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Welcome to Off-Menu, where we'll be rounding up all the food news and food-adjacent internet ephemera that delighted, fascinated, or infuriated us today.NEWSThe koala really did like the air conditioning, and wasn’t at all interested in leaving the vehicle, no matter how many times Whitrow softly said, “Come on, buddy.” I am beyond interested in having my own in-car koala, and will be leaving my doors and windows open from now on. KOALAS ONLY, PLEASE.JUICY TIDBITS
- There are tons of caffeine-related memes with wide-eyed animals and Spongebob and an open mouthed Nicolas Cage, and they all say something like “When The Coffee Hits” in Impact font. But that’s not real life, because when the coffee really hits, you end up helping a group of movie theater employees mop up your own vomit. According to the NZ Herald, 43-year-old Bruce Ellery Royal downed five cups of black coffee, then went to the Focal Point Cinema where he promptly puked in the lobby, cleaned it up, helped himself to four bottles of water from the concessions area, squirted said water on other moviegoers, headbutted the cinema manager, and then did a boss job of resisting arrest when the police eventually arrived. (It took three officers to handcuff him, because coffee makes you a strong boi.) At the time of his arrest, he said he was “stressed out, but sorry for his actions.” On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to common assault and resisting arrest. A judge also ordered him to pay a $300 fine, which will almost cover the cost of those four bottles of water.
- Need some additional proof that drinking impairs your judgment? The Derbyshire Roads Policing Unit in Derbyshire, England has some evidence for you. On Monday, a driver on the M1 motorway called them to report a minor collision with another car. He said that the other driver was drunk, and wanted to report it—but he either forgot to mention, or just forgot-forgot, that he was drunk too. “You couldn’t make this up,” the department tweeted.
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“Both arrested. One blew 40 and the other 78. Charged to court.” I like to think that at least one officer said, “That’s what you call a BOGO, boys.” Then they all high-fived and did burnouts in the middle of the road.
- A blind California man has sued Domino’s Pizza, claiming that the company’s website violates the federal disability requirements, because it doesn’t allow blind or visually impaired customers to use their phones to order pizza. “[U]nless websites and mobile apps are designed to be read by screen-reading software, blind and visually impaired persons are unable to fully access websites or mobile apps, and the information, products, and services contained thereon,” the lawsuit says. According to the Detroit Free Press, Guillermo Robles’ lawsuit was thrown out once, but an appeals court ruled in January that it could go forward. Although the Justice Department hasn’t established guidelines and requirements for making apps like Domino’s accessible to the blind, the judges ruled that “did not eliminate Domino’s statutory duty” to figure it out. Bro, if you can’t order a pizza from Domino’s, consider yourself lucky.
- I watched all six episodes of I Am The Night over the weekend, and after four-plus hours of George Hodel’s unrivaled creepiness, I needed something adorable to push all of that out of my brain forever… something like these videos of a koala that climbed into an Australian winemaker’s car. Tim Whitrow was checking on the grapes at a south Australian vineyard, and he left his car door open so his dog could jump in and out. “As I was moving to another part of the vineyard, I noticed that someone else was also in the car enjoying the A/C,” he wrote on Facebook. “It took a fair bit of convincing to get the feisty little fella out.”
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- If you’ve turned to fruit juice in an attempt to make yourself healthier or whatever, here’s a gentle reminder that you’re supposed to drink it with your mouth and not inject it directly into your veins. Again, do not inject fruit juice into your own bloodstream, even if it is organic. A 51-year-old woman in China almost died because she shot up with a blend of 20 different fruits, and her body rewarded her for that decision with liver, kidney, heart and lung damage. She was in intensive care for five days, and the BBC reports that social media users are basically pointing to her and saying “SEE? This is why people need basic medical knowledge.” They’re also using the hashtag #OldWomanPutsJuiceIntoVeins and, personally, the most upsetting part of the story is the idea that being 51 makes you an “old woman.”
- Claire Cain Miller and Jonah Bromwich wrote a New York Times piece about ‘snowplow parents’ that made me say “What the fuccc?” out loud at least a dozen times. In their words, these are the moms and dads who are willing to “[clear] any obstacles in their child’s path to success, so they don’t have to encounter failure, frustration or lost opportunities.” That includes parents like Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, who were allegedly willing to pay up to six figures to scam their kids into college. Apparently, it also includes parents who are willing to do whatever it takes to keep their children from ever eating sauces on their foods.
“Her whole life, her parents had helped her avoid sauce, calling friends before going to their houses for dinner,” they wrote of one girl. “At college, she didn’t know how to cope with the cafeteria options—covered in sauce.” Somehow, getting into college despite being unable to handle sauce, ANY SAUCE, seems one billion times worse than getting into college by paying half a mil and pretending to be a water polo player.