The Carrie Nation of the Fizzy Set

INDC Bill in drag and his vicious Christianist campaign to deprive honest sons of the working class their daily Jolt Cola. The Bastard!

INDCent Bill continues his one-man temperance movement against the evil soda, umm, machine with his latest screed: the physiological reaction to Coca-Cola.

When you can only get a bottle of Barq's from a crack house in a bad part of town, blame Bill.

I hate to say it, though, but Bill's push on this issue has had an effect on me. Rather than making me want to indulge, just to piss him off, it's had the opposite effect such that I rarely touch the stuff now. It was actually quite a while in the making: my Dad did the thing for us as kids of taking a tooth and disolving it in a glass of Coke. I would have been about 10 or 12, so it was right around the time they shifted the sugar composition, and memory serves that it only took a couple of days for it to completely work. But then again, it was my Dad, and I wouldn't put it past him to have helped the process along, partly out of a concern for our dental hygiene, mainly out of a desire to not pay for the stuff. By college I couldn't drink regular Coke anymore, as it was too strong, and would drink Diet Coke, and then Diet Pepsi. In grad school, I didn't drink coffee (I've never liked the taste or smell), but would drink Diet Pepsi pretty regularly. When I got married, I switched to Diet Dr. Pepper, as that was what the wife drank and I was too lazy to buy my own. But I went cold-turkey at New Years in 1996 because, well, it tasted like drinking fizzy crank-case oil of a Mexican 18 wheeler running Power Rangers to Walmarts across the greater Alberta region over the salty and sandy roads of winter. That, and it made me feel like crap when I didn't have one, and if there's one thing I can't stand it's being dependent on anything. So I went cold turkey, which sucked chrome to high heaven for about 3 weeks, but haven't touched the stuff since. Almost as bad as going off Paxil, but that's another story.

Now the Barq's Root Beer, I have on occasion, but I was a regular indulger until Bill began his anti-soda jeremiad last year. Now, only occasionally. And in the summer, the odd orange soda because, heck, it's summer. But otherwise, no soda.

Thanks Bill.

So godspeed, you zealous little social reformer, but if you come for my unsweetened ice tea, I'll strangle your skinny neck real good. (said in my best "Deliverance" voice)