Iced tea or lemonade?
One is forced to ask this question every time he considers buying a bottle of lemon iced tea. I confess that I was once among those who happily consumed the Lipton “iced tea” you get from a gigantic can. Even then, I never made it “properly”—I made a highly-concentrated version with anywhere from three to six times the recommended measure of concentrate. And I also invented an ungodly concoction wherein this tea concentrate and cherry-flavored Faygo sparkling water are mixed to create what tastes like pure heaven: carbonated, liquefied blue SweeTarts.
But I digress. Over the years I have grown to appreciate what good iced tea should taste like. I’ve gotten good results making my own, but when faced with a purchasing choice I usually go for Lipton PureLeaf—it’s probably not the greatest iced tea on earth, but it’s right in that range where it goes up against the other contenders for that title. It makes a good benchmark, in other words.
Advertising is a powerful force. About a month ago a rather cute commercial for Snapple iced tea came over the airwaves. It punned on their slogan, “Made from the Best Stuff on Earth,” by depicting what would happen if they somehow found “better stuff.” I thought that was pretty clever, and so I figured I would give it a shot this evening. In the atrociously cornily named Barnes & Nibble (Wayne State’s campus store), I picked up one Lipton PureLeaf lemon iced tea and one Snapple lemon iced tea, figuring I’d set up a little showdown.
There’s no competition. The Snapple stuff is brown, tea-hinted lemonade. There is virtually no tea flavor at all; it’s as though the tea was added as a means to color the drink. To its credit, it certainly wasn’t a horrible-tasting thing, and its use of real sugar means it goes down smooth and doesn’t leave that awful film in the mouth. But it is a horrible tea. Maybe the other flavors will fare better, but at this point I can’t see that happening; the fruit-to-tea mix is so far out of whack that no matter which variety you choose I imagine all you’ll taste is an overly-sweet, fruity liquid that’s colored like tea.
The PureLeaf, which I opened afterward for a single comparison sip, was as good as always. I highly recommend any flavor of this line of tea—you might even get the unsweetened version and add your own digs, as the tea flavor itself is excellent. Raspberry is a bit sweet, but it’s still pretty good. I’ve never liked peach tea much (sorry, my love), so you’re on your own to decide there. And I’ve always hated sweet tea, so that’s outside my sphere of objectivity as well. But once you start with a good base, usually any product made from that base will be at least tolerable.
But enough about tea. Lately I’ve been busy, sick, and also busy. School is going well enough; I scored a 490/500 on my second paper for the “Hardest English Professor at Wayne” (evidently, see his score), to go with the 470/500 I got on the first one. I have something like a 96% in the class. I can see how those who aren’t familiar with argumentative writing (or writing in general)—basically those who learned the wrong way from high school—would have a bugger of a time with this guy. Me? I had Alwardt. He was my high school AP Literature teacher. I learned more from this guy than from any other teacher I had ever had, and each and every day I’m grateful for it.
Aside from that, I’ve been busy with miscellaneous projects here and there. Recently I’ve been attacking the company website again. This time I finally think I’ve got a good design. It certainly looks better than any of the crap I had put up in the past. It’s in a secret directory so the general public cannot discover it the way you just did now by clicking on the link. Go on, I dare you. I know it should have occurred to me, but I learned relatively late in my web-designing lifetime that many websites use pre-rendered images in their designs. The current incarnation of the site therefore has a pre-rendered header and footer, generated on each page by a separate JavaScript (so I can easily change them site-wide). If you’re using a Gecko- (Firefox or similar) or WebKit- (Safari, Chrome) based browser, you’ll see this site in its full glory, with rounded corners on the tabs and drop shadows on the tabs, headings, and behind the pictures. If you’re (gasp) still using Internet Explorer, do yourself (and me) a favor: switch. When Microsoft finally learns it needs to play nice with web standards (sometime around Internet Explorer 3,702.5 or so), maybe I can let it slide. Until then, bring on Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera…anything but Trident-based IE.
In other news…well, there isn’t anything. Anything I can freely say, at any rate. An insane ninja-stalker might find this site and then there’ll be hell to pay. I’ve been busy, busy, busy. I deactivated my Facebook last week, as it had become a time sink. Plus, it’s like Pink Floyd said, if you build a wall, the other people can’t reach you. Or should that be ρ!ηκ ƒζσγδ, lest Roger Waters find me and decide to sue me for typing “P!nk F!0yd.” Din’t do nothin’, Rog. No þλο1∫ ʞµιδ here.
But enough. I started this entry full of purpose. I end it with no purpose whatsoever.
