It’s a novel thought, I know. Not being a dick to someone who disagrees with you? *GASP*

What does this have to do with orange?

Truffles are the world’s most expensive fungus, for (almost) good reason: firstly, they are impossible to farm (people have tried, generally without success, to start truffle-farming orchards for YEARS) and grow pretty much only in the wild, under very strangely specific conditions (around the roots of certain types of trees in orchards of a certain age – like 20 years or some such – that of course, have been exposed to the spores of truffles), under the surface of soil, in select regions and climates. This rarity and difficulty in finding them in appropriate time for harvest (along with the fact that, being a fungus, they will spoil relatively rapidly and need to be harvested not just at the right time but also very carefully, lest they get damaged) jacks up the price considerably… but that’s not all of it. It’s not just that it’s rare or hard to get to that causes the price to be sky-high, because there are certainly orchards that have produced truffles for decades or more – no, it’s not just that they are rare.

It’s REALLY because the smell of a truffle, a real truffle, apparently is not just mouth-wateringly delicious, but actually has bonafide sex pheromones in it. Ones that apply to all mammals – including humans.

That’s right: it makes you want it just by smell, and it makes you want it desperately, and it does it by stimulating not just taste/scent receptors, but your sexy mind parts. No wonder it’s bloody expensive! Speaking of “it’s bloody expensive”, curious as to HOW expensive?

We’re talking, up to tens and tens of thousands of dollars a pound or something, if it’s at auction; the current world record is, for a white truffle, $110K PER POUND at an auction (it was a 3.3 lb specimen, so, $330k US). Granted, when it’s a fungal fruiting body, a “pound” goes a long way (they’re generally mostly water, very lightweight), and that particular truffle was genuinely massive I suppose, but still. Stupidly expensive. Prohibitively, for most people who don’t own car elevators.

So, in that case, the stupidly expensive burger would not be because of the burger. It would be the truffle, the rare, short-shelf-life, mind-manipulatingly tasty, fantastic-smelling fungus, that made it so expensive, and even then, that would be a perfectly fair price all things considered; you would not be paying for the probably $3 worth of beef and bun, you would be paying for the bizarrely intoxicating experience of smelling and consuming the (I will say it again) sexyfuntime-mind-manipulating fungus up close and personal. I can’t possibly afford to spend $30 on a tiny one-person meal, but if times were waaaay the heck better for me and I knew of a place that had real truffles and dishes with it in it that were only $30? I have to admit, I’d be curious enough to splurge and try it. Not every day or anything, but at least once, just to see exactly how allegedly magnificent the effects of that, let’s face it, mind-altering fungal substance really are. And this is mind you coming from somebody who would otherwise thing the $9 burger was absurdly expensive

Now, if you had said “Kobe beef”, I’d be right with you though… because actual Kobe beef exists almost nowhere except Japan (I just checked: Japan, Macau, and Hong Kong and that’s it) due to food safety/import restrictions, and is therefore a rip off if you try to get it in the States “legally” since you can’t GET it legally, which means it’s either black market stuff (which would be stupidly expensive, illegal, and possibly handled by people who, let’s just say, may not be considering food safety or purity first and foremost)… or it’s just like, Angus or something. Overpriced, crookedly marketed Angus.

I don’t buy Transformers except to give to my kids to play with, and they don’t care, but when you care about something, be it music, video games, movies, books, the devil is in the details.

Having someone try to pawn off products that have missing details out of sheer cost cutting is as insulting as someone saying that an old PCI Titan video card is just as good as my Radeon 5750, because does it really matter about lessened detail?

Cheap is Black since that can use any old regrind crap swept off the shop floor and still be black. Unfortunately it also tends to a lot more brittle but who cares if you save a few bucks per pound on raw materials?

Aaaaad … that’s totally off the subject…. =P

It’s one thing to make a random comment. It’s another to try to make a logical argument based on opinions. You need to read up on your communications or learn to stop being so one-sided. Or both. Yeah, both.