Choke-a-Cola
Guide to Earth Part X.
The word cola comes from the Greek kalo (good), because colas are good. For example, as a cleaning agent, a screw loosener, or if you want to get your neighbour's chair sticky. They are also good if you get locked in a garage as a burglar, and live on dog food and Pepsi for a week, then sue the returning owner for torture and get a lot of money, at least according to the urban legend many claim to be a hoax. Even if not true, it demonstrates how colas can save lives.
Coke was first brought to the market by a confederate general named John Pemberton who was addicted to morphine. He advertised it as having medicinal properties that can cure morphine addiction, indigestion, nerve disorders, headaches and impotence. A great number of people don't realize that their favourite drink, beside tasting amazing, is so healthy! The range of ailments it can cure is astonishing.
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Coca-Cola is made from an extremely thick and corrosive syrup, Coca-Cola concentrate. The concentrate, as the name suggests, is made from coca leaves and cola nuts. Are you nuts? It’s made of phosphoric acid, sugar, coloring, carbon dioxide, caffeine, and secret ‘natural’ additives, using immense amounts of water. Indian peasants would prefer to use this water themselves, but such outdated views are no longer viable. Pepsi Cola is called Pepsi to distinguish it from Coca Cola, as it has no coca leaves, just phosphoric acid, sugar, coloring, carbon dioxide, caffeine, secret ‘natural’ additives and immense amounts of water. Colas are both acidic and very sweet, which can hardly be improved, although perhaps salt and a little bitter hops could be added to make the taste even more all-encompassing.
Until then you can drink sweet Coke which does not quench your thirst. Or at first it seems to, but then you get even thirstier because of all that sugar. You can, however, drink more Coke to temporarily quench this, ad infinitum, and with the gases building up in your guts, you can float up like an airship and get very high. Diet Coke, on the other hand, has no sugar, only artificial sweeteners which cause cancer and people with cancer are known to lose weight, so Diet Coke is really effective. Cola-drinking children, on the other hand, are nice and fat, so they would do well in Polynesia, where being fat is considered attractive. This rounding effect can also be observed in the shape of Coke bottles, where the feminine slimness of classic glasses has been replaced by the masculine massiveness of plastic bottles.
Some people say that Coke damages your teeth, but it's easy to see the ridiculous nature of this statement. Coke merely undergoes being slurped up into a mouth full of sharp weapons, the rest is not Coke’s fault. Besides, Coke leaves dentures intact, and even if they do fall out, you can still drink Coke. By implanting new dentures you increase GDP thereby boosting the economy.
Beside increasing general prosperity, Coke also protects the environment, as it is sold in disposable plastic bottles that can be collected from rivers to build rafts and raise awareness of the importance of environmental protection. And if you get lost in the wilderness, you can use discarded Coke bottles, now found in every remote corner of the world, to collect water, or even use them as lenses to light a fire. A worldwide study is urgently needed to seek out places still without scattered bottles where the right amount of life-saving Coke bottles can be distributed. Some people are building houses out of Coke bottles, thus Coca Cola Company reduces homelessness. Unlike the KKK (Ku Klux Klan), the CCC is not racist at all. Crates of Coke can be found everywhere, including outside of mud huts of indigenous people, usefully involving them in the world economy.
Nazi Germany only allowed Coke to be sold in the country if it displayed a swastika on the bottle, which, according to Wikipedia, it did. This shows the remarkable adaptability and impeccable moral standard of the company that greeted the Führer's 50th birthday with a resounding Sieg Heil. When America entered the war, and Coke concentrate ceased to enter Germany, the company had a fantastic idea: It created a new super drink called Fanta from waste fruit and cheese byproducts.
Wartime Fanta ad. Source: Samilhistory.com
The French later invented the word cocacolonization to refer to the progress American pop culture precipitates by spreading all over the globe. As of today Coke is sold in over 200 countries replacing outmoded traditional drinks, together with great American fast food chains serving nourishing, tasty and natural meals. Unfair critics of this phenomenon complain of naive populations being taken advantage of using massive amounts of capital and manipulative advertising but it is clearly the quality of the products that accounts for the result.
Coca-Cola has even given its name to things and places, such as Cocadin in France. Din means religion in Arabic so the inhabitants must really believe in Coke. There's also the Kola Peninsula in Lapland, where they drink only Coke, without even needing to cool it. In Australia there is the cola bear, also very sweet while the kookaburra is very fizzy. In Spanish, cola means tail, because it is romantic as a tale. A Serbian dance is called kolo, demonstrating how sexy colas are, especially for shareholders. In Latvian, koka means ‘made of wood’. Coca plant is actually a shrub and the coca leaves have long since been removed from the drink, but Tikkadt Szöcske (Exhausted-from-the-heat Grasshopper) does contain a cola nut extract demonstrating that useless foreign things can be given authentic Hungarian names.
Beside colas, CCC and Pepsi Co. have long been producing other kinds of syrups while also buying up mineral water sources of poor and not so poor countries. This is a good thing, as locals do not waste this treasure on drinking, washing and similar selfish activities. This way everyone can benefit, at least those who can afford it. Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola are fierce rivals in acquiring the planet’s drinking water supplies. It’s like in politics when you can choose between voting for honest representatives of the Democratic Moral Party or the Party of Moral Democrats.
Everyone knows that Coke is it. Have you ever asked yourself the question: “What, specifically?” Well, ‘it’ means ‘dog’ in Turkish. Yes, Coke is man’s best friend. Why, it could even be your romantic partner! All those sexual orientation and identity problems avoided. No fights, no nagging, no hairs in the sink. Coke can be the true love of the whole of humanity. Pity that dating sites, wedding halls and a few backward individuals have not yet realized this simple solution. And there is an even more perfect relationship looming on the horizon, doing away with the unpredictable human element:
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The Coke phenomenon is a thoroughly positive event: It shows that advertising can achieve everything. People will buy anything that's cool. If it becomes cool to own virtual pictures put up for auction, you can charge a lot of money for them. Toilet graffiti have not yet been exploited in this way, but there is considerable business potential in this field. As to Coke, the company's strategy is remarkable. They have calculated how many times a year people drink and aim to make a certain proportion of that be Coke. It’s not a very high number — just have to be multiplied by eight billion. Could this be how gun manufacturers think? Of the twenty-six thousand murders in the US per year, a certain number should be committed with our product! But once again we digress from our fatiqued-red drink which is said to have lent its color to Santa Claus. Although Coke-flavoured chicken drumsticks and Coke-flavoured sauerkraut are still a thing of the future, Coke-flavoured ice cream, candy, cheving gum, lollipops, energy jelly, candy floss base and flavoring, as well as Coke-coloured varnish, lamps and hair gel, not to mention stock images, are now available. While there is still room for improvement in this area, the trend is promising.
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In the third world, Fantababy deficiency syndrome has been diagnosed, caused by mothers giving their babies Fanta (©CCC), colas and other sugary, fizzy drinks instead of breast milk. Advertising led them to believe that these drinks are more nutritious and would help their babies develop better. Although this is not true yet, the big day may come when proteins, vitamins and other things will be added to Coke so we will not need to consume anything else. On that happy day we will put up a sign on Earth saying "COKE PLANET" so that passing spacecraft can see from a distance that this is definitely not a place where they want to land.
Source: Brian Yurasits, Unsplash