TAKES A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR TO MAKE THE REALITY OF DEATH GO DOWN: Butterfinger Smooth and Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups Skulls

Spooks, ghosts, skeletons, you know the whole Halloween kit and caboodle—frankly, I’ve always been a fan. Butterfinger Smooth and Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups Skulls utilizes one of the solidest tropes: the skull. Two surprisingly hefty ones of ‘em per package. While the Capuchin catacombs of Rome (human hip bones splayed out like cocktail napkins on the wall, alters of femurs) are a bit much to my sensibilities, I cannot lie, Halloween or nay, I do like me a memento mori. And while I can’t say skulls are, like, my thing, if you will, as a real sock-in-the-teeth reminder of the inevitability of death—well, they’re hard to beat. My favorite painting right now is “The Triumph of Death” by William Beard

and you could slap a Butterfinger Smooth and Crunchy Peanut Butter Cup Skull in place of the skull in the painting and it’d just work fine.

What’s even better about these particular skulls, and probably why I reached for them in the first place, is not only are they skulls, but as the death-blow to the cranium suggests, they are murdered skulls (or I ‘spose the skull of a murdered candy person). Butterfinger double-downed. Oh, sure, it could have been an accident, or the effect of rotting in a grave before rising to freak you the f out. Yet forensically speaking, in candy terms—we are looking at murder.

It’s a good skull, scary, murdered, mean-laughing (at your inevitable death, I expect), and rather more metal or biker than that band I cannot stop myself from disparaging. A few millimeters more on the bigly-proportioned eyes and it might have edged into Area 51. I’m just as glad it doesn’t.

In any case, looking at it, I have to say, you get the feeling if you knew the back story on this skull you would not be entirely surprised it had died a violent death. Or, if you were feeling victim-blame-y, you might even secretly wonder it had it coming. In any case you do know this: there will be no justice for this skull. No one will seek it and it is not expected.

Now, many people eat many dead things. There are dishes made up of the four-and-two footed/finned that don’t hedge from or even highlight this deadness (big fried google-eyed carp, par example). But I can’t think of that many foods we eat regularly that the uh…corpseness…is upped into memento mori. I mean a roasted pig, sure—but one put in a (bread? sweet potato?) coffin? Or a traditional French cake decorated to look someone on their deathbed? Meatloaf skulls? I haven’t seen it, anyway.

I’ve a suspicion that despite the universality of the human death ugh/eek factor, there’s something Northern/Western hemisphere-y required for the iconography of Butterfinger Smooth and Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups Skulls to work. I wonder if other places—Chad, Malaysia, Bhutan, New Guinea, Tajikistan—they might translate into totally hilarious (not scary), unfathomable (wha?), despicable (seditiously unserious)—but lord knows, I could be wrong. Go forth and find out. I can’t right now.

And now to the brass tacks: texture and taste. First the paradoxical claim is not an untruth: it IS both smooth and crunchy. The smoothness has a weird mouth feel (a word that’s useful but I am still getting used to). This smoothness is in fact so acute as to seem a little hoodwinking, like the silky goodbyes of a ne’er-do-well charmer leaving the house with your wallet. The crunchy is a bit smothered and exists more like little crunch flakes or crystals than something more texturally substantial. Maybe this has to do with some essential globness at work. It took me a week to get through both Butterfinger Smooth and Crunchy Peanut Butter Cup Skulls, which could be misinterpreted as a delicacy of appetite, but no, I just needed a breather now and again. Maybe it was less the sum of its hybridized parts, as the Butterfinger and peanut butter were both dimmed, and produced an effect I found a little gustatorially confusing. Still, while the smoothness…lingers…if you like candy, and don’t need fancypants candy, they are perfectly pleasing.

I’d recommend ‘em but as an object of contemplation or a snack, it’s a little hard to say. Oh, and: we’re all gonna die someday.

HAIKUs4Us

I’m disappointed

my tv choices tonight

the blandness cries out

dim and distant day

still going on but over

time got a bit lost

sit in the dark park

eating a chicken parm sub

perfect in its way

tomorrow a big day

I’ll wear my new squirrel dress

rejoice quietly

come on take it out

theoretical garbage

it begins to smell

the jackals of hope

distant howls but they’re coming

pretend not to hear

Gilmore Tamny does some things some times and other things other times.