Jelly Beans

Anyone who has eaten 'Jelly Belly' jelly beans, or anything similar, is aware of their remarkable ability to imitate flavors. It's difficult to believe that anyone could make a jelly bean that really captures the taste of popcorn or cotton candy until you've tried one. Sometimes, it's also difficult to believe that anyone would want to capture some of these flavors. But if you think that 'jalapeno pepper' is an odd one... Well, I'm not ready to spoil it just yet. Keep reading.

It was maybe about a week ago that Kate's parents sent her a package that contained various sugary confections, including a box of Harry Potter jelly beans. The yellow box was rather innocent-looking, with the Harry Potter name covering all sides. On the back of the box was a color-coded list of 'unusual' flavors. These were the flavors listed: earwax, booger, bacon, black pepper, vomit, dirt, soap, rotten egg, grass and earthworm. They're trying to be cute, so they just named all the flavors disgusting things, right? Of course.

So Kate tries a bacon one, and she's somewhat surprised at how much it tastes like bacon. She tells me she's scared to try any more of them. I must admit, a jelly bean that tastes like bacon is a bit weird, but I'm sure there are people somewhere in this enormous world who like bacon enough that they'd enjoy it.

Next, Kate gives me a 'soap' jelly bean and tells me to try it. Most people who shower regularly have probably tasted soap before at one point or another, and I'd say this jelly bean wasn't too far off from the real thing. It didn't necessarily taste good but it wasn't totally unpleasant either. So I try another one, this time 'dirt'. This one is pretty close too. Now I'm a bit surprised because I really feel like I'm eating potting soil, and it actually doesn't taste all that wonderful.

So all the jelly beans seem to be delivering what their names had promised. But they have to draw the line somewhere. I mean 'vomit'? I don't believe that. No way. Probably just tastes like a veggie burger or something. I toss one in my mouth.

It tastes exactly like vomit.

Like putrid, gut-wrenching, partially-digested high-school-cafeteria-food vomit. It is by far the worst thing I have ever voluntarily put in my mouth. I immediately start swallowing a bunch of 'dirt' in an attempt to cover up the taste, but it's too late. The vomit-flavored jelly bean has already ravaged my taste buds and left permanent mental scars.

So much for drawing the line. Ugh.

$ony Paystation 3

(A friend of mine recently informed me that rumors are floating around about the Sony Gameslave 3 ... err ... Playstation 3 selling for between $500 and $700 when it comes out. The following was my response.)

I bet they sell about three of them. There aren't very many people that are willing to pay that much for a console. It doesn't matter if the thing can render 800 million shaded polygons per second and toast bread at the same time because price is really what determines whether a new technology sinks or floats. Look at zip drives - they were faster than floppy drives, much more reliable, and they held way more data. Totally superior in every way - except they were expensive. They died without ever catching on because people would rather go through the extra effort of burning a CD that's worth a couple pennies than drop a few hundred on a zip drive and then pay $50 or whatever outrageous price per zip disk.

Remember the Neo-Geo? Neither does anyone else. That was one of those systems that existed around the time of NES/Genesis/SNES. They sold for maybe $600-$700. I knew one person that owned one. Everyone had Nintendo and Genesis at the time because that's what was affordable; nobody gave a damn that the graphics were inferior.

If the rumors are true, Sony is really going to shoot themselves in the foot with this one. A $700 PS3 will sell about as well as a Sony Betamax VCR.