The Knowledge for Thirst

Josh the latest report from this packet of duck sauce I got the other day says Americans drink about 600 sodas a year. I don’t think I get up that high, even with this albatross of a website dangling from my midsection.

You know better than anyone that energy drinks and I have a troubled past. Bloodshot eyes, heart palpitations, amateur karate competitions, god complexes, picnic, lightning, etc. I’m just not the target audience. I long ago hung up my extreme parachute and developed secondary sexual characteristics.

But my lucrative job as a Junior Bevolologist [sic] requires me to sample every drink I come across. And these days you can’t drunkenly stagger into a convenience store shrieking obscenities and grabbing handfuls of pep vitamins without running into a wall of energy drinks.

This brings me to Celsius, which not only plies you with the caffeine and guarana seed that your body so desperately needs, but also promises to raise your metabolism by 12% and “significantly increase calorie burning for three hours.” This has been proven by science.

For someone like me who enjoys nothing better than drinking and watching his gut slowly expand, this sounded like the perfect beverage. I tried the lemon-lime Celsius, and even though the flavor was not unlike that of a household cleanser or urinal cake, I didn’t care because my metabolism was going ape and the ladies were appreciatively eyeing my very slightly diminished waistline. Science tastes like shit, but isn’t that sort of the point?

Stay up all kinds of late. Pudding for lunch AND dinner. Clean underwear totally optional. Drink as much soda as you want, when you want. Who’s with me: being an adult is awesome. OH WAIT OR IS IT? Your lower back basically hurts all the time, you have no clue what that noise on the radio is, you can’t remember the last time you had anything interesting to write about on your blog, and every bowel movement is written in sweat across your brow.

Enter GuS, or Grown-Up Soda, to provide the perfect accompaniment to the end days of your existence on this planet. GuS is about as un-fun as a soda could possibly get, but let’s face it, at your age maybe it’s all you deserve.

The label says “Not too sweet,” but I’d describe it as “Not at all sweet.” Many sodas, when they want to want to seem more mature, get fruit juice involved. This is why you see apple and grape juices listed as an ingredient in basically everything: it allows them to bump their fruit juice percentage (and appear healthier), while also making the drink sweeter. Not GuS Dry Cranberry Lime. Basically it’s just plain cranberry with some water. This combination of ingredients has been clinically proven to suppress smiling, ask any scientist. There’s a little bit of lime in there, but it’s really only there to remind you what a complete ass you made of yourself the last time you had a margarita. I couldn’t even think of what alcohol I would want to mix this with. That’s a sign of trouble, right there, on a number of levels.

But no, best leave the drinking to the high school kids. For you it’s a quiet night in the house–just you, a salad, and a vague distrust of Youtube. Twist open another GuS. It’s the sound of your hopes, dreams, memory and prostate all throwing in the towel.

OK I am back from my trip to Boston. Good job on updating the site once while I was away, you exceeded my expectations by exactly 100%.

I had hoped to discover all kinds of new juices and sodas while I was over there, but to be honest I mostly only drank beer. Taste-wise it was all fine.

I did have some kind of fruity icy tea concoction from Starbucks, on a day when it was about 120 degrees celcius and armpit-to-armpit with no air conditioning on the Green Line. The tea hit the spot, but at that point I would have drinken any mixture of bodily fluids, provided they were served in smoothie format.

Before you even start, I know. I know Ramune is old news for Mr. Worldly Beverage Maestro over there. I know you always have a bottle at the ready to impress the meganekko down at Club Yank or wherever you prowl on Friday nights nowadays. But since you haven’t deigned to share your little secret with our reader(s), I shall once again pick up the slickity-slack.

OK let’s pretend Kfan isn’t here right now. Ahh! It’s like a black cloud has just cleared away from our skies. Look at this spring in our steps! Rad! Anyway this one is just between us. Shhh. So listen: Ramune is a soda that comes in a bottle that’s shaped like a Victorian woman who had some ribs removed in order to fit into an xtreme corset. There are also some dimples. Instead of a bottle cap or its ilk, the top is sealed with a marble and a plastic lid. The lid is disassembled into a little tool which allows you to push the marble into the liquid within. The marble rests in the Victorian waist of the bottle and rolls around while you drink.

You kind of have to work at popping the marble, which only makes the moment of breakthrough all the more satisfying. And innuendo-filled, looks like.

I guess Ramune in general has a bubble gum kind of flavor, and it’s still the dominant thing going on even with this melon iteration. But the melon complicates the experience a little. It’s the drifter who comes into the small town and changes everyone’s lives that summer. It softens the sickly-sweetness, makes you feel a little better about yourself for drinking something that tastes like bubble gum.

Nevertheless I still sort of feel pukey. But I mean who cares when there’s a marble trapped inside there! Clinking! Sometimes blocking the outflow of the iffy green soda! This is a marvel of ridiculous and user-unfriendly packaging. It makes me want to go hunt replicants. Zura karu ze.

Over on Megnut (I know!) they’ve got an article about how you should drink Campari this summer. Absolutely fuck that. Even ignoring the fact that Campari is the drink of choice for emotionally distant fathers, it gets its coloring from cochineal extract. Do the opposite of what it says on Megnut and do not drink Campari. It is sick, sick shit that is made of bugs.

No idea how to pronounce the second word this one. In my quiet moments I cradle the bottle like a helpless infant in my hands and say things like “Silk!…Live, damn you!” Like in an exasperated Charlton Heston voice. And pronouncing it with a short “i.” Ah fuck, humor about heteronyms is basically impossible on the internet. In any browser.

Anyhooters. Did we ever talk at all about that homemade smoothie kick I was on a while back? Dogg I was getting straight ill, like on the mad scientist tip, with the frozen strawberries and the fruit juices and the yogurt and the what-not. I mean just allowing myself space to be creative, you know? I had one of them hand-held blenders (The Masturbatron 3000, if you want to look it up. Although maybe that was just the name I invented for it.) and I would just go at it, first thing every morning. It was probably the happiest I’ve ever been, except for those two months when you forgot to post anything here. But all dreams end, I suppose; turns out my blender was not dishwasher safe, and I’ve been too lazy to get a new one. Like the moment had passed and I had to mourn it on a subconscious level.

A friend, who perhaps knew of my sad story, recommended this here bev to me, and I have to say: Not bad. It was very yogurty, which I liked. My problem with a lot of OTC smoothies is they taste too thin and juice-y or have a weird graininess to them. And my problem with a lot of soy products is that they taste, you know, like soy. Which is not an awesome flavor. So I was pleased here. It’s very simple, like vanilla yogurt with some mango, and the viscosity dial set right to “Smoothie-ish.” Plus! Dairy-free! Colons of the world: stand up and testify to the gospel which I am preaching.

Basically I can see adding this to my morning routine. Wake up, spend 45 minutes in bathroom, pin a fresh picture of you to my dartboard, drink Silk Live, wonder how to pronounce it.

Dear Kevin, as you know I’ve been slacktastica on my beviews as of late. And though you have done your darnedest to take advantage of my absence by pretending I was never a part of this site, going power-mad and shoving your ill-informed thoughts down the gaping maw of our readership day after day, I must unfortunately inform you that your little coup has come to a humiliating end. The heart of The Knowledge For Thirst is back.

Where have I been all this time, you didn’t bother to ask? The desert. The West. A land where people understand what it is to be truly parched. Where thirst is not a word to be lightly bandied around by chubby liberal arts majors but rather a thing to be feared. An actual living entity that can take your black heart between its arid fingers and crush it into a kind of coal-dust without even really thinking about it. I have been out in the wilderness with people — well, let me come right out and say it: men — who can appreciate thirst on a level that you can’t even see from where you’re standing. I’m talking about Level 42.

Anyway during my journeys I ended up at Target. And I guess they have lots of “alternative beverages” (that’s how they labeled the aisle) that you can only get at Target? Like they’ve cut exclusive deals? And one of those is called Snow, which as expected is a clear liquid in a clear bottle.

I was wary to give it a shot because it’s another mint drink, and your recent experience in this category left me shaken and expecting more of the same. If I wanted to drink Scope neat that’s what I’d do (and will do later on — it is Saturday night, after all).

But what ho here comes M. Night to shake things up at the last minute. Snow is a mint beverage, yes, I am not arguing that point. But the mint is way dialed down. It’s not a flavor that goes in for the cockpunch but rather gently caresses your package like a lover or kindly old doctor checking for lumps. There’s a nice balance of carbonation and cane sugar going on, too. Crisp and refreshing. Subtle mint action, a good degree of sweetness — I think this one is right up your alley. Probably more than mine, really, considering I prefer to take my mint in some form of chewable gum or flavored prophylactic.

I had been planning on writing a post about optimal beverage serving size, but thankfully Mr Baldwin wrote about it so I don’t have to:

When Coke [was] sold in 6 oz. bottles it was billed as the “pause” that refreshes. Now it’s a motherlovin’ sabbatical.

Personally I vote 250ml (“energy drink size”) is the absolute perfect amount. You get a good swig, but you don’t feel like the drinking process is taking up the whole afternoon, and there’s room afterwards for if you need to drink something else to wash the taste of the first drink out. What do you kids think.

Recently Snapple has burst–nay, arabesqued–into the marketplace with a new series of white teas. Such a display can mean only one thing: that the white tea craze was over 10 minutes ago. But still, I know what you’re thinking: you hear “Snapple” and “healthy” and “refreshing” and you think: surely, drinking this would be nothing short of magical, like if Tinkerbell–yes the Tinkerbell–came to your house, and she fluttered up above you as you tilted your head back, and she uncupped her hands, letting fall a gentle spray of angel tears, in all the colors of the rainbow, to noiselessly alight upon your tongue. At which point she would offer you the happy ending for $5 extra. Honestly, the mouth on her.

But yeah this is nothing like that. I took a sip, there was clearly something in my mouth, and I was wondering if the flavor had fallen down the front of my shirt. Basically they’re just charging extra for weak tea. It doesn’t involve sexual innuendo from Disney characters, like, at all.