Mountain Dew, Throwback & Another Fun Thing

America, we picked up a twelve-pack of Mountain Dew, Throwback and it is amazing.  I was going to go all taste-testy on you and get a can of current Mountain Dew and describe them for you side by side, but whatever.  I had a Throwback with dinner and I cannot recommend enough, if you like Mountain Dew, running out and getting it.

Let’s be all pop snob here for a second in describing it.  First, it feels lighter on your tongue.  There is no corn syrup in it, so there is no heavy syrupy feel.  It feels light and refreshing.  I also think they must have slightly tweaked the recipe as it is less sweet and I think it has a slightly more orangy taste and the grapefruit notes are less severe.  It is also not as sickly sweet by the time you get to the bottom of the can as regular Mountain Dew can be.

It is, in a brief phrase, Mountain Dew for grown-ups.  And, at Walmart, it’s a good dollar-fifty cheaper than a twelve-pack of the HFCS stuff.

And because it is fantastic and terrific, I have no doubt they will pretty much instantly discontinue it and we will never hear tell of it ever again.  So, get it now, so you can tell your great grandkids about the glorious moment when, briefly, Mountain Dew was amazing.

Also, I would like to recommend Black Joe Lewis, who my co-worker turned me on to.  He’s not the most original singer and the Butcher complained all the way through the album that he couldn’t understand a word the guy was saying, but we both agreed that you cannot NOT dance when his music is playing.  His one album is on sale at Amazon for five bucks.  And you can get his song, “Sugarfoot” for free right now.

But my favorite song of his is “Cousin Randy,” and I am now dying for someone to explain to me how your cousin wanting to go fishing at ten in the morning is a sign of demonic possession.

After the Flood

Mom

I talked to my mom this morning and she told me all about the flowers she’d been planting and the flowers she was going up to my grandma’s to plant.  I told her about the Friday Night Flood here, when the creek overran its banks and came down through the yard and overturned concrete blocks and swirled across the garage floor and left creeky flotsam in the front yard and mysterious high water marks on the doors.

And she asked me if we had hummingbirds yet and I said I hadn’t seen any, but none of the flowers I have planted that are supposed to attract hummingbirds  are even more than a few inches tall.  They have feeders out, but they haven’t see any yet.

And she asked me about the turkeys and I said I hadn’t seen them yet and she offered up that maybe it was turkey season.  I told her that we needed to get a copy of what season it was when, because there’s almost always gunfire around here and it’d be nice to know when we need to call the cops.

And she said, “Yes, it turns out wives and mothers are out of season right now.  Kids?  It depends upon their weight.”

I laughed.  If my mom were that wickedly funny all the time, she’d be one hell of a blogger.

You Laugh to Keep From Crying

I forgot to tell you the most outragious thing Shug told me while she was here, but I just got an email from her about being in New Orleans and that reminded me.

So, Shug is going down to New Orleans right this very second to work on houses for Katrina victims with a church group that has been going down every year since Katrina hit.

Shug told me that this is the last year the group is going down.

“Oh, that’s awesome,” I said, thinking that that meant they were done.  And she looked at me, confused, and I looked at her confused.

“No, you don’t get it.  They’re just not going any more because they’re tired of going there and want to go someplace else on a mission trip next year.”

“Wait.  What?  Jesus is okay with you leaving stuff undone if you get bored.”

“Your half-assed is good enough.”

America, I think about this often since she told me–that there is still work to be done in the Gulf Coast that was (for better or worse) basically left in the hands of volunteers and church groups and the volunteers and church groups are ready to “help someone else.”

I find the whole concept of mission work to be kind of gross, I should just acknowledge up front, and I find the whole “I’m using your pain and suffering as a way to make me feel closer to God and to see a part of the country I might not otherwise” thing we do here in the U.S. to be really problematic.

But if I did buy into it and I were a missionary who, say, went overseas for fifteen years, working to put in roads and hospitals and churches and stuff and risking my life and I learned that some folks could just get tired of helping the same people over and over and do something else the next time they had some time, I’d be pretty fucking angry.

Which is probably why I’d make a lousy missionary.  I have trouble in those circumstances keeping my eyes on my own paper.

But I also think that this is why you have to have even a semi-competent response to emergencies.  Because volunteers do get tired and bored and the people who still need help this far out are people who need more help than just volunteers can give them.  You need to pay people to work and keep them working and who can do that for things of this magnitude but the government.

And when the government fucks up and drops the ball, you can have public outrage.

But who is going to say to volunteers and good church-folks “Wow, you’re abandoning people who need you.  That’s fucked up.”?