Snail Mail Derailment

I'm pretty sure they're Joltiks.

Oh. What’s that? *hi-ho google away*

you kids and your packmen and your kinkajous

Kakapo, kiwi, bellbird,takahe?

3/4! Not bad! You win a

The bellbird was correct, actually! The takahe is actually a pukeko, a related bird that is capable of flight. It's much more common and is much lighter-built. They both have the same colour though.

Actually it is a takahe because pukekos don't have green feathers! But the two are very close

Oh no I failed at bird

Plaid you have slain me in birdology and thus take my crown and empire

Does this mean I get my cat back

I've been going on post bents more since I've moved to Japan, because what else am I going to spend my disposable income on? Alcohol? Furniture? Keeping a properly-stocked fridge? All passé.

But that's enough of me and my horseshit, what I'm here to show you today is a parcel courtesy of the ever-inestimable Pharmacy.

This be the loot. I didn't want it to go unsaid (even if I wanted personal details to go unsaid) that Pharms has some of the loveliest handwriting I've seen. I could hug that penmanship.

Cute paper to add to my wall decorations, letter with all my favourite Pokemon drawn on it, stationery with birds, and stickers (because clearly what I need in my life right now are more stickers), including some kickass sharks. I am all for those sharks, instructions on the back say:

Make beautiful
greeting cards . invitations
paper crafts . home & office decor
kid's crafts . correspondence

I am totally decorating my home, office, kids, and correspondences with sharks. E: Holy shit I opened it up and there's three layers of shark, that is so excellent


Customs forms are always fun, and by fun I mean "oh god did I fill this in thoroughly enough to get my shit shipped out unfossicked.


A bead????


A bead! A piece of coral to be exact, because I haven't been able to stop rambling at her about my Groc characters and their undersea antics.


Thank you Pharms!!! Between this, an early escape out of car school (fuck half-clutch S curves) and an awesome moon to watch rise, it's made for an excellent evening :>


Addendum: I've hung the coral up on the cord that my light switch is attached to, which made me realise it looks like a yam (my favourite vegetable which apparently doesn't exist outside New Zealand). So you get bonus points on top of your already-admirable pile of bonus points, because yams are delicious.

Yeah those things. Whenever I tell people my favourite vegetable is a yam though, they assume I mean sweet potato ( doesn't help that that's a close second).

I GOT A PARCEL


GETTING PARCELS WILL NEVER NOT BE EXCELLENT AND EXCITING

This one is from MrGuy! She's very generously commissioned me to make a thing AND ALSO for some reason threw a box of Delicious All-American Foodstuffs into the deal? The only catch is I'm going to have to document it eating of said foodstuffs, which I'll do as I periodically raid my new snackbox.


BOX INNARDS (you don't get to see any of my apartment because it's currently a tip.) On the savoury side, I've got Snyder's Hot Buffalo Wing flavoured Pretzel Pieces, which sound ridiculous and delicious and whoops I just opened them. Holy balls that is like a mashup of Works and Tomato Sauce flavoured Eta chips from back home. I'm gonna be putting in one hell of an effort to not eat this before I'm done with this post. Also, a package of "pretzel crisps" which are like a pretzel but squashed.


As for sweet things, I've been blessed with some Reese's peanut butter cups (because I've never eaten them before), Lifesaver gummies, Ferrero Rocher (I think those are Italian not American but I'm certainly not complaining?) something delectable in the guise of "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites", and then



THESE FUCKERS. THE FUCK ARE THESE.
Guy was quite worried about "the smarties" arriving intact, and I figured she was talking about these things. I was kind of bemused as to why they were so important when she'd packed m&m's minis in there anyway. Well now I know

In conclusion, thanks MrGuy! From the bottom of my heart and/or tastebuds.

Bonus (and by bonus I mean I only just found this particular item and it's really funny to me for some reason:)

"Newtons Fig"

you see now there are other flavors, that arent fig, so they cant all be called fig newtons,

BRANDING

Can we do a secret santa this year? Because thatd be pretty damn cool.
Judging by how Reddit handles it we'd probably wanna open signups around october, get our exchangees in early november and send the packages off early december. They have a $20 minimum too.
Pleeeeeease?

We've had secret santas other years! No cash limit though because some of us are poor and/or artists of some description and making something is a more appealing option.

Males sense!
I suppose art kinda has an abstract value anyways.

The only requirement for having a Secret Santa is for someone to volunteer to run it.

2011, I ran one. 2012, I thought I'd participate but no one ended up volunteering to run it. Last year, I just ran it again. (And fulfilled my desire to participate by secretly put together a gift for Jac, who was running an exchange on the MSPA Forums.)

Those exchanges were art, writing, and other things that can be handled through forum PMs, with some people voluntarily sending things along in the mail. Last year, I also offered to fill writing requests for anyone whose Secret Santa didn't put anything together by the end of January.

I do remember one year, pre-Eagle Time, when some of us put together a two-part Secret Santa where one side was packages and one side was art/writing/etc. If there's interest, we could do that again. I'd be up for running the electronic side again (though I'd step aside if someone else was interested) and participating in the actual mail side.

The latter sounds good!
That way we can get participation without financial obligations too!

I can volunteer to do the Mail side of things. Heck, I can even do the electronic stuff if we wanna do this with the fewest number of hosts.

I'd recommend having a space open for volunteer 'elves' to send a gift to someone who's santa dropped out or didnt fulfil his/her side of the bargain. As a host, I'd sign up for that! I might even send a bonus, randomly selected gift to some lucky fellow.

Good news folks!
https://www.drawnames.com/secret-santa-generator

If we just use this thing we can include the host in the secret santa-ing :)
It does the random selection and emailing automatically.

I don't trust this gentleman's cold, soulless eyes.

I can't wait until my Cherno Alpha gets here

Much to my delight, a package arrived in the mail today! I'll put this all in an internet box so you too can have the joy of opening something up.

Show Content

Spoiler

My favorite resident of Japan Schazer not only sent me a package, but protected it with DEADLY SHARKS



Unfortunately, they are very shy DEADLY SHARKS and revert to silhouette when you try to photograph them straight on.



Never one to do things by half measures, she's also warded the inside of the box just in case an intruder made it past the first ones (possibly by threatening to expose them); these ones also guard some incongruously floral stationery, which is delightful.

It was a cute, fun box, but the contents were even more exciting:



Candy! As a man with an incorrigible sweet tooth, I couldn't wish for anything else. Now, the packaging on these items (and all the ones to follow) have little to no English on them, so figuring out what I'm about to eat is a matter of pictures and guesswork, which just makes it more interesting. And surprising. So here we have 1) hard candies in three peach flavors (which is very cool, and also the only one of these products that I could read everything there was to know about the flavor on), 2) some... I have no idea, honestly. Apples and honey things? I can feel that they're large and squishy, but this bird is not revealing his secrets. Then 3) some lychee-flavored hard candies. Lychee is my favorite fruit of all time, for those not in the know. Delicious.



Up next is 4) a bag of Sweet March, which seems to be mixed-berry-flavored gummy drops, 5) a different sort of lychee hard candy, this one very small and round, and 6) pomegranate collagen gummies. I have a friend who swears by these things; I eat them when she buys them because they always taste really good. The thing about Japanese gummy candies is that unlike American ones (which typically have one gummy consistency all the way through), they're usually a gummy skin surrounding a softer, more jellylike center. I really like that!



And there's still more! (She really packed that box to the gills.) There are 7) mango gummies; two two-flavor gummy bags, one 8) pear and Asian pear and one 9) kiwi and golden kiwi; and 10) a mixed tin of Sakuma Drops. I don't know what Sakuma Drops are, but they resemble these fancy older hard candies I like that are hard to find anymore. This might be very nostalgic for me; that or very surprising. Either way, it comes in a tin, which is great; I am instantly convinced of a product's quality if it comes in a tin. Same with frosted glass bottles.



Then there's 11) a bag of hard candies with liquid or gummy centers that appears to have lychee, strawberry, orange, and lemon. There's also 12) a bag of mango smoothie gummy cubes, and a bag of what I didn't realize was another bag of the same lychee hard candy from before until I looked at all the pictures at once. For some reason, I thought that this one was lychees and cream (which, by the way, needs to be A Thing).



I also got 13) some possibly-liquid-filled gummies in pomegranate and... elderberry? Blackcurrant? I don't know. Small black tree berries. Or bush. Plus 14) melon gummies, 15) mango caramels (which sounds amazing), and 16) a handful of mystery hard candies. Those could be decorative starbursts on the wrappers, or they could be abstracted lychees. Who knows? Either way, the last thing is a tube of coffee something. Coffee beans? Chocolate covered coffee beans? Little espresso-flavored nuggets? The package elucidates nothing.

I'm planning on recording my reactions to these things as I eat them, so I'm not going to read anything Schazer says to explain the candies until after I've tried them all. no spoilers pls

14) My first gummy was the melon one, which was great. Things that are just called "melon" usually have a flavor that to me seems like a midpoint between cantaloupe and honeydew; it's hard to go wrong with either, so both is even better. It's really nice eating fruit-flavored things that actually taste like fruit, rather than fruitesque sweetness. These ones were solid gummy candy, unlike most of the rest of the gummies.

4) Mixed berry seems like a pretty safe bet; these do not disappoint, and they have that great gooey-in-gummy texture I love so much. Yum!

9) Moving along to a different flavor in the same genre, the kiwi gummies are amazing. The two varieties are visually almost indistinguishable, but I don't care; they're both delicious. Kiwi's one of those foods I forget I really really like until I'm eating it. I suspect the abundance of sickly-sweet strawberry-kiwi things makes me forget that by itself kiwi is great. It's definitely got me excited for the pear ones.

8) Unfortunately, it seems these ones either got too hot or had some moisture in the package. Or were a factory error, who knows. Either way, they've fused into one patchwork gummy mass of pear tastiness. Any given bite is pretty much guaranteed to get some of both flavors, so I can't really examine them separately.

2) These were the ones I was most curious about, and also the ones I got most wrong. First of all, that's a sour plum on the package, not an apple like I originally thought. Second, where I originally thought they were very large, soft gummies, they're actually entire preserved fruits. The taste is hard to describe. It's plummy, but there's also a strong, fermented flavor; it's very salty, and has a vinegary finish. They'd go great with some sharp cheese, or maybe in an onigiri. Has a pit, so I'm glad I took a bite rather than popping the whole thing in my mouth and chomping down.

7) You can really tell these ones came from an American brand (Dole); they definitely have that actually-tastes-like-mango mango taste that I associate with mango confections from everywhere but the United States, but they're also noticeably sweeter than anything else I've tried. And dusted with sugar. Granular sugar though, not powdered, which is nice. Powdered sugar always tastes dusty to me. The solid gummy was a nice change after the very soft plum things.

12) The smoothie cubes were really good, and really interesting. I originally took them for gummies, but they're actually pressed from little granules of... stuff. I don't know what, obviously; the texture is very reminiscent of the time I made jello, then froze it instead of refrigerating it. Probably gelatin-based, but not gummy. They fall apart in your mouth, then melt. I really like the mouthfeel on them.

16) I've just eaten one of the mystery candies, and I'm still not sure what flavor it is. It has the perfumey quality I associate with lychees, but the candy is very mildly flavored. That, or my mouth is burned out from shoveling gummies into it and I can't taste anymore. Actually, you know what, the starbursts on the wrapper are the same ones from the large bags of lychee hard candy. Mystery solved, candy confirmed for lychee.

That is way too much candy in one go for a nominal adult, so I'm going to have to try the rest later. Thanks so much to Schazer for this very thoughtful and delicious gift!

fakeedit: Because apparently that WASN'T too much candy, I ended up eating more while I proofread. 13) The pomegranate-and-whatever gummies had melted too, but this was even funnier because the black ones were an entirely different texture and were sugar-dusted; they formed these big, hard inclusions in the gummy red mass. I did find out they weren't liquid-filled, though; the core of the pomegranate ones was just a different sort of gummy, colored clear and mildly sweet. If I tore the gummy around them, they could be popped out whole. I mostly didn't, though; the texture of eating it all at once was nice and varied.

The following response is spoiler-free:

Firstly! I looked up Maquiberry, it's also known as Chilean Wineberry apparently. So kind of like an elderberry or blackcurrant or similar.

8) and 13) probably suffered melt fate in the Japan midsummer rather than factory error, because it seriously did take me that long for me to get my shit together and ship the box out (my bad). I had a packet of Acai berry gummies (same brand) that became a packet of Acai berry gummy sheet by the time I remember it had been in my car. The sheet still tasted good, and supermarkets being fickle about their confectionery stock I could not for the life of me find a replacement packet so I took a bit of a gamble.

2) I would've warned you if I knew they weren't pitted, whoops! I wasn't sure if you'd like preserved fruit proper, particularly the ever-popular plum, so I thought I'd send you something sweet and see what you thought of it. Brown/black sugar candies are also really popular here but I couldn't be sure they weren't your jam. So, fruit! And lots of it.

Ben you have an e-cig why did you make fun of me when i told you i used one you big cyber bully.

I am a cyber bully; I don't need logic, just your tears.

Also, I just bought my vaporizer a few weeks ago. It is very relaxing and pleasant; the only thing I dislike is that people call smoking it "vaping", which is a super obnoxious neologism to me for some reason. I've been wanting to get into it since I found out you could get nicotine-free fluid.

Mine tastes like honeydew!

Yeah vaping sounds pretty stupid. I haven't smoked regular tabacco regularly since i bought mine, only thing is, i think the ones they sell here are pirated versions of the real thing, they're also more expensive and the cartomizers break so easily.

I like to mix Ice-Mint with everything sweet.

My partner is trying to get into e-cigs but they're not having a lot of luck. Any particular advice?

Uh ontopic uh so how about them serbian surplus jackets