Liquid Metal & liquid sugar.

My guilty pleasure of late is the XM Satellite Radio station XM42 Liquid Metal (or as they often identify it, "Liquid Fucking Metal"). It is the most extreme, hardest, most rambunctious heavy metal I've ever heard, with shredding guitars, lightning fast bass drum assaults and gutteral croaking that passes for vocals (not always the latter, but that's the kind of singing that I like in this kind of stuff).
My wife absolutely hates it. With a passion. She can't understand why I like it, doesn't think it even qualifies as music, and says that it is the kind of stuff that disturbed teenagers listen to (and all this time I thought disturbed teens were listening to Justin Timberlake and Panic! at the Disco...silly me).
I suppose that's why I consider it a "guilty pleasure", because this time last year I probably would have agreed with her on all points. I don't know how I developed a taste for XMLM, only that it came on strrong about 3 months back and ever since then it's been a staple of my XM listening experience. I think the first time I began to like XMLM was when I heard "Coolguy", the evening on-air personaliy. This guy is one funny SOB. He's got a voice that's almost as gruff as the singers of the songs he plays, and a "who-gives-a-shit" confrontational attitude that cracks me up. He takes phone calls from listeners, most of whom sound like they're either stoned out of their minds or simply don't have much of a mind to work with. Coolguy never fails to demean them in some way, whether by completely and viciously dismissing the song/band the caller wants to hear or just by subtly insulting them in ways that go over their heads.
It's always big fun when Coolguy is on. Associating that personality with the music and realizing that I share many of those personality traits, though buried deep within, has probably been the main reason I've come to like Liquid Metal so much. Plus, it is very cathartic to listen to when I'm in a piss poor mood.

In other earth-shattering news from our camp, we liked Jones Soda Co.'s Pure Cane Sugar Green Apple flavor that we decided to try the Strawberry-Lime version. Sounded like a nice combination, the strawberrys & the lime. And sure enough, it is a very tasty blend. Much sweeter than the green apple version (which I blogged about several days ago), with the pure cane sugar much more prominent. The final verdict, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that the strawberry lime edition, though a good deal better than your typical fruit flavored sodas, does not quite measure up to the Green Apple. We'll probably not bother with it whenever we have a choice between it and the latter.
Not too sure what other flavors Jones has to offer so I don't know what I'll try next. I do know that they have a Kiwi version, but as I don't like Kiwis in the first place, I doubt I'll be inclined to give that one a shot.