One Bad (green) Apple...

The green apple I am referring to is one of the many flavors of Joose alcoholic beverages. You may have heard of Joose or Four Loko in the news lately, as apparently it has just come to light in the national media that these caffeinated alcoholic beverages exist. For the still unfamiliar, these flavored drinks come in ~24 oz cans and contain a good amount of caffeine and sugar while also having a 10-12% alcohol content. "Blackout in a can" is the term being used by media outlets, and for once, this actually holds up. And they are fantastic.

My friends and I first discovered these great drinks a few years ago and were immediately taken back by what a wallop they deliver. If you can manage to get two cans in your system, you are in for a wicked night. By wicked I mean very, very drunk. But because these drinks have so much caffeine in them, the combination of pep and drunk make for potentially sloppy situations. This is what is causing all the brew-ha-ha about these drinks. Apparently people are drinking these beverages and then doing irresponsible things, sometimes deadly things (drunk driving, alcohol poisoning, falling, etc). Well, once this crap has hit the national attention, of course 'concerned' parties must step in and intervene. Dissenters want drinks of this nature to be taken off the market in the name of public safety. By eliminating these dangerous drinks, people won't do irresponsible things. Can you smell the faulty logic?

Sure, these drinks put people on the insanely fast track to intoxication. But that's the damn point. They are butt cheap and pack a punch. You are a fool if you think that young people (who these drinks are aimed at despite the owning companies denying the fact) just drink to have a good time and loosen up. People drink to get hammered. Hammered, I tell you, not nicely buzzed. People who want a nice buzz pour a glass of chianti and watch the Mentalist. People who drink Joose or Loko want to get tore up and have a good time doing it.

The problem I have with the national uproar relates to the bigger issue of personal liberties. There are a lot of dangerous things and a lot of dangerous products, but they don't become dangerous until the person uses it and makes it so. Somebody can drink Joose and get S-faced, pass out and wake up with a serious hangover. Another can drink it and then decide to go for a drive and kill somebody. The difference is the action of the person, who should be held responsible for those actions. Instead, the tact is taken, like so many other things in our society, where we don't hold the person responsible, we search for blame in material objects or exterior reasons. In this case, it's not the person's fault, it is the alcoholic drink that he himself consumed. Why bother the person with blame when we can just say it is the products fault? If the product is eliminated, then he would never had had the problem in the first place.

This kind of reasoning is garbage. It is the line of thinking that makes one bad apple spoil the bunch for everyone. Because a small percentage of users fuck things up, everyone should be reprimanded. Everyone loses out on something they enjoy because others were irresponsible. I mean, for the guy who crashed his car because of being intoxicated, can't by the same logic we say that the car is to blame? If he didn't have a car, there would be no crash. This is a lame argument of course, but it points out the absurd reductionist reasoning that is oh so popular nowadays. Similarly, think of airport security - I can't bring a water bottle on a plane? Really? One guy puts some explosives or whatever in a water bottle and now millions and millions of people are denied the liberty of bringing a bottle of frickin water on a plane. God forbid someone tried to bring a can of Joose on a plane. Security guards' heads would explode.

I will be happy to admit that these types of drinks are horrible for you. They mess you up. But do I need to be censored in my choices because of potential? Critics argue there is no good that can come from these drinks. The combination of caffeine and alcohol create dire results for the consumer and are just not healthy. Well guess what, there are a lot of things that are unhealthy that are available to for consumption. It should be up to the person to evaluate the product and decide for himself the results. Some people, (like me) enjoy Joosin'. These same people have not died or caused trouble. But again, because the potential is there, the 'safe' route is to eliminate it. It is just a damn shame that absolutes must be pushed like this and are accepted under the guise of larger public safety.

I will say that in the end, it won't even matter if these drinks get taken off the shelves. It has been shown that there is a market for this type of beverage and just because you can't run down to 7-11 and grab one (or two or three...) doesn't mean that people won't be able to get smashed and make bad decisions. Something else will come along or some other method will be made known to get the same effects. Case in point: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/make-your-own-four-loko-homebrew. You can stop people's desire to get messed up, you can only hope to contain it. For now, just go stock up on those cans of blackout.

The Big Scary 100

Readers, this is the 100th post here at MCP. I has taken a few years (five to be exact), but I am proud to achieve this milestone. That being said, I would like to tackle the biggest, scariest topic out there. This affects every single last one of us as well as (to a lesser extent) our pets, animals and even plants. This frightful subject is death. It is the last great mystery, the great unknown. This topic is pretty much the reason religion exists and is something that truly can never be solved. Oh really? Never solved you say? Yes, I do say, and the reason is this: there is nothing after death. Nothing. Emptiness. The void. The scariest freaking void there is.

I will put it like this: imagine yourself as a machine. You are booted up (born), you run and serve your purpose with some sleeping and hibernating to keep you in shape, then you get shut down (die). Your consciousness is the life of the machine. Once that consciousness is no longer possible, the machine no longer works. And what happens to a useless machine? Dismantled and discarded. As bleak as this sounds, it is the same way with bodies. We just have a bit more respect when we dispose of them.

The reason this termination is scary is because of the aforementioned consciousness. We humans are tragic in that we can recognize and realize our own limitations. Our consciousness cannot last forever. We all have aspirations, possibilities available, emotional connections and feelings of responsibility. There are things we hope to do before we die, families to be part of, love to have and share, genes to pass on. These all immediately go away once death happens. There are no second chances, no possible comebacks. There is no waking up and changing things. There is just no more. People may compare death to sleeping, but when you sleep, you are still technically conscious. Comparing death to sleep is a false relationship. With sleep, your mind is still active and there is still the ability to wake up. In death, I reiterate, there is no more.

So what is a person to do? Live in hiding, preserving one's life force for as long as possible? That would be a waste of life. Unfortunately, there is big business in the realm of death and most of that started with religion and then the church. Since absolutely no one has the answer to what lies beyond (because it is physically impossible), there is plenty of room for speculation, theory and in essence, hope. Many explanations have been put forward to varying degrees of success. The most popular seems to be that after this life, there is a magnificent realm of happiness, often referred to as heaven, where everything is happy go lucky, and all evils are in another place. Other explanations include reincarnation or energy transfers, but most all of these 'answers' involve some sort of transfer or transport to another realm and most of these involve the idea of the soul or spirit of the individual.

I don't want to get into the debate of whether there is a soul or not only because I think there is a confusion as to what a soul is. I think that because of our own self-awareness, a complication is created where we think we are more than we actually are. Each of us are still just one being; a being who exists just like the billions of people before us did. No one is more special than the other, each one is born, lives, then dies. To my knowledge, there has been no factual exceptions to this (there are plenty of legends and myths though). I ask you to now take a step back and thinking logically, picture the idea of the human race. As stated, there are billions of people who have lived and still live today. Now what makes more sense, the idea that there is a hidden control of billions of souls where depending on which religion you believe in, this controller will then individually take you to your next fantastical destination, or the idea that the people are just like any other living thing on earth, having a defined life period and a terminal life on earth.

If you agree with me, then the latter makes more sense, but is still as frightening as ever. This is why religion appeals so much to people, it relieves the fear and anxiety of the impending doom. We cannot escape death's grasp, but we can choose to believe that it is not as bad as it really is. I will acknowledge the benefit of soothing this fear of death by religion, but at the same time, it can have the adverse effect of allowing the person to not respect death in its finality. Life is the greatest gift you can receive. Death takes away that gift. If one believes that there is a possibility of something after death (in this case something better), then death no longer becomes a consequence. The severity of death is diminished to just a road bump on a longer journey. The result is extremely dangerous to the value of life.

It is this very value that must be restored and fully appreciated. I feel like denying to yourself the finality and magnitude of what death is creates an excuse for not fully living and respecting life for what it is. You are only given one chance, one lifetime. Everyone around the world is given that same single chance. Denying yourself experiences in life in hope or regard for a promised afterlife is foolish. The same thing goes for taking that ability away from someone else. Violence, harm and murder destroy a person; in the most literal sense. I feel acts like these now have a diminished sense of their true power and people neglect to realize what it actually means to take and eradicate a person from existence. This is why is boggles my mind that we are more concerned about seeing a naked body in the media than we are about seeing a person brutally murdered. Love is more taboo than death. This makes no sense, but that will have to be elaborated upon another day.

The point I am trying to make is this: Death is absolutely horrible. It ends your life. No more memories, no more experiences, nothing. Just try and imagine this. It is chilling. It makes you want to find a way around it, defy it. Religion has offered a valiant alternative. Science is slowly giving we mortals hope. Life expectancy is constantly increasing. My only advice is to stay in the positive about what time you do have. Experience life to the fullest. Do not put off for tomorrow what you can do today. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Cliche and cheesy, yes it is, but I am dead serious (sorry). We all to need to take a step back and realize what a gift and treasure life is before we no longer have that ability.

So after all this morbidity, is there any possible upside to dying? Any pros to the big con of not existing anymore? The only thing I can think of is the fact that you just won't know you are dead. There is no "oh crap, I died" or any last words or last chance type things, you are just gone. Sometimes at night, while I am laying in bed, I stare up and imagine this nothingness. I imagine all of reality gone, a time when I can't think and can't feel. This is some of the scariest shit mentally possible and I can easily work myself up into a panic. In order to come back down, I realize that I will not be conscious of the fact that I am not conscious. The fear comes from worrying while I am living. Once I die, the ability to worry is no longer there. There will be no reflection on my sadness. In essence, there is nothing, just peace. Eternal peace. Big scary eternal peace.