According to Miss Ginger Millay — who, going by her blogging/tweeting, has a better gauge for sexual proclivities than I do — food-phobics make for boring bedfellows:

@MyGingersnaps: Have I yet mentioned my theory that picky eaters are bad in bed? Won’t try new foods, won’t try new…ya know.

In other words, if they’re reluctant to put something exotic in their mouth, then they’re probably also reluctant to… um, put something exotic in their mouth. I guess you are what (or who) you (won’t) eat…

What is “hogo”, you ask? It’s the historically distinctive devil’s-piss burn once associated with rum. From the September 2010 issue of Esquire (which isn’t online yet, apparently):

Derived from the French phrase for the “high taste” game meats develop when they’re hung up to mature before cooking — and by “mature,” we mean “rot” — hogo used to be a term of art in the rum trade to describe the sulfurous, funky tang that raw-sugarcane spirits throw off. For 300 years, rum distillers have sought ways first to tame and then to eliminate it: proof distillation (more alcohol equals less hogo), filtering, tweaking the fermentation, long aging in barrels — all very effective, particularly when used in combination. Perhaps too effective.

I’m liking the idea of this raw rum. I bet it would be the perfect ingredient in my much-appreciated Kill Divil cocktail — which, after all, is a Colonial-era drink recipe. I’ll have to track down a vintage-crafted bottle of this hogo-licious firewater, and start mixing.

The following message was taped to the office refrigerator today, at a client site that will not be named:

To whoever continues to take the boiled egg from my Snack Pack:

This is at least the 3rd time this has happened. I put that pack this morning around 8:30 am, it is now 10:13 am and you have already ruined the entire pack for me. This is NOT your food, this is my food. If you didn’t bring and put the food in the fridge, then IT IS NOT YOURS TO EAT.

[name redacted]

Not to say that the injured party isn’t justified in her outrage, and is well within her rights to air her displeasure thusly. Still, it’s a situation where, since it’s not happening to me, it’s funny. The funniest part being that the theft of the egg results in “ruining the entire pack for me”. Who figures that an egg is so vital to a mid-morning snack?

“There’s a whole bowl of granola over there, dude,” he conspiratorially whispered to me.

That’s what I get for going to Deity, a self-styled underground nightclub in Brooklyn, for a meet-and-greet a couple of nights ago. You’d have thought that the crunchy-munchy party favor was manna from some hipster version of heaven. It was mighty tasty, though — and paired surprisingly well with a vodka tonic.

If you couldn’t already tell that DateBritishGuys.com was a cut-rate dating operation just from the sight of the site, finding a stack of cheap-looking, URL-emblazoned business cards next to a grocery store register ought to confirm the shoe-string budget.

Although they’re on the right track, by advertising near food. They just need to make the association more explicit — namely, take a stack of those calling-cards and place them in the citrus section.

If you think that tagging sugarwater and snack chips with “extreme” labels in their names is a silly, wholly marketing-driven gimmick, consider the experience of Hosmer Mountain Soda. This locally-focused Connecticut softdrink bottler stumbled upon the public’s attraction to potentially wild food rides:

Hosmer’s ["Dangerous" Ginger Beer] is another new release. Its pepperiness inspired [co-manager Bill] Potvin to apply the word “dangerous” to the sandwich board promoting it in front of the Hosmer soda shack in Manchester. The result: “People were whipping in — ‘What’s this dangerous drink?’ — and I realized that just having that adjective on the beverage was enough to create interest,” Mr. Potvin said.

Simply including a strong descriptor as part of the product name — as hokey as it seems — will rope in customers. I’d say it’s due to the appearance of added legitimacy: Subconsciously, you rationalize that if this drink’s “dangerous” quality is so potent that it merits this sort of permanent enshrinement, the it must be legit. It’s somewhat on par with naming rights for sports stadia and similar branding tactics.

This particular tactic that I’m sure will run its course eventually, but for now it’s a strong magnet for thrill-seeking consumers.

Leave it to six-time hot-dog eating champ Takeru Kobayashi to lend some actual drama to this year’s Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island. Thanks to his contract dispute with Major League Eating, “The Tsunami” found himself gatecrashing the event:

Kobayashi, wearing a black T-shirt that said “Free Kobi,” mingled with the crowd watching the contest, standing inside a police-barricaded pen just under the stage. When the eating ended, he slipped up the stage stairs.

Then, several security officers appeared and tried to usher him off. He grabbed a metal police barricade with both hands, holding on tightly as the officers pulled at him. Finally, they dragged him down the stairs, with Kobayashi resisting vehemently.

He was under arrest Sunday afternoon, charged with resisting arrest, trespass and obstructing governmental administration.

I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing: Getting arrested for attempting to upstage a celebration of competitive gluttony, or actually participating in a contest that demonstrates what a frankfurter-inhaling pig you are.

Until recently, a “sugary beverage tax” of one-penny-per-ounce seemed destined to become law in New York State. But apparently, counter-lobbying by the American Beverage Association killed the proposed bill, and supposedly more persuasive advocacy by the industry turned the tide:

Next, this TV ad from New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, a name calculated to make the blood boil. A mother unpacks groceries in the kitchen as her son mixes a powdered lemonade, one of the drinks that would be taxed. “Tell Albany to trim their budget fat and leave our groceries alone,” the mother says…

It is too early for a final tally of the money spent on advertising and lobbying by either side in New York. But by most accounts, the beverage industry has outspent the pro-tax side and has succeeded in painting the soda tax as a naked money grab cleverly disguised as a health policy.

I question how convincing the ABA’s advertising was, at least with the general public. I caught their commercials a few times; frankly, I wouldn’t have been aware of the tax if hadn’t. I found the ads — including the one referenced above — to be particularly grating and transparently self-serving. In fact, I came away from them more in favor of the tax, just because the industry opposition was so blunt. I think this is more a case of the state legislators getting swayed by their corporate constituents, prompting the burial of this bill. Democracy at work, right?

I guess that’s just me, though. I don’t froth at the mouth every time a new tax is proposed. Plus, I don’t consume all that many soft drinks. So that makes me the silent minority in this arena.

Summertime has hit, which means it’s the season for your basic shaved ice/sno-kone treat.

In my neighborhood this weekend, I noticed something unusual among the little kids partaking in this slushy refreshment: About half of them would order theirs without any flavoring syrup. Just plain, straight shaved ice in a paper cone. This, despite the option of about a dozen sugary flavors from the sno-kone seller. I didn’t detect any pressure from the parents to skip the fruit-flavored additives, either — the kids were willingly going with unadorned ice-chips.

This is weird, isn’t it? It’s a good thing that youngsters who normally have extreme sweet-tooth tendencies would forgo the saccharine in this one instance. But why? Is this some kind of sugar-free snowcone trend? How refreshing can a little cone of melting ice-water be? You might as well go home and pull an icecube out of the freezer, and start sucking on that.

I guess the real winner here is the sno-kone vendor, who sees his usual 90 percent profit go even higher, since he saves on the syrup. Anywhere from a buck-fifty to two bucks for some ice shavings, plus the cost of the paper cone. Must be a goldmine.

According to some, liberalism travels on its stomach:

…The idea of being in a city without a decent Thai restaurant drives [liberals] frantic. As long as they can point to a Cambodian eatery or a Syrian café in their town they can reassure themselves that they are among the civilized. Their greatest fear is to be stuck in some flyover burg where the only food available is exactly like the stuff they were raised on in their bland, white, upper middle class childhoods.

Well, yeah — if you were, in fact, raised on bland tripe, I’d think you would want to branch out culinarily once you’ve grown up. Sticking with the same meat-and-potato options your entire life — including what goes into your head, as well as your mouth — doesn’t seem all that appealing to me.

Anyway, demographic shifts are helping that traveling army of thought infiltrate even flyover country. If Oklahoma City can boast of an Ethiopian restaurant (sub-Saharan cuisine being an apparent marker for diverse discourse), there’s no telling where the dining/thought experiment will end.

Here’s a novel use of iPad versatility:

Forgot to mention – when I was in Ireland – a restaurant was using iPads for menus.

Any independent verification of this? I’ve found the concept advanced, mainly as a way to eliminate waiters, but no actual sightings other than this tweet.

I’d hit any restaurant that attempted it, just for the experience. Imagine the surprise at opening a routine-looking leather menu cover, and instead of a printed price list, finding a touchscreen inside…

Alex Tabarrok declares that dust in high-end restaurant food is evil:

Dust, not on the floor mind you, but on the food especially the desserts. The trend, for example, is to nestle ice cream in a bed of chocolate dust. Not chocolate chunks or even bits but a chocolate grit that ruins the elegant smoothness of the ice cream — like eating ice cream that has been dropped in the sand.

Not being much of gourmand myself, I can only guess that a dusting of some ingredient is easier to measure out and shape than other forms. I also notice that presentation becomes more elaborate with this format, as when you “draw” a pattern on a dusted-plate canvas. Chiefs probably find that the versatility trumps diners’ palate preferences. And the fancy restaurant landscape is just as much of a copycat environment as any other competitive field — one joint probably started dusting every dessert in sight, and then everyone else fell in line.

To put a stop to this gourmet granularness, I say patrons start pouring water over these dust-ups as soon as they hit the table. That chocolate-dusted dish will transform into “chocolate-muddled” — thus kicking off the next culinary trend…

When we combine Starbucks with the National Hockey League, the word-mashup of “StarPucks” is an inevitable outcome.

Two possibilities come to my mind for using this puckishly-cute StarPucks label:

- As a cross-promotional campaign. Both entities like to position themselves as higher-end pursuits for discerning consumer bases (versus going after mass-market appeal, ala McDonalds or the NFL), so they’d find common ground in their audiences. Some sort of rewards program tied to city/team territories would strike marketing synergy.

- A potential name for a Seattle NHL franchise, perhaps the first blatant corporate branding of a franchise identity in North American major-pro team sports history. But only if an on-ice resurrection of the Seattle SuperSonics doesn’t work out.

Caprice Crane hears tell of gourmet-ish airs at 7-Eleven, and calls them on it, Book of Revelation-style:

7-11 sells Four Cheese Pizza. The cheeses are: War, Pestilence, Famine and Death.

End-times delivered not on horseback, but on a hot-and-crispy bread crust. To which I can only tweet: Apoca-licious!

If Fortune Magazine is to be believed, there’s a new drinking game sweeping the nation:

“Icing” — or “getting iced” — is a drinking game that’s rapidly gaining popularity amongst office workers, tech and media types, and college students. The rules are simple: If a person sees a Smirnoff Ice, he or she must get down on one knee and chug it, unless they happen to be carrying their own Smirnoff, in which case they can “ice block,” or refract the punishment back onto the attacker. In order to dupe people into stumbling across the beverage, participants have devised creative ways of presenting them with Ices, like strapping the bottles to the backs of dogs or burying them in vats of protein powder.

The trend first took hold on college campuses in the South, but it’s trickled up both coasts, where icings have been spotted at the offices of companies like Yelp! and IAC’s College Humor. Bankers, too, have embraced the fratty fad: An ice attack was recently reported at Goldman Sachs, and Fortune has learned of icings at Florida-based investment bank Raymond James and New York City hedge fund D.E. Shaw.

Smirnoff parent Diageo claims to not be behind this brand-specific recreation. It certainly does smack of corporate-guided viral/guerilla marketing, so it wouldn’t shock me if that turns out to be a lie. Then again, I can totally see this being a genuine grassroots effort. People — particularly the college-aged contingent behind this — love their vodka.

Then again, again: I’m not sure how much to make of this. A handful of frat boys in the finance industry are playing with liquor bottles — so what? I don’t see this taking hold on a wide scale.

It’s been around since last summer, but this week is the first time I’d seen The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck parked on the streets of Manhattan. I cameraphoned this photo (embiggened on Flickr) in Union Square, at Broadway and about 16th Street.

Without the sign, you wouldn’t know this food truck from any other four-wheeled ice cream purveyor. I didn’t hear the jingle; I can only imagine that it’s something that melds disco and dairy.

I absolutely hate tomatoes. But I do like this Santa Sweets brand tomato-package label, featuring inseparable company mascots Tom, Matt, and Otto.

Not enough to buy that package, obviously (citing my distaste for tomatoes, grape variety or otherwise). Nor enough to name my offspring in likewise manner.

But I did like this clever little wordplay enough to take a Flickr-sized cameraphone photo. After which I moved on to produce which was more agreeable to my palate, if not as personable.

This is it — the 15th and final installment of “The Daily Fortune Cookie Fortune” project on Flickr. My store-bought box of fortune cookies is empty, and the final cellophane-wrapped treat from it produced this parting shot, on aging:

The older the crab, the tougher his claw.

As I approach my 40s (still a year-plus away, thankfully), this observation certainly seems apt. I’m unquestionably more ornery than I used to be. The crabbiness, though, has been a personality feature since childhood.

And so ends this little content-generating diversion. I could always pick up another box of cookies, and/or eat Chinese takeout every day, and thus keep this string going. But no. This lark ends here. I’m only a little disappointed that none of the cookies didn’t wind up flawed — with two or three fortune slips, or empty, or with some foreign object inside. Those results would have made for nice curveball-type photos on the Flickr set.

Reaching into my store-bought box of fortune cookies, I find that I’m down to the last two entries for “The Daily Fortune Cookie Fortune” project on Flickr. Here’s No. 15 — the next-to-last one — which tells us that thoroughness is the better part of vigilance:

A cautious person leaves no stones unturned.

No caution involved, but we’ll see what turns up in the final fortune tomorrow.

The thirteenth cookie is cracked in “The Daily Fortune Cookie Fortune” project on Flickr. You’d think that that would portend an unlucky result, namely in the form of an ominous fortune.

Alas, the fortune-cookie culture doesn’t appear to be superstitious (outside of the basic premise behind a psychic slip of paper). Instead of gloom and doom, today’s fortune promotes problem-solving through aesthetics:

A beautiful person is with you, confide your problems.

So, beauty should inspire you to unburden yourself? Not sure the beautiful people would appreciate being a default emotional dumping ground. And are we to infer that ugly folks are unsatisfactory recipients of soul-baring info? This cookie guide to interpersonal relations confounds me.

We’ve reached an even dozen in “The Daily Fortune Cookie Fortune” project on Flickr. So figure that it’s time for some contriteness:

“The best way to have the last word is to apologize.”

Level-headed advice for settling accounts. In lieu of apology, you could also opt for a curse word or two as your closing argument. I’ve found that to be an emphatic parting shot, even if true closure is elusive. But let’s face it — if you want closure, best bet is to partake of your fortune cookie after a meal.