Hi, I'm back.
Also:
Did something I really regetted, participated in a spam eating contest. Didn't much like it, even though I won. In bathroom now, several hours and a half bottle of Bismol after the fact. Lemme 'splain.
As many of you are aware, on most forums there is the opportunity to post large amounts of meaningless [Edit by JeffT, Moderator: Removed offensive language], like "LOL" or "idc" as a single worthless post. This, as we all know, is called spam.
But that's not the point. At the kumoricon forum meetup panel that I went to, the forum's number one spammer was sitting behind a place setting, his name was Mustash, as in mr_mustash, and the fellow running the panel is this guy called Tom the Fanboy. Now, Mustash is the Kumoricon forums' biggest spammer. And so Mustash was the champion of the previous year, having eaten an entire block of spam faster than his opponent.
Mustash was waiting for a challenger. Immediately everyone in the room* suggested that "Tanis should do it," and, well, I had never eaten spam before, and I didn't know what it would taste like, only really knowing that it was something posing as meat. I took my seat at the place setting opposite Mustash and took my knife and fork, one in each hand, and banged them against the table repeatedly, just like orphans in movies do when they demand food. It was freaking go time was what it was.
And Tom said to the crowd that there was a surprise beverage that we could use to wash down the spam with, and he took the lid off the mini cooler, and pulled out two cans. I eyed them up as a cheap generic lemon-lime soda at first, until Tom was careful enough to point them out and made sure everyone in the room understood that no, in fact they were cans of Big K Lemon-Lime Sparkling Water.
I knew better, I didn't touch the stuff. Who am I kidding, I don't know nothin', I'm in a spam eating contest.
And I was eyeing Mustash in the face and getting ready to kick some butt and to chew and not put my mind to whatever it tastes like and pretending that Spam was in fact bacon and that bacon is tasty and good. Mustash, for whatever reason, didn't really seem all that gung-ho about it.
So Tom waved us off and said go and I tore open my can of spam and shoved my spoon in. Now, there's videos of all this stuff on youtube, when they come up I will totally link you guys, but I shoved my spoon in that spam and tried to pull out a chunk. It didn't really work that way, but it slid out as a whole brick of spam. Sure, not to plan, whatever. I tried to lift the spoon out of the block of spam and that didn't work either, in that the spam came up with the spoon. Cries of "lollipop it!" abound.
So I took a huge freaking bite, my first bite of spam. You know how dog food tastes? That's half. The other half is pure salt. It was mind over matter from here on out, folks, that's how bad it was. Chomp, chew chew swallow, chew chew swallow, chomp repeat. Go go go, gotta beat Mustash.
And I look over at him, and he's cracking open his soda, and he's drinking it, remarking about how awful it was, and he would cut just a little bit away from his spam brick at a time, and eat it just like a decent civilized person.
Got massive bites coming off my spoon, and before too long I'm a bit worried that I'm gonna bite into the spoon. Seperate spoon and spam, deploy the fork really loudly, continue having at. Ate the last bite of spam four minutes after Tom said go.
That was really cool, got first place, and one of my prizes was a can of bacon spam. The other was Pepto Bismol. Heh. And so I decided while I waited for Mustash to finish eating his stupid spam that I would eat the bacon spam right in front of him, hoping to double lap him. And I started in on the bacon spam, and the sheer saltiness of the spam got all into my sinuses and made it all terrible, made me shudder and made it hard to chew and swallow. Felt like I was gonna barf. And so with really good judgment, I stopped eating of the bacon spam. Best idea ever.
Mustash never did finish. But in a spam-eating contest, there are no winners, only losers.
[Edit by JeffT, Moderator: Removed offensive language]