Archived comment by Patrick:
It's a sad fact that no matter how generous people are with drinks that they can't be arsed with finishing, everyone considers them to be poisoned or spat in. Its not just drunks in the UK/US, either. I went to Brussels just after new Year's eve: the lushes there don't leave out half empty bottles o' beer, but champagne.

PS, why is budweiser like sex in a canoe?
They're both fucking close to water

Archived comment by bubba:
BURSTING AT THE SEAMS HERE JUST TO AD TO THIS.

1. WHY DID 7UP STOP MARKETING HOWDY COLA? ICE COLD IN A GLASS BOTTLE.. NOTHING COULD BEAT IT.

2. WHY DOESN'T COCA COLA MARKET DIET CHERRY COLA MORE WIDELY AND AS A COUNTERPOINT, WHY DON'T THEY TAKE THAT LEMON FLAVORED CRAP OFF THE SHELVES.

3. WHO'S HAD BIRCH BEER? HOW ABOUT VERNOR'S?
I CAN'T FIND EITHER ANYMORE.

4. POINTS TO THE IDEA OF SELF IMPROVEMENT. WHY NOT "HELP YOURSELF?" DON'T ASK ANYONE ELSE FOR ANYTHING UNTIL YOU'VE DONE ALL YOU CAN FOR YOURSELF. (THE HEIERARCHY OF HELP)

5. DIET DR. PEPPER IS ALMOST AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL...IF YOU LIKE THE ORIGINAL. I HAVE SEEN IT (THE ORIGINAL) EAT THROUGH TILE AFTER A FEW HOURS.

6. GRAPE CRUSH IS A TASTY ALTERNATIVE.

7. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH WEARING ALUMINUM FOIL ON ONE'S HEAD AS PROTECTION FROM THE ALIENS, OR ANY OTHER MINDSTEALERS.

8. PEOPLE ARE, IN FACT, EVIL. WE MUST WORK TO BE ANY GOOD AT ALL AND WITHOUT ASSISTANCE, WE CAN NEVER GO THE DISTANCE.

9. PEPSI IS THE CHOICE OF PEOPLE WITH NO VOLITION.

10. MONTYGIRL IS NOT A FREAK...I DO THAT TOO.

5 TO 1
1 IN 5
NO ONE HERE, GETS OUT ALIVE.
--MORRISON

Archived comment by jeremy:
thats about right, pepsi one is swill

Archived comment by Raj Bob:
That's cuz Pepsi One tastes like shit. Person must have bought it because it was on sale.

Archived comment by Arlene:
I remember grape Fanta fondly. I also love Cheerwine (sort of cherry cola), which is _only_ in NC. Blackberry & lemon Fanta? I must try those if I ever get the opportunity.

Archived comment by steff:
*chuckle* ah... just plain mike. yes, that pretty
well sums it up, doesn't it? just remember we luv
ya mike. the only thing i cannot pick up from the
front is newspapers. what is THAT about? do i
think the top paper has less news than the others?
it's not like it's something that has maybe gone
stale and i need the 'fresher' paper underneath.
i'm actually not allowed to read the newspaper
anymore (been banned from the evening news for
years), so it's a moot point.

Archived comment by Mike:
Don't forget my dad. Throw away your pride and have yourself a drink!

Archived comment by dfresh:
Thanks Montygirl. As if I didn't have enough to worry about, now I have to worry about Mike's mom projecting psychic images into my mind, and making me reach into the back of the shelves at grocery stores. Looks like I will have to start wearing aluminum foil on my head to keep out her impulses. Not that there is anything wrong with Mike's family. I mean, Mike's grandma, the crack dealer, his sister the crime organizer, and then there is just plain Mike...ah, forget that aluminum foil, I think that her screwing with my head will just make my life more interesting.

Archived comment by Montygirl:
OK, this is weird! I, too, mush aside the front row of stuff to get to the second or third row of whatever I happen to be buying, but I don't know why I do this. I don't believe my mother does this. I do this for everything from packages of carrots to canned food. I guess either a) I'm a freak, or b) your mother has some sort of psychic ability. :0)

Archived comment by Mike:
That's not paranoid! Experience has taught me that people are evil. Pee in your drink, spit on the handrail, wipe themselves in the toilet stall and stuff the tissue back up into the dispenser-- people are just plain sick!
My mom has this shopping ritual in which she never buys the items on the front row of the shelves. She thinks people have done... something to them. I have repeatedly told her that if someone did tamper with the food, they would probably put it towards the back, where she's reaching. She won't hear of it. Now, whenever I go shopping, I find myself pushing the front items aside... damn brainwashing!

Archived comment by Montygirl:
Reminds me of my mom always reminding us to never take candy from strangers ... she always added, "And never pick up candy lying in the street, even if it looks like it hasn't been opened - they put needles in it and drugs! And then they wait 'til you're unconscious and take you away, and..." I think mom read too many horror stories.

Archived comment by Apple:
The images one derives from the comments on this site are priceless!!! LOL!! Homeless people plotting evil "pee in soda pop and see who we can trick into drinking it" almost made me spit soda pop on the screen!

Archived comment by Mike:
Yeah, but sitting curbside? Was anyone even watching the stuff? I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be naturally suspicious about "free" drinks lying on the sidewalk. I've seen too many beer and soda bottles lying around filled with what is obviously urine; I'd suspect anything offering a sample. "Help yourself," indeed. There was probably some homeless guy hiding just around the corner, waiting for someone to drink so he could jump out and yell, "Ha ha ha! I peed in that!"
The homeless have very little else to do, you know.

Archived comment by philosophile:
Most likely, it had everything to do with a campus advertising campaign. The pepsi one truck invaded my campus today, giving away free pepsi.

Archived comment by Phil:
On a practical note, maybe the sign had nothing to do with the product, just a store giving slightly preachy advice. Today the sign says "Help Yourself", the next day it says "Get Your Act Toghether", then "Quit Whining", "Call Your Mom Once In a While", "Your Socks Don't Match". You get the idea.

Archived comment by WendiWolf:
Thanks TallCupOfJoe for getting it streight. Genetics class was a loooong time ago and at 8am. (That and the proff was a bit of a bore...) It wasn't my best class, although not the worst either. I guess I can't really call myself a biologist, but maybe an ecologist or environmental educator would be better. Although that is not my field of work these days. Ok, it's still early, or at least feels that way. Back to work now.

Archived comment by nightfever:
here, Mike, check out the link!
Coke and Procter & Gamble are making a new company!
Should be interesting...

Archived comment by TallCuppaJoe:
actually triticale, i didn't look at the expiration date on the sodas until after i drank one and almost spit it all over the admin building. sodas can and do go bad, i am unfortunate enough to have found out for myself...

Archived comment by Eve:
Umrguy --
I am 99% certain the slashes are a server side PHP problem, especially since it happened while dreamhost was fooling around with the location of the site this weekend.
I agree though, it is annoying. I will look into it after my midterm, and the huge rush of work I need to do at my job tomorrow. Talking without contractions makes my words sound stilted. Weird.

Archived comment by Mike:
Oops.

Archived comment by Mike:
End quote.
Next time you\'re on your own. :^) ^Makes a better nose, btw.
---Mike
slash-free stenographer

Archived comment by nightfever:
hehe...
Well, I like fanta, and I found that the \"Fruits of the Forest\" (or some such rubbish) Fanta tastes like Kool Aid!!! I mean, Really like Kool Aid.
I haven\'t had Kool Aid in over 4 years, but as soon as I had this
stuff, I
thought \"Wow! A vodka mixer!\" (which is what we used Kool Aid for)
;-)
Well, I like orange fanta!
Nice link though... even mentions Ireland in one of the headlines!
I wish that I had known about this stuff when I saw the Coke stand in a trade fair that I was at over xmas!
Oh, and according to a friend of mine doing Pharmacology, just about everything causes cancer if it is in large enough quantities...
...even cigarettes! Oh... wait...

Archived comment by triticale:
1) Most food expiration dates are nothing more than \'quality starts to fade after:...\' dates. The only exceptions would be bread and animal protein products. I consume significant amounts of packaged food scavenged from the dumpsters of food brokers and chips from a vending firm. I once many years ago brought home many cases of cream soda from a dumpster; the children of the household remember it fondly.

2)Does anyone here remember real Coca-Cola from before the New Coke fiasco? I\'ve met one other person who agrees with me that a wintergreen component of the flavor (I believe this to be the coca leaves) was replaced by something more citrus.

3)Not everyone who drinks sugar-free soda is doing so to diet. My wife (who drinks diet Cherry Coke and diet Pepsi but not vice versa) and daughter-in-law are both diabetic and have no choice but to order the diet drinks with their non-diet meals.

Archived comment by Paul:
I have this vision of the soda being taken and this piece of paper sitting there saying \"Help yourself\", and someone deciding that they had been given some advice on living by God himself... kinda has a \"Reader\'s Digest\" feel to it, doesn\'t it?

Archived comment by Shadowcat:
Am I the only one who remembers drinking grape Fanta? I used to LOVE that stuff. In fact, I have very fond memories of going to the swimming pool in the summer and getting grape Fanta from the vending machine. While I swam, I would let it sit out in the sun until it got really warm, and that\'s when I would drink it.

I know, I know, I\'m a freak. Everyone gives me the strangest looks when I admit that I used to prefer my grape Fanta hot. ;-)

Archived comment by umrguy:
Oh, and Eve, are you sure that it is a server fault that is causing what appear to be escape characters (the slashes) to appear in front of the quotation marks and apostrophes? Just wondering, it is getting on my nerves (and caused me to rewrite this comment to eliminate all contractions)

Archived comment by umrguy:
I have noticed the disparity in the taste of Dr. Pepper. I came to the following conclusions (feel free to add your own experiences):

1. If you go to a fast food restaurant, the taste of Dr. Pepper seems to depend on the primary distributor of soft drinks to that restaurant. I have noticed often in Taco Bell restaurants that the \"Dr. Pepper\" that is being served tastes nearly indistinguishable from the Pepsi [I\'ve noticed this on several occasions, so it\'s not just a case of somebody hooking up the wrong syrup to the lines.] If you go to McDonald\'s, the Dr. Pepper tastes better than that served at Pepsi restaurants, yet it still tastes a fair amount like Coke.

2. In no circumstances that I have ever been in has a fountain Dr. Pepper ever tasted the same as in a can, or in a bottle. I know purists will claim that the can changes the flavor slightly (I haven\'t noticed, I don\'t drink canned Dr. Pepper that much) but I still think the flavor in even the cans is more distinct than that which is served at a soda fountain.

Archived comment by KamiilYaan:
Hey Mike,
Fanta tastes a little different here in Holland than it does in the US-- I think it's better. It's also available in lemon and blackberry flavors.


Dr. Pepper doesn't taste quite right, though...

Archived comment by Milo:
What is the deal with companies still making products and not promoting them? Coca-Cola is a huge company, and they advertise the hell out of Coke and Diet Coke (totally independantly of one another, I might add), and thier other sodas, as well as Minute Maid Juices, yet Tab vanishes from all media. Well, fine, so stop making it. But ten years or more since the last Tab commercial, or redesign of the package, and you can still find it! I don\'t get it.
On a similar, and mostly unrelated note, in around \'93 or \'94, Nissan had a car called the NX, which was the redesign of the Pulsar NX, that only existed for about 2-3 years. I never once saw this car advertised. I also never saw it in the car magazines, or anywhere else, but occasionally on the road. It was like they didn\'t really want to sell them at all. No surprise the model wasn\'t around long. Too bad, they were cute.

Archived comment by TallCuppaJoe:
the above link is on aspartame in general. i\'m sure we\'ve all received those screechy emails about how it will kill you and give you tumors and seizures and the plague and everything else. maybe this will calm people down a little bit...

enjoying a PepsiONE as we speak...

Archived comment by TallCuppaJoe:
hey there kids. as the resident biologist i couldn\'t help but set the record a bit straighter with the above link about PKU. yes, nutrasweet IS aspartame, which is a dipeptide, meaning it is made up of two amino acids (remember freshman bio?) aspartic acid and phenylalanine. it\'s the phenylalanine that gives PKU victims trouble. anyway, it\'s not really going to kill you, any more than a big mac or any other overprocessed food (read: all food that you didn\'t grow the old fashioned way). and saccharine isn\'t as bad as it\'s rap. you\'d have to put many many pounds of saccharine on your back every day for a long time to get the same results as those poor rats who got cancer. a little knowledge is a dangerous thing sometimes.

oh, and to comment on the Europe v. us soda comparison... Pepsi one is called PepsiMax in Europe, because diet drinks are considered effeminate and men won\'t drink them. so they try to get over on them. those sneaky pepsi kids...

Archived comment by WidespreadPanic:
Thank you Milo. My question has certainly been answered. Next time I\'m in my hometown I\'ll have to check the local Piggly Wiggly and see if in fact there is a little ole lady there desperately looking for that Tab that she was promised.

Archived comment by Milo:
Yes, actually, Tab does sometimes still exist. I say sometimes, cause I seem to find it every once in a while in a grocery store somewhere. There will be 40 cases of each of the other sodas, you know, the ones that they advertise, and 2 cases of Tab. It\'s like the store manager promised some sweet little old lady that loves Tab that as long as she shops there, they\'ll always have Tab, and now as the shit gets harder and harder to get a hold of he keeps hoping she\'ll switch to Diet Coke, or die, but the crazy old Tab drinking witch keeps coming in and buying her Tab and chatting his damn ear off about how nice it is that he still stocks it, and none of the other stores do, and she could just switch to Coke, but she\'s watching her figure, and he\'s thinking \"WHY? For the love of God you\'re 137 years old and no one is going to care if you watch your shriveled, wrinkly old figure or not and I have to keep ordering two cases of Tab each month and.... and.. um.... oh, sorry.

Archived comment by Jon:
I think you can find just about any old kind of soda, if you look hard enough. I was surprised to see Moxie a few years back - I thought they were out of business. Maybe they should be, since it tastes like dreck.

My favorite soda from Europe has to be Oran-Soda. The name is just the right balance of clever and silly.

Am I the only one who detects a hostile vibe to \"help yourself\"? It seems so challenging to the viewer...


I hope these backslashes do disappear soon.

Archived comment by WidespreadPanic:
Hmmmm speaking of Fanta, is Tab still on the market? Haven\'t seen that drink for ages.

Archived comment by WendiWolf:
Nutrasweet is a brand name for aspertame. They still use it in Pepsi One and you can still tase it. Or at least I can. My dad loves the crud. I\'ll just drink fewer regular Cokes than have lots of chemical tasting \"diet\" soda. Now for the bio lecture: Aspertame containes phenothailene (sp?). There is a genetic disorder abreviated PKU (can\'t remember the full name) where the body can\'t break down phenothailene properly and it builds up in the tissues and causes all kinds of horrible complications and eventually death. This is why if you actually look at a can of diet soda or the like you\'ll see a warning about people with PKU (phenol-keto something-or-other) staying away from it.
OK, bio lecture over.

Archived comment by Apple:
I personally have an allergic reaction to aspartame. I get all puffy and sleepy. I was told to stay away from Nutrasweet as well. I assumed they were the same or had similar properties.

Archived comment by Milo:
Help yourself indeed. Just keep walking and leave that nasty tasting Crap on the curb!

By the way, Pepsi One has more caffine than almost any other soda on the market, with of course, the exception of Jolt and Mountain Dew.

Archived comment by Penny:
Arlene - was it Splenda? (Link above) It measures cup for cup like sugar. It\'s supposed to be better for baking and such.

Archived comment by Arlene:
I was going to comment on nutrasweet & rats but I was thinking about aspartane (sp) & getting it confused with nutrasweet. Some people are allergic to nutrasweet, so that\'s bad, right?
I\'m looking forward to that new sweetener that is coming down the pike. Tastes like real sugar, no aftertaste but with far fewer calories. Too bad I can\'t remember the name.

Archived comment by Mike:
Nah, they're not bankrupt-- yet. (See the link.) I just didn't realize that Fanta was part of Coke enterprises. Ugh! Fanta is _popular_ overseas? And you ask why Americans aren't more enthusiastic about travel....
Self-correction: you know, I think they still say that Nutrasweet _does_ cause tumors in rats. They just decided that that little fact was irrelevant for humans.
Drink up!

Archived comment by CheezCayke:
On my last trip to Berkeley in September I saw out side a bagel shop, two paper shopping bags filled to the top with bagels and a sign that said \"Free\". I assume they were day old+ bagels they couldn\'t sell anymore and were free to anyone hungry or brave enough to take them from an open bag sitting on the sidewalk.

Berkeley\'s counter culture ethic lives on.

Archived comment by nightfever:
Oh, and just to say, Fanta is VERY big over here in Germany especially...because during the war, Coke was seen as an especially american thing and so Coke stopped being sold and Fanta was given pride of place...

It has led to such Germany-only drinks as Mezzo-mix, which is (I think) Fanta and Coke pre-mixed. Actually tastes quite good I think.

Archived comment by nightfever:
Bankruptcy???
What ARE you on about Mikey?!?!?
Fanta is part of Coke, is it not?
Nice and orangey and VERY prevalent in other countries outside of the states.

Tell me that Coke isn't going Bankrupt!! Please god no!!!!

Oh, and I agree with Matt on the "Forcing it thru my dead clenched teeth" issue. I don't like fake coke as it is, but ANY pepsi would have to be fed to me IV while I was strapped down and helpless...

I hate that Pepsi stuff!!

Well, there's a nice link to some Coke history for anyone who cares...

Archived comment by Eve:
The backslashes will hopefully go away after midnight PST. Dreamhost is moving stuff around.

Archived comment by Mike:
Uh, what's with all the (back- or fore-?) slashes?

Matt, I think they can use Nutrasweet again. It's been proven safe for rats, so it's good enough for human consumption. Of course, rats can drink seawater, too.

When I first came to college, I was surprised to see Fanta served in the local restaurants. Where I'm from, Fanta had been prevalent back when I was a kid, but had mysteriously disappeared; every once in a while, you'll find a faded old aluminum can with the Fanta logo. Brimming over with nostalgia for my lost youth, I ordered a super-size cup of strawberry Fanta... and it sucked. Absolutely the worst soda I've ever tasted. No wonder they're hovering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Reliving your childhood memories sucks.

Archived comment by dfresh:
Er...soda expires? What, after a while all the chemicals and preservatives finally eat that last bit of \"natural coloring and flavors?\"

Archived comment by TallCuppaJoe:
i love me some pepsi one, but i won\'t be taking it from the curbside, thanks. they had a box o\' cokes and sprites like that at work. i looked at the dates on the bottom and they were over 6 months past the expiration date. yuk.

Archived comment by Matt:
What a shining endorsement!

I'll drink Pepsi One (or any other "diet" soda) when they force a straw between my dead, clenched teeth.

Helluva a generous thing to do for somebody, though. Does anybody actually know what sweetener they're using to avoid that whack aspartame taste?