Beverage Hell

This is a true story. The fact that it's true doesn't mean it isn't pathetic, but it is true.

Every now and then I become despondent over the range of fizzy beverages at the grocery store. You've got your cola family, your root beer/cream soda family, your citrus family, your berry family, and that's about it. And sometimes I think "That's it? For the rest of human history we'll have to get by on these four flavor families? Oh, say it isn't so!"

But then the endless inventiveness of America redeems my faith by coming out with Baja Blast. Now, mind you, I don't like Baja Blast very much - it's way too sweet and it causes general unrest amid my Isles of Langerhans - but mirabile dictu it's a new flavor unrelated to the previous four! Mankind can continue to plan to go the stars secure in the knowedge that new flavors of soft drink are possible, and they needn't necessarily feature mango. But for all that I don't care for Baja Blast very much, it's come to feature in my Friday Lunch, which is a Taco Bell #3 (three Super Tacos) and a tankard of Baja Blast, all downed in the parking lot behind where I work while listening to the radio or a book on CD.

I worried when I was a kid that astronauts would tire of Tang. What would become of them in the midst of a ten-day lunar mission if they suddenly developed a strong distaste for Tang and wanted, say, a rum and Coke? Would insanity set in? Anything could happen. They might open the Apollo capsule at the end of the mission and find nothing but fingernail claw-marks on the inside of the spacecraft, and the hastily-scrawled note can't live with that god-pounding Tang another minute...

I used to really like the works of William Gibson, especially the Burning Chrome collection of short stories and the early cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer and Count Zero. Later his apparent obsession with fashion design quelled my interest in such things as Idoru and Pattern Recognition, but that's okay; he doesn't need my money that badly any more anyway. Anyway, he wrote a short story whose name escapes me, but the upshot is that people go out into a circumscribed region of space and pop flares, and according to some scheme nobody understands, some of the spacecraft are taken. Nobody knows where they go, because when they come back (and they always come back) the occupant is suicidal and insane, but almost always clutching some piece of bizarre alien technology, like the cure for cancer inscribed on a ring of black iron. It's a haunting piece of fiction and extremely effective because Gibson doesn't even begin to bother with the explanation; his story is about the emotions in the caregivers that try to keep these poor yahoos from killing themselves.

It was the notion of an empty Apollo capsule coming back with fingernail claw-marks on the inside that suddenly reminded me of that Gibson tale. I'd love to sit down and have a beer with him and talk about that story for a bit, but somehow I get the feeling that William Gibson doesn't have blue-collar beers with fans who buy clothes at chain stores and wouldn't know a designer jacket if one attacked.

Actually, I have a list of people that I'd like to have a beer with. The top two are pretty solid, but after that, the list moves around a little, and sometimes there are major changes when someone high up on the list dies, like Arthur C. Clarke.

1. Michael J. Nelson of MST3K infame. He seems like he'd be a good beer dude.
2. Stephen King, though he may not appreciate me trying to get him to start drinking again.
3. William Gibson, in honor of the amazing power of his early writing
4. Neil Armstrong, who probably wouldn't appreciate the invitation very much.
5. Madeleine Albright, because I'd love to know exactly what she said to Slobodan.
6. Tracy Caldwell, simply because it is the nature of moths to circulate around lights.
(See http://www.titanmag.com/2002/caldwell/index.html for details.)

All right. Enough stream of consciousness for today, wouldn't you say?