I’m thinking about starting a band called Ugly People Flirting. I’ll be the singer, of course, who specializes in an Axl-style serpentine dance, and will need some badasses on bass, guitar, and drums to supply the wall o’ rawk. Our first single: “We’re All Ugly Now.” If anyone’s interested, please drop me a line. Pussies need not apply.
A few days ago I drove to work in an Atlanta-style rain. Those of you who have lived in the South know what I’m talking about. It’s the kind of downpour where you can’t see beyond your hood, and the drops are pounding so hard it feels like the roof of your car is going to cave in. I never tired of hearing the reactions of non-Southerners to one of those so-called gully-washers. Good stuff.
The best, of course, was Nostrils who was so shaken by a North Carolina storm he pulled over beneath a bridge, shit his pants, and made a panicked call to Nancy to bring him clean underwear and ointment. Heh. Not necessarily in that order.
It’s rare that we get a pants-shitting rain up here, but there was certainly one on Tuesday. And I-81 was lined with vehicles pulled to the side of the road with their flashers on. They all said fukkit, and threw in the towel. I soldiered on, needless to say, but the other drivers were traveling at roughly 20 mph. I was three minutes late for work, which really boiled my peanuts; my OCD was spiking and throwing off flares.
When we moved to California the locals always talked about “the rainy season” (what is this, Fiji?!). And they assured us we’d NEVER seen anything like it. I was skeptical, but they kept repeating their warnings until I started to wonder if it might be true. And if it was worse than Atlanta – holy crap!
Then the “season” arrived, and every few days there would be a light mist of rain. And everyone would flip-out, fully. All TV programming would be replaced by wall-to-wall Storm Center coverage. People would crash their cars and drive off cliffs… Trains would come off the tracks, catch fire, and go ripping through orphanages. Terrified office workers would fling themselves off the roofs of skyscrapers… I couldn’t believe it.
“This is it?” I shouted. And they all sneered at me, and said, “Listen to Mr. World Traveler over here. He’s not affected by anything, because he’s SEEN IT ALL.” It was highly unsatisfactory.
Last week, at work, someone brought in a bar of Russian chocolate. It was big, the size of a paperback book, with a weird from-a-different-era wrapper. It looked like something Buster Keaton might eat in one of his movies.
But I was told that it’s the best chocolate in the world, that there is nothing better. Russian?? I don’t pretend to know everything, but don’t associate Russia with gourmet candies. Am I wrong? Something seemed askew, but I had to try it anyway. The words “best” and “chocolate” draw me in.
So, I snapped off a square, and immediately smelled something unappealing. It was like our dog’s breath, or possibly Long John Silver’s dumpster run-off. There was a definite fishiness to it. And what the hell, man?
I put it in my mouth, and it has to be one of the top five worst things I’ve ever tasted. I think I audibly gasped when the “flavor” took hold. It was horrible and crumbly, and seemed to immediately grow in size. It tasted nothing like any chocolate I’d ever encountered; it felt like I had a block of yeast in my mouth.
My eyes widened, and I sprinted for the trash can. I didn’t spit, I just let the horrible thing fall from my mouth, as everyone laughed and laughed. Except for the woman who brought it in… She just shook her head and walked away. And I tasted that crap for the rest of the night, and smelled it, too. I think the stink was clinging to my nose hairs.
Absolutely horrible. Those Russkies can take their terrible candy, and ram it deep and on a slant. Blecch.
What are the worst things you’ve ever tasted? Does anything stick out in your mind? If so, we’ll need to know about it. I ate something at an Indian buffet, many years ago, which I’ll never forget. I don’t know what it was, but it’s definitely in the Top 5 alongside that horrible chocolate from a few days ago.
But what about you? Please use the comments link below.
And I have to drive 36 miles, each way, to work today, to attend a three-hour training class. On my day off… So, I’d better stop here.
I’ll be back soon, possibly Friday evening. Definitely before Monday… I probably shouldn’t use the word definitely, but I’m throwing caution the wind.
Have a great day, my friends!
Now playing in the bunker
Buy Jeff a beer, he could use a beer.
Worst taste: horehound candy. It’s just a cruel trick to play on a kid. I’m convinced no one actually likes the stuff.
My wife thinks it tastes like some kind of terrible medicine. I, on the other hand, grew up with the stuff in southwestern Wisconsin. I kind of like it, but it’s hard to find any good stuff in the central California.
I think “chitlins” would definitely fit here–apparently I ate one or two spoonfuls in 1978 during a Thanksgiving dinner, but 3 year olds are pretty damn stupid, and I’m sure that I probably didn’t chew. Flash forward to 1985, more “chitlins” (for Christmas!!!), and I was sick as a damn dog just by smelling them. That chocolate McDonalds shake probably didn’t help, either, so Christmas ’85 was spent watching the Stooges on our 30 pound, wired-remote VCR and making sure I got to the damned toilet on time.
Fast forward to 2000–my piano teacher/boss makes “chitlins…in the French manner.” (…the fuck?) He claimed that they didn’t stink as much as the regular way, and I was too afraid to open my mouth and tell him he was a liar. Then I proceeded to drink a good deal of his expensive liquor to get the smell/taste (you know, something stinks sooooo much you can taste it) out of my mouth.
“Chitlins” should be called “shitlins”, since that’s where they come from, smell like, and are filled with WHEN YOU BUY THEM IN THE FUCKING SUPERMARKET!!!
(Then again, I consider pig snouts pretty damn good. Go figure.)
“shitlins” LMAO!!!!!!!!!
close 2nd
I like horehound, and 2 of my kids love it….different stroked for different folks, I guess.
(First time posting)
Second 🙂
No offense intended, and should I receive any in the future, I now know where to forward it!
I’ll be the rhythm guitar/back ground vocals guy in your band…..I get uglier each year.
Bad tasting food ? I went to India for a 2 week visit back in 1999,,,,,I don’t specifically remember what particular dish(es), but I basically lived off of rice and nan bread…….something about watching people defecate on the sidewalk right outside the restaraunts kinda ruins the ole appetite……
You should do a commercial for “Travel to India!”
I once took a big swig of rotten YooHoo. Maybe the seal was broken on the bottle, I don’t know. I was crying between gagging and trying to scrape my tongue clean of that awful taste.
I did the same thing with a carton of strawberry milk when I was about 8. IT HAD LUMPS. My mom couldn’t pull the car over fast enough.
I am a mediocre to shitty guitar player, but I want to be in UPF.
The worst taste I have ever experienced has to be Yuengling Lager. Yuck!
BLASPHEMER!!!
Pickled Herring… YUK!
i once did a shot that someone made up at a party called a “brain hemmorage” the schnapps curdles the Irish cream and the result looks like a brain floating in your shot glass. The grenadine adds the hemorrhage affect. it was disgusting, i was clenching my jaw trying not to vomit, it was all chunky and shit uughh. a close second was when i did a straight shot of jack daniels, grosss!
Oyster Shooter. Raw oyster floating in vodka with Tabasco on top. Individually, all good stuff. Put them together and they’re obnoxious. Sort of like frat boys.
Squid stew. In Portugal. All the vino verde in the world couldn’t rid my tastebuds of the awfulness for the rest of the evening
Indian pickle. I love Indian food and eat it whenever i get the chance, and i love pickles, so i thought, ‘Indian Pickle! Two of my loves!’
I thought that I would die. It was filthy horrible, and erased all the Indian food goodness that I had absorbed. I had to go back to the buffet and eat through another plate before my nose stopped bleeding.
Stilton cheese. I was told it was special cheese from England. I suspect there’s no such thing, and it was the panty scrapings from an aged hooker who died wearing those panties some weeks before she was found and the panties scraped. Nothing got rid of that taste or the smell except for time. Straight shots of scotch did nothing to get rid of it. I just had to ride it out like a bad trip.
That’s cuz you did it wrong. Stilton is best with a good red wine; I’m sure the scotch just made it worse.
laughed till i threw up on that
We call Stilton “Ass Cheese” around my house.
I used to work with a lot of Vietnemese folks…. and we always had snacks on a vacant desk…. Well, there were some chips there one day… and some girlfriends convinced me to try one…. I think it might have been shrimp flavored, or like 2 week old dead fish flavor… and it was horrible… and like you Jeff, I stopped chewing and let it fall out of my mouth into the trash can…. so effing nasty…
Shrimp Chips! I will second you on that one. I go to the local oriental market for some stuff you can’t get in my regular market like cellophane noodles and such but I also like to try neat snacks. I saw them on the shelf and I was intrigued. I like shrimp, I like chips. So I bought a bag. They were kind of puffy like cheeze doodles and didn’t smell overly bad, so I popped one in the ol’ food hole. Immediate disaster. I sprinted for the sink and down the disposal it went. Two week old dead fish sitting in the hot sun with a rotten seagull on top was my estimation.
However, as I prepared to toss the whole bag away I noticed all three of my dogs crowded around me literally drooling. Experimentally, I tossed one in the air and was nearly trampled by three 50 pound dogs scrabbling to get their snout around the chip first.
Best. Dog. Snak. Evar. I used them there after for training or for special times. They used to listen for the bag crinkling. The ensuing stampede was always hilarious. However, they always had the worst eye watering, loudest, ass ripping farts after….
Earwax.
A boogah.
Can’t think of anything particularly nasty I have eaten. Benefit of being a picky eater, I guess; I always smell anything new before I try it and if the texture looks too much like snot, I won’t try it. I have had a problem many times with accidentally getting a big gob of fat in my piece of steak and that is always gag-inducing.
How can people eat anything without smelling it first? That’s why I could never eat liver – blech.
Last night I went to happy hour. After happy hour I went to a Turkish bath house. I met Charlie Sheen.
He made me reenact scenes from Red Dawn with Charlie Sheen. He told me to make myself useful. My sister lost her shit. I told him what he said was wrong.
Worst thing I ever ate….a Blind Robin. For those of you not familiar,, it’s pickled herring all brined up and sold in bars. It comes in a package stapled to a piece of cardboard, like peanuts or other bar snacks. HORRIBLE!
I remember. Where was that?
Eric’s
Figures!
holy shit, someone else mentioned Blind Robins – I was just getting ready to write that. We used to make different fun bets in a local bar up in Chicago – the loser had to eat a blind robin. I think that was the only way they sold any. I’ll bet if I went back there after 30+ years, they STILL have the same ones hanging behind the bar.
Close second: Braunschweiger. I’ve never eaten a dog turd, but if I did, I’m sure it would taste similar.
Funny story about abuse from my childhood. My old man loved that shit. One day makes me a sandwich. I don’t like it, but he forces me to eat the whole fukkin thing. I puked right on the kitchen table.
Blind Robin thread……….
http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/Blind-Robins-m319687.aspx
Bliiiiiiiind Robin……Yum!
Just kidding. I think Tucker Max ate one of those and got a parasite.
I once had some Chinese neighbors that often left boxes of fish in front of their apartment door.
I can’t stand any sort of fish smell – particularly tuna fish.
there’s only 2 things in the world that smell like fish, and one of them is fish.
Lamb is on the top of my list. I know, I know, a lot of people love it but I can’t even be in the house when it’s cooking. Lamb chops, leg of lamb, lamb stew – take that shit across state line and I’ll still be able to whiff it. And could there be anything worse than a street vendor on a hazy, hot and humid NYC day cooking up gyros with the smell of lamb hovering in the air? If you think that’s appetizing, take a good look at the fingernails of the guy serving you. Bon apetite.
Lamb is up there on my list, too. Disgusting.
My aunt raised sheep. We had one of them as Christmas dinner one year.
I second your vote.
[The flavor was marred by the fact that us kids had bottle fed the lamb – he was more of a pet than a meal!]
Muktuk, which is whale blubber with the skin of the whale still attached. Pickled seal flipper. Jameson’s Irish Whiskey.
I have absolutely no talents worthy of being in a band of any sort, so I’m sure I’d fit right in and be very useful to Ugly People Flirting. Maybe I can jingle a tamborine and sway back and forth beside the drummer. I’m rather, shall we say, unattractive, so that’s a plus (I suppose).
Balut in Subic City. Very nasty and it felt like I has a little feather in my throat all night, probably because I did. Couldn’t get that little bastard up or down.
Way back in the day I was at a seafood buffet, yah, what could possibly go wrong at a seafood buffet 1000 miles from an ocean?
Anyway I was shoveling fried shrimp into my piehole Homer Simpson style when I bit into one who must have fallen on the floor a week or two earlier and was found that day and fried up. I have never before or since had something so rancid in my mouth. I gagged, spit it out on my plate, wiped my tongue off with a clean napkin and chugged a full beer buy it didn’t help much.
I’m a little more careful aroud seafood these days.
More off topic than my last post, Go Bearcats!
Bearcats. Grumman F8F?
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Yes, also the binturong whose anal glands secret musk that smalls like cornchips, and of course the mascot for The University of Cincinnati who I am hoping make bitches out of the ohio state buckeyes.
Wish in one hand and shit in the other. Which one filled up first? HA!
Actually it was a good game and yes I was worried shortly after the second half started.
So now I’m being treated like a virgin commentator and must wait for moderation? Does this mean I can’t be in the band?
Ugh. Taramosalata at a Greek restaurant in London. Absolutely horrible.
Because it had been featured in so many old 40’s cartoons, Three Stooges shorts, etc. I decided to try some limburger cheese just to see what all the fuss was about.
I bought a little package of it at a gourmet sort of grocery store. It looked like an innocent package of cream cheese. But as soon as I started to unwrap it I knew this was going to be more of a challenge than I expected; it reeked like a neglected garbage truck.
I went ahead and put a chunk in my mouth, because, hey, this is a classic cheese that’s been around for many years, it must taste much better than it smells. I thought maybe it was one of those strong “adult” flavors that I, as an adult, could now appreciate.
It was like eating the moist scrapings from the darkest corner of a hot summer dumpster, mixed with condensed armpit juice. I couldn’t take it. Even after spitting it out, my tongue stayed coated with the stuff. It had an aftertaste of rot and ammonia that couldn’t be gotten rid of.
That was many years ago. Now I’m thinking I’d like to give it just one more try…
Oh man, I love limburger cheese.
Yep, ammonia, that’s what I got, too. I was even cleaning with ammonia right before I tried it and thought I had some ammonia still on my hands. Not until the third taste did I realize it was the friggin’ cheese!
I can suggest Mike Lumer for your band. He’s not Russian, but looks the part; and a damn good drummer besides.
I have been caught in a Midwestern Thunderstorm. This was on I-90, sonewhere around Gary, Indianana. OMFG. Did I mention I was on a motorcycle, and 1000 miles from home?
As for the chocolate, next time look for a product of Belgium or the Netherlands. Maybe South America.
I have no “worst taste” at this time, because I have yet to taste either sea urxhin sushi or durian.
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“urchin”, that is. Fucking android on-screen keyboard.
Urchin sushi, when I tried it, tasted like the air does at a New England beach. It wasn’t gross, just really really weird.
Really! Perhaps the “challenge” was overstated. I do love the taste/smell of the air at a New England beach, and I don’t find it weird at all. Just kinda salty and seaweed-y, with a vague undercurrent of death and decay like any seashore.
Thanks for the encouragement, MiniPeds; I’ll have to give the uni a chance next time I’m in a good sushi joint.
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Sea Bass. Actually it was Sea Bass au gratin. Years ago at a Red Lobster in Orlando. I’m not much on fish to begin with but the picture on the menu looked damn good. Most gawd-awful fishy-est tasting, nasty foul smelling cheese covered plater of dead fish ever. One bite and I was done. Couldn’t even salvage the cheese.
The worst thing I’ve ever tasted? It’s a tie between haggis and licorice.
First thing that comes to mind is caviar. We eat sushi often but didn’t expect the caviar “topping” on one of my sushi orders. (Btw…I only eat cooked sushi….). It was just horrible. I can’t believe people spend a small fortune for those little turdlet’s.
Cough medicine. Ugh God. If I need to take that shit, I instantly forget about my cold and cough because I’m busy throwing up.
One Christmas, being in a somewhat lofty mood, I got Beloved some caviar. I wanted to do the whole thing – the chopped egg, toast points, etc. He loves it and it was one of those things I wanted to try. I almost pulled a Tom Hanks in “Big”. Blech. I couldn’t wipe my tongue fast enough. I downed 1/2 bottle of champagne. Plus, that shit is salty!
Jeff, I could easily draft a backup band for you. It would be a three ring circus of beer, chemicals and mental illness. Ugly in a different way.
I had eel sushi in NYC once, and even though it was cooked, I couldn’t get that damned taste outta my mouth. Pork belly cooked in a clay pot at a Cambodian place comes pretty close too — gummy, sticky, fatty, unappealing. Blecch.
BTW, ugly does travel in packs.
Always wondered what that stuff was my parents used to buy from those creepy kids in their little town. Supposedly it was chocolate, four ounces for $12 or something, to support some vaguely described athletic endeavor. Now I think it must have been Russian chocolate. Thanks for clearing up that little mystery! I think my parents bought it just to keep bad things from happening to their property. They would put it in the freezer, and after several months of no one touching it they would throw it out. Even my little sister wouldn’t eat it. She would eat just about anything, and loved candy of all kinds.
I drove through a storm in Indiana one time when I thought my silly little car was going to get washed off into the ditch. I knew there was a truckstop coming up soon, so I plowed through to the exit, where I had a hard time finding a place to park. The storm raged on for another half hour or something, and when I could finally see out the windows the truckstop lot was flooded and there were trees torn up all over the place. I’ve seen a lot of Midwestern storms where it rains sideways and washes out highways, but that day in Indiana I thought it must be the Apocalypse or something.
Way back in the middle of the last century, we had some amazing electrical storms in Iowa. I used to sit on the porch and get soaked, watching the show. I miss those. Many years later, I stood in the living room of a house in the Rockies with several other people from, well, some place they don’t have thunderstorms I guess. We watched a pretty frisky one approach and when the thunder started to get loud the others started freaking out. “What’s that?” they yelled, almost in a panic. Um, a thunderstorm? Kind of a puny one, but fun to watch.
I didn’t eat it but just finished reading on The Drudge Report about the Russian [Ukranian) Mafia beating one of their gang to death with a hammer then deboning and skinning him and cooking him in a stew and eating him.
Man that’s hard core. Makes the Eyetalians look like pussies.
Speaking of the Russkies:
http://www.coolhunting.com/design/museum-of-soviet-arcade-machines-moscow.php