Going with the something's better than nothing theme...

So, it’s not often that I get to try the various special flavors of Mountain Dew. And really, I’m a purist…if it doesn’t taste like Mountain Dew then…it’s NOT. These different flavors are clearly different, not like they’ve put some Lemon in a Diet Pepsi, or Vanilla into Coke. The flavors don’t taste anything like “something” added to Mountain Dew, so really it’s just another soda, riding along on the coattails of a brand name. But I always feel neglected, because the new flavors are rarely in Diet. And there’s the personal hurt I like to nurse, being left out of the flavor party, if you will, but really the thing that completely irks me is that a local Pepsi rep confessed to me that at least in this area, Diet sells at the same rate as Regular, yet they always have two-three times the stock of regular, because of brand shelf mandates. And that’s just dumb. And dumb enacted by people who aren’t actually dumb, but seem to lack the stones to raise their hand at a meeting and say “Um, you know, this is sort of dumb”, irritates me. At one point, the Code Red came out in diet and it was, while not the grossest thing I’ve ever put in my mouth…it was definitely something I never need to repeat. Plus, the last thing I need is something with the spill-and-stain power of RED. But yesterday I spotted a Diet Mountain Dew in PURPLE. (Purple. It’s the only auto-girly response I have.) So, I HAD to try it. For the record, it’s like drinking a liquid carbonated purple jellybean. Old school purple jellybean - -that bastard cousin of grape flavoring, even though the label says that it’s strawberry-melon flavor. I actually think BETTER of it if I concentrate on purple jellybeans. But it’s way too sweet. And doesn’t hold a candle to the real deal. (Which for the record, probably doesn’t taste all that good either. Some things…Diet Mountain Dew…Hostess Snowballs…Raisinets…Pez…transcend tasting good and are just tapping some addict-neuron I have.) Plus, I don’t need PURPLE spill-and-stain in my life.

I know. I can do better. I have several posts brewing -- but they need some shaping, some fleshing out...and the only fleshing out I had time for this week was stress-eating fleshing out.