Fall of Western Civilization, Part 2

Lj-tags: in today's news

I'm sitting here drinking my last can of non-vending machine dew.

Admittedly I'd stopped hitting the vending machine for my dew fix months ago
because I was really annoyed by their inability to 1) stock dew in cans and
2) clean out the money when they restocked the machine so you could
<u>buy</u> the dew they'd (maybe) put in there. It hasn't been a true
boycott - I did break down & feed my money to the machine a couple of times
when my cache was empty, but i've been mostly good throughout.

But after my shopping trip this weekend, and seeing the ingredients lists of
those jars of spagetti sauce...(Citric Acid? HFCS? Why not leave them BOTH
out?) I'm struck with a renewed interest in turning a declaration of Not My
Friend into a full-blown embargo. Where there will be no HFCS containing
items consumed by me if I can possibly avoid it. No dew, no "juice", no
fake maple syrup... Which, really, i've already been doing these last few
months but with the exception of the dew.

So here's some numbers, for my thermodynamically-oriented friends, as well
as myself:

<u>Mountain Dew</u>
Calories: 170
Sodium: 65mg
Total Carb. 46g; Sugars 46g
Caffeine: 54mg

So the thing that's really been holding me back from going all out on the
HFCS-Embargo thing has been the lack of caffiene. Which, I do have options
available - there's the excedrin clone painkillers in the first aid kit at
work, there's the eternal collegiate standby of No-Doz. And, of course, tea
& coffee. (anything with aspartame or other synthetic sweeteners give me
raging headaches, so that's not an option either.) What i'd like to do, of
course, is figure a way to add caffeine to drinks I mix up - adding fruit
juice to tea, for example, or whatever goofy/fun things I come up with that
day.

So i'm thinking I should hit walmart tonight after work. Check their prices
on medium grain rice by the 25 lb bag, since i'm out, but also to look at
their mini-section of No-Doz type items & see what dosages & ingredients
they include. The only thing I was wanting was to get to give up HFCS for
something - like Lent, but longer, except not for New Years since that's a
little abused. So, here we go...wish me luck.