If you demand that every task be BIG, then you never actually get around to tasking. And that's a shame, because tasking is fun. Besides, I'm running painfully short of vote points.

When it comes to food, I don't scare easily. I jump at the chance to eat the strangest thing on the menu, and therefore almost any completion of this task would fail the was it done for sf0 test. (Though I am quite struck by the senator's suggestion of eating a still-living animal. That's scary enough to be worth doing.) But, there is one group of edible things which I do avoid eating because of fear. Not the sort of tremor-inducing fear you'd get from a dish of thumbtacks and broken light bulbs, but rather a vague uneasiness. That group of foods is: things which are spoiled, or just on the edge of being spoiled.

When I came across the WestLand Bacon Bar, it immediately caught my attention. First of all, I'd never heard of the product before, and it seems like the sort of thing that would have made its way into popular culture. Second, there's something a little bit funny and vaguely anachronistic about the packaging. I love the brutally descriptive subtitle, "Pre-Fried bacon - Diced & Pressed," and I was surprised it survived the ad-man's knife. (Can you say, "Real bacon, fully cooked and ready to eat?") Third, despite being sold in California, the packaging doesn't seem to include either an obvious "best by" date or a "this item not labeled for individual sale" tag.

Digging around a bit online, I was unable to find any reference to the Bacon Bar. What's more, the company that produced it - Westland Foods - appears only in patent and court documents from prior to 1985, when they were bought out by Schreiber Foods. It looks like the stamp on the back of the package, "61186," which I'd assumed was some sort of batch ID, is actually a date. All of which lead me to suspect that the product was likely to be around 24 years old.

Now, ordinarily I'd probably throw the thing in a drawer and keep it for a few years, before throwing it away in a cleaning frenzy. But, this task seemed a fine opportunity to avoid doing that.

On opening the package, I was greeted by a combination of the smell of bacon, and the crisp, sour stench of rancid olive oil. (No doubt actually ancient bacon grease, but that's a new odor for me.) The brick crumbled to pieces immediately, and even the individual chunks proved chalky and insubstantial. The result was a thoroughly unpleasant paste on the tongue. Imagine a pâté made by scarping the vent hood above the grille in a burger stand, and you'll have a pretty good sense of the experience.

I take three hearty bites, then surrendered and threw the rest away. I'm pleased (and not a little surprised) to report that I didn't suffer any ill effects.