Sunday, June 08, 2008

Tired of fruit that doesn't perform miracles?


Miracle fruit; non-miraculous hand



So yesterday I'm reading this story in the NY Times about these special berries—called "miracle fruit"—that alter your taste buds for an hour or so after you eat them, making beer taste like chocolate and sour taste sweet. (It's a story that ran May 28, apparently, so it's not screamingly timely but that's what happens when I read the newspaper online—I don't know what the hell I'm clicking.)

Anyway, there are these secret roving parties where people get together and eat berries and go nuts, turning into crazed flavor slaves who drink maple syrup and rip the arms off couches to eat them or something. Well, maybe not but I'm pretty sure they ate masking tape. (note: They did not eat masking tape.)

I have a few thoughts about this:

1) I would be tickled if this turned out to be the Emperor's New Clothes. I don't know why, there's just something pretentious about it that makes me want it to be revealed as mass hysteria.

2) All this talk of berries makes me think of when my sister and I were in London a zillion years ago and couldn't stop laughing at the summaries of the porn movies offered by the hotel. This is a paraphrase, but it was something like:

When Rosalind and Alan go to a forest, they are told whatever you do, don't eat the berries because they will make you do all kinds of sex. What do they do? Eat the berries!


3) If you're looking to goose your taste buds, there are cheaper ways to do it than spend two dollars a berry. Herewith, some budget options:

a) If you eat really spicy food, everything will taste like spicy food for a little while!
b) If you eat glue, everything will taste sticky!
c) If you drink hot chocolate and burn the roof of your mouth, everything will taste like sandpaper!
d) well enough of my ideas which I ran out of... let's hear yours!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you lick stamps and envelope seals, everything will taste like cockroach eggs! It's true, pookums.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't eat anything supplied by a guy who calls himself Supreme Commander - unless it was Norman Schwarzkof, because he really was a Supreme Commander.

But I'm wondering if you eat these berries and then had sex, would your partner taste different? If it makes beer taste like chocolate... hmmmmm...

So I suppose it's only a matter of time before these berries start showing up in sex shops under some weird name (like "Sexwow") claiming it can "flavorcize your sex life". And then we'll see Sexwow commercials on Fox right along with those cool male enhancement ads.

And by cool I mean horrible.

Toddrod said...

The only magical food I know of is grapes. Oh wait, maybe they are musical? I forget

Toddrod

Toddrod said...

Heck, I just found out it wasn't grapes that are musical at all! It is apparently beans that are supposed to be musically inclined. How silly do I feel now.

Toddrod

Anonymous said...

If you eat a bunch of Captain Crunch, the roof of your mouth will turn into a dangling meatsicle.

Norman Beats said...

I asked a girl if she wanted to eat the berries once. Didn't work out so well. Also, Taste Sticky is a great band name.

Rbastid said...

They tested this on a live TV show once and the girl had a allergic reaction and her mouth started to burn. They said everything more or less tasted like what these berries tasted like, crap.

Try eatting lemons or lemonheads 20 minutes before a meal and they help boost your taste buds.

Or you can just get shit faced and everything taste good.

Or like me, you can eat a baby and then everything happens to taste like Prison, please send a nail file.