Needless to say, I will never eat sardines again.

I don't recall exactly what I said on Tim's voicemail, but here's the gist of the sardine thing:

Last week I was eating my last tin of sardines when it occurred to me that I had purchased those sardines nearly a month before. At that time, Walgreens had them on sale for like 40 cents a tin so I bought six of them. Sardines really aren't too bad. They're like tuna: by itself it isn't that great, but throw in some Tabasco and a saltine and, baby, you got yourself a stew! Or heartburn and bad breath.


So I was eating these month-old sardines and I was thinking, "dang, how long to sardines stay good?" I had never looked at the expiration dates on them and, considering the clearance price and the popularity of sardines, the store might have been trying to get rid of them before they went bad. That could explain why the empty tins stink so bad in my trash, too. Just the week before one of my co-workers sent me an email requesting that I take a bath. It wasn't my unwashed junk that she was smelling, though, it was the sardine tin in my trash. I hope.

So I plugged my nose and dug the stinky tin from the trash. To my shock and awe, Bumblebee assured me that those little fishes were good until 2011.

Two more years to eat those fish. I couldn't believe it. Isn't that crazy?! Is it just because they're in an airtight container, or do they add some sort of edible formaldehyde? What kind of preservatives are capable of embalming those fish for two years AND keeping them safe to eat? These fish could have been killed three years ago and, oh, I think I'll just pop one in my mouth on a cracker. Three year old fish corpses drowned in oil and sealed in tin. It's like a little dead-fish time capsule. How delicious.