My excuse is that I've had no experience with any kind of bacon other than the regular stuff, the stuff that's not coated in maple syrup or other weird nonsense. I thought that's what I had, but I did not.
Bacon is supposed to be cured so that it can't go bad. The worst that can normally happen to bacon is for it to go rancid; that's why they soak it in brine and smoke it and do the other things they do to the stuff. And when bacon goes rancid, it's pretty obvious, the same way you can smell butter or margerine and tell it's gone rancid.
But what I had was bad bacon.
Right out of the f-ing package it was bad; it came home from the store, was separated into two-strip portions and frozen the same night. I don't know how or why it went bad; it smelled fine--but for the strong smell of maple syrup when the package was first opened. (When I put it close to my nose and sniffed, though, I smelled nothing unusual. Weird.)
But after I cooked four strips of it last night, the house smelled like burned chocolate. I took one bite of one strip, spit it out, and threw it away...and dumped the still-frozen bacon atop it. Mrs. Fungus reported that the strips she'd eaten had tasted okay, so perhaps it was confined to a few strips, but it's safest just to get rid of the whole thing and not buy that brand any more. (Corn King.)
I didn't eat the bacon, but because it was the last thing I tasted of what I cooked, I ate potatos cooked in grease from it, and a couple of eggs. I had lots of cramping last night, and I'm not looking forward to the next stage.
So now I know that--regardless of what kind of spices or flavorings it has--bacon should always smell good when being cooked, and if it does not it is because the bacon itself is bad.
The thing that really hurts about this is that bacon now costs f-ing $6 a pound. The price of bacon has doubled since June (but of course there's no inflation)! The government is reporting that inflation is "modest" and "controlled", but the price increase bacon has seen is neither. The prices of chicken and pork have gone up to 150% of their former levels, too.
So, naturally, the first time I ever get bacon that's bad right out of the package, it's when it cost $6, rather than when it cost $3. *sigh*
* * *
Everyone who supported Obamacare wants to be exempted from it. The unions are unhappy because their insurance plans will be taxed at confiscatory rates for being "too good".
The union leaders are saying they don't want it repealed; they want it fixed. "Fixed" in this context means "not to apply to union members, but to apply to everyone else who can't get exempted".
We are continuing very nicely down the "everyone who supported Obamacare wants to be exempt from it" path, and it's not even remotely surprising. The morons who had to pass the bill to find out what was in it, and who accused us on the right of being racists, are learning that there is no right way to do socialism that can result in any kind of success. They will never admit it.
* * *
I'm in the process of rereading Aldrin and Barnes' Encounter With Tiber and while regarding the cover it occurred to me that I didn't know what Buzz Aldrin's given name was.
Mrs. Fungus suggested, "'Buzzard'?"
I just looked at her.
...there followed laughter and a five-minute riff where we tried out different names for his siblings--Chicken, Robin, Eagle, etc--and the family dog, Thomas.
Then I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that his name was originally "Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr", but in 1988 he had his legal name changed to "Buzz Aldrin". Also--contrary to my thinking that "Buzz" was his call sign in the military--it was actually a childhood nickname that came about because his sister said "buzzer" instead of "brother".
Then I discovered that he took Communion on the Moon, and in fact the first food and drink consumed on the Moon were the elements of Communion. There's a trivia question for you!