My wife, as she browsed through artsy and craftsy stores in Portland last weekend, wanted to show she was thinking of me (while she was off having fun at an art conference and I was home doing a 3-day weekend of toddler wrangling). So she bought me some bacon flavored mints.

After she bragged in her art blog about how thoughtful it was for her to buy them for me, I finally got up the gumption to open them.

The smell that wafted out didn't so much put me in mind of bacon as it did of the smell of a open box of Band Aids. And that's sort of strangely coincidental since the same company makes and sells adhesive bandages that look like bacon.

After sniffing it a bit, I had to quit now or take the next step and put it in my mouth.

Perhaps you've read my musings on the Uncanny Valley, but if you're not familiar with the concept...

There's a space along the spectrum from "cartoony" to "just like the real thing" in which a product that imitates something becomes too much like the real thing, yet not enough like the real thing at the same time. In this space, the little differences become magnified, almost creepy or disgusting. When it's done with robots and animated characters, it feels like you're watching a zombie, an animated corpse. Enough's right to make it seem human, but enough's wrong to make that humanity creepy and scary instead of endearing.

That space is called the Uncanny Valley.

These mints live in the Uncanny Valley of bacon. To sum up the taste... they tasted like doggie bacon treats smell. You get hit with such an overpowering essense of bacon that you know immediately it's not bacon. Bacon just isn't that... bacony. And instead of revelling in an enhanced bacony sensorium, my reaction was to spit out the mint.

So, my darling wife, I do so appreciate you thinking of me while I'm sitting home with the kid so you can go hang with grown-ups and be creative. Without your thoughtfulness, I would never have had this experience which has made my life so much the richer.