[Poll] Check One

[thefourthvine]

Internets! I am still compiling the Woobie Poll of Dooooooooom, but in the meantime, here is a PRESSING QUESTION that came up today while I was (yay!) visiting with norah. Plus some other pressing questions, because why have one forced choice when you can have five?

So. For the rest of your life, you can only have one of each of the following pairs. Which will it be? Which is the ONLY ONE YOU CAN HAVE FOREVER? (If you already live without one or more of these, then obviously your choice is easier. Like, I will have no trouble at all with question three, but question one might kill me.)

I am also taking suggestions for future horrible forced choices. I would like to find the hardest forced choice in all the land. (That isn't, you know, of great weight or import. No Sophie's Choices.)

Poll #2389 Choose Wisely

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 634

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You can only have one of these for the rest of your life. Which? Choose wisely:

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Onions
234 (37.1%)

Garlic
397 (62.9%)

Choose wisely:

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Fat
405 (64.3%)

Sugar
225 (35.7%)

Choose wisely:

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Coffee
159 (25.2%)

Chocolate
473 (74.8%)

Choose wisely:

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Caffeine
426 (68.3%)

Alcohol
198 (31.7%)

Choose wisely:

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Sex (including with partner(s) and with yourself, etc.)
427 (68.4%)

Sweets (including all desserts, candy, etc.)
197 (31.6%)

Comments

[frostfire]

See, I have no issues at all with onions vs. garlic, as I like onions but I could not LIVE without garlic, and caffeine/alcohol isn't hard for pretty much the same reason, but the rest...! I saw above someone was all, 'but there are other vehicles for caffeine than coffee'--but COFFEE ZOMG, it's not just the caffeine! It's the best drink in the world! (I truly believe this. Because it tastes SO GOOD, and it's so versatile--you can have it with no calories at all, with fat but no sugar, with sugar but no fat, with enough of both to practically spontaneously give you a heart attack; it can be hot or iced, smooth as hell or strong enough to knock you over--and also it TASTES SO GOOD. I have had a plain old cup of black coffee bring tears to my eyes, no joke. And in addition to all of these delightful things, it wakes you up! I don't know how the human race ended up blessed with something this good, but I am grateful.)

Right, so this just became an ode to the virtues of coffee? IDK, it was still a hard choice! I love chocolate! but coffee wins.

[thefourthvine]

I, too, absolutely could not live without garlic, so that was super-easy. But I want you to know that it is only my love for you that is stopping me from judging you for your Ode to Coffee, the World's Most Noxious Drink (That Doesn't Actually Involve Any Blood or Fungus or Urine or Anything Rotten).

[queue]

Hm. So I should not actually tell you, then, that I think Frostfire is 127% right about coffee.

[frostfire]

HELLO, MY FRIEND, I SEE YOU HAVE CORRECT OPINIONS ABOUT THE WORLD. (I cannot believe coffee is LOSING by like SEVENTY VOTES to chocolate!)

[queue]

WHY, YES. YES, I DO. *slurps*

Am I going to forfeit my newly acquired shininess in your eyes if I admit that I drink it with milk and sugar? (And if so, will the forfeit be lessened if I hastily add that it must be actual milk - please to not be bringing those nasty petroleum byproducts masquerading as kremer anywhere near me, kthxbai - and actual sugar?)

[thefourthvine]

You are another person I love so much that your love for coffee in no way lessons my regard for you. (And, really, I am Just Jealous - I have tried, at various times in my life, to be one of the cool kids with the coffee, and I just CAN'T. I am a tea and water drinker. I AM LEARNING TO ACCEPT THIS.)

[queue]

I love you too, dear heart.

And there is nothing whatsoever wrong with being a tea and water drinker. I went through large parts of my life not even drinking tea, actually, or soft drinks - being entirely caffeine-free, which as I look back on it is both amazing and probably way healthier. But I have a true-blue addiction to caffeine (the headache I got one morning recently when I found the milk had gone off AFTER I'd poured it into my brew and had to wait until lunchtime proves this yet again), plus I actively like the taste of good coffee. The taste of bad coffee would probably lose a popularity test against pond scum, but I don't drink that shit.

La Mama drank tea most of her life. Hard-core cinnamon-orange loose-leaf stuff, which in retrospect I think was pretty cool-tea-drinking-kid of her. She switched to coffee about three years before she died, and we never could figure out why. Possibly her taste buds had gone awry? Anyway, she gave teaheads a good name, as do you.


ETA: er. hard-CORE. hard-CORE. you'd think I'd know that word by now...

[frostfire]

ZOMG. I don't how you could SAY that about my beloved coffee! *bites lip* I--I still love you. BUT. COFFEE. *clutches coffee cup* Can't you just be HAPPY that I've found someone something that I can love like this? *broken sob*

[thefourthvine]

*emotional tear*

I am happy that you're happy. I AM. I just - I just - I feel like I am the only person who sees that coffee is REALLY NOT TASTY AT ALL.

Really, I am Just Jealous! Because I am LEFT OUT OF THE COFFEE LOVE. *sniffles* Why am I always LEFT OUT? Why can't other people LOVE WHAT I LOVE? WHY MUST I ALWAYS BE ALONE?

(Next up: a lengthy, ranting post explaining how all coffee drinkers are bad people who should feel bad, and they should just drink tea and water, which are obviously superior choices. And then I will make food_wank! And I will be proud!)

[calathea]

In my life I have had ONE cup of coffee, and I had it after a three hour hike during which I exhausted my water supply and my choices were: (a) coffee from my hiking buddy's flask or (b) water from the lake we were hiking around, which is known to contain liver flukes (which can kill you). It should tell you something that I really THOUGHT about the liver-fluke-containing water for some considerable time before I gave in to the coffee.

It's not that I don't want to like coffee (because I do! You have no idea how often people here assume that not wanting coffee or tea when they offer is because YOU HATE THEM AS A PERSON instead of you know, because you don't like coffee or tea). It's just that even the SMELL revolts me. (Tea I object to less, and will drink 2-3 times a year, usually when my mum makes it for me.)

[frostfire]

Awwwww, well, tea is good too! I have a cupboard full of tea, I drink loose-leaf, I feel like tea is hardcore. And I am certainly the last person to say that someone should like a food that they don't like, give how much I hate nuts, dried fruit, spicy food of any kind, tomatoes (sauce excepted), olives, most savory/sweet combinations, and tons of other things that most people think are delicious. ("You're going to LOVE this salad with mandarin oranges and walnuts!" "Oh, but you just have to have FRESH tomatoes, those are so much better." "Well, it's not THAT spicy, just try it!")

...clearly, we BOTH have the potential to make food_wank, here. <3

[starwatcher]

.
I am the only person who sees that coffee is REALLY NOT TASTY AT ALL.

Now there are two of us!

The funny thing is, most foods I dislike (and there are many) turn me off by their very smell. Coffee, OTOH, smells delicious to me... but it doesn't match its promise.

But I don't drink tea, either. Pepsi is my caffeine of choice. ::slinks away::
.

[queue]

Coffee, OTOH, smells delicious to me... but it doesn't match its promise.

This was my reaction to coffee for literally years. It smelled SO good - decent coffee did, anyway, and actually unless coffee is burning or several days old and being drunk by vice cops or IT techs on their third straight shift from hell it almost always smells good to me. It smelled like the definition of brown, which sounds weirdly awful but always drew me. And then I would try it, and I would be all, like, "...yeah, not so much."

I got addicted to coffee the first time around when I was in the process of being kicked out of my first graduate program with a useless terminal degree and fled the music building to study at the cafe in the basement of the campus commons. I got addicted to coffee the second (and continuing) time around when I fled my law school's library, haunted by 599 other panicky competitive law students, to read about contracts and corporations in the Starbucks across the street. There might be a trend here.

[blushingflower]

You're not the only one who thinks it's not tasty. I have tried it once or twice, but I don't have the patience to figure out what the correct amount of sugar/cream is to make it palatable, or to drink something that requires that much adulteration to be palatable. Plus, my mother drinks it black, so I feel like a wimp.

Also, I have been known to want to punch people in the face for drinking coffee not merely in my presence, but on the street, where I could smell it. Because when I have a migraine the smell of coffee is one of the smells that cannot be borne. (I don't particularly like the smell the rest of the time, but migraine time is worse)

[alixtii]

I have never acquired a taste for coffee. So I can join you with the Do Not Want.

[stasia]

Ohhhh, I'm so with Frostfire on this. I couldn't make it without coffee. We're out of coffee right now, so I had a cup of Geordie's good British black tea and ... it was weak and thin and not coffee. This frightening lack-of-coffee can't be allowed to continue for much longer today.

*hides from the empty coffee grinder*

Stasia