At this point, even I think we may have taken this whole thing a bit too far.

There are some things that I pretty much just always love to eat. One of them, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, is bacon.

That's not a surprise to anyone, right? Or have I been too subtle?

Anyway, another thing I pretty much always love to eat is jelly beans. Any kind of jelly beans. Gourmet jelly beans like Jelly Bellies; plain old Brach's jelly beans; those weird Starburst or Jolly Ranchers flavored ones that get reduced to like 95% off after Easter because no one else will eat them; the crappy generic ones you buy in the Hudson News at the airport. . .

. . .the point being, I am an indiscriminate lover of jelly beans, and a well known lover of bacon. So it may surprise you that "squeals of delight" were not my immediate reaction upon seeing this:

Yeah, that's right. Bacon Flavored Jelly Beans.

As I said, my first reaction did not include squeals of delight. Instead, it included a sense of fatigue, an arched left eyebrow, and a muttered "seriously?"

I'm sure that in part, at least, was due to the display they were part of. Because the bacon flavored jelly beans were displayed not just with the ubiquitous bacon air freshener and the famed bacon wallet; not only with the popular Mr. Bacon vs. M. Tofu playset (which I still don't have, by the way, hint hint); not merely with the ever present bacon band-aids. . .

. . .but also with the poorly reviewed bacon mints; something called "Uncle Oinker's Gummy Bacon (which is somehow strawberry flavored???);" and with gum shaped like both meatballs and cocktail wieners.

And seeing it all there, all laid out together like that, is it any wonder that I--that even I--began to think "enough already!" Faced with such a bounty of meat-inspired and faux-meat products, even I began to feel the onset of meat fatigue.

This did not, naturally, stop me from buying the stupid things. After all, I love bacon and I love jelly beans. Also, I liked the little bacon shaped tin, and I thought it might come in handy for carrying other things after it's empty.

Other bacon shaped things. Like my emergency supply of travel bacon.

But the point is, I didn't cave in and buy the stupid things immediately, like I would've a few years or even months ago. I walked around Pulp taking care of my other card and gift related needs before finally caving in and picking up the tin at the last minute on my way to the cash register.

They're cute, right? They're about the same size as Jelly Bellies, and they're a nice pink color. I was encouraged. And there was no bacony smell when you opened the tin, the way there can be when you're dealing with this sort of product.

So I popped one in my mouth. Chew chew chew. . . doesn't seem to taste like much of anything. . .chew chew. . . I mean, there's a sweet flavor to it, but nothing I'd associate with bacon. . .chew chew. . .

. . .and right there at chew #7 is where it hits. The "bacon" flavor. Except if you didn't have bacon in your mind, if you didn't know you were supposed to be tasting bacon, you probably wouldn't register it as such.

What would you register it as? Um . . .the best terms I can think of to describe it are "sweaty chewy meat vomit."

So you get in seven good chews, and then you're hit with the full force of sweaty chewy meat vomit. And somehow, there's still so much chewing left to do at that point, and the flavor doesn't go away.

And then some of it gets stuck in your molars, as jelly beans are wont to do, and there's a little concentration of sweaty chewy meat vomit flavor sitting there in the back of your mouth, just. . .tasting.

And the flavor makes you thrash your head about violently as you try to prize it out with your tongue, and you yell out "please, god, take this sweaty chewy meat vomit burden from out my mouth." And if you've ever tried to thrash your head, scrape your teeth with your tongue, and plead with an increasingly unjust god all at the same time, you'll know it's no easy feat.

But then you get it loose, and you think you're free, but as it comes out of the teeth and hits the open mouth, somehow your saliva reactivates the sweaty chewy meat vomit flavor, making it more potent than ever before. And you yell out "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?" or if you're a LOLCat "'OMFG OMFG y do u haet me?"

And finally you manage to choke it down, and you do the "ptih, ptih, ptih" thing to try and get the taste out of your mouth. But it lingers. Oh, how it lingers. Past an entire brushing of the teeth with the Oral B Pulse Action tooth brush and a healthy swig of the orange flavored Listerine, it lingers.*

But after awhile you start to think "was it really as bad as all that?" And you eat a few more, and because you're eating them in quantity and without too much of a pause between them, you get kind of inured to the flavor, and start to forget how completely vile the initial experience was.

So you wonder if you overreacted, maybe kind of just a little. And you take the tin upstairs. And first you offer them to your landlord, who recoils from the tin and hisses as though it was a crucifix and he was Mr. Burns spoofing Gary Oldman playing Dracula.

But then you offer it to your upstairs neighbor, and she takes one gingerly from the tin. And chew, chew chew, she seems to be nodding, and chew, chew, chew, she has a thoughtful but interested expression on her face.

And then she gets to that seventh chew, and her face contorts with horror. And then the head thrashing begins, and she rushes to the bathroom and goes "ptih, ptih, ptih" into the toilet.

And as she starts yelling "OMFG, OMFG, y do u haet me?" you respond--calmly, and in your best Ashley from Rock of Love Bus voice: "That's what you get for having all of your friends over listening to The Best of Prince and taking illicit drugs right above my bedroom until 5 in the morning, biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch."

* And quite frankly, it will take a only the briefest of hiatuses after being temporarily drowned out by the garlicky passed apps and the cake at the birthday party you went to later, and even after another go with the Oral B pulse action toothbrush and the orange flavored Listerine, the sweaty chewy meat vomit will make a comeback the next morning.