Want something to drink?

What do you reach for when you're dying of thirst and need something special to answer the call?  Some people choose to go for a glass of iced tea, but for me this just doesn't cut it.  Tea that's been sweetened tastes good enough, provided you can wade through the 4.2 million varieties of it...are tea people actually finicky enough to warrant 7 varieties of raspberry tea?  First you have the flavor choices: strawberry-kiwi-raspberry, blueberry-raspberry, raspberry green tea, raspberry diet green tea, orange-raspberry-grape...the list goes on forever.  On top of this, every flavor has 3 or 4 varieties of "healthiness" for it as well.  You have the "radical" line of teas that have 4 times the suggested daily allowance for caffeine but which claim to give you energy based on a little-known Chinese herb.  You have the whole "green tea" family, which is basically their way of saying that they crushed up some ginseng in it and colored it green so you feel like you're drinking some ancient magic potion developed long ago in the Orient.  Finally, you have the entire line of diet drinks that taste just the same as the sugary ones but don't have sugar in them - instead of poisoning you with sugar, they replace it with a cancer-inducing agent that won't make you fat like regular sugar.  With all this said, the reason I stay away from tea is simple.  Here is a little industry secret...know why they call it "tea"?  Because "tea" rhymes with "pee", and that's all you'll be doing for the next 4 hours after drinking this stuff.  It's bad enough my bladder is the size of an ant's knapsack...I don't need a bunch of tea ravaging my system.

How do any of us know that the bottled water we're drinking has actually been drafted off of a filtered mountain stream somewhere in Colorado?  I'm betting some guy in BigStick, Mississippi is getting filthy rich bottling water from the hose in his backyard. (incidentally, in my opinion we need to find the person who decided to spell Mississippi the way it's spelled and severely beat them...why make up some name that's this long and this difficult to spell?  Every time I have to type it out I get ticked off - stupid jerk)  I remember when we were kids and you got thirsty, you'd just stick your head under the bathroom sink and guzzle tap water till you achieved major bloat.  You'd come up with a wet face, but you wouldn't be thirsty...and it didn't cost you $1.39 either. 

The other day I noticed that you can still buy "Grapico" - I guess some people still desire to know what it feels like to drink liquid lead.  Talk about sugar content...you could use this stuff on your pancakes, that's how thick and syrupy it was.  At the swimming pool, you could always tell which kids spent their drink money on Grapico...they'd be laid out on the deck with a stupid looking purple ring around their mouth moaning in pain and baking in the hot sun, unable to move as they fought off the nausea and sugar seizures.      

I know lots of people who love coffee, and I myself like to drink it from time to time...I like to put a little coffee in a cup full of sugar and creamer and make a malt out of it, because coffee by itself tastes like creamed toenail.  The problem with coffee is, you have to have a satchel full of breathmints or else you'll melt faces when you talk.  The funny thing is, when you're around a bunch of people, and they're all drinking coffee, it's like no one cares about the breath thing because as long as everyone is drinking it you know all of you will have stanky breath which makes it ok.  But if you're the only one drinking it, and everyone else is having raspberry-orange-kiwi-blueberry green tea, you'll need some Altoids (you know, those white mints that come in the fancy tin that make you cry when you suck on them because their 57% alcohol and 20% liquid nitrogen) or other suitable funk-removing device.  One other note...if you need a pick up in the morning, you can order the large at Starbucks and that will suffice...you don't need the extra super skyscraper grande...trust me, your brain will thank you for not upsizing later.  As a rule of thumb, I generally won't consume enough coffee to fill a cup that's as tall as I am.  I like my heart maintaining it's rhythm and don't need massive coronary spikes to help me "perk up" at work.

Making words difficult to spell does not make you cool - it just makes you a freaking capital 'D' - lowercase 'w' - double 'e' - lowercase 'b' that needs his capital 'A' - lowercase 's' - lowerca...uhh...I mean...his butt kicked.