Some of you, no doubt, read S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders sometime around middle school. It was part of the curriculum in my county, so I found myself reading it aloud in class many times, my pubescent voice cracking at every change of inflection. I wonder what my classmates thought when I was called on to read; I was a good reader, but man, those voice cracks.
But today's topic is too grand for me to get bogged down in memories of 1997 and my changing body. The reason I bring up Hinton's coming-of-age novel is that it prominently features Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay," especially its titular final line:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
I'm glad I was exposed to this poem in middle school, because it helped me in high school when the well went dry... the well of the sweet nectar of life.
Baby Come Back
Or I'll bring you back in a laboratory like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein
The discontinuation of Tropical Sprite Remix was, to me, The Day the Music Died. If you had the privilege of tasting this heavenly concoction, you know exactly what I mean. If you didn't, you were deprived one of life's true masterpieces...
...until now.
Coca-cola (always leading) has developed a fountain machine, called Freestyle, that allows you to thoroughly customize your soda beverage. You've probably seen one in a Qdoba, Five Guys, or some other fast casual restaurant.
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| Just saying whatever comes into the top of my head... freestylin' |
One glorious day, it occurred to me that Sprite is one of the beverages in the Freestyle. That for each beverage in the machine, there are plenty of flavor syrups to mix and match. And that, if the stars aligned perfectly, if God saw fit to pour out a special blessing on a random dude like me, perhaps those flavors could combine their powers to summon forth the Captain Planet of beverages.
On most machines, these are the flavor options for Sprite:
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| L to R: cherry, orange, vanilla, strawberry, raspberry, grape, peach |
I could stretch this into a novella, but that would require inventing a villain hellbent on denying the world of delicious flavor combinations. Too dark. So I'll just cut to the chase...
It was only a matter of time and experimentation until I rediscovered the magic of Tropical Sprite Remix. Here's the formula that will change your life (in the sense that reading it, like any action you take, adds to your cumulative life experience):
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| Please try this. |
A Drink By Any Other Name
Would at least closely resemble the taste of its former self
What is your current favorite soda beverage?
Have you made any fun creations in the Coca-Cola Freestyle?
Jon
