Diary of a Madman

5-30-02 THURSDAY:
Hi-keeba. This is not a diary. I have no interest in creating or maintaining a diary. This is about interesting stuff, not my life, which is interesting to me, but probably not to those who demand the constant unparalleled entertainment provided by that mass of unquestionable taste, the World Wide Web.

Now that all that's out of the way, today I want to talk about something important: Vanilla Coke. To your left at this moment you should be seeing a picture (an ad, rather) for this new soda available from the Coca-Cola company. I have heard throughout my existence of the marvel that is Vanilla Coke out of a fountain. The idea always intrigued me, as I am a great fan of Cherry Coke, something of which I'm sure everyone I know is aware. Cherry Coke is, for lack of a better term, the fuckin' bomb. My sister Bonnie is patently obsessed with Dr. Pepper. She has a toy Dr. Pepper car, and a Dr. Pepper T-shirt. She has chewed Dr. Pepper gum. She has claimed that she, and I believe this is true because my sister is an honest woman, walked three miles in the rain for a taste of sweet, sweet Dr. Pepper. She has rarely gone for long without Dr. Pepper. She has a home which is always in plentiful supply of Dr. Pepper; this I know, for I have seen it with my own eyes. I also believe that she owns a Dr. Pepper blimp and has a Dr. Pepper billboard mounted on her roof. My sister, to put it quite bluntly, quite likes Dr. Pepper.

I always wanted to have a similar healthy infatuation with a soft drink; my choice was always Cherry Coke. Unfortunately, the idiots at Coca-Cola, who aren't really idiots since they did create the brilliance that is Cherry Coke, quit stocking Cherry Coke where I live, in North Carolina, in the late 1980s, when I was but a wee lad. I still remember the fateful evening on which I traveled with my parents to the local Zip-Mart to bask in the glory of a cold, refreshing can of my drink of choice. A man from Coke was there stocking and told us with a sordid glance that Cherry Coke would no longer be available in our area. It did not return until 1995, when it suddenly appeared in 2-liter bottles and six-packs with a nifty new purple logo.

Not long after I made this discovery in what I've subsequently come to refer to as "the summer of Cherry Coke," the release of the soda was again botched in my area. The cans disappeared, followed by the 2-liters, until only the 20-ounce bottles remained, along with an ugly "contemporary" logo which I think was supposed to appeal to generation X-ers who watch SEINFELD, go to coffee bars, live in large droves occupying enormous apartments, and listen to Nirvana. You can see this logo at the left. The Coca-Cola company tried a similar tactic with their citrus drink Mello Yello in a series of low-budget advertisements accompanied by the sound of a rock band singing some stupid song called "Let It Out." This proved no match to Pepsi's '90s Mountain Dew commercials portraying twentysomething white men and women jumping off cliffs, skydiving, waterskiing, and participating in extreme sports, all while screaming profusely and gulping down large quantities of what they so affectionately referred to as "the Dew." The same poseur ad execs responsible for all this horseshit were the ones who kept me away from what I affectionately refer to my muse, lord, and savior, Cherry Coke. I could not buy toys, games, stock, billboards, or blimps bearing the title of my favorite drink simply because I could not even by the drink, save for those awful smaller containers which often were out-of-date and tasted remarkably like plastic. Wild Cherry Pepsi was a fine enough distraction, but it leaves a strange taste in my mouth that reminds of cough syrup which I had to force down as a child.

To top the insult, my girlfriend Stephanie arrived home some time ago clutching in her hands a bottle of Vanilla Coke, the new drink being marketed by the worldwide conglomerate. The vanilla flavor was cool, at least a hell of a lot better than that Pepsi Twist crap, and Vanilla Coke is a nice treat every once in a while, but it's a little too sweet, and that lets me down since a drink I kinda like is widely available and my sick obsession is not. Sure, commercially sold Cherry Coke is nothing compared to what you can get out of the fountain (as proven by a trip to the nearby UNCW cafeteria), but it's awesome and I have been in love with it since a very young age! The tastes of children, you see, are vastly underrated. When I was three, I drank Cherry Coke; listened to the Beach Boys and Chopin; read books about the family called the Berenstein Bears and their experiences with such real day-to-day problems as strangers, working mothers, bullies, and encounters with the creature Bigpaw; screened cartoons concerning the travails of yet another bear, this one rather obtusely named Winnie the Pooh; and wore clothing designed specifically for me by Calvin Klein. I still enjoy and see the art in all of these things, except that bastard Calvin Klein, who stole my idea for commercials starring losers who think they're cool, and Chopin, that untalented hack. (I am particularly enamored with Winnie the Pooh, who I'm convinced had a dark past and only kept morons like Christopher Robin, Kanga, Piglet, and that stupid goddamn rabbit around to cover up the skeletons in his closet.)

Imagine my surprise some two weeks ago upon wandering into the liquid refreshments aisle at my local supermarket and discovering large twelve-can packages of CC. The excitement of Stephanie and myself has yet to subside. We managed to nab a couple of twelve-packs with the ugly-ass grunge-rock logo before Coca-Cola finally changed it to something considerably more suitable, as seen here. Since that day, I have consumed volumnious amounts of Cherry Coke, and I have considered directing a film which will be called "Cherry Coke: The Movie" and will be a musical about the economic state of Poland.

All in all, I would have to give Vanilla Coke a 7 out of 10 and Cherry Coke a 10 out of 10. (Only Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Mr. Pibb join Cherry Coke in this prestigious hall of fame of soft drinks which have recieved a full 10 on my grading scale.) I have a theory that Dr. Pepper and Cherry Coke mixed will cause massive explosions. If anyone can confirm this, please send me an email, because I really want to get revenge on that fucker Calvin Klein.

LINK OF THE DAY:
It's not terribly hard to decide that today's link will be the one closest to my heart. I'm debuting my site with a tip of the hat to the beloved TimeCube. Gene Ray, who is a 74 year-old lunatic, here presents his theory that everything operates on a four-corner system. He says that Santa Claus, God, Bill Clinton, you, me, and all our pets are one-corner beings, whereas he is "wiser than all gods and scientists." My numerous friends, with whom I share a large NYC apartment, have big classy parties wherein we devote much of our time to making fun of this site. If you have a problem with Gene Ray's ideas, don't hesitate to send him a message; he will reply rationally and fairly. I asked him to be my friend once. He said "We can be friends, but you have to understand that you are educated stupid and a stupid word 1-corner..." something or other, I can't remember. I am currently working on a punk-rock love song about TimeCube, which I will then submit to Blink 182, who could stand to take lessons from somebody who can't even read music. If you search online, you'll also find the TimeCube RPG, which you may find interesting if you're a loser and a geek and you have the capacity to comprehend the concept of RPGs.

To your left is a photograph of Gene clutching a cube, which I believe I can see actually has eight corners. Please don't harass Gene; his daughter said once that he's been going on about this whole Cube thing for about forty years now. I guess we all have our passions. Mine is Cherry Coke.


By the way, I once viewed the film CUBE (1997) upon its airing on the institution of artistic ingenuity, the Sci-Fi Channel. I came to the conclusion that it is not a film of considerable quality (I give it a 3) and that it is entirely unrelated to Gene Ray's maverick TimeCube web page.

VOCABULARY WORD OF THE DAY:
In this section I plan to flaunt my intellectual abilities by showing to the world that I'm smart enough to flip to a random page in a dictionary and ramble about my findings on the Internet. For good measure, I'll also include the first picture that appears when I enter the day's vocabulary word into the Google Images search engine.



secretariat (n.) - the body of secretaries in an office

(as used in sentence: "Last night I got it on with the whole damn secretariat.")




FROM THE COLLECTION:
(Photo by Stephanie Coin, altered by moi.) Each Monday and Thursday I will highlight some sort of odd picture, image, or photograph from my large collection of useless junk. Today's item is a neat doctored photo of my beloved kitty, whose name is Cat (don't ask). This picture symbolizes the commercialization of culture. My intentions -- nay, my message with this piece, this work of genuine art, is to show that not only can I use my scanner, but I can also use it to optimize cool weird little visual effects, such as this "line monochrome" option. This photo is called "Symphony in Line Monochrome, No 1" and if you would like to link to it on your own home page I will allow you to do so for a mere charge of $2,500. Thank you.

Don't betray your roots.
n.