Are we reaching the bottom of the barrel? Are we running out of things to rank? A day may come when the supply of things to rank fails, when Steve and I forsake our weekly foray into meaningless listicle nonsense and break all commitments to carrying on this ridiculous tradition, but it is not this day. No, today we rank violations of the Word of Wisdom, in order of least to most sinful.
As always, these rankings are authoritative.
- Wheat you didn’t personally grind by hand
- Loud Laffy Taffy
- Steaks cooked past medium-rare
- Candy cigarettes
- Tobacco on non-bruised cattle
- Non-wholesome oregano
- Snorting angel dust
- Cool Ranch CornNuts
- Licking the vanilla extract that spilled onto your finger while making cookies
- Barq’s Root Beer
____________________________________________
[1] Honorable Mentions
- IBC Root Beer in dark bottles
- Cooking wine in your pan sauce
- Snooze buttons
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
What about “non-refrigerated grape juice”, like Jesus used to drink?
That awkward moment when you’re caught buying vodka to make your own vanilla extract, making #2 possible.
Vodka is solely for pie crusts.
where do mild drinks made from barley rank?
This day, we FIGHT! LOTR for the win.
Oh, also, snooze buttons should clearly be ranked higher. Maybe highest.
Cool-Ranch Corn Nuts are ok, as long as you feed them to your ox.
For a minute, I thought you’d forgotten meth, but then I remembered that people are really productive when they’re on meth, which is ostensibly why it ranks outside the top 10. I mean, you of course violate the word of wisdom doing meth, but at the same time you get all your home teaching done, your wife’s visiting teaching done, and several lessons prepared in advance. Pluses and minuses, pluses and minuses.
The footnote about IBC root beer…
Years ago, my wife and I were drinking some of those with a picnic in the mountains outside Provo. A bishopric looking guy drove by in his minivan and gave us the most piercing glare imaginable for drinking the devil’s brew. To this day, I can’t bring myself to drink bottled root beer in public. I’m a closet rootbeeraholoic.
fuddy-duddy – your story reminded me of one of my own. My grown daughter and her husband were moving out at the end of a UVU semester in Orem (they managed some single student housing). They’re not active, and they’d heard that the ‘best kept secret’ of finding moving boxes in Utah County was to get them at state liquor stores (when half of Provo/Orem are moving on the same weekend).
So I’m carrying out their stuff in Vodka boxes and all kinds of liquor boxes I’d never even heard of (I don’t drink), and stacking them in our car. The piercing glares and incredulous looks of disgust on some of the students faces walking to/from their apartments were priceless – they almost made me laugh out loud.
fuddyduddy, your experience is exactly why i DO drink bottled root beer in public!!! :)
Do please let us know when you are finally done ranking. At which point the BCC will then rank all your rankings. Authoritatively.
*BCC Community*
What about eating lots of meat during the summer? I am afraid I am guilty. Not to mention I eat grains that are really intended for cattle.
By angel dust, I assume you mean those bits of glitter that remain after an angel ascends. Snorting them does make you a little higher than you were before.
What about mixers?
My father-in-law likes to tell about the time he (then a Food Sciences major at Utah State) made homemade root beer for an Elder’s Quorum function, with a recipe that used yeast, I guess? It must have, because after everyone had had a bottle a new convert came up and informed him that this root beer tasted like alcohol.
Wimps. The lot of you. You simply have no idea how to sin. I suppose that’s a good thing.
I assumed Corn Nuts of all kinds were covered by the “Oh be wise, what can I say more?” commandment. They are the devil’s dandruff.
If you could liquify lipstick that’s what Barq’s root beer would taste like
Un-Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Phew! Code Red Mountain Dew didn’t make the list. My recommend’s safe.
In other news, Brian wins.
larryco_says: if the olive oil is in a container that is not too tight or revealing, it can maintain its extra virginity for a longer time. Nobody wants to make a salad dressing with oil that has lost that which is most precious about it.
“Steaks cooked past medium-rare”
Only in the summer.
Q: Why do you always invite two Mormons to your picnic?
A: Because if you only invite one, he’ll drink all your Barq’s.
Ah, flashbacks to best of EFY firesides in the 90s and how using the snooze button is exactly like telling the devil your physical body rules your spiritual body at the start of the day. Breaking the WoW indeed. .
O’Douls is a mild drink from barley. For the root beer drinkers of stouter constitution.
Thanks for the explanation Kristine A. I have never heard that explanation, or even that snooze buttons were a problem. Lol.