Michael Allen's Blog: Michael Allen Online, page 13

Krispy Kreme Has A Process So Smooth You’ll Want Some Today

Krispy Kreme has been in business since 1937, when it opened in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Since then, it has grown to where it makes over a billion donuts a year and we eat every single one of them.

Obviously, Dunkin’ Donuts sells the most donuts a year at a whopping 2.9 billion, according to the Chicago Tribune. But Krispy Kreme is the next big seller with sales of 1.6 billion. According to Lovefood, one single store can make over 20,000 donuts a day, which comes to over 20 million a year. How amazing is that?

The process is so automated but not to the point where it cheapens the quality. Real flour is dumped in huge containers and mixed. That’s where the process begins, and it doesn’t go downhill from there. In fact, it gets more interesting.

People take tours through their local Krispy Kreme and snap pictures or make videos. Obviously, the process is very fast because if over 20,000 are being made a day, that’s over 20 donuts a minute, taking into account that a store is open on average 16 hours a day. So, get the camera out and get it ready because donuts are going to start flying by in no time.

Have you ever wondered how your local grocery store gets fresh Krispy Kreme donuts so fast? There are nearly 400 stores in the U.S. alone, which means that most likely, there’s one right down the street ready to deliver every day or even several times a day.

I don’t know the logistics but I can imagine a truck fills up and goes on a route to deliver donuts all over the city and throughout the countryside. It’s like a newspaper route. The driver simply drives by and throws a box to a stocker who is ready to rush it out to the shelves.

That’s what I imagine and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind. While you think about that, watch how they’re made. I know you’ll be making a trip out to get yourself some later today. They’re great with coffee and coffee tastes better when you drink out of my line of coffee cups. So, two plus two…

Krispy Kreme makes over 20 million doughnuts a year pic.twitter.com/uiMMrGoQdf

— Insider Food (@insiderfood) September 21, 2023

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Driven To Paint: Exploring The Art Of A River In The Ocean

When Chris picks up his brush and begins to paint, he transcends into another world where nothing else exists. Art is one of the main themes of A River in the Ocean as a man explores a life he never knew through his paintings.

The book has now been categorized under Sci-Fi as well as Drama and Mystery because it does have a few elements of supernatural in it. A little girl named Angel lives only in his imagination, and he can’t help but express his relationship with her but through his paintings. The thing is that his other paintings are becoming a phenomenon in high demand. So, to keep her all to himself, he hides those paintings in a secret room only he knows about.

via Michael Allen

To pick up the pieces of a life he knows nothing about after coming out of a coma with amnesia, he starts refurbishing old furniture. It begins with the furniture he found in the old house he purchased. But he catches the fever for furniture, and word gets around that he’s good at it. So he started fielding offers from people in town who wanted their old furniture brought back to life.

That brings him into contact with most of the residents of Fredericksburg, Virginia, the setting of A River in the Ocean. One day, he feels a strange urge to paint. So, he makes a run into town to pick up supplies and builds an easel on his front porch, where he begins whipping out masterpieces. Mountains, country roads, and river scenes are what he’s drawn to at first.

via Michael Allen

As his imagination of Angel invades his psyche, he captures those moments in paintings and loses time while doing it. His first painting of her takes him all night and when he’s finished, he has no idea how he did it or who she is. As their relationship grows, she becomes more real to him. So real, they have conversations like a father and a daughter would.

via Michael Allen

In one endearing moment, he is visited by her and she reminds him that it’s her birthday. His imaginary friend has a birthday? He finds it strange but the moment gets even more strange when he realizes that he built her a dollhouse as if he knew.

After sharing it with her, she takes it to her empty room in his house where she fades away, back into the recesses of his mind. Walking down the steps, he happens to notice that his secret room is open and there in the middle of the floor is a painting of her playing with her dollhouse.

via Michael Allen

He’s not losing his mind. It’s the memory of his daughter trying to fight its way through his amnesia. If he could only remember his life before the accident, he would be able to put it all back together again.

Art is such a huge theme in the book because I used to paint. I gave it up when my daughter was born, but she’s grown now and it really would have been great to introduce her to that artistic side of myself. I could have shown her how to paint.

But she was so full of energy and adventure that painting never crossed my mind while she was growing up. Maybe it will come back now since I’ve been exploring this book on its ten-year anniversary, and it has reminded me so much about everything that I put into it.

The book really is such a part of me and so much a part of her that I consider it my masterpiece. A totally biased opinion because I wrote it, but it’s my heart.

A River in the Ocean – He didn’t know he was looking, and she didn’t know she needed found. Available on Amazon!

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The Slice Of Heaven Chris Carved Out For Himself In ‘A River in the Ocean’

My novel A River in the Ocean explores many themes like family and loss, but it’s delivered with comedic tones and riveting scenes. One of the interesting aspects of the book is how Chris Ferlin built himself a slice of heaven from nothing.

Chris had been in a really bad accident that landed him in a coma for nine years. After waking up, he had to struggle through amnesia to remember even his own name. It wasn’t easy. But once he was able to do that, he could begin putting his life back together, which started with finding himself a place to live.

He had a little help from a social worker who went above and beyond to find out information about him, and she even acted as his real estate agent for a moment to find him an old country home that was for sale. She knew some people who knew some people, so she introduced him to the place. The owner was an elderly lady whose family had to place her in a nursing home. They were motivated to sell, and once he saw it, he fell in love with it. It was a fixer-upper, and he could relate to that.

via Michael Allen

While he struggled to put his life back together, his house became a therapeutic project to him, as well as the broken furniture he found inside. Little by little, he refurbished chairs and dressers, even the bed he found in an upstairs bedroom.

But the outside needed his attention too, and working with wood just seemed to come naturally to him. Somehow, his past life was reaching through his memory slice by slice to remind him of certain things. His love of art manifested itself as he picked up painting as a hobby. His ability to build came through in furniture design but also in how he handled the reconstruction of this old house that had been abandoned years ago.

While his daughter was being raised by a quirky couple on the other side of town and he had no idea she existed, he was working on himself. One project at a time, the house started to become a home, and in much the same way, he was finding himself as well.

via Michael Allen

The dusty living room that hadn’t seen life in years was now a comfortable space where he could proudly accept guests. The only thing he needed was the people who would fill it. No one in his past life knew he was alive because they had lost contact with him years ago, and he certainly didn’t know who they were.

via Michael Allen

The kitchen came to life and once the coffee started brewing, it almost became his favorite part of the home. His imagination would often take over and soon, he was being visited by a little girl he would eventually call Angel. She would come and go as she wished, and it was in the most unexpected times.

The first time she visited, she was four. But this spirit that was haunting him, even while he was awake, progressed to the age of thirteen in a very short time. Every time she visited, he would paint her. He painted her at various stages throughout her life as if he were capturing it for a portfolio. But it wasn’t something he ever wanted to share with anyone. He kept those paintings hidden in a secret room while his landscapes and abstracts were being sold to art enthusiasts worldwide.

Angel became so real to him that he gave her a room and built her a dollhouse that he placed in the center of it. Even though she was just in his imagination and he was fully aware of that, she was the only one he had to hold onto for the time. So, he completed the house for the two of them.

via Michael Allen

A complete transformation from being broken down to having a brand new life, it was what he was going through as well. He had started off lost and broken himself. As he found his way out of the darkness, more things about his life started to come to him, like the fact that he had a daughter. Now, all he needed to do was find her.

His slice of heaven would not be complete until she was a part of it. But the river that runs through us all and connects us is the hope that he held onto that he would one day find her, and they would be reunited.

A River in the Ocean – He didn’t know he was looking, and she didn’t know she needed found.

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Book Facts: The Dream In ‘A River in the Ocean’

A River in the Ocean isn’t a sci-fi book by any means of the genre. But there are some interesting scenes that have elements of fantasy because Chris and Krista share vivid imaginations.

After coming out of his nine-year coma, Chris has amnesia and has to learn about his life all over again. He doesn’t have much to go on but gentle urges that fight through his memory impediment. One of these urges is painting. In his former life, he was an art dealer after becoming bored with corporate investigations. His love for art finds a way into his psyche, where he is led into town one day to buy paint supplies.

While starting with the basics of painting mountains and other rural scenery, his imagination soon sparks the creation of a little girl he eventually begins calling Angel. She becomes so real to him that they start having actual conversations. His paintings begin to reflect these interactions, but he doesn’t include those works with his other scenery. He hides them in a secret room where he keeps them only to himself.

via Michael Allen

Krista is his daughter he doesn’t know is out there somewhere fending for herself. Fate had a way of finding her a home with Maggie and Gilmer, a quirky couple with the best intentions, but they’re figuring out how to raise a little girl as they go. Gilmer is like a kid himself, and Maggie simply tries to do her best to keep the both of them in line in her own sweet, little way.

When Krista catches a fever, Maggie has no idea what to do after it goes on for several days. She tries everything while worrying day and night if her little girl is ever going to come through. But Krista is in a battle for her life, and nearly crosses over.

Excerpt:

Krista was lost in a dark world. She was walking on cold stone in her bare feet, a long winding path through emptiness. Water started splashing with every step she took. She looked down at the stone underneath her feet and the shallow water surrounding her. That’s when she noticed light coming from underneath a heavy wooden door in front of her.

“Do you think you’re ready,” a calm, but strong voice spoke from the dark.

Krista turned around to see who had just spoken to her. She could only see a silhouette of a man, who for some reason had an umbrella. It wasn’t raining. It was just wet on the ground. Krista did not know the man, but she was not afraid of him. There was something familiar about him.

“Ready for what,” she asked.

“To find out,” she heard the man answer.

“To find out what?”

“The secret no one knows,” the man’s words echoed through the vast darkness surrounding them.

“If no one knows, how do you,” Krista asked as she cocked her head with sincere curiosity.

“Because doors have a way of hiding things,” were the words that floated heavily over the silence of the room.

Krista turned and looked at the door again. She was drawn to it, but hesitant about approaching it. What secret? Was it a good secret? Or was it a bad one?

As she cautiously stepped closer, she reached out her hand and grabbed the knob. She took in a deep breath and with that, she found herself entering a house she never knew existed. From just being in the dark to entering a room full of light, her eyes needed to adjust until she saw them. They were across the room at an island in the middle of the kitchen. She did not know the man, but she knew the girl who was sitting across from him. It was her.

Who is that man?

To her right, the staircase caught her eye. She looked up to see windows at the top of the steps. Then, she looked to her left where the front door was open to the porch on a beautiful sunny day. What a nice house, so pleasant and welcoming.

When she looked back toward the kitchen, they both were staring at her. In creepy unison, they said, “It’s time for you to go back now.”

A River in the Ocean

via Michael Allen

The themes that run through this book are obviously what a river means to it, but also what the doors are about and the silhouette with the umbrella. The rest of the dream reveals more about what it means to her and her life, but to talk about it goes further than a spoiler should.

Exploring the connection that Chris and Krista share was an amazing challenge for me to write. I loved working through his life with Angel and the paintings that came out of that while mirroring Krista’s life with Maggie and Gil. I also loved working through this dream sequence and what it put him through while she was fighting for her life.

A River in the Ocean – He didn’t know he was looking, and she didn’t know she needed found. The book is currently available on Amazon!

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Florida Man Arrested For Attempted Hamster Wheel Adventure

There is something really strange about this story of a Florida Man and his Hamster Wheel. The main thrust of it would be why he was arrested, but there’s more I want to know.

So, a guy put together a Hamster Wheel with the intention of taking it across the Atlantic Ocean to London. Okay. He should be allowed to do that. It’s his life, and he just might make it. I’m cheering for the guy. I can promise you that.

But along comes the Coast Guard to say, “Hey, what are you doing there, bud?”

Why is their nose in his business? I can see them checking it out for certain reasons, like when security comes up on you in the bay or a lake to see if you’ve been drinking. Also, if a man is getting ready to cross the ocean in a contraption like this Hamster Wheel, is he on drugs? Is he transporting drugs and partaking of the load? Those are good reasons to check on the man.

But when they determined that he was not, in fact, on drugs or intoxicated, that he was just a little crazy, they should have backed off and let the man go on his way. Why did they push things as far as they did and end up arresting him?

As it goes, they deemed the vessel unsafe and told him to get in their boat. But it was okay in June when the Titan went on a dive with rich people in it and it imploded, killing them all. Where was the Coast Guard to stop that from happening?

Also, how far does it go that law enforcement of any kind is responsible for our safety? Can I still jump out of airplanes? Can I still climb a tree?

I’m not saying don’t try to stop the man. It was a very risky undertaking and would most likely have resulted in his death. But you should only be allowed to warn the man. After that, he’s on his own.

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Scientists Who Lick Rocks Win Special Nobel Prize

Field geologist and stratigrapher, Jan Zalasiewicz has won a special Nobel Prize in chemistry and geology for his groundbreaking work in rock licking. Other prize-winning projects include repurposing dead spiders and counting cadaver hairs.

The Nobel Prize winner is Emeritus Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester. His work has appeared in such publications as New Scientist, Scientific American, and The Guardian. He is the author of The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?, The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey Into Earth’s Deep History, and How to Read a Rock: Our Planet’s Hidden Stories, among other remarkable reads that he has penned. His breathtaking piece on rock licking appeared in The Palaeontological Association newsletter in 2017, where he observed:

“Licking the rock, of course, is part of the geologist’s and palaeontologist’s armoury of tried-and-much-tested techniques used to help survive in the field. Wetting the surface allows fossil and mineral textures to stand out sharply, rather than being lost in the blur of intersecting micro-reflections and micro-refractions that come out of a dry surface.”

Shockwaves torched the earth throughout the scientific community. Dr. Jan Zalasiewicz has been a constant contributor to geology and instrumental in moving the field into the future. But this was work that shook the very foundations of science itself. A sponsored event by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students, this special Nobel Prize is now a documented work in the “Annals of Improbable Research.”

via AP

The award is actually known as the Ig Nobels and to let you off the hook, it is a big joke. It’s an actual award event held at Harvard University but it’s an over-the-top exaggeration of the actual Nobel Prize. The players who put on the live-streamed broadcast have fun with it and contestants need to be lighthearted or they will get their feelings hurt.

Of course, their work is serious. It does contribute in some way to the field of science. But it’s head-scratching work. The kind of work that has most taxpayers scratching their heads wondering if a grant was actually awarded for the time and effort that it took to come to those findings.

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F-35 Went AWOL And Is Facing Formal Charges

Going AWOL is no joke and the F-35 that took off the other day has some serious explaining to do. The Marines don’t take that kind of thing lightly.

It was a beautiful Sunday in Charlotte, South Carolina when an F-35 and her pilot decided to take a flight. They traveled quite a few miles until suddenly, the jet kicked the pilot to the curb and kept going.

According to NPR, “The U.S. military wants help finding the plane, which is believed to have crashed.” Which means, they don’t know for sure!

Everyone knows when you can’t find a jet, it took off for the coast and doesn’t plan on coming back. It’s an F-35 after all. Just a few years ago, the Marine Corps was flying F-18s and now they’re in F-35s. In just a few years, they’ve gone through the F-19, the F-20, the F-21, and now they’re up to the F-35. It won’t be long before the F-36 comes along and they’ll watch it walk by forgetting who they’re holding hands with.

So, the jet kicked her pilot to the curb before the pilot had a chance to do it to her. The problem is, you can’t just run away from the United States Marine Corps. They look down on that sort of thing.

They will hunt her down and if they find her, she might be facing a dishonorable discharge. But if I know anything, she’ll be kicking it on some tropical beach with a drink in her hand in no time. Going 1,200 mph at top speed, she’s probably already there.

Asking people to help look for a missing jet is as bad as it gets. Doesn’t she have a tracking device? Of course, she does. It’s the thing that Air Traffic Control uses to watch planes in their airspace. You know all those dots going in different directions on the computer screens in front of them? That’s what they are. Where is she?

There’s all kinds of stuff. Even an app like Life360 can do it. If I can keep track of where my phone is, why can’t the military find its own jet?

They need to get on that though because if it crashes in the wrong neighborhood, it will get stripped down and sold for parts. We’ll start seeing ads on Craigslist like, “F-35 muffler for sale. Dirt cheap. Just a little damage.”

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Nudity In Hollywood Is Reaching New Levels

We’re not talking about adult films with all their nudity that really should stop trying to class up the joint with lines and acting. These are films and television shows that you can find on Netflix or Hulu that are flashing all the junk without any hesitation.

Hollywood has changed quite a bit. There used to be laws governing the nudity in films and television shows. It went pretty much like this. In films, the nudity had to be modest. Boobs and butt were about all you could expect to see. And for television, it was a no until HBO came along in the 70s.

But that has changed. Hollywood is a brave new world and they are showing everything now. In No Hard Feelings, Jennifer Lawrence walks across the beach totally naked and beats the crap out of kids who are trying to take her clothes. She is literally showing everything and she even body slams one of the guys. It is hilarious because it’s totally unexpected, but wow! What were the negotiations like when they were talking to Jennifer about this level of nudity?

I haven’t seen the scenes yet, but Poor Things is getting standing ovations for the sex it offers. Of course, Emma Stone does have to act like an awkward person because she was brought back to life after committing suicide. She returns naive and in the trailer, even the way she walks is strange. So, imagine the sex scenes having that same awkward motion. Plus, reviewers who have been blessed with watching the movie before its official release are going crazy over how wild it is.

I got into The Righteous Gemstones because it makes fun of all the stereotypes of the fake religious family who is making a fortune and building an empire. But wow! All the penis in the show. I don’t know what it’s trying to say, that penis is funny or just trying to make a statement that there isn’t enough male nudity in shows. But now I know what it’s like when females complain about all the Dick Pics they get in their inbox. Just like them, they didn’t ask and they didn’t want Dick Pics in their faces every day when they are simply trying to enjoy some social media. Here I am, trying to watch a show and smack, the penis slaps the screen and I’m not trying to see all that. Who is?

I’m trying to catch up on Killing It and there it is again. Craig is forced to live in a gym in Season 1 Episode 3 because of his dire circumstances and while he’s on the phone with his daughter, a guy drops his change. It’s a lot of it. Probably a couple of dollars. So, he gets down on the floor to pick up his money. The problem is, he doesn’t have any underwear on, not even a towel around his waist. There I am with butthole and penis in my face again. If this is any indication how the show is going to go, I have a feeling it might turn into another The Righteous Gemstones.

It’s about time we dropped all of our inhibitions about nudity and sex. But I hope people keep wearing clothes in public. We don’t need that much nudity.

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Spotlight On Terann Hilow And Vengeance Bikinis

What would it be like to own your own Luxury Swimwear line and be able to model them yourself? That’s what Terann Hilow does and she does a great job at it.

One look at the Terann Hilow Instagram, and what you might see at first is a gorgeous model with 235K followers growing by the day. But there’s more to the story. The pictures of her in bikinis are her own because she’s the owner, designer, and maker of Vengeance Bikinis, and they are handmade in the U.S.

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She has a huge assortment of bikinis, and they all look great on her. There is no guarantee that they will look the same on you, but I’m willing to bet if you bought a few, you would look great in them in your own way.

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It appears that she has bikinis she has designed for chores such as taking the trash out. This is just about the best promotion for a bikini that I have ever seen, and I would put Terann Hilow on the level of genius because who wouldn’t buy this one after watching her walk around in it?

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With her bikini promotions also comes inspiration every once in a while. What good is an entrepreneur, a go-getter, if she can’t inspire the same greatness out of others? “They asked her how’d you get so fly? She said from not being afraid to fall out the sky.”

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Exercise is one way to stay so fly. It should be done regularly. Every day is what it might take to have a body like hers, but several times a week is recommended at the minimum. To be honest, I need to get back into that. It’s a good thing and I’ve put it off long enough. See, she inspired me!

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Her bikinis have the right amount of variety that anyone should be able to enjoy. Whether you’re going swimming or you just want to sit on a wall while a photographer captures you in your best light.

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Kicked In The Nuts: Pranks That Go Too Far

Kicked in the Nuts was huge back in the day because a guy with an orange wig ran up to random people and actually kicked them in the nuts. The program made its point, but it didn’t make it good enough.

Mike and Patrick Henry are brothers who were behind the Kicked in the Nuts prank show. They actually walked into a Hollywood meeting, and the top execs thought it would be a great idea to prank people in extreme ways. They had the premise that people would be forgiving just because they were on a hidden camera show, even if it caused them great harm.

This was back in the early 2000s, and the Henry brothers looked at each other thinking the same thing. They knew these execs had lost their marbles. They were definitely assholes, that’s for sure. But the Henry brothers got a great idea out of it. They would end up setting up a prank show that was on a hidden camera. Only no one actually ever got kicked in the nuts. The prank was on the viewers.

It really was ridiculous when you think about it. But viewers believed it without a doubt. Mike Henry would run up to people looking like a clown and just randomly kicked them in the nuts with everything he had. They would fall in pain, and some guys would look like they were about to fight. But then, Mike would say, “Hey, my friend. You just got kicked in the nuts.” Then, he’d point at the camera.

That would change everything. Looks of anger became smiles. They’d laugh and hug. It was hilarious. A prank show on prank shows. Even though it proved its point, it didn’t stop anyone from doing increasingly more dangerous pranks. The thing is that these pranks that go too far are never at the expense of the prankster. It’s always at the expense of the unsuspecting victim, and there is very real danger involved.

Just to be real about it for a moment, they are some real dumbasses. That’s what the Henry brothers were trying to say way back then. Why didn’t anyone listen? Do it for the likes.

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