So, I tried it. The famous beetlenut. (Sorry Ray and Ellen, sorry Mom.) When in Rome. (Ron Burgundy anyone?) I know, you likely don’t know what the beetlenut is. I’ll explain it as best I can, but it is something very foreign to Canada. Kinda like chewing tobacco in Canada, but here everyone does it. Even cute girls. I bet babies do it in the womb. It is this little orange tiny coconut looking thing that they peel and eat the inside, which is a small nut. They break this nut into four pieces, and they start to chew on a chunk with a piece of some leaf, and some white stuff, lime I think, spread on it. It makes your spit all red and your teeth all red and gross. It creates so much red saliva that you have to spit it everywhere, and you see the red tinted spit marks all over town. Beetlejuice, I call it.. They also have to spread the lime on the leaf with their finger, and then their finger is coated with white that they wipe anywhere in town they want, poles, walls, anywhere. Like finger painting.

Scott and I decided for the full force of our trips, that we should give the stuff a try. We bought some at the Difference United concert we went to, for five rupees. We got some girl nearby to show us how to do it, so we did it properly, but it was still the grossest thing I’ve ever tasted. I started chewing and had to squat down because I was laughing so hard at the taste of the stuff. I spit/sprayed from laughing and got some beetlejuice on a girl’s leg. She wasn’t too pleased and we’ll just say that I didn’t get her number after the show. I’m sure the red juice was running down my face as I laughed/gagged. I couldn’t finish my helping, I had to spit it out. Not much makes me gag, but this did the trick. Its taste is something that cannot be explained, but I were to give it a shot, I’d say it would be something like cat testes dipped in whale vomit. Sorry about the description, but seriously, that is what it was like. We both got head rushes and laughed for a long time. But really, what is a gospel-rock-powerpop concert without some illicit substances?

I also tried the packaged version, the ones you can buy absolutely anywhere. It is like beetlenut mixed with sugar, or so I think, so it isn’t half as bad, which makes it into a fraction of awful that is still astounding. The taste is way too hard to explain, you’ll have to try it out to understand it, I’ll bring some home, you can try it out. It is like chewing on popcorn seeds that didn’t get popped in the microwave. Anyways, it is likely super addictive, and afterwards it gave me a headrush and I got a bit dizzy. You know it is good when it does that.

Don’t worry Mom, Ellen, I won’t ever do it again. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I prefer buffalo testes and dog vomit.