blue soda? er, yeah.... looks.... delicious. ugh.
11.15.02 @ 12:33 p.m.
I have this theory, and I'm sure that advertisers have it too.
It is this: College students will do almost anything to get free stuff.
Now, this mostly pops into my mind when I see the hoards of frat/jock types filling out marketing surveys so they can get free t-shirts that proclaim their affinity to beer and pot. Or the "Help the Ducks, get a free Oregon t-shirt!" people trying to get hapless college students (c'mon, who else is going to take the Autzen footpath from the University's residence area? Yeah, a few people, but mostly students) to sign up for Visa cards.
My point is that college students like free stuff. And who can blame them? The immortal Tom Peterson always says "Free is a very good price" in low budget, late night ads. Those who are not Portlanders and who have no idea who Tom Peterson is, he used to own a chain of appliance and home furnishing stores in Portland and surrounding areas, but there's only one left now and his son technically owns it. He's well known for his fifties flat top haircut. He has a cult following among Portland lovers of kitsch. He also appears in practically all Gus Van Sant movies as either an extra or his commercials are put on the TVs. I need to to see To Die For again to look for him. I digress. A lot. What I'm getting to is that I have two bottles of Pepsico's latest teen confections. Pepsi Blue and Dr. Pepper Red Fusion. I thought I had a previous entry speculating on Pepsi Blue and how gross it sounded, but using the d-land search form is not helping and I'm not about to go through six months worth of almost daily diary entries. Anyway, I thought I'd pick them up since I'm going home today and I thought I'd share these whacked-out beverages with my mom, who occasionally expresses an interest in trying new sodas. She was very interested in Vanilla Coke. I thought it was kind of bleagh. I don't know. I like Coke, sort of (prefer Pepsi, yeah, I can tell them apart EASILY), and I like vanilla tootsie rolls (damn they're good) but the two of them together is just... icky. (Don't I use good words to express my distaste?)
I got to thinking on my way back to the dorms, watching one young man waddle around with about four bottles of Pepsi Blue in his arms and a couple of bottles of Red Fusion stuffed in his sweatshirt pockets (free stuff, man, we're suckers for free stuff!) and all I really need is for them to bring back Crystal Pepsi and I'll be totally patriotic in my carbonated beverage consumption. I would totally drink Crystal Pepsi if they brought it back. I loved the stuff. We even have an old promotional magnet on our refridgerator from Crystal Pepsi. Our 'fridge is a mass of promotional magnets. That's a thing my family has a weakness for. Well, me and my mom. So we have about a hundred bandaid shaped magnets from Kaiser Permanente, our HMO, several Clorox magnets in the shape of bottles of Clorox products, hundreds (okay, just dozens) of cartoon cow's heads that say "Don't eat Chex without the Milk!" Dude. We have NEVER eaten Chex in my family. One of our most recent aquisitions are a pair of Challenge Butter stickers that we got from a guy handing out cupons at Fred Meyer (the best store ever and all y'all who don't live in Oregon and Washington are totally missing out.)
Once again I find myself in the position of laying out plans for the day. Let's see if I can follow them (unlikely)
-First I need to shower, as I slept in today and had to dash to Italian. I'm okay for now because I took a shower last night but I will be traveling by bus today (Greyhound) and I'll be nice to the people around me. Man, I don't know what it is, but I am so sensitive to the smells of other people lately. It's irritating, because I never used to notice and I was much happier that way. Dirty hippies :/ That's a joke. I actually rather like real hippies.
-I have to get Chris' CD in the mail which I should have done on Tuesday and I am a bad person for that.
-Lunch will probably come before the CD.
-I gotta pack still. This just means throwing two t-shirts and some underwear in my backpack with my laptop (to work on Riverwood) and Coriolanus, our current Shakespeare play. Oh, and my mutant Pepsi products. Mmmmm. I am inherantly suspicious of any blue product masquerading as something edible. Blue is my favorite color, but it does not look appetizing.
-Get me to the Greyhound station but avoid making conversation with creepy ticket agent. Oh! I think I met my first non-creepy Greyhound ticket agent. I was carrying my history book with me yesterday when I went to get the ticket (because I was studying desperately) and he asked me if I was in the MWF 11 o'clock class. Why yes, yes I was. And so was he. And he hadn't been doing the readings either. Well, that made *me* feel better. I'm not the only dumbass in the class after all, ha ha. I actually think I did much better this time around. I worked until the end of class rather than finishing early.
-Enjoy being amongst my family again. A month is a long time to be away from miei genitori. (My parents. I doubt I'll be throwing random Italian in very often, but I might every now and then, just to annoy what few readers I have. Muahaha.)
Mmmm.... Lunch. You know, lunch might come first.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
