This is Better...

...than anything I've ever done with this dumb blog.  Here.

This is a page from a notebook that the poster found somewhere.  Back when I was a kid we'd order mixed sodas and called them "suicides".  "Can I have an orange and Coke and 7-Up suicide, please."

A lot of these seem pretty safe, Sept 30th gave five stars to "pink lemonade, cranberry juice, sierra mist".  That sounds like something my wife would drink.  September 29th, though, gives two stars to Sierra Mist, orange juice and Dr. Pepper - this would seem to indicate that the tester wasn't an insane person.

Notice that the uncolored pieces are also unrated, the tester planned/drew out a number of tests in the future and was then coloring  the sodas in and assigning ratings later.  The drawings aren't of the actual unmixed sodas but are really just a graphical way to represent the proportions of what went into them - which is great.  I do not demand photorealism in my mixed soda visuals.

The most important thing to walk away with from this would be a wariness towards Fruit Punch and Mountain Dew mixed in a 60/40 ratio.  It's the last completed entry and might have very well been what killed the tester and caused the discontinuation of the experiment.

But, this is pretty and maybe I should recreate some of this on my own...


(Thank you Sherry W. for sharing the link to this great image)

Gimmick

Okay, I saw this post a few weeks ago and had to mull it over. What was wrong here?



No, not the hidden outline of the dude. That's specifically what's right about this image.

It's the background, the arrangement of the sodas o the shelves to be precise. I would say that this is not a soft drink selection found in nature, that it's carefully arranged in the studio. But it's still an awesome painting trick, right? Well, no. Follow my logic:

1. The guy had to arrange his own sodas in a staged setting.
2. The sodas are arranged in a very particular way, groupings of sodas that repeat throughout the shelves - not that the patterns repeat, just the blocks of sodas.
3. It's a very specific choice. Why?
4. Because he already had a soda suit, of course. He had the painted suit FIRST and had to build the background around it.

It's the only thing that makes sense.

This Blog isn't Dead, I'm Just Bored...

...because it's fucking boring to write "Oh, this strawberry soda tastes like strawberries but a little chemical fake" for the eight-hundredth time. Seriously, give me a break. I was powered by foulness, by liquid malignancy passed off as child treats. I haven't found a soda evil enough to be reviewed.

And I'm lazy. That too.

I shit you not, I have six milk crates of sodas and threw away another three last time I moved. Soon they'll all be botulism flavored, which at least will give me a run for my money. I can't bring myself to drink another boring god-damn soda.

Boring.


BOOOORING.

Shoot me.

The Dr. Soda Phenomenon

Ak-100 the teaser for the sequel

Photo from The Vain Gourmet.

I'm a little unclear about a lot of things, especially Mrs. French's AK-100. This exceptionally foul beverage has the dubious honor of being the worst thing I have ever drank AND has the best review I have ever written.

Sneaking around the internet this morning, I'd hoped to find a place in Brooklyn to buy some more as I really don't feel I gave the stuff a fair shake the first time around. I mean, it could've been spoiled or just old or an angry person might have shat in the mixing machine. All of those things are more likely true than the possibility that someone actually intentionally concocted the thing I drank to actually taste that way.

Blech.

Anyways, sniffing around I found this blog called "The Vain Gourmet". In it they found an apparently in-house restaurant version of AK-100 sold in a bottle with a sticker reading "AK-100". This completely changes my understanding of the world in that either:

A) AK-100 is a type of drink in general usage in the Caribbean. The wicked Mrs. French didn't originate the stuff, but instead just makes a (hopefully) exceptionally vile version of it. But how the hell does a whole category of drink denoted with a seemingly military code?

or

B) Some perverse Haitian restauranteur is making knock-offs of Mrs. French's products. Next to that AK-100 bottle might be a bottle full of thin grey liquid labeled "Coca Cola".

or possibly

C) The restaurant was rebottling Mrs. French's stuff, possibly after cutting it with bleach. But that seems silly.

Either way, this must be investigated.

President Lincoln Hated Fast Food...

...and they've banned it at the Lincoln Memorial. He'd written that in as a requirement in his will, or his estate wouldn't have payed to have it built. Considering his book proceeds alone, that estate is worth a fortune. And with the money he gets from letting his likeness by used on the five dollar bill...

New 7-11 Gimmick

New 7-11 Gimmick

I don't know what they're selling me, but I doubt that they'd've done this if they'd realized how tacky it is to make something so similar to the "missing children" milk cartons.

Speaking of which, do they still have missing children pictures on milk cartons? When did milk companies stop caring about missing children?

I wrote them a letter that goes a little like this:

I love Slurpees and drink them all the time. However, I was a little uncomfortable with a recent promotion I saw on a Slurpee cup. It shows the profile of a Slurpee cup and says "I lost my Slurpee".

I'm not an old fogey, but man... Do you folks realize how similar this is to the old missing children on the milk cartons? It's sort of tacky.

I'll be writing about this on my soft drink review blog, and would love to hear your side of the story.

http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=7117116885333133555&searchType=ALL&txtKeywords=&label=Slurpee

I do love Slurpees, though.

Best,
tim h

Stealing Stuff at McDonalds

I commend whoever was able to get their act together enough to keep a McDonalds cup intact long enough to try and use it over two separate visits. I'll also salute whoever was cheeky enough to bring in their own cups to fill them at the station, and then tried to justify it by saying "But I was in here last week and bough at a soda, I thought it was all you can drink?"

I myself could never manage any of these things. Try as I might I could not keep a Taco Bell cup in sanitary shape long enough to use it twice. I'd stash it in my car in a safe place and by the same time the next day it was so full of dirt you could use it as a plant pot.

I wonder if I could score a free McDonalds meal by offering to fix the capitalization on their sign? Mind you, I don't eat at McDonalds very often, just when there aren't any other options. Or I'm in a foreign country, few things more awesome than a McDonalds full of funny talk and crazy items that should be in a Jack in the Box.

I need a Cocta put in my mouth

You certainly can't say I'm not hopeful.

I've added a "buy Tim stuff from Amazon" button on the left there. Right above the "Share on Facebook" button. You should mash them both down.

Get to work.

You can buy me stuff like this. Don't buy any of the big cases of drinks unless your using a stolen credit card, as the shipping is ludicrously expensive.

A Slurpee trick

A. Note the Dome on the Mountain Dew Slurpee.

This is a handy trick for easy Slurpee drinking after you've gotten down to about half way through a large sized cup. Eventually the slush level gets low enough that your straw lacks buoyancy/support enough to stick out of the dome. Or at least it doesn't stick out of the dome enough for convenient access.

Rather than removing the lid or engaging in an unnecessary amount of "lip grasping", take the dome and push it down into the cup so that the convexity pops into a concave shape. Voila. You have easy access to the perfectly centered straw, but still have your convenient covering for your remaining drink.

B. Note the "Timulated" dome on this Slurpee.
Mighty convenient, eh?
(Is that a pie on the stove? How old is this photo?)

And your straw is still kept conveniently centered.

The lucrative world of soda reviewing

So I just received a check from Google for $107, which means that my blog averages about $25 a month in clicks. Yep, those annoying ads in this blog are finally paying off. As the old joke goes, I need to start one hundred more blogs and I'll be sitting pretty.

The Fridge Monkey

Combining drinking with stacks of glass bottles, brilliant!

The Fridge Monkey


My wife showed me this gimmicky device, I could see the hopeful glint in her eye, right through the email. A good idea, I think, but not for me. I have eigth bazillion bottles in my refrigerator and none of them are the same size, it kind of spoils the trick.

Pepsi Throwback

This isn't your father's Mountain Dew, nor is it that punk kid's,
it's YOUR Mountain Dew. At least judging by the label.
And assuming your about my age.

I've been trained by enough horror movies to know that
a "throwback" is a genetic monstrosity sure to kill
almost everyone in the film.

Okay, so Pepsi is releasing "retro" versions of its soft drinks. These drinks will use sugar instead of corn syrup. It's first mentioned in a bevindustries.com link here:

In the middle of April, PBV also will begin distributing Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, which features those brands formulated with sugar.

There's a very nice write-up on this at bevreview. Smart folks over there. Too bad my "no research" policy prevents me from actually reading their website. This was an okay bit of looking because:

1. It's about something that hasn't actually been released yet.

and

2. Enough people sent me the link that I felt I HAD to look.

Not much else I can add to this. One thing mentioned in the original Bevnet article is that Pepsi has some kind of consumer voting thing for the new Mountain Dew flavors. I'm hoping I can hire some African dictator to come up here and rig the polls so we can get rid of some of those disgusting cartoon flavors they falsely call "Mountain Dew [*]".

It astounds me that companies have people vote for flavors. I've always assumed that this was total crap, even as a kid. As an adult I had it confirmed when I worked on a cereal ad campaign for which the results were determined before the "kids go vote" commercials were even aired. That Bevnet runs an article which states that:

In CSD flavors, PBV will add Mountain Dew Voltage, which was the winning flavor in the brand’s Dewmocracy campaign.

This makes me half wonder if there might not be some legitimacy to the Dewmocracy thing. And if Coke isn't passing bribes to get the worst possible results.

That Pepsi logo looks kind of Mad Maxx, especially with
the dirt on the circle part. I hate the font on
the Mountain Dew "Throwback". I want to put the designer
inside a big inner tube and roll him into a river of lava.

Root Beer Makin' Hijinx

Hey look! I got handsome.

So this is a smart guy who tries to make root beer and writes about it on his blog. I won't give the ending away, but notice that I used the word "tries".

Go look.

Tentacle Grape Soda

I was sent this link by a well-meaning friend. I'm not certain, but I think he's hitting on me.

Either way, I prefer consensual tentacle sex. And that only with sexy tentacles, not like the poorly drawn specimens featured in the ad.

Writing about hentai sex-anything is difficult, because I have to affect an air of incredulity while pretending that I've never heard of it before. "What? This 'hentai' you speak of consists of sexual drawings of anime type characters? And there's a whole genre of hentai about women being sexually molested by tentacles? Well I never."

Well I never.

This crap does bring up an issue about "collectable" sodas, as this stuff purports to be. It also brings up a question about exactly what flavor is tentacle semen. Sadly, no one seems to bring up any questions about representations of rape, especially within the realm of school girl hentai type porn.

Clearly the novelty soda maker here is trading on a cultural gimmick, something that represents the worst of a particular genre. I'm sure that the maker is not promoting rape, but is so totally accustomed to the term "tentacle rape" that they are immune to any critical thought about it. It's a tongue-in-cheek appeal to the self mocking sense of sarcasm that kids today love.

But man, why does the soda maker have to pick something so incredibly offensive? And the sad thing is that it isn't really funny, it's just a "You remember Transformers?" type joke, just pointing at something that a certain group of people know about and therefore making everyone feel like more of a group through the pointing. "We all know about tentacle rape porn and laugh at the people who look at it."

I dunno. The soda maker'll sell it. The 18-35 crowd will buy it and give it to their friends as joke presents. None of it will get drank but it will instead sit on a shelf next to the ol' anime DVD collection and a half-painted figurine or two. The soda maker'll make some money but not enough to make it worth while, will probably try to branch out into "Lolicon Lolzberry" and etc and be disappointed by the sales.

I'm writing about this in a critical tone, but just the other day I laughed at "rape seed" on an ingredients list. What a dick.

Undrank British Sodas

Each probably deserves a skull on crossbones on the label.

So an inquisitive Glaswegian was curious about what sort of British sodas I have "on tap", so to speak. Well, here you go.

I have three different "Club" sodas, including a "Rock Shandy", whatever the hell that is. If someone asked what I thought "Rock Shandy" was outside of the context of soda, I'd guess it was a fish. In the context of British soda, I'm still thinking it's fish.

Not looking forward to that one.

I have a red Tizer, which is a year out of date. Apparently they don't make that one anymore. It was sold to me under the counter by some shady folks. That bashful can in the back is a Ribena and on top is a Ben Shaw's Dandelion and Burdock. Finally, a Funky Orange Fanta and a bottle of Lucozade, an energy drink. I hate energy drinks, and I've hate every British soda I've ever tried, so I'm sure that last one will go well.

Some of these might be British and some Irish. All the same thing, right?

Edit: I just realized I also have some British made Fentiman's. Foul, foul stuff.

The You're All Great, But Some Are Greater Than Others Awards

So I use a mixture of Google Analytics and Mixmap to track traffic on my blog. Google Analytics is good at not working well, and at telling me what links people clicked to get here. Always fun to know. But Mixmap, Mixmap tells me where you folks live, and that's fun. It resolves down to neighborhoods, not to specific houses, so don't get scared.

It also lets me tag people, lets say I think this IP is my pal Polly because Polly said "I looked at your blog at 5:35 EST, it sucked then and it sucked when I looked at it again at 7:37." I can find the hits that landed at that time which are near where Polly lives and label that IP: "Polly is a jerk." Of course, only I get to see these labels and this information.

But today I'd like to take a moment and acknowledge the most active clickers, the folks who have looked at my website more than anyone else in whatever that default amount of time is that Mixmap keeps track of things (I think it's two weeks). Some of you I know, some of you I don't, so here goes:

7th most active reader: Anonymous from Oakland, CA (is that you bkh and co.?)
6th: Some sucker from Bristol, UK (is this a certain archaeologist I know?)
5th: Paula from St. Peters, Missouri who only discovered my blog about four days ago. That's a lot of clicking there, Paula.
4th: Anonymous from Le Francois, Martinique. Really? Martinique? Don't you have topless beaches to go to?
3rd: Someone from Show Low, Arizona. No doubt plotting my doom.
2nd: D.S. who hates the DS, from Brooklyn, New York.
and the most visitingest guy of all:
1st: K.L. from St. Louis, Missouri. K., I'll buy you a Vitmo next time I see you.

But that's not all. A freakishly busy region gets an honorable mention:

Port Richey, Florida, come on down. I get about a zillion hits from around Port Richey every day, but seldom from the same IP. Is some crazed hobo travelling the library circuit, visiting my blog at each in turn? I'll never know.

Thank you all very much. Tell your friends.

You all get ice cream.

Stalling

So I've been a little busy lately, so I'll just fake a review:



Ooh, yuck! It's a funny color. Lookit that label. It has corn syrup in it, I don't like that. My wife is yelling at me. And here's a picture with a funny caption (imagine a picture here, with a sort of funny caption).

Perfect Water and imperfect ribs at the street fair

I don't see "snake oil" anywhere on the ingredients list.

The perfect Perfect Water stand, first stop on our day at the street fair.

I think the man is showing me where the water comes out.
Does that give it calcium?

My wife and I wandered by the local street fair and, lo and behold, a healthy new beverage was being offered. A high oxygen bottled water, scientifically designed to put pep back in your step and make your stiffy less whiffy. I've always been a fan of water, namely because my body is almost ten percent water - concentrated in the knees.

A kind gentleman offered to PROVE to me that his water could improve me physically with just one tiny cupful, in less than a minute. He also told me that a hospital was doing studies about how great Perfect water is because it helped CANCER patients by making their chemotherapy less bothersome. That's incredible! I plan to have cancer one day and asked for more information. Unfortunately, the gentleman couldn't remember which hospital was doing the study, I guess this magic water doesn't help the memory so much, eh? He told me that the manufacturer has used SCIENCE to insert extra oxygen into the water molecule. Exciting stuff, that science - kids love it.

My wife had made plans for us to meet some folks at a movie, so I wasn't allowed to linger long over this liquid marvel. However, I did take the three step test which PROVES that this magic water immediately improves your body.

Test 1, right when I get gut kicked by a karate little person.

Test 1: The guy moved me off to one side of his tent, undoubtedly afraid it could be toppled during the vigorous physical demonstrations to come. He asked me to touch my toes, which I did. If I may say so, for a doughy guy I'm pretty flexible. I did this once. I could've done it more, but he didn't ask me to.

Test 2, I'm sure my face is that way because
I was photographed in the middle of saying something witty.

Test 2: I am told to flex my waist. I got excited as I was confused by the homonym, but no, I am made to stick out my arms and pivot my waist to see how far I can reach one arm behind me.

Test 3: This is the big one, what he called the "tip" test. The guy cozies up next to me, makes a fist with his arm straight down and has me hook my hand underneath his. At first I thought we were about to do another homonym, but instead he "tips" me by pushing down on his arm. He pushes his arm down, pushing my hand down, which makes me rock over toward him a bit where he leans up against me so I won't fall. He sits me back up and they hand me a tiny cup of water.

As we will come to see, this man is a master of the dark art of illusion. Illllllusion (wave both hands in the air in front of listener). So let's stop and guess what he's going to try to prove from these tests. 1... 2... 3... No, don't answer out loud, just think it over. I knew what was coming when he asked me to touch my toes just once.

The water. The magic. "The Ultimate Fluid to Empower Your Body and Mind". Perfect Empowered Drinking Water. I am given some in a little blue cup, it has no smell. They all laugh when I smell it. I drink it, it tastes like distilled water. Because I am too ignorant to feel my new super powers flow through me, the man now will complete his test and prove I'm now a better person.

Test 1a: I am told to touch my toes again. Knowing full well the trick, I refuse to touch any further than where I touched before. Everybody in the world knows that you don't have your full flexibility till you limber up a bit. It stands to reason that I will be slightly more flexible on the second stretch than the first. When I stall out at the same place, the guy tells me to stretch further and see if I can touch the ground - he didn't do that the first time. During Test 1 he told me to touch the tips of my sneakers and stop there.

Test 2a, that woman behind me works for the
Perfect Water people.She's telling me that
I turned further this time than last,
if you look at the photo for Test 2 you'll see
that she's not even behind me.
For shame.

Test 2a: To test their scientific rigor, I twist to the right instead of the left this time. They don't correct me, thus invalidating their carefully constructed control situation. That, and see Test 1a. The woman standing behind me cheers that I twisted much further than before, even though I pointedly did not, and she hadn't been there the first time to see.

Test 3a, I'm ashamed to even look.

Test 3a: This is where, we slip across that tricky line from silly to fraud. I strike the fist in hand pose and the guy pushes down again, tilting me slightly toward him, but THIS TIME I DON'T TIP! It's absolutely the most unnatural thing I've ever encountered, positively eerie. I mean I DIDN'T TIP OVER, but of course that wasn't the eerie part. I didn't tip over because the man was standing much closer this time and leaned against me with his shoulder so I wouldn't move any further than he wanted me to. What was so unnatural was this grey haired old fellow being so deceitful, perpetrating a fraudulent scientific test worthy of a snake oil salesman. Oh wait, I've been having grey haired old men tell me lies my entire life. Maybe that's why I didn't react with surprise and anger.

It was kind of neat to be there first hand for something so sneaky, to be told a bald-faced lie in person instead of through the television. To personally witness a "scam". I was wondering what would follow, but all they said they wanted was my email address which no one proceeded to take. Did they detect the savvy look in my eye, or were the two old ladies behind me better targets? Do they try to sell oil shares to the more gullible? I've been wanting to pick up a bridge.

Because the folks working this booth were so shady, I am going to pointedly say that everything I'm writing and have written is MY OPINION. I'm not going to assert as a fact that these people actually lie, cheat, or seek to defraud by misleading trickery but that is merely my interpretation of their actions. I'm not going to say that anyone so sleazy as to pull stunts like this would probably try to sue for supposed defamation, provided they were willing to show their snakey heads in a courtroom.

Houdini style, I will invite them to present these tests again, under controlled circumstances. I will bring a few people in rented lab coats to make up facts to oppose their made-up tests. I would love to see FACTS which can be drawn out from that wonderful "tip" test.

Folks, water is good for you. It's true. I'd suggest you drink it in almost any form or flavor outside of "sea". The Perfect water test is a poorly thought out deception, and if it wasn't old people administering it I'd've told them so loudly. Of course, if they were strapping young men I wouldn't have told them off, either. The water doesn't instill courage.

Fortunately, I was wearing my disguise that day - dopey fake beard, false glasses with novelty nose attached, and a derbie masquerading as a cap. Next time I see a street fair I'll find them and take the test again, then ask the sort of quick-cutting questions one expects of a blog like this. The most important being: What is test 3 actually trying to prove? Wha? It's so odd as to refute any sort of logical sequence that could lead one to wondering anything about it.

So this is a fair and there are many folks wanting to separate you from your money here, I won't focus in one just this one shyster but skip along to the important bit. More food. After wending our way through obnoxiously loud DJ booths and bad cover bands, past carpet sales booths and so, so many sausage stands, I bought a portion of ribs and a sweet tea.

I put the little black bar on there
to protect the identity of that awful sweet tea.

I asserted earlier that great sweet tea was had from bbq restaurants. I'll stick to that by insisting that a stand is not a restaurant. The tea I bought was watery powder mix, with a lemon in it. Not great sweet tea. Not at all. In fact, it was barely drinkable.

The ribs, however, were very good for what was there. Not very meaty for their size or price, the bulk of the piece I was given was that nightmare of bones that all the ribs attach to. That mess that looks like half an alien face hugger after you pick that meat off. Not enough meat, but the glazing and the bits were good. Really good. NOT as good as my home-made over ribs, which is saying a lot as these actually came out of a real smoker.

There were only about four bites this big in the whole cut.

I will assure you that after eating these ribs, no old fellow selling snake oil could tip me over easily. My center of gravity had found a new low, not to mention I was still full of ribs from the time before. Does Perfect Water have fiber in it? I could sure use some of that.

When I mentioned Olde Cape Cod BBQ sauce before,
I lefte the "e" offe of Olde. Howe thoughtlesse.

Ramune, the Kind in the Blue Bottle

Something about the illustration on that bottle makes this feel
reeeeeaaaaallllll natural in my hand.

At first I couldn't place the taste. It was a very dry but still sweet faux fruit flavor, but painfully familiar. After some squints and contemplation, I think this is the taste of Crystal Pepsi. It's hard to remember a flavor from so long ago, but I'm pretty sure this is it - though my wife disagrees. But that's her job. Maybe Crystal Pepsi with a touch of bubble gum flavor. But wait, the real adventure was in getting the bottle open.

I pull of the cap... What? No soda? What sort of trick is this?


After four hours of fiddling with it, I break down and read the instructions.

Okay...

I think I see...

This video is called "We need to tidy up our kitchen"

Okay, so the marble seems to be wedged into place by the pressure of the carbonation. You break apart the cap and make the little plunger which you use to push the marble loose. The cool little marble rolls around, making a pleasant glass on glass noise. It's fun to see a marble rolling in liquid, makes me feel like I'm visiting an electronic novelty store in a mall in the 80s.

Makes little pieces of wasteful plastic.

Finally, the moment of truth.

My god, what did the stuff do to my moustache?

The sickly sweet smell of fruity bubble gum betrays the passable taste of it. The stuff is very bubbly-dry, leaving a clean feeling in my mouth and on my lips. And there's no high fructose corn syrup taste to plague me.

Not bad stuff, but the real kicker is the novelty marble. Those wacky Japanese and their gimmicks. Sadly, the marble backfire towards the end of the bottle, tilting the bottle all the way back results in the marble rolling back into the mouthpiece and blocking the liquid. Duh. I'm forced to drink my own back wash in a slow drip as opposed to the quick toss back to which I am accustomed.

(Note: I picked up a second bottle of this, in the off pink flavor, and figured out that the two little dimples in the neck of the bottle are supposed to hold the marble out of the bottle of the mouth. They don't do a very good job, if you tilt it back to a comfortable degree the marble jumps loose and blocks the flow again.)

Here's another close up of the dimples in the bottle neck, for no good reason.