Things that are not actually pink

[beetiger]

1)Termination notices, aka "pink slips". They're just on normal white paper in manila envelopes. At least mine was. Amazingly, the company delivered it to me a full two and a half days before my actual end date, which is atypical of their disorganized administrative approach toward us generally.

2)Natural cherry flavor. It's clear. However, it smells just as artificial as artificial cherry flavor, when you knock a bottle of it off your lab bench and it cracks and goes all over the floor. Then you have to unpack boxes of expensive fragile equipment to get packing materials out of them, because you have no more packing materials otherwise, and you need to send packages of cherry flavor to people. Someone else will have to repack the fragile equipment. Or perhaps they won't. I should probably mark the beverage bottle I have with a ball of mercury from a broken thermometer in it more carefully. My reputation as a klutz is not undeserved.

3)On the other hand, newborn "pinkie" mice really are pink. Perhaps a tiny snake wandering around the house will be tempted by one if I leave it out overnight.

Comments

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

*pats*

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

It's always sad to get the actual pink slip. I wish you the best in your quest for your next job.

Oh... and about the bottle with mercury in it. I recommend that you don't put seltzer water, a dab of food coloring, a touch of the natural cherry flavor, some sugar, and a label 'Extra special flavored soda for my boss' on the bottle. I especially don't recommend that you leave it in her/his/zir office with a nice ribbon tied around it.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

In fact, it's very possible that pink slips may have never been pink.

And I imagine most fruit flavors (most flavors in general) are clear; there's no reason to expect the various chemicals that give plants colors and the chemicals that give them taste to be related in any way. Speaking of which, just out of curiosity, what is 'natural cherry flavor' and how does it differ from the most common artificial versions (or is it simply the fact of having been extracted from natural cherries)? An ester or some magic combination such? How sweet is the flavor itself, or are there no sugars involved?

And that reminds me...

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

Maybe you can answer something I've always been curious about; who/what decides on the relationship between a fruit and its 'flavor color'? For most fruits there's a fairly obvious mapping (cherries are red, etc etc), but apple wound up green rather than red even though I would bet most of the apples people eat are red, and I've never understood how raspberries ended up blue...

Rrf.

[awolf.livejournal.com]

*snugs*

Sorry to hear about the job. I lost a damn good one a few months ago, and only now am back on my feet... It can sting.

Trickster

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

As far a "natural" flavors go, it is a sourcing thing. Natural flavors are extracted entirely from the named component(s), whereas artificial flavors are synthesized. This is US law, European law also has a category called "nature identical" which describes synthesized flavor containing only chemicals you could have extracted from nature. Most flavors are clear, but brownish or reddish is also common.

Cherry flavor is relatively simple. The classic lollipop cherry is mainly a single component - I can't remember the exact chemical now, but I think you are right about it being an ester.

Flavors aren't "sweet" in the sense that they don't contain added sugar. But a lot of flavors give a "sweet" impression anyway. Flavored seltzers are the obvious example for this.

Re: And that reminds me...

[fenton.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, "apple" being green is supposedly derived from "sour apple" being the origional flavor used - and sour/unripened apples are, in fact, greenish. Usually. Of course, this is from my memory, so take it with a grain of salt.

I'm not sure where the hell 'blue' came in for raspberries. Even black raspberries aren't a dark blue; they're a dark red.

However, I have seen red raspberry, as well - and blue raspberry has to fight it out with blueberry...