Alyson Lewis

I don’t necessarily understand all art. I accept that I’m not meant to know or understand everything, and people laugh when I say that, but it’s true. Art that I do understand, is something I can touch or taste. I don’t get anything out of going to museums and looking at paintings or sculptures I can’t put my hands on. If I can’t actively engage with it in a way I like, I’m not interested.

First, I want to state that horniness is a sickness, and the only cure for it is death. Until we die, horniness plagues most of us in our waking and sleeping life. There is no escape. That being said, I had to try this drink. I first came across it during the summer, when the packaging was much more vulgar (looked like a sex toy). I appreciated the boldness of their gesture; insinuating that this drink was like a rocket ride to Horny Town packed neatly in a 35 calorie beverage. I don’t understand why anyone would want to get horny from a drink. I would prefer something more subtle, like a salad dressing or a drink sweetener. Something that could provide me with just a Touch of Horny. A drink seems like something to overwhelm the senses. If it worked, how long would it take to wear off?

Caffeinated seltzers are becoming a subgenre of the fizzy sugarless variety, and I came across Pep Talk during one of my usual beverage browsing sessions online. The drinks only have three ingredients: carbonated water, natural flavor, and natural caffeine from green coffee beans. I’m always intrigued by anything that has so few ingredients, because while it’s possible to make something taste good with only a few elements, it’s definitely more difficult in certain instances. For those who don’t know, green coffee beans are just coffee beans that haven’t been roasted. Different green coffee beans have different “roasting profiles” that open up when the bean is roasted (this is when the bean turns brown). If the coffee bean remains unroasted, though, it maintains the amount of chlorogenic acid it originally carries. Please keep in mind I’m not a scientist, or a coffee expert, I just have the same google you do. Anyway, chlorogenic acid has antioxidant properties and caffeine.

Lemonade is truly one of life’s simplest pleasures. Too often, though, it comes in the form of unimaginative flavor combinations (OK strawberry lemonade, I Get It), and the drink itself ends up being imbalanced and syrupy. I love a good chain restaurant, but they have to stop just pumping strawberry syrup into plain lemonade and calling it a day. Please respect the drink.

It’s really, truly winter, and among other crushing aspects of the season, some of the best fruit is hard to find. I live in the Midwest, so if you’re in a warmer climate and have access to other seasonal options, congratulations. I envy you for that. The weather here sucks ass, and if I’m being completely honest, I would love to not experience another cold season. Realistically, there’s nothing I will do about it. I’ll bundle up in a winter coat and thick scarf every year and sigh and fantasize about other places I could be living.

Borrowing its name from a product in the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, Soylent claims to be the perfect meal replacement to solve issues of food insecurity through Silicon Valley engineering. I recently rewatched the film Soylent Green (1973), and though the official soylent website claims the drink isn’t as bleak as the meal replacements offered in the film, the association is still incredibly dystopian. Soylent Green is a film set in New York City in 2022, where the poor are packed in the streets, and real food only exists for those who can afford it—the rich. While older people can vaguely remember the taste of fruit or meat, younger generations were born under depressing circumstances, and have no idea what real food tastes like. The poor subsist on an allegedly nutritious food made of soybeans and lentils, as the Greenhouse Effect has ruined the Earth and made other food unsustainable. Fueled by a series of murders and suspicious events, Detective Thorn starts investigating what looks to be a dark secret surrounding soylent green.