We will take a moment here, as we* were waiting at the airport gate for boarding to begin, to burn a little time and address the chocolate rating scale because our fast and furiously reading readership may easily confuse our chocolate rating scale with are non-patented hammock rating scale. But there is a difference. And it is not related to patents or intellectual property law.

Yes, both are out-of-five-star systems. The main difference is that while all hammocks we review get ***Spoiler Alert that Spoils With Sweetness*** five stars out of five (as the sky is literally the limit for hammocks), not all chocolate-–or so-called chocolate–-deserves five out of five stars because unfortunately the world is full of people that throw around the term “chocolate’ too loosely, which we will dive into further detail about downline; whereas this world, for all of its faults, at least does not confuse something like “a chair” with “a hammock” and use the two words interchangeably. As such, not all chocolate can earn five stars on our rating scale. And, because of our integrity, despite our kindness and generosity, we refuse to yield to the pressure of the big corporations and just hand out five star ratings to chocolates that don’t deserve it.

Of course we need to further explain this and get into details. Because we are now at the gate waiting for the plane, there is nothing more important you could be doing right now like work or clearing or repairing your lawn mower. So we will get down to brass tacks about the chocolate rating scales and how that works. By the time we are done with this section of the discussion, it will be time to board the plane and it will almost be like no time has passed at all: as they say, “time flies when you are reading Hammock Reviews” or “time flies when you are writing Hammock Reviews” or “time flies when you are on a hammock” or “time flies by when you are in a hammock” or “time flies when you are talking hammocks.”

These sayings, common in The Beautiful Hammock Future, are unfortunately rare in this present epoch this writing has arisen out of as we are trying to do the heavy work of societal subduction now that will pay off in the gold of hammock appreciation later. This is a necessary step in societal growth as currently time moves slow at terminal gates where the majority of passengers wait with non-hammock-obsessed impatience as humankind (and likely other mammals as well) lacks an expression in any language that states: “Time flies when you are at an airport gate waiting for your plane to board.”

But in The Beautiful Hammock Future time will fly at all airport gates as the majority of chairs (some will be left over as artifacts to remind us how superior hammocks are to them) will have been replaced with hammocks, not completely unlike the modern medicine practices that have been introduced to replace leeching, as discussed earlier, but leeches of course still exist just as chairs will still exist in The Beautiful Hammock Future: we just will neither recklessly use leeches nor chairs to make us unnecessarily uncomfortable through uncomfortable outcomes like bleeding.

Yes, we are getting to the chocolate rating system, and warming up your mind to do so as we have also been preparing your mind for the whimsical nature of how the mind will evolve in The Beautiful Hammock Future where people think so often in whimsy, the wishful way of mental wondering in hammocks where the mind can explore various thoughts without the pressure of deadlines to finish one thought before moving on to another or connect them logically.

Of course, logically speaking, we need not wait until The Beautiful Hammock Future to participate in such leisurely mental patterns because the fact that time is relative has already been theoretically proven (Einstein, Albert; paragraphs, the above), we need not wait for time to pass for The Beautiful Hammock Future to come and experience evolution: we simply need to jump into a hammock.

Or get wasted.

Or eat chocolate.

Real chocolate.

Centered around cocoa. Not sugar.

While this may seem obvious, this must be noted because the great majority of things sold as chocolate are mostly cheap sugar. In other circles, such deception would be called lying (or if you are the Pittsburgh Pirates ownership you call it “rebuilding.”).

In other words, what is often called chocolate is actually cheap sweetness.

In even other words, what is often called chocolate is actually bullshit.

Now, one might be thinking–-considering our (your esteemed Hammock Reviewers at Sweet Livin’ Productions Hammock Reviews) rightly close relationship to Sweet Livin’ Productions and the overall enlightening nature of the term “Sweet Livin’”--why would this Review be denigrating, rather than promoting, chocolate of the super sweet nature composed almost entirely of sugary sweeteners with barely any traces of cocoa. Several important reasons:

1. A chocolate wrapper should not front as a cheap mystery novel where you have to use your detective skills to find where the cocoa is as a sub ingredient among many other non-cocoa ingredients.

2. A chocolate wrapper should not front a Where’s Waldo? (Where’s Wally? or other names, for our non-North American readership) book not only because of intellectual property rights but also because no matter how much we or kids may enjoy Where’s Waldo? (Where’s Holger? for our Danish readership) books we or kids enjoy chocolate more. Sure, a Where’s Waldo? (Where’s Ubaldo? for our Italian readership) book is a great way for any person at any age to pretend they’re reading, but no one has to fake enjoyment of chocolate. Women fake orgasms when having sex (citation: sex); women don’t fake orgasms when having chocolate (citation: chocolate commercials).

3. Freedom of speech runs deep, like a Wonka river of chocolate, in the creative process at Sweet Livin’ Productions. There is certainly not a host of hapless censors (neither is there a host of hapless people, regardless of their job responsibilities: there may not even be a host of people, regardless of their mood) looking over our shoulders telling us to promote sweetness, however cheap it may be. No, at Sweet Livin’ Productions, all positive, absurd, and humorous views are accepted.

4. “Cheap” is the key ingredient to the cheap sweetness of such cheap chocolate. That is, the large, cheap companies, deliver cheapness in their sweetness rather than generously giving you highly-qualified high-quality elite sweetness, such as they provide at sweetlivinproductions.com, which is hand-crafted with every delicious word, mostly on a keyboard. Conversely, big corporations give you mass-produced, non-tailored sweetness that is mostly constructed and conceived in very inhumane vats: unfit for any human to dwell in, even temporarily for a short vacation of relaxation. You wouldn’t make a hammock with corn syrup, and so you shouldn’t make chocolate bars with corn syrup–-or hydrogenated vegetable oil. Hammock lifestyle is not about hydrogenating your vegetable oil. Never did one (unless they are an absolutely sick fuck) lie in a hammock and hydrogenate their vegetable oil.

Hydrogenating vegetable oil is for cheap ground/human separating devices like chairs, which often require oil to make, whether hydrogenated or not.

Or maybe hydrogenating vegetables is a chairless activity that requires standing and thus is even too cheap for chairs.

Nobody knows.

Nobody cares.

But people do care about Mount Rushmores and we just created a Mount Rushmore above of the top four reasons that cheap chocolate is bullshit.

But its such bullshit, that will degrade our great Mount Rushmores by inviting the above bullshit Mount Rushmore into their great company. #Mounts(AlsoKnownAsMountains)MustHaveStandardsOtherwiseTheyAreJustAMereHillOrALowlyValley

Our readership only cares about things like Mount Rushmores that are high quality and require a process.

Like hammocks and cocoa.

And/or cacao.

Which are largely the same thing, in that they are the real stuff. They are the goods; they are the star player; they are the hammock of the chocolate.

Without cocoa/cacao you have to delve into metaphorical chocolate, which doesn’t work so loosely with metaphorical materials as hammocks do for many of the reasons described above.

But cocoa and cacao are not actually the same thing.

Cocoa is basically processed cacao, cacao after it has been roasted. Because processing often gets rids of some of the good stuff, like antioxidants, cacao is technically healthier than cocoa. We say “technically” because people may use cacao as ingredients in processes where they are heating everything up (i.e. cooking or baking), which could similarly strip cacao of some of its goods.

We don’t know all the details. We aren’t chocolate scientists here (that would strip all of the fun, along with antioxidants, out of the cacao, cocoa, and chocolate!). But cacao and cocoa are so similar that most languages just use the same word for both. English is one of the few languages that distinguishes between the two, most often by people who mistakenly think cacao is the correct pronunciation of cocoa and therefore believe the use of it makes them sound smarter and will get them laid, most likely with a compatible partner who uses whom at every possible opportunity (and sometimes incorrectly) for the similar reasons. #CanDarwinismPleaseStepUp&DoSomethingToAddressSuchAnnoyances?

So even though cocoa and cacao are not the exact same thing, if we proceed to use them rather interchangeably, it really is okay because we really use them both to mean the real deal.

And this is not just us: the debate around the legitimacy of white chocolate often surrounds cocoa content and the FDA requires a minimum level of cocoa content to call something white chocolate.

While we may debate the cocoa levels needed to meet the chocolate threshold (we like it higher), we agree that a minimum level of cocoa/cacao is required to call something chocolate, without being a piece-of-shit liar.

Yet, cocoa by itself is not chocolate; just as words by themselves don’t make a Hammock Review: they are the ingredients or parts of the Hammock Review, that have to be skillfully and thoughtfully woven together into the tasty product called a Hammock Review.

And before they can be woven together, they have to be found, they need to be sourced. Because we only use the highest quality of words, they typically have to be gathered through traveling to far-off lands, harvested, and carefully selected. If this sounds quite similar to the process of sourcing cocoa beans to make chocolate, then you are right to think that a Hammock Review is as tasty as a perfectly cocoa-balanced chocolate bar.

If we were one of those larger companies that use large, fancy business terms for everything, we would call this previous paragraph a great description of how import/export works.

Most business schools in North America–-and probably other continents as well (we have yet to do a full curricular audit)–-exclude the importation and exportation of words and relaxation from their curricula, perhaps because they do not understand how this process occurs.

Because they haven’t read our Hammock Reviews.

Which explain everything (citation pending).

Among everything is the hammocktiering process.

How do our Hammock Reviews manage to explain the hammocktiering process to the masses in a more efficient way to the accounting or medical professions bestow their knowledge in degree or certification programs?

The writing process.

Unlike magic, which is anti-transparency, we can explain our processes. We can outline our steps.

First one must procure the necessary amount of alcohol or coffee. That occurs either after or before one secures the proper hammock. After securing the proper words as discussed above and properly pairing them with the hammock, one then might proceed to revise the grouping of words before sharing such polished work with a team of highly-paid, highly-skilled, and highly-talented editors. Then a cover designer arrives, a marketing team enters, professional promotional book cover blurb quotes are procured, and then you have a New York Times Bestseller.

Imagine, if you will, cutting corners and eliminating a key part, or two, or more, of that process. Imagine if someone were to just complete the first couple steps of the process–-alcohol/ coffee/hammock/words–-and spit out a Hammock Review, for instance, disregarding the arduous writing process discussed above that results in a New York Times Bestseller. In such a case, the writing may just go on and on and on with only the most adventurous, most high-end, most wisdom-recognizing, and wisdom-seeking readers sticking around to uncover the gold nuggets, sneakily hiding of course among the rivers of words, so they pan them out (another beautiful process), like the Great 49ers of Old.

So the Hammock Review writer, who in future centuries (or millennia, for the process of allowing words to ripen into wisdom can be one of the slowest moving processes humans partake in) will be called prophets, takes a hammock and communicates it to the masses through the Hammock-Review writing process just as a chocolatier takes cocoa and communicates it to the masses through the chocolate-making process.

For chocolate that is 100 percent cocoa is baker’s chocolate; it is not edible, just like a Hammock Review would be unreadable if it were 100 percent words, without adding photos, alcohol, and coffee in careful adherence to the instructions of the Hammock Review recipe, written in the futuristically-fabled heavenly scrolls in The Beautiful Hammock Future.

Baker’s chocolate is appropriate for cooking or baking (citation: chocolate, baker’s; onomatology): not eating. It is raw. So just as the Hammock Review writer, in later decades to be called scholars (for the peer review process that produces scholarly articles is quicker than the wisdom-producing process discussed above), must add some hammock-friendly/hammock-complementary/non-direct-hammock ingredients to transform a raw “baker’s hammock” into a refined Hammock Review, non-cocoa ingredients need to be added to cocoa to transform it into tasty chocolate.

But how much other stuff?

There is the often cited “balance” needed in life to make it tasty which is also true (and perhaps derives) from the balance needed in chocolate bars to make them the ideal taste. This balance is usually not 50/50 regarding chocolate bars because they were not built on evenly-spread socialist ideals (in fact, actually much of the history unfortunately circles around plundering, exploitation, and colonialism: none of which will exist in The Beautiful Hammock Future). But a 50 percent cocoa, non-cocoa split does not necessarily equal the ideal balance in a chocolate bar.

So what creates the perfect balance in a chocolate bar?

Naturally, that is a matter of opinion.

As you come to Hammock Reviews to get the wise opinions our Hammock Review writing process delivers, we will deliver for you that flavor of wisdom here in regards to chocolate bar balancing.

If you are to get your standard chocolate bar, the balance must tilt in favor of cocoa: it must be over 50 percent (citation: Reviews, Hammock). And normally we actually put the cutoff at 70 percent for our taste buds, which are reputable in the cocoa department here at the Hammock Reviews. Still, we recognize the 70 percent cutoff is a matter of opinion. The over 50 percent is not.

“This is subjective,” an annoying naysayer could say who wants to argue about everything while not lying in a hammock while not living in The Beautiful Hammock Future. “I prefer less.”

“If you prefer less enjoyment in this world,” we kindly respond. “That is your prerogative. It is no matter to us, as long as you stay to yourself and do not go around tearing hammocks off of trees as many of your annoying colleagues do. In fact, by not appreciating cocoa you create less demand for this wonderful resource, which will hopefully create less global conflict over it. Yet, ignorance is not bliss. The greatness of cocoa, just like the greatness of hammocks, is not subjective or open for debate. This is not some annoying Philosophy 101 class where the existence of every little thing is questioned. Does the chair exist? Is it real? Yes, of course it is. But a hammock is realer. Does a ‘chocolate’ bar with barely in cocoa in it exist? Yes, it does. But a chocolate bar with over 50 percent cocoa in it exists over 50 percent more” (citation: statistics).

“What about the free speech mentioned earlier?” the naysayer asks in a whiny voice, for their cacao-deprived voice is almost always whiny.

“Well, Sweet Livin’ Productions is all about free speech, but telling people that cheap sweetness sans proper amounts of cocoa is chocolate is akin to screaming ‘Fire!’ (when there is not one) in a crowded theatre, which you are not allowed to do and is not protected by free speech. This was already settled by the Oliver Wendell Holmes Supreme Court. It is law. So we are right, as law-abiding citizens here at Sweet Livin’ Productions.”

With the Supreme Court having ruled in our favor, we can now proceed without quotation marks or dialogue as we were doing so well before being rudely interrupted by the stagnant chair using, non-moving, un-evolving, non-2Pac-listening-to skeptic.

Now, context is important, for both fires and cocoa levels. You should indeed scream ‘Fire!’ if there is a fire in a crowded theatre—or even an uncrowded theatre as those theatregoers who chose the less fashionable show have the same rights as those who went for the popular show, especially if the less fashionable show is a Hammock Review reading, in which case they have more rights, and likely more skill so a few of them can probably calmly extinguish the fire while the Hammock Review reading show continues to its completion.

Similarly, if a more sophisticated and artistic chocolatiering practice has taken place than what results in your standard chocolate bar discussed above (those chocolate bars that appear in most grocery stores), then you can actually make do with a lower cocoa percentage, not completely unlike a well-executed writing process can do more with less words (of course there are some exceptions, like this Hammock Review, which is equivalent to high-cocoa levels and high art).

Cheap chocolate, that which is low on cocoa and low on artistic processing, in direct opposition to the high level of words and art in this Review, is like a cheap sitting device or cheap relaxation device, the proverbial mattress filled with bedbugs in comparison to a hammock. Sometimes it’s better to just stand (citation: the rise of the standing desk).

As noted above, you wouldn’t make hammocks with high-fructose corn syrup, and you wouldn’t gargle on high-fructose corn syrup before kissing someone, so why would you want your chocolate kisses to have them, like Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses used to before getting back to the simply basics?

Hershey’s Chocolate would normally get low ratings on the chocolate scale except for two things:

1. It is in Pennsylvania and while it is more on the Eastern side, it's in the relative vicinity of Pittsburgh (as far as chocolate production goes), which gives it some proximity to greatness.

2. There is also the Milton Hershey School, which is supported by the Milton Hershey School Trust and is the largest stockholder of The Hershey Company. So every time you eat a Hershey’s Kiss, for instance, you are helping kids. You are literally educating a child with every Hershey’s Chocolate bite. So, if we were some anti-kids outfit (like most of the Other Internet, which is not suitable for kids), then we might be anti-Hershey’s Chocolate. But like the late, great Ol’ Dirty Bastard, we are for the children.

All of this is to say, we simply put chocolate in these categories:

1. Great Chocolate. This is the stuff that has gone through the chocolatier process as described above.

2. High-cocoa chocolate. This is stuff that may have not had such a sophisticated chocolatiering process, but makes up for it with a high-cocoa percentage.

3. Hershey’s Chocolate

4. Cheap, sugary, low-cocoa content “chocolate” by large companies that are not educating kids at the Milton Hershey School and thus do not invite you to help the children by eating sweets.

So just as there are four corners to the earth, and four aspects of this Hammock Review, and four faces on a Mount Rushmore, so too does chocolate fall into these four categories and thus creating four aspects of this sentence. When added together—-the earth, this Hammock Review, and chocolate—-you end up with a dodecagon.

And when just one Mount Rushmore (like The Mount Rushmore of Highly-Generalized Chocolate Categories) is thrown into the mix, you get a 16-gon.

So the chocolate in the first chocolate category gets five out of five stars.

The chocolate in the second chocolate category gets four out of five stars.

Hershey’s Chocolate, because of the pro-kids stance we talked about above, gets an exemption from the rating process and the gift (generously donated by us, without even deducting it from our taxes #CivicDuty) of its own category.

The “chocolate” in the fourth category gets quotation marks in lieu of stars because we don’t even believe it is chocolate.

Annoying people and mathematicians alike may rage against our five-star chocolate rating system, saying that it is not a true five-star system because we don’t use all five stars available—or even five categories. Well, we have simply taken the nod from elite institutions who do not use all five letters available in the Great Alphabetized Grading Systems of Old (citation: grade inflation at Ivy Leagues schools) and must note that there is a secret fifth category: any chocolate bar with a golden ticket from the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (but not the too-creepy remake Charlie and Chocolate Factory).

Case closed. Argument won.

If you are wondering where sweetlivinproductions.com would fall into all of this if it were a chocolate bar, well it would be the perfect balance, it would be the perfect chocolate bar. It would be Belgium chocolate.

Made with Ghanaian cocoa.

Five stars out of five. No one likes false humility.

With all of that noted, we should return to our discussion of chocolate bar percentages and differentiate them from the high-quality chocolatiering process that we did not demand such high levels of cocoa of. We are using chocolate bars here in this great discussion to connote all chocolate processes without an advanced chocolatiering system and so they require more cocoa to make up for the less sophisticated process.

All of that considered (retroactively) and chocolate bar talk providing the unbelievably stable bookends to hold the discussion upright, we then board the plane.

While I cannot rightly claim to credit chocolate for allowing me to finally board a plane more than I could credit a confirmed seat, credit should still be given where credit was due: I did not partake in such consumption of chocolate in my previous attempts to board as discussed above.

You do the math.

After a layover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the home of awesome ancient mathematics methods and another chocolate-induced on-time departure for me, I arrived in Brussels in the wee hours of the morning, tired after a long trip with little sleep.

But the pursuit of chocolate douses fatigue.

I took a train from the Brussels airport to the city center to find a chocolate shop.

Success.

Success takes many forms, but this is one shade of it in Hammock Reviews: