Being Dead Drink

NO!  That Is Not A Typo!

Just for that, I'm going to inflict the Remote Nuclear Tormentor on a random sample of the readership <pulls giant lever maniacally> and just see how you like glowing in the dark.  Cuts down energy bills, mind.

     ANYWAY you were thinking of 'Dead Drunk', which my Brewer's defines as: "So drunk as to be totally incapable or useless", which is so not Conrad who is as sober as a block of granite.  This month, at least.  Art!

     I am reliably informed that this is 'Animal House', which Conrad confesses he has never actually seen, and wonders if he needs to rectify this omission?

     By Wild Coincidence, a phrase that tends to crop up a lot here on the blog, the entry directly under 'Dead Drunk' is 'Dead Duck', defined as "Figuratively, something of no further use or interest".  Stick a pin in this, we'll come back to it.  Art!

     Nor is the title anything to do with zombies, whom tend to ignore the need to remain hydrated, the negligent fools! nor yet either vampires or biker gangs as we're not dealing with blood or beer (despite the gory image above).

     Okay, enough about what the Intro isn't about; what I intend to cover are soft drinks that are no longer with us, thanks to either being staggeringly stupid in conception or just not built for the long run.  Art!

     FOUR LOKO: I'd never heard of this one before reading the item on the 'Museum Of Failure' website, perhaps because it's no longer available.  It contained what you'd expect from an energy drink - caffeine, taurine, guarana and the piece de resistance, alcohol.  Lots of alcohol.  The lowest proof were cans of 8%, going up to as high as 14%, or if you want a comparison, from white cider to extra-strong wine.  Young people, whom were most definitely the target demographic, dubbed it 'Blackout in a can'.  The spoilsports at the South Canadian Food And Drugs administration eventually wised-up to what Da Yoof were drinking and sparked a fuss about it, leading to it's demise in 2016.  It was replaced with a version containing only alcohol, booh.

CRESTA: Unlike other carbonated swill in the Intro, Conrad actually drank this stuff occasionally back in the Seventies.  Art!

     The gimmick was that, thanks to some hideous chemical processing, it produced a huge layer of foam that did not dissipate and sat like a hat on the liquid itself.  I cannot remember anything about how it tasted.  Sorry.  Forgive me for not remembering a fifty-year old flavour.

     It was canned - do you see wh O you do - in the early Nineties.

RED BULL COLA: Conrad likes Red Bull but not their over-charging so I make do with the Lidl or Food Warehouse knock-off versions.  I never knew there was a Cola version.  Art!

     Probably because it isn't sold in the UK or South Canada any longer, as you can get cola-flavoured carbonated swill elsewhere for a fraction of the RB price.  Art!

TAB: This was the Coca-Cola company's diet version of their Cola brand, introduced in 1963.  It was reasonably successful until 1982, when they launched Diet Coke, after which Tab's popularity dwindled to near-zero - NOT to be confused with Coke Zero - and it was ended in 2020, by which time it had a miniscule share of the market.  Art!

CRYSTAL PEPSI:  Another brilliant concept ruined by execution.  Crystal Pepsi was a child of the early Nineties, pushed as being 'purer' than conventional sodas - sorry, sorry, carbonated swills - because it lacked any colouring.  In practice it was just as unhealthy as normal Pepsi, and if exposed to light before being bought, would develop an unpleasant aftertaste.  It died the death in 1992.  Art!

     COCA COLA BLAK: Once again Conrad has never drunk this digustrous concoction and never wants to.  Introduced in 2006, it was Coke's attempt at a coffee-flavoured drink that nobody had requested, wanted or needed.  The taste, which you must admit is quite important in a drink, was execrable, compounded by substituting aspartame and high-fructose corn syrup for sugar.  Coke took it off the market in 2008.  Art!

     These are a couple of still from the advert promoting this glop.  The trouble with trying to promote a foodstuff brown in coloration is that it looks disgustingly like disporting with diarrhea, much like that horrid 'Crunchie' advert that looked as if the contents of a septic sump had gained sentience.

     There you go, a collection of dead drinks.  You're welcome.

Does Deja Vu Strike You Too?

Yesteryon Your Humble Scribe's nerves were sent a-twanging as an item on my news feed put up a grossly-incorrect thumbnail. Being concise, it was a Bob Semple tank, standing in for Yugoslavian M5 Stuart tanks THE HORROR THE HORROR and the reason BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM doesn't have a Bob Semple on display is that there were only ever three of them, and they were scrapped during the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

The Bob Semple lurches into action.  Again.

     That would be very unusual, Tank Encyclopedia, because this particular tank ceased to exist 80 years ago.

Generate Us Some Content, Donold!

You may not be aware, but Mister Zeppelin Ego himself was furiously angry during his first term as Crook-In-Charge when 'Saturday Night Live' did skits of him during their cold open.  He wanted to prosecute them, because it must be illegal to make fun of the Orange Land Whale, right?

     Wrong.  The grown-ups in the room had to tell him that free speech is protected under the South Canadian Constitution, a document that he has come to hate hate hate.  Art!

     Let me elucidate: that 'probably illegal' is from DJ Tango himself, whom has no legal training at all, because you need to be able to read and write to study law.  Here's what Seth Myers - the chap to starboard - was mocking, as Trump bloviated about aircraft carriers.  

Trump declared he would issue an executive order to restore the use of steam-powered catapults. “I know a lot about these ships. … I want to know [about] catapults — which is better, the electric or the steam? They’re spending billions of dollars to build stupid electric,” the president said.

     South Canadian naval officers and ratings must be laughing themselves sick at these comments.  The steam catapult is being replaced on South Canadian aircraft carriers with an electromagnetic launch system, which is far more efficient.  Before steam the catapults were electro-mechanical hydraulic ones, which were even less efficient, so perhaps BOOH wants to go with that model?  Art!

'Billionaire's Bunker'

Just about to watch Episode 7 out of the original Season's 8, and I have worked out at least two huge plot holes in the series, involving background and potential endings.  Art!

     The series was only released on Netflix on 19th September, so I don't think I can go public with my observations and predictions just yet, because you might not be as cynical and morbid as Conrad.  We shall see.

Another Doddery Old Man Wearing Makeup

No!  Not a British thespian in his dressing-room such as Albert Finney or Michael Gambon.  We mean Vova, or Dimya as we know him on the blog: Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks, Vladimir Tinpot.  Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Ruffia Correspondent, has been looking at the boot-licking Putinpot calendars now available to the orc population, so that you don't have to.  Art!

     What a shame there was another abyss just behind the first abyss.

     This quote is, incidentally, Putinpot's reply to Steve, who pitched a question about whether he'd done what Yeltsin told him to do: look after the country.  Art!

     Part of the metaphorical abyss: the port of Novorossiysk burns merrily.

     None of them dared print that quote where he admitted the economy is in trouble: "There is never enough money for everything".