Complex Numbers

I Scream

"30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  [13+]:
13. National Ice Cream Day
What are your favorite flavors, weirdest flavor you've ever tried, or a flavor you would NEVER try!

"JAFBG"  [XGC]:
Do you think the holiday cheer is genuine or do you think most people are just acting fake around this time of year?

Well. I'm still choosing JAFBG prompts at random here. I was kinda hoping to land on this one to go with today's 30DBC prompt.

See, my favorite ice cream flavor is...

Vanilla.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Waltz, vanilla is the most boring flavor!" If you think that, then you haven't had real vanilla. Only fake vanilla.

See why it's appropriate now?

Look, I'll be the first to admit that I have a weird palette. I can't stand coffee, for example -- though if it's combined with other stuff, like when they put it in beer, especially a stout or a porter, sometimes it works for me. And my taste buds are surely affected by the cigars I smoke - which, also, are a result of having a weird palette; unlike many people, I truly enjoy the taste of tobacco.

I've spent years working on identifying flavor overtones in beverages such as wine, beer, whiskey and tequila. I don't always succeed. When it comes to beer, though, I'm also an outlier: I don't appreciate the same kinds of beer as the majority of other beer snobs. One really popular style, for example, is IPA -- and after having conducted a number of beer tastings, I can identify the thing that puts me off in IPAs: the presence of Cascade hops.

Cascade hops tend to impart an astringent citrus flavor to the beer they inhabit. To me, they taste like grapefruit. And I dislike grapefruit. Oh, I've eaten it, even drank grapefruit juice on purpose, but it's never been something I sought out. That is, until I started taking a statin, at which point, for the first time in my life, I craved grapefruit juice, simply because it was forbidden to me.

Well, that was a few years ago, and I'm over it now. So if you give me a beer with Cascade hops, well, I'll still drink it -- it is, after all, beer, and since you're giving it to me, it's free beer, which is the best kind of beer. Though, to quote Marvin from Hitchhiker's: "I won't enjoy it."

But it's been a trend in beer for many years, and apparently Cascade is one of the cheapest varieties of hops, so a lot of brewers use it. I'm not one to follow trends blindly, though. There are things I like, things I don't, and things (like tomatoes) that I can take or leave, and none of that is dependent on what other people like. In other words, I don't care to fake it for the sake of conformity. There are, as an aside, a few IPAs that use other kinds of hops, and those I don't mind so much.

And thus it is that I proclaim: I like vanilla ice cream. Not that I eat a lot of ice cream these days, but that's all the more reason not to eat the stuff I like less. I'm also a fan of chocolate ice cream, which is far more widely enjoyed, I think -- but the best chocolate has vanilla overtones as well.

At the same time, I can't say I've ever had a flavor of ice cream that I didn't like, to some extent, which is actually more than I can say for beer. Still, I don't think I'd like coffee ice cream. I would totally try it, though, because how do I know if I don't try?

But again, there's real vanilla, which is delicious, and there's the synthetic crap that is probably what gives vanilla its bad reputation. Either way... it is not "plain". Not by a long shot. Real vanilla has a subtle, ephemeral flavor that fills the mouth and coats the tongue, while the fake stuff tastes, to me anyway, like medicine.

Still, I can't say whether other people are pretending to like these things that I don't like, or if they actually enjoy them. I've had some coffee drinkers swear that it's like ambrosia to them, while others have mentioned that they don't really like the taste; they just drink it because it's convenient, ubiquitous, and caffeinated. I can respect that, too; it's just that I use tea and Crack Zero for my wakey-wakey juice.

Which is another thing. To me Crack Zero tastes just like Crack, only a bit less cloying. Other people have had the stuff and despise it.

Incidentally, if there is a worse commercial soft drink out there than Vanilla Crack Zero, I have never encountered it. That stuff is absolutely horrible. I'd say it tastes like ass, only that would be an insult to ass.

I think they use fake vanilla.

Point is, I'm honest with myself and others about my tastes, and I don't do things just because they're faddish - though I've participated in fads that suit me; I don't usually shun something just because it's popular. Which is why I can't really comment on the "holiday cheer" prompt. I'm sure there's a lot of fakery out there, but even if so, I get the feeling that it's a "fake it til you make it" kind of fakery, like the idea that if you engage all the muscles in your face to force a smile, the effort alone can be enough to make you happy.

And if you need that to keep going through the dreary pre-solstice period? Please, go right ahead. Just don't call me Scrooge or Grinch for not following along.

Or do. Whatever. I always have to stop the original Grinch animation before the point where his heart grows. What even is that, anyway? That happened to me once and I ended up in the hospital for it.

There's a certain kind of honesty in fakery, anyway. I know a lot of people complain about other people being "fake," but to me, they're making an effort, and that takes some level of commitment. Like, if you're naturally grumpy but you act all cheery just to get along with people? I'm okay with that. Outright dishonesty can piss me off, but if you're trying to get along, well, that means that you care enough to try.

I'll end with a short anecdote. On one of my cross-country trips in the Before Time, I ended up in Aurora, Colorado. Colorado in general is well-known for its diverse beer ecology; there are many excellent breweries there, though I have no idea how many of them have survived this fucking year. Anyway, this one brewery I hit right around sunset, and there weren't a lot of people around, so I got to talking to the bartender, as is my habit. He quickly pegged me as a beer guy and gave me a bit of their secret stash, which on that day was a stout made with vanilla, chocolate, and cinnamon.

I took one sip of that, and my eyes went wide in appreciation. I turned to the bartender and said, "This needs ice cream."

Any flavor would have worked. But alas -- I had to drink the stuff on its own.