mokie coke! mokie coke! mokie coke!

Living in America: a Guide for the Perplexed Chapter 12

The only product I have a passionate relationship with is coca cola. To me it's still the archetype of my love hate relationship with my country. Here's this former cocaine quack remedy (cures the Blues, no doubt) that manages to transform into this sexy snappy timeless artificial icon, while still being a true juggernaught, core evil of the bland, ruthless, corporate variety. A Mega Product. A product that is itself Wealth. But I love it, really I do, like no other product. Cars, for example, I simply hate. I used to love my cigarettes but slowly it became clear that they are actually and quite unambiguously killing me, and we drifted apart (I admit I still think about them sometimes).

The term soft drinks, one presumes, is as opposed to hard drinks, as cider is to hard cider, if my astonishing analogical skills serve me. It's a neat comparison, kids can start out hitting soft drinks and then when they get to college they can really start hitting the, uh, hard stuff. There should be some sort of graduation ceremony with the ceremonial pouring of the rum and coke. Oh yes, it's called the post graduation kegger. Anyway, I live in the midwest and up here we call it pop. The fruity legal version of the same slang mentality that gave us smack, crack, and pot. I came from california though and I still tend to call it soda. Go figure. Anyway, they say that it is the single largest source of refined sugar in the American diet. Now if you knew anything about the amount of the world's sugar consumption (hint: it's large) and the scale of the world sugar industry (it's frighteningly vast and disconcertingly full of Dutch people), that fact might mean something to you. Don't feel bad! I don't know anything about those things either. I mean, I'm just, uh, guessing.

Anyway, pop, yes. We do drink rather a lot of it, you might call it an obsessive amount, considering that they say we're generally obese and prone to tooth decay anyway. Actually, just read Daniel M. Pinkwater's The Last Guru. It's all in there.

klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.