The Eckerd (drug store) by my job has them on sale. A pack of two for $2.99. They're normally $3.48 or something. Not a huge savings, but this doesn't bode well for my attempt to wean myself off my recent mint addiction.
My plan was to limit my purchases to a two-pack every two days. I consume both packs in the course of a work day, so the in between days would have me calming my mint jones with Canada Mints. They're much less intense than Altoids, and they're a bit sweet, but I love the texture and the way they melt in my mouth. They're also much cheaper at 99 cents a bag and actually contains peppermint oil, though probably not as much as Peppermint Altoids.
The other two Altoid mint flavors don't mention mint leaves or oils in their ingredients. Just "natural flavor". Most mints, I notice, seem to list "natural flavor" rather than name the mint whose flavor is indicated on the packaging; Peppermint, Spearmint, Wintergreen. Is Wintergreen an actual mint, or just a made up flavor? And what is "natural flavor"? In any case, I buy the Peppermint flavor.
I'm not sure exactly when my mint addiction started. Maybe about a month or so ago when a morning cough had me buying Hall's Spearmint cough drops on the way to work. It wasn't the first time I've had them, but somehow I was hooked.
I was also using Arm & Hammer whitening toothpaste and perhaps the problem started there as I enjoyed it a great deal more than usual as dental care goes. Something about that baking soda/mint combination. That would date the start of this situation more than a couple of months back. Anyway, shortly after that particular cough drop purchase I would occasionally find myself brushing my teeth twice in the same session. Then I was buying more cough drops, sometimes Hall's, sometimes another brand to experiment.
At some point I moved from cough drops to mints, but I don't remember the transition happening. Three weeks ago they were on sale and I was buying them almost daily. Once the price went back up I slowed it down a bit for the sake of economic sanity.
Speaking of sanity, there are some who question mine, for a variety of reasons usually, but in this case over my consumption of six Altoid mints at a time. Over the course of a day I'll vary the amount sometimes to extend the life of a tin. Also, should I have to speak while I have a bunch of these mints in my mouth, I end up burning my eyes, which isn't a very pleasant sensation.
Another issue I have is with the gelatin found in these and other mints. Gelatin is apparently a beef by product. I don't eat beef or pork, but I'm not a fanatic about it, however seeing that Altoids are made in Great Britain, and that the U.K. isn't known for having the best cows within it's borders at the moment (mad cow), I'm just a teensy bit concerned.
So Altoids are on sale and tomorrow I may buy two 2-packs, to try and hold me over the weekend.
At some point I expect to bring myself down to a once a week habit, but we'll see.
Things like this are why I don't do drugs (yet), or rarely drink.
Labels: Altoids, peppermints
The post below contains some historical information that may be flat out wrong. For more information on Prince, visit housequake.com or order The Vault from
http://www.uptown.se/ if you're looking for an informative book on the man. I haven't read or even ordered it yet. Just letting you know it's there.
For official news and occasional music, see
http://www.npgmc.com/ http://www.3121.com/Info on unofficial recordings by the man, see (again) housequake.com
Labels: music, Prince
Went to Best Buy after work to get the three
Prince films on DVD;
Purple Rain, Under The Cherry Moon and
Graffiti Bridge. Unfortunately, GB was out of stock. Wouldn't be that big a deal except that there's an extra five bucks off for buying all three. So I didn't get any, went home and ordered them online from Overstock.com for just about the same price. Maybe less considering NY sales tax. That Best Buy under-ordered GB is understandable. That it's possible to sell out that movie is almost astonishing. Yes, it's bad, but I still want it.
Some bad movies are great but it often takes the passage of time (since the release of such a film, not the first viewing) to reveal it's true value. Most of the time that value is unintentional laughter.
Jackie Chan's Fantasy Mission Force was probably less amusing in 1980 (or whenever it came out) than it is now. It happens to be a comedy, but not all the laughter is generated as intended. FMF was actually more of a
(Jimmy) Wang Yu vehicle than a Chan film by the way. Chan owed Wang Yu a favor and repaid him by appearing in this bizarre movie and
Island On Fire (U.S. title:
The Prisoner) or maybe not. IMDB.com has a different story for IOF. Whatever.
Anyway I look forward to the Prince films and will probably watch GB first and PR last as this will be the most painless way to watch all three, saving the best for last.
Graffiti Bridge is supposed to be the sequel to Purple Rain, but in my mind, the sequel elements were thrown in to get what little financing this movie ultimately received. This story is less about Purple Rain: six years later, and more about Prince's state of mind following a rumoured bad ecstasy trip that inspired
Lovesexy, a sort of spiritual album that took the place of the dirtier
Black Album that was initially to be released. It seemed to me that GB was to be a sequel to the Lovesexy album, but with visuals. I don't remember what clued me into that possibility (song titles? The movie trailer?), but Lovesexy had been among my favorite Prince records (I think the
Batman "soundtrack" followed) and I was looking forward to a development of those themes or perhaps I came to that conclusion AFTER hearing the soundtrack.
Anyhow, listening to the soundtrack was the first sign that something was wrong. I don't remember if this record followed or was released at the same time as
The Time's Pandemonium, but those two albums were like night and day (no pun intended) especially where tracks on GB attributed to "The Time" were concerned. It should be noted that The Time is pretty much one of Prince's musical alter egos, but one that apparently has taken on a life of it's own. This may've been true as far back as the early eighties when they reportedly upstaged him as his opening act. It was certainly true in 1990 when these two albums were released.
The music on Graffiti Bridge is generally lifeless, due perhaps to the mis-use of computers which allow Prince to fullfill his perfectionism to a fault. Due also to some bad songwriting as well, though this album contains one or two of my all time favorites;
Joy In Repitition and
Question Of U. I think there were about four songs attributed to The Time, which as far as I know, in this case consisted of Prince and
Morris Day. Prince is largely (though not completely) responsible for the music on the first three Time albums which are classics. The touring group which included Day, Jam & Lewis, Jesse Johnson and others had been long disbanded and it seems Prince was ready to re-team with Day to create another Time album without the guys everybody associated with the group. It sounded like a plan, but it just didn't work. Most of the songs on the aborted
Coporate World sucked. The songs by "The Time" on GB sucked. Pandemonium was another story, though. It included songs written by Prince, as well as the "original" line-up of the band. The best songs on the album were written by
Jesse Johnson while the Prince tunes were okay, but better than the one's on GB, except maybe
Data Bank, and
It's Your World or something. The original Data Bank recorded by Prince and
the Revolution is excellent. Whoever's responsible for the re-working on Pandemonium deserves a flogging, as long as they're not into that sort of thing already.
Too late to make a long story short: The first full album by this assembled band produced better results than Prince's attempt to continue a tradition of pretending to be the band by doing everything himself and throwing Morris Day's vocals on top.
So the soundtrack was generally bad. I chose to avoid the theatrical release of the movie after reading a few reviews and after my best friend warned me to stay away; "Yo! This guy snuck into the movie, sat there for a while, and then
snuck right back out."
I eventually rented the tape and saw for myself how bad it was. It became for me the worst movie ever, and remained that way untill I viewed a bootleg of
Moulin Rouge.
Now I wonder how the passage of time will affect the way I enjoy this movie as well as the other two which I haven't seen in quite some time. I'll have to wait and see.
Labels: DVD, movies, music, Prince