Sans Carbonation = Certain Devastation

Mmm mmm ahhh. The wonderful world of soda.

Who knows what the sugary, carbonated empire would be like today if it hadn’t been for Mr. Pemberton and his cocaine laced Cola drink. Probably nonexistent.

A disclaimer before we begin: I’m not a huge soda fan. I go days and days, weeks even, without so much as a sip.

But if the mood strikes, I love me some A&W Rootbeer, Diet Coke with Lime - even the occasional Fanta (omg pineapple!) and Welch’s Grape. Oh, and cream soda, birch beer (remember that??), and ginger ale (Canada Dry only).

On the flip side, I very much dislike Dr. Pepper. And Mountain Dew (sorry Fred) - especially their 9 million red varieties. And I could totes do without Sprite and its sad little impostor, Sierra Mist. Even 7Up.
Nevertheless, be it tasty or disgusting, purple or yellow or brown (boring!), all of these sweet, syrupy concoctions have one common denominator:

Carbonation, baby.

It don’t matter that I inevitably hiccup each time I crack open a can-o-pop. I love me some bubbles. Lots of bubbles, in fact.

Champagne! Beer! Seltzer! Spritzers! Soda! Alka Seltzer! Bubbles just make everything better. Really they do. (Even hungover tums!)

I wish Willy Wonka was hiring for positions in his Bubble Room. Fizzy Lifting Drink taste tester? Yes, please!

And that, my friends, is why I am misery personified if my soft drink – or hard drink, for that matter – is flat. GASP. The absence of effervescence is cause for antidepressants, I tell you. No joke.
Because of all the hootin and hollerin and anti-soda/anti-caffeine lobbying, we the people have been programmed to regard soda as the enemy. 


Well, girls and boys, I am here to tell you that the enemy, in actuality, is supine sucrose. Soda that’s flatter than tap water. I’m talking sans bubbles blasphemy.

It’s just not fair! I so look forward to my one-soda-per-week allotment (FINE, it’s sometimes two...or five, if I am so inclined) – and cannot even savor its fizzy deliciousness because I know I’m on the clock. I’m rushing against the carbonation wrecking monster.

And it is a monster.

What’s the sense of drinking a bubbly beverage if the bubbles don’t last? Why hasn’t anyone invented a beverage with carbonation staying power? Instead we get measly crappy CO2 trap contraptions.

Remember those rubbery can caps from the 80s? Junk. Those newfangled can-topping tricksters Trissi fell victim to? Junk. (We could NOT even get them off the can!!)

Those fizzy little globules of deliciousness are tricky sheisters for sure. I know, I knoooow. Once the bottle seal is broken, the can top popped, the champagne stopper unstopped, it’s CO2 Gone Wild. Carbo buddy doesn’t know what to do in the presence of less pressure. So it desolubilizes and...poof!...vanishes nearly completely before I can before I can gulp it down.
I loathe bubbleless soda. So much so that oftentimes, in my mad dash to keep as little effervescence as possible from escaping, I fumble the cap, losing precious fizzy seconds.

Or sometimes, I successfully get the cap on but drop the bottle. And you know what THAT means - invaluable bubbles galore exploding and frothing before their ticket is up. (Those are the times I really just despise my beyond-klutzy self.)

It’s unfair. It’s not right. And there’s nothing we can do about it!

I hate you stable pressure! I hate you oxygen! You carbonation wrecking monster, you! Greedy little bubble sucking bastard! Leave me and my effervescence alone!

Capish?

Fishy-Smelling Graveyards

I was a vegetarian for three years. But when my hair started falling out and my nails began ripping and peeling, I decided it was time to give up my Mom’s special-made veggie chili and veggie meat sauce. I dove right back into the world of meat, eagerly devouring chicken nuggets and filet mignons and pork dumplings (pre-Swine, obvi).

Seven years later, my affinity for turkey tacos, mi amore for my Mom’s (real) meatballs, my absolute relish in annihilating foot long hotdogs – let’s just say it’s still going strong.

However, as creeped out as I get when I pass through the meat department (because really who likes thinking about all those dead animals), it’s the fish section of the supermarket that I find most frightening.
Does Whole Foods (there I go again) really have to put whole fishes on display? The Striped Basses and Red Snappers are macabre enough to keep me away. But seeing row upon row of crass, cloying carcasses is ridiculously revolting.

Bleh.

Why do they have to flaunt the flesh? Remove that skin, please! Pop out those elephantine eyes! Scrape off those scales! Snip, snip those fins and goddamn tails! And the tentacles. The tentacles! I love me some fried calamari but rings only, please.
Those poor orange crustaceans with their little groping antennae – prawnies and crabbies and shrimpies, so sad! And the lobsters – oh boy. Yes, yes, it’s one of my faves too, especially dripping in butter. Or baked with breadcrumbs. So delicioso. But to be boiled! Alive! The humanity.

Now let me just clarify: I do love fish. Especially tuna. Especially raw. Swordfish, tilapia, scallops, mussels – love, love, love, love. However, I just wish the fish counter wasn’t so scary. Why does it have to be such a morbid, ghastly, eerie experience? I don’t want to feel like I’m visiting a fishy-smelling graveyard. I want to feel like I’m shopping for food – like how I feel when I'm buying chicken breasts or flank steaks or turkey burgers. They're nice and trimmed and displayed in such a fashion that I forget it's animal flesh I'm looking to buy. It's so much easier to pretend you’re not consuming something that once mooed or oinked or gobbled or SWAM when it’s not bam, eyes/fins/tails/scales in your face! Poor Flounder. Poor Sebastian. Poor Nemo!

So please, please, please – take away the carcasses. Make the fishes look neat and pretty and like they never were alive. Conceal them like those Cajun and lemon herb tilapia fillets. Yes, more of that, please. Thanks!