Van Gogh-Kart

My poor Honda got sideswiped yet again while parked over night in NYC. This time, the driver's side mirror was completely ripped off the side of the car. It was nowhere to be found on the street so either the hit-and-run coward grabbed it as a souvenir or another passerby disposed of it. Fortunately, aftermarket replacement mirrors are relatively cheap ($50), but it pisses me off that the car insurance I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on over the years is useless to me in this case. It's also incredibly frustrating to spend $8 in tolls several times a week to visit (and presumably spend more money in) New York City, only to have my car constantly damaged on its streets. I'm just going to have take my frustrations out by terrorizing idiot pedestrians that have no concept of what DON'T WALK means.

On the bright side, I'll learn how to install a side view mirror on a Honda Civic which will make things easier if and when this happens again. I also used this opportunity to coin a new phrase on Urban Dictionary (it's been approved, but the page hasn't been published yet):

Van Gogh-Kart - (n.) A vehicle that is missing one of its side-view mirrors, reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh's severed ear.

Fucking animals.

Facebook.com/?????

Two weekends ago, Facebook decided to allow registration for subdomains. Unlike the 200,000 people that immediately logged in at midnight to take advantage of the service, I hesitated. It took months just to come up with Beauty and the RoBeast, so I knew it could take time to come up with something snazzy. A few days into Snatchfest 2009, I started getting anxious, so I did some preliminary brainstorming. Facebook only suggested boring variations on my name and most of the obviously offensive stuff was gone already. I threatened to steal a friend's name in protest, but even that move was old news by the time I considered it. I needed to enter the universe of the absurd.

Here is a short, exciting list of subdomains that are still available (as of 6/25):

/shitonashingle
/butterballturkey
/waristheanswer
/nicebeaver
/rickyschroeder
/drinkyourdrugs
/electricsportsbra
/snakesonatrain
/gloriouswatsontits
/leaveamessageatthebeep
/policeacademyfour
/teenwolfblitzer
/chickencow
/trampstampclamp
/thethethe
/jesuschristsuperhighway
/defenderoftheuniverse
/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12345678
/stopallthedownloading
/alldayidreamaboutsex
/ppppppokerface
/americanapparatus
/ahorseisahorseofcourseofcourse
/gozerthetraveler
/happybirthdaytoyou
/iwannaknowwhatloveis
/iwantyoutoshowme
/notmychairnotmyproblem

No such luck on /saddamhussein, /feliznavidad, or /facebookdotcomslash. I was especially disappointed about the last one not being available, not because someone else grabbed it, but because it seems that Facebook simply prohibits it. I loved saying it out loud, and still craved something similarly meta, so I abbreviated it to /faceslash. It's postmodern, catchy, and violent! I quickly registered on Facebook, and then immediately finger-ran (I need to work on this one) to Urban Dictionary to lay claim to this new definition for faceslash. Amazingly, Urban Dictionary approved it in just one hour! I think this may turn out to be way cooler in my imagination, but I'm still going to pretend that this term catches on fire and I soon see this headline on the cover of Newsweek:

FACESLASH BURNINATES THE INTERNETS!

Igloobicle

Igloobicle - (noun) - The place you will be confined to when your company refuses to close during a snowstorm.

The RoBeast is currently sitting in his igloobicle because the powers-that-be refuse to ever officially close the building. 98% of his co-workers have already gone home, including the powers-that-be, but if the business is still technically open, he still needs to technically be there. At least the heat is still on and the internet works.

I'm going to protest now and dick around on Urban Dictionary to fulfill my editorial duties. A second one of my words was made Urban Dictionary Word of the Day, but it was one of my shitty words. Well, it's a good word (grandboss), but I after I found out that other people had coined it before me, I felt shitty. I'm not totally satisfied unless I enter a term on Google and zero results return.

I have some good blog entries planned, but I need my camera, which is in the car, which is outside, where I'm not allowed to go just yet. Maybe tomorrow.

I don't know

Sorry I've been MIA. I had every intention to post more frequently after last week's flurry, but then I got all tied up with my hotsaucing and even more stress inducing, my apartment situation. Neither war is over yet. I will soldier on.

Speaking of the url www.urbandictionary.com, I got a personal email from the founder of Urban Dictionary after my latest bitchfest. It came just a few hours after the post and was, to my surprise, very calm. I usually take things very personal on the internet (insert cliche Special Olympics jpg) and probably would've flipped out if I read somewhere that "Beauty and the RoBeast is really going downhill." In fact, I'm getting fired up just seeing that sentence typed out.

Instead, he simply apologized for how long my submission took to be processed by editors (apparently there really is a backlog), and then asked me why I thought the site was going downhill. I wrote a long response email issuing my constructive criticism and thanked him for his diligence.

And then... he made "bagside" the Urban Dictionary Word of the Day on November 15th. I had complained about the quality of the Word of the Day in the letter, so I don't know if he did this to appease me, or just to stick me out there with the wolves (aka whiners like me). Either way, I'm pleased to say that I've got more Thumbs Up than Thumbs Down. So far.

Dr. Pepper sent me a response too. First an automated one saying they'd respond to my email in 72 hours, then a more human, but still 99% automated (much like Darth Vader) email stating this:

Thank you for contacting us about Dr Pepper. We do apologize for the problem you experienced with our packaging.

We take great pride in producing high quality products and any experience to the contrary is cause for concern. Please be assured that high quality control standards and precautionary procedures are observed throughout the production of our products.

To ensure that appropriate action is taken to prevent future incidents such as yours, we have forwarded your comments to our quality assurance team for investigation.

We hope you continue to purchase and enjoy Dr Pepper products.

Sincerely,
Consumer Relations

I think it's amazing that Dr. Pepper has someone named Consumer Relations working in their Consumer Relations department. It's truly a match made in heaven. I doubt the quality assurance team will take my letter seriously, unfortunately, because there really is a problem with Dr. Pepper's plastic six-pack rings.

Now onto the most important company in the world, one that I constantly bitch about but refuses to make amends. I've complained a million times about Google's Blogger but they have yet to stumble upon my blog and respond to my constructive criticism, like Urban Dictionary. I did formally submit issues I discovered while using the beta version of Google Chrome (is it out of beta yet?) but received no response addressing my issues. I switched back to Mozilla's Firefox as a result.

I may finally need to compose a letter to the Google Blogger folks in order to get their attention, since I've been disinvited from their holiday party this year. I know, I know, it's a free service and I shouldn't cry about it. I hear it used to be worse. And what I mean by that is, when you Google "Blogger Sucks," a number of the complaints are from 2005.

Here, I used Google's search engine to rat out on itself:

(search term, using quotes) -- (number of results)
"Blogger Sucks" -- 43,500
"Wordpress Sucks" -- 8,310
"Myspace Blogs Suck" + "Myspace Blog Sucks" + "Myspace's Blog Sucks" + "Myspace's Blog Blows Dog Shit" -- 1,352
"Livejournal Sucks" - 1,160

Highly scientific, I know. In fact, just by typing these search terms and publishing this blog, I've already skewed the results. Yeah, yeah, it's possible that the number of people using Blogger is 5 times as many people using Wordpress, so the resulting complaints may be accurately proportional. I don't care. These are statistics, and I'm manipulate them anyway I want.

"Dr. Pepper's Plastic Six-Pack Rings Suck" -- 0 ???

Well, not for long, bitches.

Puzzzzzzzzzles

Last night I realized two very important things:

1. Samuel Adams is an anagram for A Mad Mule Ass
2. Sierra Nevada is an anagram for Raised A Raven

I also played with a Rubik's Cube for some time yesterday evening. It was a 4x4 Cube, which I understand is considerably more difficult than a 3x3. I didn't even know there were different sizes. I haven't touched one of those things in twenty years. It's sick, but I sort of can't stop thinking about it. I was unable to solve the puzzle because I don't really know how the things work. I am going to have no choice but to pick one up for myself to learn its secrets.

In other puzzle news, I officially fucking hate the new Scrabble beta application on Facebook. I know this is late pass, but I actually wanted to give it a fair shot. I am going to finish the games I'm currently playing and then never touch it again. Yeah, I know it's beta, but it's ruining my Scrabble experience. I had a game going with Kevin*, an amigofriend new to Facebook. Despite the numerous bugs and play issues, we were having a close, competitive game. Then Kevin discovered that he had had a turn skipped in an earlier. We should have abandoned the game right then and there, but because we had already invested so much time patiently playing around the problems, I decided to manually skip my turn instead, and let Kevin catch up fairly. Of course, as it was so late in the game, giving Kevin two turns in a row allowed him to get to a Triple Word Score fairly easily, which turned the tide in scoring. To make a long story short, I ended up losing by a few points and now I'm crying about it.

While I actually do side with Hasbro in this whole Scrabble vs. Scrabulous intellectual property and rights debate, I think their alternative application fucking sucks. And since the customer is always right, I will be playing Wordscraper (the further adventures of the rebellious Scrabulous coders) until either Scrabble is no longer beta, or Hasbro realizes that the Scrabulous app is a thousand times better than their POS and coughs up some compensation for that renegade code.

Speaking of shit flowing downhill, Urban Dictionary's Word of the Day has been terrible every day for a long time. On top of that, UD has also added a comments option for the WOTD that is consistently filled with an even mix of pointless spam and colorful bickering. I can't really tell if the naysaying is penned by 12-year olds with no sophisticated way to express themselves or annoyed older curmudgeons like me that have chosen to regress back to a 12-year old's insult style in protest. Either way, we all agree that most of the featured words suck.

As it turns out, the majority of the interactive users are in fact 12-year olds, as I discovered by entering UD's extremely unnecessary Chat Room. This new feature was so lame that I didn't even stick around long enough to bully the kids about their horrible taste in music. Maybe I should take all my entries elsewhere, including the one apparently still under review by "editors" who are too busy sorting through all of this bullshit:

juggalin - A term used When a Juggalo Just sits around listening 2 juggalo music,watchin a dvd or doing anything involving other juggalos! by juggalopride187

bloody sundae - when someone pops a girls cherry and holds an ice cream sundae underneath so that the blood trickles down like syrup. by ovi ghosh

Nguyen-Vy - a badass guy of asian descent who plays guitar, skateboards, and does everything else amazingly. by Naked Dang

And there you have 17 hundred thousand percent of all Urban Dictionary entries... dumbasses trying to show off their shitty taste in music, their plans to invent pointless new sex terms, or just typing their own name and attempting to define it. Fuck all y'all.

Sorry there aren't any pictures in this post--I'm using the RoBeastress's computer and I just can't do anything with a Mac. How could I? This thing thinks Delete means Backspace and it's got an Eject button where the real Delete should be. Anyway, there will plenty of photos in my next entry - The RoBeast Cola Challenge, where I make an ass out of myself and get a stomach ache!

(* name not changed to protect the innocent)

Bitch Burrito

Robeast Rollie found out this week that his department is getting hotsauced. We don't know yet if this is good or bad, but either way I'm expecting super anxiety for a while. I want to buy a bicycle to relieve some of the stress. Like, a cute little Schwinn or some Schitt.

Oh, that reminds me:



Also, somewhere on the right side of the page, I've added a Robeast Dictionpedia. Because I'm an egomaniac. WHATEVERT (this comes after WHATEVERS in the Robeast Dictionpedia).


PS - If anyone wants some free chocolate bars, come see me this weekend. No, they didn't fall off a truck.

Ro-Beast Review

I've got a week-long trail of unfinished (and barely started) blog entries. Maybe if I set my sights low for this one, I'll Finnish it.

I did some shopping at Virgin Mecha-Zord last weekend cos like errything was ten bucks, plus it was hot out to the Ndredth Degree (still trying to get that accepted on asshole Urban dictionary) and I needed some speedy Air Conditty. With every corner I turned I kept finding MORE STUFF to buy. I went for the trifecta of dead media--two DVD's, a book (don't worry, it wasn't for me), and a CD. This CD was Oasis' Greatest Hits.

I always said to myself, I will never buy an Oasis CD, but if they ever decide to put out a Greatest Hits, I'll pick it up. As a man of my word, I did just that. This double-disc greatest hits retrospective entitled Stop the Clocks was put together by Noel (he's the unintelligible one, right?). There are a ton of great songs on the discs and it was definitely worth the ten smaccaroons. The second disc alone is a near-perfect ten. There're only two songs on the second disc that I hadn't heard before, and only two songs on the first disc that I have heard. ODD!

And then there are two other Oasis songs that I do know that aren't on either disc. "D'ya What I Mean?" (which goes "D'ya know what I mean...") and the one from the commercial "All Around the World" (which goes "All around the world..."). Those two tracks (both HITS and GREAT, mind you) are both from their album Be Here Now, released in 1997. Although the overwhelming majority of the tracks on the greatest hits package are from the mid 90's, Noel the Gatekeeper did not put a single track from Be Here Now on it at all. Why Noel? Why?

From what I've just read about Oasis' career (in the past 25 minutes), Be Here Now began their quick decline in popularity with fans and critics alike. It's apparently a bloated, self-indulgent album. I don't know. Plenty of their songs sound bombastic and arrogant anyway (helicopter intro? sampling their own songs?), so what's the fucking difference? The exclusion of tracks from that album is just making me want to hear it in its entirety. Maybe that sneaky Noel knew what he was doing. Unless it actually does suck and I'm the sucker. Maybe if I find it for $2 somewhere, I'll buy it knowing that at least two songs are good.

Anyway, the album has come at the right time for me. I listened to the Beatles non-stop last summer, so it seems to be the season of pop for me. Well, I listened The Beatles and Battles non-stop, actually, so maybe it's the season of bands with B, E, A, T, L, & S in their names. That's right, no fucking Beastie Boys for the Ro-beast. Is there a band called The Constables? The Blast Beats? The Table Saws? I don't fucking know. Oasis has certainly been living up to their name though. I've left work every day this week wanting to KILL EVERYONE, but Oasis has been able to take me to a better, calmer place. The George Harrison tune "My Sweet Lord" used to do be my close-my-eyes-and-count-to-ten tune, but I lost the CD four years ago and have been a super prick ever since! I think "Champagne Supernova" may turn me back into a pussy again.

There are a ton of liner notes that came along with the album (apparently a DVD came with some sets--not mine) so I will have to comb that for answers. Sorry this "review" fucking sucked. I'm in a hurry and my breath smells like onions. D'ya know what I mean? Here's what a good review of an Oasis album looks like:


Maybe I'll attempt to review that Sara Bareilles album over the weekend. Later MF's.

Well I'll be damned...

I accidentally liked a Rolling Stones song. Well, most of it.

On my day off, I decided to attempt Used CD shoppin' at Academy Records again. Being Tuesday morning, and not Sunday afternoon, things went a lot smootherly. Not as many looney tunes in the store this time, so I got to actually explore the racks.

For those keeping score, I picked up (and I'll be hotlinking every one of these because I don't have time for this shit):







I bought The Sopranos soundtrack knowing that I've heard every song on it, but without really knowing which song is which. I could be wrong, but I don't believe they credit any of the music in the credits of the show. For the most part, I like the music on the show, but every once in a while, a particular track fits so amazingly well that I get an HBOner. The "Every Breath You Take/Theme From Peter Gunn" mash-up is one of those moments. Dominic Chianese singing "Core 'ngrato" at the end of Season 3 is fantastic too. Obviously "Don't Stop Believing" in the last scene of the last episode is epic. Tony singing just one line of Buddy Holly's "Maybe Baby" on his way out of Dr. Melfi's is enough to get me going.

One particularly sombre moment is at the end of Season 2. It's a very long, slow montage, with an equally long, slow guitar track playing. Coupled with the gritty and haunting vocal, it puts to a rest a torturous and introspective season. The song gets stuck in my head quite often, but I've never known who it was. I picked up the Peppers and Eggs set today hoping that the song would be on there. At the end of the first disc, I was finally greeted with the track. I looked at the back of the jewel case and... The Rolling Stones? How the fuck could that have gotten past my radar?

I'll tell you how--Keith Richards sings the song. I don't think I'd ever heard him sing before. I'm still a little dumbfounded because it's good. Now I'm no Jagger fan. I'm not even a Rolling Stones fan, but this is good stuff. I even like the other Keith Richards track on the album. Fuck, do I actually like Keith Richards? Most Rolling Stones shtuff is too repetitive for me, but this is nice. Maybe they should do more soundtrack work.

Here is the scene:



Don't Stop Baleetin'

KARMIC CRIME SPREE RAMPANT

I do a lot of nice things for a lot of people. It's part of my job. I'm supposed to be pro-actively helpful, consistently selfless, and most importantly, as Patrick Swayze taught me in Road House, I need to be nice:

All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice. If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both be nice. I want you to remember that it's a job. It's nothing personal. - Dalton

And even though I'm getting paid to be helpful, I still venture outside of my scope of expertise to be of assistance to colleagues and vistors. This extends outside of work too, because it's hard to turn off my problem-solving switch. At Shop Rite yesterday, I committed not one, but two random acts of kindness. I saved an unattended SVU from getting smashed by a runaway BJ's cart blown by a windy act of god. (For anyone keeping score, I just said "BJ" and "blown" in the same sentence and neither referred to a sex act. See, I can be mature sometimes.) And while inside, a very short older woman asked me to fetch her a box of cavatelli from the top shelf. Despite being a troll-sized pasta-hungry ro-beast myself, I complied graciously.

Bob Odenkirk explained, "Charity is when you do something for people while other people are watching," but I'm not telling you about my goodidity because I want a pat on the back. I'm just building you up for the abrupt change in tone that's about to occur before this sentence ends YOU UNAPPRECIATIVE MANIPULATIVE MOTHERFUCKING ERFFLINGS.

Ahem, more celebrity quotes to support my argument... Swayze further clarifies his stance: "I want you to be nice... until it's time to not be nice." I had to heed this caveat in the 4th act of my grocery shopping tragedy last night. I had just gotten in line for the express line (FYI - I only buy what I can carry in a basket) and was counting my items to make sure I was safe for the 10 items or less lane (I was at 10 exactly), when an old lady crosses in front of me and says "excuse me." I think nothing of it, as Shop Rite is horribly organized. The express lanes are usually pretty busy at that time of day and shoppers that have just entered the store often need to cross the lines to get to the pile of baskets that the slacker employees have no plans to replenish at the actual entrance. So I excused her. But she didn't pass through. She just totally cut in front of me.

And this was the second time in two weeks that I got cut by a fucking slag using the same exact technique. I was at Academy Records & CD's for checking out the used bins. After opting not to buy the first two seasons of Penn and Teller's Bullshit on DVD, I moved over to the tall rack over by the entrance and starting Kellering* the spines up and down. People are coming in and out the door there so I am frequently being interrupted. Whatever, that comes with the turf. I return to humping the racks. A middle-aged woman comes over and says "excuse me," and naturally I back up so she can head out the door. Wrong. She just wanted to get in front of me and look at the CD's before I did. I didn't speak up and give her a piece of my mind because she smelled like schizophrenia and I didn't want to cause a disturbance with the force in such a tiny place. I put down my Sunny Day Real Estate CD and just got the fuck out of there instead, vowing to never return on a Sunday.

This old broad yesterday didn't seem mentally ill in any way, just oldie-farty. Confronting a senior citizen is not the easiest thing to do, so again, I remained tight lipped, but I determined that now was the time to not be nice. She plopped her three items on the conveyor belt and grabbed a tabloid to read while waiting. I cramped her items' personal space with my lasagna ingredients, and didn't use a separator. Gasp! The line quickly moved and of course she decided not to buy the tabloid, but because I was up her ass, she couldn't reach the spot where she swiped it from in the first place. She had to put it down on the belt and the clerk started to swipe it. The woman then said she didn't want it. The clerk (now slacking in my favor) said "Well, you have to put it back. I don't know where it's supposed to go." What ever will she do? Don't look at me, cutter, cutter, peanut butter. I'm not helping you out now. Normally, I do not have this cold of a heart, but I have to draw my passive-aggressive line in the sand somewhere, don't I? Finally, the diplomatic chick behind me grabbed it and put it away for her. Sure, I look like the uncaring asshole, but I'm satisfied with my track record of charity. I'm sorry, but this is my new zero tolerance policy when it comes to line cutting infractions. You are lower than an A-Hole and worse than a B-hole. You are an F-minus-Hole and you will no longer get any forgiveness from this bleeding heart.

Unless you let me fuck you up a wall after my shift at the Double Douche.



Have a Bad Good Friday.

Oh, speaking of going to hell...

Keller - verb. To peruse items using
your finger as a placeholder.

PS - This will be Urban Dictionary's last chance with my words. My previous submission "Ndredth Degree" was cancelled in the editor selection process which coincidentally pissed me off to Ndredth Degree. If I don't see Kellering in the UD lexicon within a week, I'm going to burn down their fucking offices. Unnumnnummummm! and/or BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Listen up, Shorties

I was going to post a He Said to the Pink Knight's She Said about Hilary, but my heart's just not in it. I don't currently agree or disagree with anything she or Tina Fey said, I just had a semi-relevant post idea that I had been kicking around for a few days that would have served to knock Hilary down a notch. Plus, aren't we supposed to be drumming some controversy here or something? We've yet to butt heads, buttheads.

Politics really isn't my arena anyway. Apparently, timeliness isn't either. I caught the CNN clip over the weekend that showed Hilary stealing lines from one of Bill's old speeches. It made me pukey. I still had yet to even really begin showing interest in narrowing down candidates to potentially vote for in November, but this was a major strike for Hilary with the Ro-beast caucus.

So earlier tonight I was all psyched and shit to look up the CNN clip and be all "Where's your Hilary now, motherhumpers?" when I discovered that this plagiarism deal was a majorly hot topic. For like five minutes, but still. Hilary's plagiarizing Bill Clinton and John Edwards. Obama is plagiarizing some other dude...

They're all fucking robots that need to have their motherboards struck by lightning before I am convinced they have any real personality of their own.

So, I'll be staying out of politics for now, but that doesn't clear up my own blog personality disorder. I have no business reviewing drinks or music or poop culture either. I turned out to be a shitty podcaster when I tried that last summer and now here I can't even put a weekly feature together two weeks in a row. I have clearly not gotten my blogroove on yet, and there's a chance that I may never consistent stimulate your eblogenous zones, but I want to offer up this pact: I'll keep my paragraphs short, random, dirty, and full of made up words and intentional Type-O's, if you promise to read 'em all and not look bored. Occasionally, I may snark up the wrong tree, but if I make you laugh more than I make you cry, you have to forgive me.

Moving along, dudes and dudettes... today I saw that Sarah Bareillis has the number one song on some chart. Another artist that owes me absolutely nothing because I jumped on their bandwagon way too late is this Flo Rida person or persons. I heard this "Low" song for the first time last week and I was completely amazed by the chorus. I mean, obviously, the lyrics are ridiculous to the Undredth degree, but the sincerity in the harmonies and layers of back-up vocals is very endearing to me. The rest of the song can burn up in re-entry for all I care, but that fucking chorus is heading straight for the stars. It's got a straight delivery, but at the same time, isn't taking itself completely seriously. Sure, it gets repeated six hundred times in the song, but that's the only thing that gets me through the whole thing. This is number one on some chart too, and I'm glad. I think the version I hear on the radio has even more harmonies than this version, but I'm not going to go buy the fucking Step Up 2 Soundtrack just to confirm:



I don't even know if it's Flo Rida or T-Pain (who is given the obligatory "featuring" credit) that is responsible for the chorus, but they can split the 1 Kudos they're getting from Ro-Beast Rollie until I figure out the deal. Here's yet another version of the song, this time with Travis Barker playing drums along with the track:



By the way, if anyone is wondering, my favorite part is when they emphasize "With the straps." I'll be back later with last week's Stupid Q&A session. I gotta go complete my 24 hour cycle of bad eating choices.

Sell Out Blogging

Don't give me that face, Ian. Come on, knock it off. How am I going to get through this blog with you pouting?

Whatever. Baby.

I'm seriously the worst consumer. I hardly ever buy anything except for used CD's and black socks. New black socks, I mean. Commercials have little-to-no effect on me other than their jingles. I rarely know what is up to date with technology or entertainment. I usually purchase generic brands. I am instinctively repelled by most things deemed hip and/or popular. I pick out wine based on what animal is on the label. Maybe I'm a target market, but I'm certainly not a good one.

I've realized lately though that there is an industry that's been sneaking into my brain, and subsequently, my wallet. It's the beverage industry. All right, so those of you that know me personally are aware that I sort of pay my bills thanks in part to paychecks coming from an international corporation with a huge stake in the North American beverage industry (for now), which clearly makes me vulnerable for bias, but I assure you that my taste buds are no bullshitters.

When I decided almost two years ago to start losing weight, I cut out all soda intake with the intention of switching exclusively to water. I knew that would be quite a shock to the system though, so I first switched to diet Snapple, then went to a seltzer middleman. Flavored seltzers. I thought it would be torture, but I really took to it. Dare I say that I sometimes actually crave seltzer?

I almost made the jump to water, but I broke my water bottle and was too cheap to go buy a new one. My roommate and I sprung for a Brita (or a Pur, or something) over the summer, but we never do the dishes so I've got nothing to pour the beautiful water into. I still drink a shitload of seltzer, but lately, I've been picking up Udder Tings.

It started with Vitaminwater, due to its ubiquity. Helps that Coke owns the shit, I'm sure. In every convenience store I stop,Vitaminwater is very well stocked and sometimes I just don't want to buy something super bubbly. I have yet to find a flavor of VolkswagenVoyeurwebVitaminwater that I don't like.

I also tried a couple flavors of Gatorade's new "low calorie electrolyte beverage," G2, which I actually learned about from, *gasp*, a television advertisement. I think it tasted as good, if not better than regular Gatorade. Grape was especially bueno.

One final new drink that I have tried is Snapple Antioxidant Water. Dragonfruit sounded like a good flavor to be adventurous with, but unfartunately tasted like the sperm of a mythical reptilian beast. I gave The Snapz a second chance and picked up a Strawberry/Something bottle that was definitely better, but still not fantastic.

Now before you lecture me, brothers and sisters, I am not here to claim that any of these drinks are a magic elixir. I am not dazzled by the words taurine, gingko, electrolyte, guarana, or antioxidant. I tried one of these waterish drinks because it was there, and it tasted good, so I tried another. I exercise consistently enough that I'm not concerned about the fact that these things have as many calories or as much sugar as soda anyway. I have a bottle once or twice a week at most as a treat, so don't report me to the Sports Authorities.

And I'm quite aware that I still can't slam dunk.