Buh-bye, bean

Hey, remember Sony's Walkman kidn^H^H^H^Hbean? If not, you better catch up with your remembrances now, because Sony has already announced -- after less than six months on the market -- that the Bean is getting the boot.

Business and entertainment pundits are already looking over the entrails of the Bean (do beans have entrails?) to determine if its demise was due to the rapidly-advancing tech market, or if it was Yet Another iPod Victim™. I don't have a theory either way, but I do find it noteworthy that some ancient winter rituals involved the baking of a hardened bean in a communal cake; whoever got the bean was either chosen as (a) the victim who got sacrificed to the sun as an end to winter, or (b) elected the king, who was then tasked with restoring winter -- and get axed if he didn't.

The tradition lives on nowadays in King's Day celebrations and bean cakes, but I believe the Walkman Bean is the first case of a legume committing suicide...