Pepsi Au Naturel and Cheap Skulls

A coworker brought in some of that new Pepsi Natural cola today and gave me a bottle to try.
The drink is packaged in a 12oz glass bottle with transparent sticker labels covered with off-white text.
At first glance, it looks like a small bottle of iced tea, with its dark brown liquid and lack of flashy label.
Pepsi Natural is made with: sparkling water, sugar, natural apple extract (color), caramel color, citric acid,
caffeine, acacia gum, tartaric acid, lactic acid, natural flavor, and kola nut extract.
Notice the complete absence of the two big bugaboos: High Fructose Corn Syrup (blargh!) and Phosphoric Acid (burn!).
Yes, but how does it taste?
Well, I am a Coca-Cola fan, and I sometimes drink Wild Cherry Pepsi and Pepsi.
Pepsi Natural has a strong caramel taste that competes with the kola nut flavor.
I personally do not like it much. Your mileage may vary.
Pepsi Natural is currently available at Target stores and costs $4.50 for a pack of 4 12oz bottles.

While digging online, I found some info about "Pepsi Throwback" (and "Mountain Dew Throwback"), with normal sugar.
These will be available starting April 20th and for a duration of 8 weeks. They will be packaged in normal plastic
20oz bottles and 12oz aluminium cans. I will definitely give Pepsi Throwback a try.


Meanwhile, in Lego matters, Shop.Lego.com dropped the price of the Factory 10192 Space Skulls set down to $19.98!!
It was on sale for $35 (down from $70) when I got mine 2 months ago, so this is an even better deal.
I'm not even annoyed about that because 1) there was no way I could have known and, 2) it could have sold out.
So yeah, just an FYI for the Lego people on my list.

In other Lego news, some wonderfully insane person built a 2 meters long Home One Mon Calamari cruiser
as seen in "Revenge Return Of The Jedi", aka "Episode VI".
It's amazing! It's stupendous! It's unbelieva-------ble!! It's got built-in lights!
Here are the specs:
- Piece Count: 30,500
- Length: 260 Studs or 208cm or 6’10” (82 inches)
- Width: 48cm (Max)
- Height: 28cm (Max)
- Weight: 52 lbs (Approximate)
- Design and Build Time: 11 months
- Material Cost: $5500 US.
Major OUCH on that last one!
The builder of this masterpiece is unemployed. Quick, someone get him an engineering job!!


In health news, I have pretty much confirmed that if I eat a dinner consisting of Trader Joe's pasta with marinara
sauce and Quattro Formaggi shredded cheeses, then take Aleve before bed, the Aleve turns into a sleeping pill,
I sleep through my alarms, and arrive late for work. This is has happened twice so far, including today.
This sucks, for many reasons, including the fact that I'm down to just one dose of Aleve a day: the 1am one.
And TJ pasta dinner is one of my staple cheap meals.
Chemistry is fun!
I'll think of something...

JMJ eMusic Update #3

eMusic unleashed two more Jean Michel Jarre albums today:

1) Les Granges Brulées" ("The Burnt-Out Barns"), a 1974 soundtrack album for the French film of the same name.
Up to now, it's been a highly collectable LP release, so it's great that eMusic makes it widely available.
The actual music is pretty early and rough. Jean Michel is cutting his musical teeth and it shows.
Some of it sounds like kinda wacky early synthesizer martian music.
The website has problems with all the accents in the French titles, so it's hard to read some of the track names.
I don't know if I'll get it.

2) "Métamorphoses", from 2000. This one, I'm definitely downloading once my account reloads!
If you've seen or heard the "12 Dreams Of The Sun" 12-31-1999 concert at the Pyramids of Giza, you've heard tracks
from this album. It was a bit of departure for Jean Michel, this album. It had actual songs with actual lyrics.
And it moved away from the Oxygène/Equinoxe style of pure flowing keyboard space music. There's still some in there,
like in "Millions Of Stars". This album has a more global feel to it, and there's Natacha Atlas and Laurie Anderson.
I didn't like this album at first because it wasn't "Oxygène 14-21", but then I matured in my music tastes. :)
I'm especially partial to "je Me Souviens", "Bells" and "Love Love Love" (I love you, miss robot :D
So yeah, this one is definitely worth checking out.