Maybe I should just get one of those hummingbird feeder thingys

[ladycaviar]

I am totally a Coke addict. Yeah, ha ha ha.

The old joke about “drowning when you snort it” would be kinda tired, but I’ve got a set of friends led by torin3 and The Chef who somehow manage to get me to hork something through my sinuses at least once a year, so it’s not so much a joke as a reminder. The last thing I snorted was wasabi, IIRC. Now that was an experience – but that wasn’t where I was going at all.

One of the benefits of my latest move across the country is the availability of Mexican Coca-Cola. Why is that good, you ask? Because it’s bottled with sugar instead of corn syrup, that’s why. All annoying arguments for or against corn syrup aside, corn syrup in Coke makes it taste wrong and have the drinkability of glue. Canada bottles with sugar by law, and Mexico just thinks glue as a drink is estupido (ok, well that, and azucar is cheaper. Too bad they don’t think tomato-flavored breakfast beer isn’t estupido too, but I guess the universe has to balance out somehow). And I’ve been enjoying the real Real Thing for a while here. Yay me.

I hate the corn syrup manufacturers for taking advantage of the sugar embargo in the late 70s and pressuring US soft drink producers into exclusive supplier agreements for perpetuity just because they had them by the nose hairs. The change in sweetener is what made a desperate Coca-Cola attempt to change its formula: “New Coke” was formulated to be palatable with corn syrup. No one anticipated how Americans felt about their Coke, and how bad that lead balloon would sink. Sea monsters still live in that crater of disaster.

Any Coke bottled in Mexico brought back into this country is considered “bootleg” and the Coca-Cola corporation hates it with a purple passion. They can’t do a thing about it, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. This has nothing to do with compliance with any syrup contracts, it’s to stop fights between their bottlers over exclusive territory. You’d think that the bottlers might get a clue and start bottling with sugar, but either there are contractual obligations to prevent it, syrup is still magically cheaper, or the Illuminati really is lubricating the chips in our heads with corn products and the New World Order is imminent. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that I can get me my Coke jones on here and twitch on the futon in front of the TV to my heart’s content.

Shopping around, I found Mexican Coke way cheap at a store I don’t usually go to. Score! When I got home, I popped one open and iced it up.

Weird. Kinda freaky tasting today. Kinda like… malk?[1],[2]

So I looked at the bottle. Damn, it’s been a long time since I saw a returnable bottle, all rough where the bottles rub up against each other. Ah, memories. Ah, nostalgia.

Wait. Coca-Cola Mexíco doesn’t use returnables. Uh oh.

So I looked at the receipt. It rang up as “BUENO COCO COLO.” That sounds like a festive umbrella rum drink. I don’t think my caveat emptor radar had warmed up to the stupid level while I was in that store. Damn, I got fake bootleg Coke.

Holy crap, what’s the world come to when you can’t trust bootleggers anymore? Didn’t they unionize or something when the Volstead Act was repealed? What happened to honor among thieves, or the “pirates’ code,” as revealed in the documentary series Pirates of the Caribbean? Man, I bet I can’t even trust what the chip in my head tells me anymore.

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[1] “but I drink plenty of … malk? (Now with Vitamin R!)” Bart Simpson, “The PTA Disbands”

[2] “I don't get it. Everyone loves rats, but they don’t want to drink the rats’ milk?” Fat Tony, “Mayored to the Mob”