The Technicolor Dreamcoke

Before I begin, I need to get this off my hest in a place where a minimum of people will want to punch me in the face.

This morning, my cousin went off to his first day of college in Boston. So our whole family (in state at the moment at least) all got together at our grandmother's house in Connecticut to have a party, after which we all went down to the private court for a few games of tennis.

Now admit it. Reading that, you're suddenly picturing me as a rich snob who's seriously in need of a punch in the face, right? Heck, I get that image! Rationally thinking it out though, and taking into account my firsthand experience that day, it occurs to me that my whole family is dirt poor, has always lived in Connecticut, never really played tennis despite there being a really nice court available to everyone in my neighborhood (and empty now that the people it's there for have gone back to the cities they live in when not on vacation), my cousin is going to college on a scholarship, and none of us even had a sweater, much less around their necks. Also, my arm is so sore today I can't even lift a glass of soda without grunting.

Which of course brings us to the focus of today's rant. Soda, and the strange mutations we've been seeing in it lately. This started with Mountain Dew Code Red. Now THIS one, I actually find to be an improvement. I mean, regular Mountain Dew is pretty frelling creepy. It's this sickly yellowish green color, and it has that taste that you just can't place, and probably don't like that much. As far as I can tell, it's SUPPOSED to taste like honeydew, going by the name and color. If so, it fails miserably. So then they come out with Code Red, which is supposed to taste like cherry (it doesn't but I at least see what they're going for for a change), and is this BRIGHT RED color that just screams "Danger! DO NOT PUT THIS INTO YOUR SYSTEM!" So anyway, I kinda like it, and it's a WHOLE lot better than the original.

The problem here is, this concept works. When a concept works, people imitate it like crazy, without first thinking whether it will work for them. THIS concept only works if the soda you're starting with looks and tastes more like urine than something you'd want to ingest.

The first copycat I saw was Vanilla Coke. Now, this SHOULD work. A local restaurant chain (at least I THINK it was local... I mean, Subway was only around in my state not THAT long ago) used to serve Vanilla Pepsi, made right there in the obvious fashion, and it tasted pretty darn good. Vanilla Coke doesn't though. It tastes like a mixture of coke and flat cream soda. Not even good cream soda. That slightly rancid warmed over tasting type. Disgusting.

I recently saw a commercial for uh... Dr. Pepper Red or something like that. Haven't had a chance to try it, but you know that's gotta suck, because Dr. Pepper ALREADY bears a disturbing resemblance of flavor to cherry cough syrup (I think that's where the name comes from in fact). You don't want to INCREASE that resemblance though, or more people might catch on. Ah, it's called Red Fusion. What a conveniently timed commercial that was.

The absolute worst offender though, and I believe the most recent, is Pepsi Blue. Now, this sort of oddity I decided to give a whirl. I figured this was a new take on the whole Crystal Pepsi thing. Remember that one? It tasted EXACTLY like regular pepsi, but it looked like sprite or something like that, so if you didn't drink it with your eyes closed the discrepancy totally freaked you out. Die it blue though, and that's fine. The problem is, that is NOT what the "Blue" in Pepsi Blue means. It means this stuff is BLUEBERRY FLAVORED. In my opinion, you really shouldn't make ANYTHING blueberry flavored. Blueberries taste like the opposite of a raspberry after being rolled around in some dust a bit. If you make them into a jelly or something they're OK, but the real flavor is not something you want to replicate. It also is a flavor people can never quite seem to hit artificially. So basically, what I'm trying to say here is...

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS DECENT AND GOOD AVOID PEPSI BLUE LIKE THE PLAGUE!

The moral here really is that while it's totally fine to experiment with new soda flavors, you should at least put some thought into it. Add a little cherry here, a bit of lemon there, maybe even both at once, but keep it subdued. Unless you make some sort of nasty soda to begin with. Don't be all shocking and flashy. Also, don't make it phosphorescent. That's just plain scary.

I was planning to end this rant by the way with a link to that Inu-Yasha/Hungry Like the Wolf video I made WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY back when, since two people offered to host it recently, but one of them has gone eerily silent, and when I tested the link to the other one, it stalled on me, so I'm not quite of the mindset to link a few thousand of you to it right now.

Speaking of that video though, I was planning to throw it in the contest at next year's Anime Central, but then yesterday, someone told me that IY is now being shown on the Cartoon Network. Bloody frelling smurf. That means that by the time the con rolls around, half the people there will be sick to death of the show, and the other half will all be making videos using it.

Of course, it's all really moot at this point though, since I'm a good $200 shy of the airfare (or however much a ticket from CT to Chicago costs these days). Someone I know is considering paying my way on the condition that I wear the most uncomfortable costume possible. It would have been the most embarrassing possible, but somehow word got out that I have no dignity whatsoever, and that I'm so monstrously hideous that if you saw me dressed like, say, Nahga from Slayers, you'd probably throw up, and this is supposed to be painful to ME. Anyway though, I'm fairly certain all of this will fall through, and I'll be sitting here alone that weekend, but hey, if I do go, I'll wear the nasty costume. So hey, if like... 21 people each threw $10 at me, I could go and throw my back out for the amusement of a fairly large audience. You know... it feels like I've explained this here already... I hope I haven't, that's a boring little shpiel to have to read twice.