These are not your father's (or Strom Thurmond's) M&Ms...

I went shopping this weekend for some M&Ms. Regular old, colored M&Ms. I would have even settled for the Valentines Day variety; you know, red, pink, white. Instead, I was stuck with colorless black and white M&Ms. I know this is a gimmick. Help them find their colors, whatever. What are they an ethnic group who has lost touch with their roots? At least let me buy regular colored M&Ms still.

So I was relaying my disgust to Nick. It dawned on me that not only Oreos demand different consumption styles, but so do M&Ms. Some are segregationist -- sorting them by color then eating each color group. Others will eat them believing that each color holds mystical powers. For example, the commercial when we were kids about the little league baseball player explaining to his friend that if he ate a green one before going to bat, he'd hit a home run. Other myths included the green ones held aphrodisiacal powers. Home run....getting laid....coincidence? And who could forget the kids who avoided the red M&Ms because they could cause cancer. I wish I were making this stuff up.

So, let's fast forward to today. We are stuck with black and white M&Ms while this stupid ad campaign continues. Could the folks who adhere to the segregationist method of eating M&Ms be considered a segregationist in the historical, Mississippi sense of the word? I mean, instead of splitting up the reds, greens, yellows and browns now we're splitting up the blacks and the whites. Yikes!

And if you are doing this, which ones do you eat first? And why that color? Is there something deep-seeded that is causing you to eat that color first? Does a Northerner eat a different first color than a Southerner? And I wonder if the M&Ms Company was considerate enough to ensure that there are just as many black ones as white ones in a bag? If not, isn't that favoritism? What does it all mean?! This is all about as metaphorical as bowling. Surely you've heard Nat X's (Chris Rock from SNL) take on bowling. A big black ball attacking 10 white pins with red necks. OK, I'm rambling now.