What we talk about when we talk about ass

What are we saying when we say that something tastes like ass?

We don't mean it tastes like shit, exactly. On the level of pure taste, shit and ass are like apples and oranges, they're two different taste-tations, producing two markedly different effects. To taste shit is to know instantly something has gone terribly wrong on the food chain. There's recoil, revulsion, emesis and everlasting sorrow. After one has eaten shit, one can never go back to innocence.

To have tasted ass, however, is more subtle and is only really understood with the fullness of time. Something is ass when it disgusts you slowly...

... imparting first a distinct sensation of dissatisfaction that, human nature being what it is, one tries to overcome by eating more, hoping against hope that the flavor, texture, after-taste will improve...

... or at the very least there will be an ultimate sense of satiety, of fullness.

But the insidiousness of ass is that the more you consume it the quicker it empties you, until you are left with a lingering perception of inedibility, a gnawing hollowness and the haunting understanding that you have betrayed your own appetites with a stringy simulacrum of nutrition.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009) tastes like ass.