A Trilogy of Mark Tastes Random Things!

So I do this bit on my podcast called Mark Tastes Random Things, where, live on mic, I sample whatever latest pre-packaged food concoction I've discovered and offer my thoughts.  It all started a few years ago when, at the Bargain Store, I discovered the Jones Soda Holiday Pack on sale, and bought one.  I figured it'd be a good bit as I sampled their Gingerbread Soda and Candy Cane Soda and rambled about it.  And it was good.

So I knew it was time for a resurrection a few days ago when I was at the grocery store, and, in the pop cooler, I found a bottle of Jones Soda's Peanut Butter and Jelly flavour.

Since I'm still in a netherworld of rebuilding my website before I start up the podcast again, I turned to Sound Cloud to do a special installment of Mark Tastes Random Things for the Jones Soda PB&J flavour.




But that's not all!  Cleaning out my hard drive, I found two, never-released-to-the-public installments of Mark Tastes Random Things that I made just to make my friend laugh.

I was ready to make this segment a one-and-done thing, but my friend loved it so much, he encouraged me to keep doing it.  And, since I love fast food, one of the main topics quickly became whatever latest promotional item the nearby fast food restaurants are serving.

I joked about this on my podcast as to why I think my friend encouraged me to do this.  I think it's because I've become his fast-food-consumer-by-proxy.  See, about 12 years ago or so, after reading books like Fast Food Nation and watching movies like The Corporation, he decreed fast food restaurants to be the evilest of the Evil Corporations, and swore to boycott all fast food forever.  I, however, have no such political convictions, so I have no problems with a mass-produced burger.

So it makes sense that these two episodes I made just for him were some of McDonald's promotional items in late 2013.  First up was the McDonald's After Eight Pie.  Are you familiar with that tasty chocolate known as the After Eight?  Well, McDonald's figured out how to turn it into a pie.  After one co-worker described them as "murder your wife for one delicious," well, I knew I had to give it a go.




But that's not all!  At around the same time was the last time McDonald's brought back the most famous of their promotional items, the McRib.




And that's all I got right now for Mark Tastes Random Things.  In one way, it's good announcing practice, as they taught me in broadcast school that one way to practice your announcing is to narrate your surroundings while you're driving down the road.  And here I am, narrating what I'm eating!  I don't like doing it, though, because I don't know how to fill the dead air while I'm actually eating.  Should I smack my lips and make all kinds of obnoxious loud eating noises?  I don't know. 

So that's why it remains as infrequent as it is.