You Are What You Eat...

I wrote a "poem" for a final project in high school about a man describing his love for a woman in candy terms. One especially compelling couplet was, "Your glowing eyes and flowing hair / Could rival even gummi bears." Also, if you remember, one of the early posts on this blog has me describing "Fructor," the god of candy-- he has licorice hair and jolly rancher fingers. These facts put me in mind of the axiom, "you are what you eat," and how I seem to keep returning to that theme in my thoughts.

It makes me wonder what candies I would ideally construct myself from, if such an awesome thing were possible. I would want to maintain a certain level of functionality as a candy man, but I also think that a flight of fancy requires some jouissance, throwing caution and impracticality to the wind. Additionally, I think that I would want to be able to enjoy eating myself if ever I was stranded without food, or when I felt my life had reached its proper end.

Not the Candy Man I am talking about...

All these things considered, I would want to have a variety of different tastes and textures for the big end-it-all. A completely sour or fruit-flavored body would make my last supper a bit monotonous and blase. Additionally, all hard candy or all soft candy parts would be texturally unsatisfying. Aside from these aesthetic concerns, however, the biggest thing to consider is the material from which the teeth would be constructed. One must be able to chew himself, in all his textures, in order to eat himself. My initial idea on that note is that the teeth should be made of a specially dense variety of Jolly Rancher. As candy eaters know, a normal Jolly Rancher might not be ideal, because the candy tends to shatter into shards when bitten. One would not want his teeth to splinter in such ways. However, if a denser JR could be constructed, that candy would make perfect teeth, because JRs are great to just leave in your mouth for a long time for flavor, and they tend to stick to your teeth when bitten. If one's teeth were made of JRs, not other parts, one would not have to worry about the JR parts of the body sticking to the teeth. I hope that makes sense.

Still not right...

Past that pragmatic concern, though, I am uncertain how I would construct myself per se. I have some basic ideas of what kinds of candies would HAVE to be a part of my candy-Voltron-type body (readers of the blog can guess what a number of those are) but the difficulty, I think, comes in the subtle details. When eating oneself, for instance, what surprises would one like to find? Would fingernails and toenails be of the same substance? If hair were made of licorice, say, would it be of one flavor or multiple? Would sets, like legs and arms, be matching, or would they be disparate? These and many other questions linger and make me think that the candied body is something that will continue to occupy my thoughts. Such a wondrous possibility must not be fired off in a matter of minutes for some high school poem. It must be more carefully considered.

Nope.

Birthday Candy

A couple of weeks ago, it was my birthday, and I celebrated by having dinner with some friends. I was already seated at the restaurant with a couple friends as two more entered with a gift for me: birthday candy. How did they know? Is it possible that I have spoken about candy in their presence? I must have, because the choice of candied gift was sublime-- Starburst Jelly Beans.

These little beans are the perfect blend of Starburst flavors and jelly bean texture.

The best part about the gift (aside from the fact that I got me some candy) is that my friends got me good candy, in a large bag. Those details mean they have been paying attention. Sometimes I prattle on, and it might be pretty easy to tune me out. However, my diatribes about hybrid candies and generous portions must have sunk in, as they avoided the surprisingly inferior Sweetart jelly beans and went with a proven, "family-sized" product. Though I wonder at the additions of Green Apple and Grape flavors (as these are not flavors of regular Starbursts) I find the Starburst Jelly Beans to be the perfect size-- small enough that you get more flavor than neutral jelly center-- and having vibrant and non-cloying sweetness.

While this gift reminded me of the importance of knowing your friends, it also puts me in mind of the joy of occasion candy. Already this year, I have received a ton of candy attached to special occasions. At the year's beginning, I was still munching on a few pounds of Xmas goodies. In February, I was home to visit the family, and I got a Valentine's assortment that included one of the strongest candies of all-time: Sweetart Hearts. The family was paying attention, too.

The gold standard.

Later, at Easter, friends and I gathered to share a tremendous meal and ate a couple of sleeves of caramel Cadbury eggs. Then there was my birthday. And coming up is Halloween and Xmas again. It is nice to think about what a place candy has assumed in American culture. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of diabetes. The candied life.