say there’s no possible way to know for sure, but that cupcake eating ball of fur might’ve been the same one shot and killed by police officers with the Juneau Police Department after he walked into another home that same day.

That happened about 30 minutes after the birthday party binge. So if it was you, Mr. Bear, we hope you at least had really delicious memories of that time you ate all the cupcakes. Now excuse me, there’s something in my eye.

Bear with sweet tooth crashes kid’s party [JuneauEmpire.com]

A 16-year-old took a job at a South Dakota Taco John’s, but didn’t sign on for verbal abuse from his manager. Finally, he says, the worst insult came earlier this week when his manager handed him a nametag with “♡GAYTARD♡” printed on it and forced him to wear it for his whole shift, including in front of customers.

The word, a combination of “gay” and “retard,” should be offensive to all human beings, and certainly should never have been inflicted on a gay teen by his boss. The ex-employee claims that his manager was verbally abusive to him from the beginning. “I’ve been very vulnerable and I’ve been allowing him to say things to me that shouldn’t be said,” he told TV station KELO.

The blog NewNowNext, a publication of the GLBT-themed LOGO cable network, claims to have interviewed to the restaurant’s manager, who claims that the now-departed employee himself was behind the offending nametag. “Everyone has a nickname here, and he wanted a nickname. [Gaytard is] what he picked for a nickname,” the manager explained. He counters that the teen asked a manager to make a nametag with the nickname on it, then put it on himself before quitting on Tuesday. “The [other] manager didn’t force him to do anything,” explained the store manager.

In a statement to KELO, the CEO of Taco John’s called the alleged harassment and abusive nametagging “deplorable.”

At Taco John’s, we believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. We take any accusation of workplace harassment very seriously. The type of discrimination that reportedly took place recently in the Yankton, South Dakota restaurant is deplorable. Such actions will not be tolerated by our company. Taco John’s is committed to doing all we can to make certain nothing like this happens again in any of our restaurants.

The ex-employee wants to pursue legal action against the restaurant, and is now looking for a lawyer.

In our June Recall Roundup for food, supplements, and even a few over-the-counter drugs, the mint chocolate chip ice ceram is packed with pistachios, more smoothie powders have contaminated chia seeds, and red yeast pills sold as an all-natural supplement to lower cholesterol contains cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Our monthly Recall Roundups have grown so expansive that we’ve had to separate them into two separate posts: one for consumer goods, and one for consumables.

If you have any of these listed items in your pantry, refrigerator, or freezer, first check the varieties and flavors against the ones listed on the recall site or press release, then check expiration date or lot numbers.

When there’s a match, don’t panic! If an item is listed as having undeclared walnuts and you’re not allergic to walnuts, for example, you don’t have to do anything at all. You can keep the item, eat it, not eat it, or return it to the store or the manufacturer for your own peace of mind.

Items that may be contaminated with pathogens or foreign objects are worrisome for everyone, and you should return them to the retail store where you bought them, or contact the company for a refund and further instructions.

CHIA SEED RECALLAPALOOZA
GreenSmoothieGirl smoothie powder – possible Salmonella contamination
Organic Traditions, Williams-Sonoma, and Navitas Naturals sprouted chia seeds – possible Salmonella contamination

DESSERTS AND SNACKS
Eillien’s Candies Dark Old Fashioned Sponge Candy – undeclared milk
Ocean Spray Greek Yogurt Covered Craisins – undeclared peanuts
Glutino Rosemary and Olive Oil Snack Crackers – possible Salmonella contamination
LiveGfree Rosemary and Olive Oil Multiseed Snack Crackers – possible Salmonella contamination

DAIRY
Velveeta 32 oz. containers – may spoil earlier than anticipated because of preservative error
La Finquita Fresh Farmers Cheese – may be contaminated with peanuts and tree nuts
Smith’s Country Cheese waxed Gouda wheels – possible Listeria contamination
Thrifty Ice Cream Mint ‘N Chip flavor (Rite Aid) – may be pistachio ice cream

PACKAGED FOODS
Wegmans brand bagged ice – may contain metal fragments
Dole Roasted Garlic Tomato Basil soup (Texas only) – undeclared milk

CONDIMENTS AND SPICES
Kirkland Signature Coarse Ground Malabar Pepper (Costco) – possible Salmonella contamination

SUPPLEMENTS
Doctor’s Best Red Yeast Rice – actually contains lovastatin (Mevacor)

SEAFOOD
Vita Classic Premium Sliced Smoked Atlantic Salmon – Possible Salmonella contamination

 

Here at Consumerist, we enjoy the Coke Freestyle soda machine, because if we’re going to drink one or two soft drinks per month, by gosh at least one of them should be strawberry-peach Sprite. Yet we never wondered what’s inside the machine, other than magic. Until now.

A Reddit user happened to spot one of the machines with its cabinet door open, and snapped a picture of its innards. The inside looks a lot like a traditional soda fountain, but also resembles the inside of an inkjet printer for some reason. It’s a flavorjet printer.

In case you were wondering (i.imgur.com) [Reddit]

We all know the hijinks that ensue when no one tells mom the babysitter is dead (reach back to Christina Applegate’s cinematic efforts c. early 1990s), but one 4-year-old girl wasn’t about to let her caretaker get away with lying and take her iPod and piggybank. Nope. So when her babysitter said there’d been a break-in at the home, this little girl busted the whole plot wide open.

“Wednesday was the worst day in my life,” Abby tells WITI News in Milwaukee of the day last week when police say her 17-year-old babysitter set up a fake home invasion with her boyfriend and another male suspect.

“They told us to get out of the house ’cause they wanted to steal stuff,” she explained, adding that the “bad guys” took her “kitty” bank, her iPod, Xbox and Wii.

Police say the babysitter claimed that two armed black men broke into the home, telling cops that one of the suspects looked like the next-door neighbor. He was handcuffed and questioned for several hours, until Abby stepped in.

She told police that they had things wrong — the bad guys who took her stuff were white, not black. Cops say the babysitter’s story then started to unravel and she admitted to the whole thing.

“That was really her being bad. She’s not a good babysitter,” Abby said.

You know it, little lady.

While the babysitter and her alleged cohorts have been arrested and are likely facing robbery, burglary and other charges, Abby is relieved that her family’s belongings are safe now.

“They got it back because of me being the superhero,” Abby said.

Change can be terrifying. Just ask my brother, who ran screaming at a young age when my formerly straight-haired mom came home with a perm. That kind of reaction is exactly why the companies behind Boston Market, Hamburger Helper and even McDonald’s don’t always go bragging to customers when they change products to make them healthier — they’re worried about rejection, just like the rest of us.

Even while consumers are putting the heat on companies to churn out healthier products, those businesses are worried that if they announce they’re cutting calories, reducing salt or skimping on fat, customers will get mad at the change, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Thus, the idea of “stealth health,” as some in the industry call it.

“When you tell people something’s healthy, they think it doesn’t taste good,” Sara Bittorf, chief brand officer of Boston Market Corp. told WSJ.

That company didn’t blare its healthy changes last year, cutting down on sodium in certain menu items but staying mum about it until after the food seemed accepted by consumers.

Executives at the rotisserie-chicken restaurant chain didn’t advertise their efforts in the fourth quarter of last year to cut sodium in mashed potatoes, stuffing and other menu items at its 460 outlets until February—after the items appeared to have been accepted by consumers.

They’re not the only ones — Kraft kept quiet about taking trans fats out of Oreos in 2006 for fear of customer backlash. And General Mills’ customers didn’t want lower sodium in Hamburger Helper so the company didn’t tell consumers about sodium cuts it made by substituting ingredients in like garlic, onion, tomato and spices.

Then there’s McDonald’s. It took the company years to finally settle on its current blend of frying oil, because it made the mistake of preemptively advertising the change, prompting customers to complain that the fries tasted different… before any actual change was made.

Of course, it depends on the product — if you’re already marketing something as a health item with benefits like low-sodium, those customers will expect things like… lower sodium. But you mess with our indulgent items and you’re going to have a problem.

“Consumers say they want healthier products, but they don’t want to compromise on taste,” General Mills’ company’s chief health and wellness officer Maha Tahiri noted of things like the Hamburger Helper sodium situation. “It takes multiple months, if not years, to get the right equation between taste and health.”

And it’s not easy to simply tell a consumer you want them to be healthy, say the folks at Boston Market. They found that out when trying to tackle the sodium situation, and experimented with removing salt shakers from dining tables in 2012 and moving them to the beverage station.

“We had people say, ‘Don’t tell me not to salt my food,’ ” Boston Market’s Bittorf explained.

Despite that, the chain kept salt shakers off the tables and just waited until complaints died down, which they have for the most part, she added.

Some customers say they’d like to know when things change, including one who said he would’ve like to have known he was eating less sodium, because he’s on medication for high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

“I probably wouldn’t have changed what I eat,” he said. “I’d just feel better about eating it.”

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From Oreos to Hamburger Helper: What’s Behind the Recipe Change [Wall Street Journal]

When CarMax, the nation’s largest seller of used vehicles, claims each of its “Quality Certified” cars has undergone a “125+ point inspection,” and that only 1-in-3 of the cars it considers is accepted for sale, you might assume this means it isn’t selling recalled vehicles. This is not always true, and a coalition of consumer advocacy groups allege that it’s a case of deceptive marketing.

Citing this NY Times article from May 2014, the coalition of 11 different groups — led by Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, and including our colleagues at Consumers Union — have filed a petition [PDF] with the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate CarMax’s practice of marketing quality-control while still selling vehicles that require repairs.

“It is inherently deceptive for an auto dealer to represent that its vehicles have passed a rigorous inspection, while failing to take even the most basic step of checking the vehicle’s safety recall status in order to identify known safety defects that have triggered a federal safety recall, and ensuring that the safety recall repairs have been performed, prior to selling the vehicle to a consumer,” reads the petition.

The petitioners claim that CarMax’s marketing — which makes a big deal out of the aforementioned “125+ point inspection,” a 12-hour “renewal” process, and its rejection of vehicles with frame or fire damage — “tend to lull car buyers into a false sense of security.”

See, while it’s illegal for consumers to sell recalled microwaves, blenders, or other products, the folks at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration lack the authority to actually force people people to fix recalled vehicles before they are sold or rented.

CarMax and others oppose NHTSA’s recommendation to Congress that it make it against the law for dealerships to sell un-repaired recalled vehicles. The company is also trying to shoot down legislation in California that would make it the first state to ban the sale of recalled cars until they’ve been fixed.

Thus, the petitioners have asked the FTC to look through the millions of cars already sold by CarMax to determine how many recalled vehicles were sold, then notify the owners of those vehicles that they purchased cars with unresolved recall issues.

One thing that’s not mentioned in the petition but which gives us concern is this statement on the CarMax website:

So even if CarMax decided not to sell a recalled vehicle, it would just send that car over to another seller who could sell it without revealing that there might be a safety issue.

We reached out to CarMax for a comment on the petition.

The company explained that it doesn’t do recall repairs because “New car manufacturers do not give used car retailers, including CarMax, the authority to complete recall repairs.”

However, that doesn’t explain why CarMax wouldn’t just take a recalled vehicle to a dealership and get the necessary repairs done, as it would be free of charge.

CarMax also tells Consumerist that it “provides the necessary information for customers to register their vehicle with the manufacturer to determine if it has an open recall and be notified about future recalls,” without explaining why it doesn’t do these easy checks and then tell the customer about the recall when he or she is purchasing the car.

With regard to its opposition to legislative and regulatory actions that would prohibit the sale of recalled vehicles, CarMax says it “supports federal legislation that requires used car retailers to fix recalls so long as the legislation also mandates that manufacturers fully enable used car retailers to make the repairs. The legislation should require manufacturers give used car retailers all recall notices, the same diagnostic and repair information, and the tools and parts that manufacturers make available to their franchise dealers.”

The odds of such legislation — which would seem to require that every car company to provide proprietary information, parts, training and certification to used car dealers — ever passing are about as good as the odds of me starting at third base for the Phillies.

Wildlife webcam operators around the world are grappling with a problem: Viewers don't want to see any harm come to critters they've grown to love.

A historic estate in Surry County has been sold at auction for $1.4 million.

Whether a funeral procession has the right of way depends on its escort in Virginia, but there is a lot of gray area if drivers try to look up the law themselves.