Minimum Safe Distance

Meanwhile, back at the other thing I post about, we have this little guy.

I hope to god you know who this is, but just in case: it’s the baby metroid from Super Metroid. Actually, he’s more properly “from” Metroid 2, because that where he originates, but since Metroid 2 was on the original monochrome Gameboy and Super Metroid was on the Super Nintendo, you get one guess as to which game is well-known and which is an obscure bit of trivia.

I didn’t have a Super Nintendo growing up, and didn’t play Super Metroid until emulators happened, much much later… but I did have a Gameboy, and let me tell you, I played the living fuck out of Metroid 2. At the end of the game, having basically genocided all the metroids on their planet of origin (not a difficult task, since the entire species had about forty members, all living in one small cavern about the size of The Mall of America), Samus encounters one last unhatched metroid egg. Naturally, it hatches, thinks Samus is its mother, and playfully orbits you, making adorable chirping noises and eating pathway-blocking rubble as you stroll through the last bit of cavern and back to your ship. And I mean ‘stroll’ literally — there were no enemies, and no timer. It’s the only Metroid game where killing the final boss doesn’t lead to a desperate sprint to get off the planet before everything turns into explosions.

Over the course of my many, many playthroughs, I gained quite an attachment to this little fella, which made the story of Super Metroid particularly meaningful to me, when I finally got around to playing it. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but spoilers: he dies. I was so sad, you guys.

Therefore, what new soda water we have today? It is a trade name that you probably recognize: good old Fanta, the one that is with the shining-wrapped girls of dance in the advertising announcements of television. But! This one is not hardly ninguÌ  n old Fanta as you can obtain in any overwhelmed; something, as you could have conjectured because I am making this jaw idiot of Babelfish again, this is a Mexican Fanta, fact with the real sugar instead of the maize syrup.

The bottle is very pleasant. He is really heavy and solid-sensation, and the songs him make easiest most comfortable and to maintain the soda water bottle that I have never experimented. More, the label paints ignition, and you have noticed probably now of how much joy that additional little tact. On the one hand, Mexico has still not imagined the sockets of the torsion. Come in Mexico, it obtains with the program. It obtains to some scientists and industrial engineers in this puzzle. Perhaps or puñetas, you can negotiate to us for the technology. You surely have something to interchange, like perhaps… I do not know, conquistadors, or something.

Taste: The man, this one is not very effervescent. In fact, fodder that this soda water has the bare minimum of noise like the one of a gas that escapes necessary to keep to me to accuse it to be flat. (, flat Soda water real estate has a difference different from the taste of the simple soda water uncarbonated anyway, you you knew that? In the union of student in my university of the native city, the machines of the soda water of the old-school had one of those really that spilled the syrup in a cup and added the soda water water, and had an option to use the level water instead of another one. He didn’ flat taste of t absolutely, just was not effervescent. Therefore, there is a certain defined alteration that you can try when goes an effervescent soda water ordinarily completely, and this Fanta does not have that. My point nevertheless: this soda water is absolutely until the requirement in the department of the noise like the one of a gas that escapes).

Acceptable test. Sweet, but not also not particularly saboroso either. Really, the impressive bottle is all this must go for her. The empty bottle feels like her weight more than the majority of the soda water bottle weighs when she is full, he is impressive.

Oh happy blog-readers, rejoice! No more must your seat-edges erode under nervous gluteal shifting as you await the upcoming episode of the Orange Soda Challenge. No longer must you endure the slow march of time, the hours passing leadenly, their echoes the tears of a stone statue dropping into an iron bucket. For lo! It has arrived! Lean back in your chair, relax upon the entire cushion, and read on…

What have we here, within this plain glass bottle, remarkable only in that it is brown instead of the usual crystalline clarity of the standard recyclable soda container? The glue-affixed paper label with its distressed “typewriter” typeface declares this beverage to be a “mandarin orange soda”, as produced by “maine root handcrafted beverages”. I know, I know: you expected me to continue with the joke wherein I provide an inventory of all text printed, suggesting the beverage’s moniker to be something of absurd length and verbosity. Look again — look, look at the photograph above! The entire label is words, and the exercise is futile! (Frankly, I have my doubts concerning the continued efficacy of that joke anyway.)

So. What, you may ask, is this curiously wordy elixir comprised of? The ingredients — sorry, the “handcrafted ingredients” — are listed across the bottle’s neck-label, rather than being relegated to a small box in one corner of the primary device. No doubt they are rather proud of their “carbonated pure water Fair Trade Certified organic cane juice and spices.” In fact, there is no question whatsoever that they are proud — puffed up like an inflated Tetraodontidae, no doubt — of their Fair Trade Certification. The fact is mentioned no fewer than four times, including once on the very bottlecap itself.

With the label taking such dire pains to assure me that the liquid within is handcrafted, pure, organic, Free Trade, and presumably free-range as well, I am possessed to wonder: did they perhaps concentrate too much upon the moral qualities of their beverage, and too little on the gustatory? Because I see no comment here reading, for example, “Delicious!” or “Very Tasty Certified”. Furthermore, their ingredients manifest contains no mention of oranges, unless orange is a spice.

“Godfrey Daniels!” I hear you cry. “You have acquired a beverage manufactured by… hippies!” Undoubtedly, this is indeed the case, for their operation is based out of… Portland!

Amidst your gasps, I chuckle wryly to myself, for you have been fooled: they’re from Portland, Maine. Still, it is undeniable that this flask is a bearer of hippie-water, for the front page of their website features a long-haired man wearing a green, yellow, and red headband, and one of the topic selection options in the sidebar is “bio-diesel”.

But, enough. I have spent too much time judging this book by its cover. I am a thirsty man, goddamnit! It is time to open this potential Pandora’s Bottle and see what waits within.

First, the scent: this liquid’s perfume resembles nothing else so much as orange-flavored baby aspirin. Indeed, I would say it is precisely the same odor. Is baby aspirin a spice?

The liquid within is syrupy, and sweeter than my preference. A certain fizz is present, but understated; it sparkles across the back of the tongue, but quickly flees, leaving you alone with a thick sugar-water texture that coats the inside of your mouth, and not very pleasantly.

Surprisingly, despite the “spices” and the general hippyishness, it does not taste like, for example, tree bark, or dried lichens. It tastes like sugar. To be sure, there is orange, but only in the aftertaste, and fleetingly — like the misty memory of a dream of an orange, which wavers and vanishes upon awakening. Except for ‘awakening’, read ‘swallowing’.

Perhaps I’m coming across as overly harsh. It’s not a bad soda. I would never accuse it of pissing on kittens, for example, or attempt to drag it before the Hague to submit to a war crimes trial. It’s certainly not as repugnant as Fitz’s Premium Swill. But it isn’t going to reign victorious in this competition, not by a long chalk.

Jesus how does Tycho do this every day? I’m like physically tired now.

Hello, friendly! Later in the orange soda water list for the great fight of the orange soda water to the death it is Jarritos, a tuna available of the Mexican soda water much throughout here in Table, Arizona.

It’s obtained a crystal bottle pay duty on-molded pleasant with the of-heightened name, plus an uneven texture pebbled that I conjecture I assume to evoke traditional huts Mexican of the adobe, or something? No idea. It’s done with the sugar and “true; flavor” natural; (probably ‘orange’), and not many chemical agents. I hope that this one makes, since I can buy it in the local overwhelmed one easily, only my experience with Mexican nutritional products well doesn’t gives much hope me. The Mexican caramel is particularly atrocious.

It approves well, the first note of thing I is that apparently, Mexico has still not developed technology of the socket of the torsion. It would have thought that one would be quite early in the technology-tree, but oh well. A ESA… of acceptable. Hmm! Good noise like the one of a gas that escapes, candy but not to dominate. The flavor is orangey enough, but not like the typical orange flavor of the caramel; it’ s more tangeriney.

This is quite good, really! Pleasant going, Mexico!

And hey, look at this! We finally got around to going back to Pop the Soda Shop, and I got a bunch more orange sodas for the Gourmet Orange Soda Challenge Spectacular 2010! There weren’t many left to pick from — just ten — so I got one of each. I figure I’ll take the top couple from this set and the top couple from the last set to do a Final Matchup at the end.

Here we have Beverage Gray’s Company Quality Taste Since 1856 Janesville Wisconsin Gourmet Orange Soda. It’s in the standard glass bottle with an uninspiring paper label, sealed with a blank white bottle-cap, and is made of corn syrup, citrus oils, and chemicals. Not very encouraging!

I’m down with chemicals, though, so let’s give it a taste.

Hmm. Not overly sweet. Not very fizzy. Has a slight orange candy taste, with overtones of something I can’t exactly place, but… you ever visit someone in another state, and the tap-water tastes kind of funny? That’s basically what this tastes like.

Someone else’s tap-water with an orange gummi bear in it.

Not unpleasant, but definitely weaksauce.

Who is this charming fellow? Why, he’s the newest addition to the giant Cute Video Game Monsters Group Photo Cross-Stitch, the Top Dogfish from Mother 3.

Mother 3 has a lot of these sort of portmanteau animal combo-monsters. The weirdest one is the Ostrelephant, and the scariest one is the Horsantula, but I like this guy best. He’s got chicken legs!

He’s also friggin huge, the second-largest character in the scene, which is why it took me so long to finish. The next guy is much smaller (though on the other hand, he has an assload of colors in him).

From the blog of pictures for sad children.

Raichu has a buddy!

This is a Castlevania ghost, specifically the one used in Symphony of the Night and the second DS game, Portrait of Ruin. I don’t get why they used a different ghost for the first DS game (Dawn of Sorrows) then went back to the SotN one for the second, and then changed it again for the third (Order of Eccelsia)… but that’s what they did.

I couldn’t quite tell you which of the three DS Castlevanias I like the best — they each have their ups and downs in terms of linearity vs. exploration, equipment mechanics, spirit collecting, and so on. This is definitely the best ghost of the three, though. PoR’s ghost was just sort of a pissed-off green blob, and OoE’s was a floating severed horse head — which is cool I guess, but an angry horse spirit doesn’t say “ghost” to me the way a burning skullwraith does. I’m also a little puzzled about how such a massive number of horses happened to die, unless the Transylvanian branch of the Mafia was way huge and working super-double-overtime.