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Jared has alerted me to the existence of Diet Cherry Vanilla Doctor Pepper. As he put it, “Talk about [very bad word] complicated.” I’d have to agree. I’ve never been a huge Doctor Pepper fan to begin with; I find it tastes like some horrible mutated love-child of sarsaparilla (pronounced “root beer”) and denatured brake fluid. So you can rest assured, Diet Cherry Vanilla Doctor Pepper (hereafter referred to by “DCVDP,” which can also stand for “Diseased Cat Vomit: Duck Poop,” which I think you should know before you buy a 6 pack of it) is not something I will voluntarily “enjoy.”

But it got me to wondering what other kind of unholy combinations the soda companies are working on next. I did a little “research¹,” and I have discovered the following tasty concoctions:

• Cheezy Coke: “All the natural Classic Coke Flavor™ you’ve loved for over 100 years, with just a hint of brie rind! Mixes well with crackers and pimiento loaf.”
• Meat: “We took Pemmican® Beef Jerky, ground it into a fine powder, and then snorted some! Then we took the rest and infused it into 7-Up! The result is surprisingly horrifying flavorful!”
• Land of our Fathers: “An ancient Cherokee recipe, this tasty beverage contains 475% of the Daily Recommended Allowance of ox hooves! It may also have cocaine in it. Chief Sycamore won’t say for certain.”
• Lo-Carb Triple Mochachino Grape: “So here’s the thing: Bob in R&D got really hammered on Jaeger Bombs, and came up with this. We’re not thinking it’s gonna be a huge seller, but Bob won a bar bet that forced us to spend $14 million marketing it. Enjoy!”
• Mangotastic Orange-Love Juicy Friend, With Beaver!1!: “Straight out from Japan, get yourself’s readiness on for a fruitistic autism! Humbly, we triple-time-mixed Hungarian ‘flavaz’ to 9 times caffeine! For drink. With LOVE we bring it ON, all of the night’s LONG!”

Personally, I plan to stick to Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi; I try and limit the amount of “natural foods” I imbibe. My view on the matter is this: humans ate nothing but “natural” stuff for a million years, and for most of that million years had average life-spans barely reaching 30. (Less, if you were not well liked and thusly frequently used as mastodon bait.) Within the past few centuries, however, we have seen a rapid influx of “Cheez” and “Fruit Roll-Ups” and “Pasteurized Milk,” and not coincidentally, the average life-span of a human nears 80 years. Of course, the average weight of a human, particularly Americans, and especially the ones in the Walmart near my home, is pushing two bills², but if extreme obesity is the price I have to pay to outlive my children, I’m willing to pay that.

¹I made some stuff up.

²200 pounds, you dolt.