Archive for 2015

Speaking of soda, and Mormons, (we are, in today’s show) in yesterday’s edition of the paper of record there was an article about a lawsuit that is raging between two Utah drink companies, Swig v. Sodalicious. Have you heard of either of these chains? No, you wouldn’t unless you lived in the Mormon enclaves of Utah. Swig and Sodalicous are drinks stores, much like Starbucks, but they sell giant cups of soda, mega-slushies, so-called “energy” drinks, and giant cookies. What differentiates them from say, just a 7-11, is that they customize giant soda drinks with flavored syrups and added creaminess, to make what they call “dirty” sodas. The dirty being the Mormon version of acting slightly naughty in their squeaky-clean seeming lives. (Although I got some of the dirt on actual Mormon naughtiness from a very chatty ex-Mormon massage therapist one night, and hoo boy, the hypocrisy)

Anyway, adding shots of sweetened, sugary, coconut, strawberry, red velvet, or blue raspberry syrups (among hundreds of other options) to ALREADY super-sweet soda bases, is what makes them “dirty”, they’ll also throw in a shot of half n half or cream too, too make them even dirtier, and the Mormon kids are LOVING this shit. It’s their Starbucks.  They get to customize their drinks, too. Just like us!

One regular customer was quoted: “I go there on my way to work and on my way home from work,” said Britni (!) Perry, 33, a Swig fan who works at a prison not far from her preferred soda stop. She orders a Dirty Dr Pepper (soda, coconut syrup) in the morning and a Mountain Dew Fruit Loop (soda and strawberry, peach and watermelon syrups) in the evening.

This is some seriously sick shit. Like soda alone isn’t sugary-gross enough, these freaks are doctoring it up with MORE syrupy nastiness? Oh and what about the lawsuit I mentioned? Well the legal fight is over the word “dirty”,

A lawsuit between the two chains is raging over the use of DIRTY. And who has the right to use it, to describe their doctored up soda nightmares. As if drinking the soda isn’t enough, actual businesses exist to make it worse, sell it in huge plastic cups that get tossed away onto the Utah roadside, and now a legal battle rages over a word.

So this is what we’ve come to; members of a religious, sugar-addicted cult, fighting it out over a word that they’re using incorrectly to begin with. Not like a dirty martini, or a dirty movie or a bomb, no. Dirty soda. Soda is already dirty, it’s sweetened polluted water. Think of the resources, the water, the packaging, the petroleum products that go into this pointless industrial nightmare business. Then add a pointless, frivolous lawsuit, a shot of coconut-flavored syrup, and you’ve got America in one big plastic cup. Sweetened, plastic, pointless, frivolous, empty caloric junk.

Know what’s actually dirty? Shooting at people at a clinic that provides health care. That’s dirty. Claiming an alliance with 100 black ministers who never made that alliance. That’s dirty. Vowing to not allow any refugees from terribly war-torn, dangerous countries into your vast nation of immigrants. That’s dirty. Adding a shot of blue-velvet, cherry, marshmallow, twinkie flavored crap to a vat of sugar water? That’s just stupid.

So just imagine my joy and happiness upon learning that Organic Avenue, the juice and raw-vegan “food” chain has landed on the giant compost heap of nutritional trends. The entire chain has gone under. Way under. Bankruptcy, Out of biz! Whoohoo! They went under, had huge debt, owe hundreds of people thousands of dollars, and the founders made millions off a sale to an investment company. How utterly American of them! Living the dream in the Hamptons while all their employees and suppliers are left holding their empty orange totebags.

They milked that juice for all they could, until the little bottles of unpasteurized fish tank algae water went bad, then they collapsed. Nice. Sounds very…I don’t know, mortgage crisis-y? Just saying. One former partner was quoted as saying “you can’t build a business on what Gwyneth Paltrow says she likes” which was the first intelligent thing I agreed with about the company. After all, would you take advice from a woman who squats over boiling water to steam clean her uterus? Not me. I like my uterus a little grimy anyway. Better for your immune system that way.

There was a NY times article all about OA’s tragic demise earlier this month, and at the end of the article, some genius is quoted as saying that they think juice cleanses may be over now, and that everyone is into drinking charcoal now anyway. CHARCOAL. Really. And it had a link to an article on a beauty blog (suspicious radar going nuts) about how the juice companies are now selling little plastic bottles of cucumber-peel water with powdered activated charcoal. Because toxins.

Always with the toxins. Everyone is obsessed with toxins. Drink liquid charcoal, it’ll flush the toxins, do hot yoga, it’ll flush the toxins, steam your vag, it’ll flush the toxins. Know what else flushes toxins? Your liver. Unless you poison it daily with too much alcohol, which you know those size zero-Lululemon mommies are doing every night, as they see their fleetingly youthful asses drop and their hedgefund husband’s eyes start to wander…

So all of this, while making me insanely happy, also got me thinking about coal. Well, charcoal, but charcoal takes resources and power to create. It uses up trees. Coal, on the other hand, is just sitting there, waiting to be ripped from the ground, blown out of mountaintops, gored from the earth in the most destructive, polluting ways!

So think about it, if these stupid bitches are willing to drink activated charcoal, made from BURNT WOOD, why couldn’t I get them to drink coal, made from petrified dinosaur flesh? I mean, what’s more PALEO than that? It’s PRE paleo, you’d be eating something that existed before MAN, or at least that’s what the evolutionists say. What with the American coal industry rapidly collapsing, as we switch to cleaner energy, and the coal miners all addicted to cheap heroin and Vicodin now, living in rampant poverty in the hollers and hills down in Appalachia, and China lying about how much coal they’re burning in order to hide their emissions stats, which has nothing to do with our coal consumption except that the coal we do still mine can be sold to them, isn’t it time for America to do what’s most American, and EAT our natural resources? We already eat so much corn, and with the utter failure of ethanol, we’ll be eating even more of it, forever. But what about eating coal? We eat wood, in many forms; vanillin, which is artificial vanilla flavor, comes from paper making waste, and the “fiber” in a lot of fiber-added products comes also from wood processing, you can’t really eat gasoline, but lots of fake fats, margarines, creamers etc. are made from petroleum byproducts, what do you think Cool Whip is?

If you can get Americans to eat that sh*t, then eating coal is just a mere marketing strategy away!

In Italy, in 1984 I drank my first cappuccino, I’d never really had anything in the espresso family, and this foamy, dark, rich creature was something else. I was hooked on the capp.

But, as I was quickly admonished after ordering one late in the day, you don’t drink cappuccino anytime after breakfast. Milk is a morning item for Italians, once you drink it in the morning, that’s it. Cut off. Unless… you’re American, then they’d just roll their eyes and serve you. Or at least that’s how it was in the 80’s, when tradition still ruled and cultures were worth saving. And… just a mere 40 years, may I quickly remind you, after we saved the Italians from becoming German speakers. Oh, You’re welcome, Italy. I know at the time, you weren’t really cool with it, but do you see now, how well it all worked out right? Allies, Axis, who got the better deal? No need to thank us, but ok. Prego, prego. You’re so welcome.

And now, 30 years after my historic visit to your beautiful country, 30 years after tasting my first cappuccino, my first spaghetti ala vongole, my first grilled octopus, as our second enormous gift to you after saving you from your own worst ally, we present, our very own pride of America, the green mermaid herself, Starbucks. Yes, the legless lady has slithered across the Atlantic and flopped her green tail and topless body onto the rocky shores of the land of Dante and Dr Illy. Oh, no need to thank us, again! We’re just here to spread our cultural imperialism through capitalism. Just like the Venetians of Marco Polo’s day did for you!

And I bet those Italians just can’t get enough of the Venti-soy-3 Splendas-cotton-candy-gingerbread-salted-caramel-red-velvet-frappucino deliciousness! What could be better, more Italian, more “La Dolce Vita” than savoring a forty-ounce, sweetened, flavored and colored coffee beverage by the Trevi fountain, then following tradition by throwing in the plastic sippy top and making a wish? So awesome, just like in that movie, what was it called? Again, don’t thank us, you guys invented the cappuccino! We just made it so much better, by enlarging it and flavoring it! We should thank you! Grazie mille Italia!, grazie mille. Oh, con piacere, America! Con gusto piacere.