Story of the Day...Remembering Rosa Parks?

She was the most important pawn in American History, but that wasn't her intention. She just wanted to test the waters of her freedom. Can you see now what it meant when Janis Joplin sang "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..?" That's the way that real change happens, when you throw your neck on the track when you hear the whistle blow.

Story of the Day...Chinese Smokers?

In China, there are more people who smoke, nearly 350,000,000, than there are people in the entire United States. Obviously cigarette companies are drooling at the border. It's a good country to promote smoking in because they execute more people than the rest of the world (5,000 of the 5,500 executions in the world last year were in China), they sell cadavers to Bodyworlds and encourage child labor which encourages adolescent smoke breaks. It's China, man.

Thing of the Day...Shasta Soda?

I just popped a free can of Shasta Ginger Ale from the office fridge. I work at a VA hospital and the gov provides these for the patients in the lab where I work. Tonight I drank one instead, it happens.

Imagine my surprise. Shasta is fascinating, if a little sad.

I've really only seen this can here at the VA. What piqued my interested was the copyright date on the can- 1996! I had to go digging. Why is this soda so old and so free and so unavailable at my Wawa?

Turns out Shasta is one of the oldest canned sodas. In San Francisco, Mt. Shasta Mineral Springs Company (1889) bottled mineral water from Shasta Springs in Nortnern California, where they also owned a spa and resort. Must've been nice. They claim to be the first to have canned soda, the first to offer diet soda and the first to market a soda nationally. All of which, it turns out, is bullshit. Even though their website still makes the claim. http://www.shastapop.com/museum.html

The company made its first soda, ginger ale in the 1930s. For 20 years, Shasta products were mainly used as mixers for booze. As a result of sugar rationing in 1941 (WWII) Shasta developed a cool new product- Club Soda- likely inspired by the overwhelming use of their product in bars and clubs. I do like Club Soda and I never call it selzer.

Shasta, it seems, is the cheapee brand now, akin to RC or Presidents. But it doesn't seem it was always so. In the 80's Shasta was bought by National Beverage and its distribution increased, not to cool places like Wawas and 7-11s but to places like mental institutions, college cafeterias and my little white VA fridge.

How the mighty fall.

Story of the Day...Teachers I know

Thing of the Day...Taco John's

I drove cross country last week and the best guacamole I've ever had was at a Taco John's in Newton, Iowa. They take no pride in their side of guacamole, listing it under the condiment section of their menu, between the ketchup and mayonaise. Taco John's really does take pride in their tater tot taco and tater tot nachos, both of which are pretty odd. But the quacamole kicked ass, it was a little chunky, a little sweet, a little salty, and a lot perfect. But they were like, hey, our guac is great and we know it so we don't even talk about it even though it's probably the highest food cost item we have, but try our tater tots. I wish I had back the uneaten portion of that Taco John's dinner that Megan and I shared. I'm hunry and I could eat it right now. Although it would be quite decomposed and pretty badly smashed between some dirty diapers and a soiled mattress in some Nevada landfill. But check out Taco John's if you're ever in the midwest. http://tacojohns.com