• Mood: cheerful
• Music: Rilo Kiley, "the good that won't come out"

a carte blanche, a tabula rasa, a clean slate.

To anyone who has lost respect for me because of something I've said or things they've seen over the last few days: I just want to say that I understand, and if any of you want to stop considering me a friend or defriend me, there'll be no hard feelings on my part. Any of you who just think I'm an ass, who have been looking for an excuse to take me off your friends list, now's your chance. Of course I hope none of you will, at least not without talking about things with me first--but if you decide not to do that, I will understand. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then I would appreciate it if you just ignore this post, and don't listen to anybody who thinks they know. I apologize to you all for being cryptic, but I have recently had my privacy invaded, and have no desire to reference a private issue in public.


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So. It turns out that Sobe's Lizard Lava, the drink that I have been worshiping for about 2 months ever since I had my first sip of it, contains cochineal dye. Cochineal dye is made from the Cochineal bug. Yes. An insect. Got this from some site which I lost the link and am too lazy to look up:

Cochineal production became an important export from the Canary Islands, where three tons of the powder was produced in 1875. However, there was a setback in the 1870s when synthetic red aniline dyes (from coal tar) were starting to be used instead of cochineal. Aniline dyes essentially replaced cochineal by the early 1900s. Fortunately, cochineal dyeing continued in its homeland, and this pigment began to appear in commercial products of the United States primarily as a food dye, as in pork sausage, pies, dried fish and shrimp, candies, pills, jams, lipstick and rouge, and the brightly colored maraschino cherries. Here too cochineal was replaced by red dye numbers 2 and 40, which are believed now to be carcinogenic, and cochineal is being reconsidered as a safe food dye.

Cochineal dyeing in southern Mexico is now folk art and practiced by the natives. The female insects are hand-picked and dried in the sun, interrupted by periods in shade.

Gah. Why can't they have just used red 40? Curse you, Sobe!!! You made me love this drink only to tell me that I have to subject insects to being dried to death every time I taste your supple texture on my tongue.

What should I do? Should I give up Sobe? Should I learn to do without and know that insects are still being killed and other people are blindly consuming this heavenly concoction? Or should I just say fuck it because, as a modern consumer of eggs and meat and all that stuff I have no room for hypocrisy?

Sigh. My favorite drink is now ruined. But hey, apart from this, getting my journal hacked, and having a filtered post passed all over the place, I'm having a great week.

I think I will go have an egg mcmuffin. weatherby, avert your eyes. ♥