there's no intelligent life down here...

i love frosted flakes ... i never got to eat them when i was a kid - my mother would tell me they're just cornflakes with sugar and there was plenty of sugar in the sugar bowl ... but i loved Tony the Tiger with his red bandanna and his growly voice telling me they're gr-r-reat!
when i became a grup and i had my own money to spend, i bought myself frosted flakes ... the real thing ... from k-e-double-elle-oh-double-good-kellogg's-best-to-you!
so ... when i found packages of frosted flakes with the promise of the coveted Star Trek Beam Up Badges inside...

...see ... it says it right there on the package ... BEAM UP BADGE
INSIDE
...i was ecstatic ... there are five different badges and we had collected four ... last week we found the beam up badge boxes in frosted mini-wheats (fiber), corn pops (gotta have my pops), and froot loops (yuck) ... lots of engineering, command, and Romulan badges ... the Klingon badge was won in a bidding war on eBay ...... but where were the science badges??? not in any of my cereal boxes ... the only science badge we could find was on eBay and the bidding had escalated beyond $30 (can you believe that??? thirty dollars plus shipping - and you don't even get to eat the cereal???!!!) and i had to just say no ... still ... i really, really wanted a science badge (Mr. Spock is a science officer, you know) ... this week they were in rice krispies (okay, not my favorite, but rice krispie treats are pretty good) ... and my all time favorite cereal ... so we bought five more boxes of cereal ... groan ... that makes a total of fifteen (yes, fifteen) boxes of cereal over the past two weeks ... a week's worth of grocery money blown on cereal!!! anywho, we went out to the parking lot and Auntia started ripping open the boxes (excuse me, who is the trekker in this family?!?) and said engineering ... engineering ... engineering ... nothing ...... nothing??? nothing??? you mean nothing as in no badge??? you gotta be kidding me!!! no freakin' badge??? nope, no badge - not one bit of plastic in sight ... Tony the Tiger lied to me!!! the box clearly stated that there was a badge inside, but there was no badge ... ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!
she was down to the last box ... rice krispies ... score!!!
my science beam up badge!!!
woo hoo!!!

this is a picture of the boxes of nutritious and delicious (cough) cereal that we have to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks each day till they are gone ... not pictured are the two boxes in the car waiting to be delivered to Michael Myson (he already has the froot loops) and the four boxes of corn pops that we already ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and while watching movies (Nights in Rodanthe - blech - and Leatherheads - meh) and tv shows (double blech)...

...are they worth it?
do you really have to ask?