Someone should be shot in the face for this

Whoa, that is some delicious looking juice. As we all know, red and green are complementary colors, so this bottle pops. It's a slim bottle, weighing in at a petit 10 ounces. Great, now I don't even have to count calories. But can I draw attention to that red ass grapefruit again? I mean look at that thing! It looks like and uncooked steak or something, or an ocean with the sun setting inside of it. It's goddamn gorgeous, which could not be a more perfect adjective, because I want to gorge that grapefruit or anything associated with it, namely this bottle of grapefruit juice.

Right now, you probably feel like you're watching the hopeful beginnings of a horror movie. We're all going to camp! Where we'll tell ghost stories, eat s'mores, drink merrily without getting caught by the police, and yay! But the title of this post suggests that yay is code for a serious violation. I'm getting there. It is.

The juice itself tastes slightly underwhelming. There's the initial "Mmm!" factor, where you're hit in the mouth with sweetness and red flavory redness. Those are the 33g's of sugar at work on your tongue. It's so sweet, so regularly sweet, so pasteurizedly, processedly sweet. It's not too sweet, but something is fishy. Let's go back to the bottle.

100% juice! Praise Jesus, 100 percent of what's in this bottle is honest to goodness bone raising juice. If you took away all the juice from this bottle, nothing would be in your hand. Even the bottle is made of juice! Plasticized gourmet labely juice. Man, what a great tasting thing. Good thing I paid $1.55 plus tax for this nectar of steak-ocean grapefruit paradise. And BAM! If you don't want 100 percent juice, there's no way you don't want 100 percent Vitamin C. So we'll at least give you a bottle that's only 10 fluid ounces that carries 100 percent of your daily value of Vitamin C. That's 10 percent per ounce. Holy mackerel. By the time I've taken a gulp of this baby I'm already throwing colds off my shoulders. Both shoulders! Left and right. So this grapefruit elixir, that tastes so plainly sweet. How did they do it?

Wait, I thought that was supposed to just say, like, "juice"?

Now the horror begins.

First ingredient: filtered water. THANK GOD THEY FILTERED IT, BUT, I'M PRETTY SURE NEITHER FILTERS NOR WATER ARE JUICE. .......... Wow. Ok. I guess most things have water in them. That doesn't mean they're lying to me, I guess it has concentrated juice or someth—WHAT THE FUCK WHY DOES THAT SAY WHITE GRAPE JUICE CONCENTRATE?

Let's examine the label again.

I'm not crazy, am I? That says RUBY RED GRAPEFRUIT! They even specified the shade and color! There is no way white grapes are on that label? Maybe they're really small and hard to see. MAYBE BUT I DON'T SEE THEM. So it's grape and grapefruit. That's why the sweet is so civilized. There's no space in "GRAPEFRUIT" either, I checked. Still there's a bunch of other st—WHY THE SHIT, THE NEXT INGREDIENT IS APPLE JUICE CONCENTRATE! LOOK!

So this 100% RUBY RED GRAPEFRUIT JUICE's first three ingredients, the three most prominent ones, have absolutely nothing to do with rubies, red grapefruits, and aren't 100 percent juice. Right now we're at 66.67 percent juice. Jesus. The next ingredient is ruby red grapefruit juice concentrate, as if it's any consolation. It's like when you ask for 100 dollars for your birthday and you get a suitcase, a book about lawns, a 12-pack of Dasani water and 15 dollars. You're like great. I was going to use 100 dollars to feed my homeless friend, but now I'll have to settle for a meal for two from Subway, even though we both hate Subway.

Tropicana, Mr. Tropicana, if you're out there. You sick-witted filthbag, what makes you think white grape and apple juice make a combination suitable to lead the ruby red grapefruit juice bottle into the American marketplace. IF LEBRON IS SCORING THE MOST POINTS IT'S CLEARLY NOT D-WADE'S TEAM, RIGHT? Well in this case we're claiming the team is Mario Chalmers'. It isn't. I'm drinking a lie, living a lie. And what the hell is the word "Tropicana" anyway? It's some dumb word association between Americans knowing that fruit is made in tropic climates and "cana" is a Latin suffix. What a genius combination. If this is the way America views grapefruit juice, America should be deported. It's a travesty. It's a transvestite.

I bought this bottle of 10 ounces — which is really not a satisfying amount of liquid — to taste the acidic quenching sweetness I get when I fang into a plump pink grapefruit. Grapefruits, the best fruit by the way, are made up of crystal shards containing a sweet stinging citric acid packed nectar. And this tasted like grape juice with apple juice and grapefruit flavoring poured in. It's the artificial flavor made authentically, and it defeats the purpose of selling grapefruit juice. I'm hurt by this lie, and I don't know why it's been deemed acceptable to market such a deceptive product.

Oh yeah, it says 3 Juice blend on the front of the label in the bottom right corner. Haha. Joke's on me. You got me Tropicana. For the last time.

Shout out to Espresso Royale for carrying this falsehood in its Caffe Authenticana atmosphere; it fits right in.

--Eliot Sill

My cave is a human

All my wretched and diabolical plans for this summer appear to be in mid-thwart. Originally, I was going to snooze through a job at the Country Club, earning way more cash than is necessary, while raking in a fair check from Illini Media in my work as assignment editor. I would scoop up some easy credits from Parkland in an online course or two, thus eliminating the need for me to slog through the bitches that are economics and political science during a real semester. My friends here and I would go out on a bi-nightly basis, scoring cheap drinks at bars, eating grease foods while inebriated and engaging in general goodhearted brouhaha. And I would write six or seven brilliant endeavoring feature stories while chipping in a couple dinky beat bits for the paper. And I would have an apartment to myself for a negligibly cheap sum, where I could play PS3 and Final Fantasy X at my leisure.

By the sheer amount of good things referenced in the preceding paragraph, you may have correctly assumed by process of elimination that I'm not having the best of summers. One of my larger concerns at the moment is this what is becoming chronic shoulder pain and odd discomfort of the lower back. Because they make moving harder, which translates to every thing being slightly harder. Luckily, one of my roommates left behind a bottle of Ibuprofen that is currently blanketing those pains. It wears off at night, though. Bummer. Additionally, I was rejected by the Country Club, then everywhere else I applied (read: Chipotle and IHOP) and oh hey, it's July on Sunday. Furthermore, I wasn't able to sign up for classes, partially because I didn't have a job to fund the $300 credit nuggets, and partially because I was late in beginning the process of registration. My job at the paper has been a double-edged sword. In that it gives me first pick of all story ideas, then full power to assign them to whomever I like. As in, not myself. Meanwhile, I'm clinging to the pithy salary I'm getting, trying to fund my life and buy food that I can feasibly cook. And socially most of my nights have consisted of light reading and boredom, as I've only been out to the bars a couple times. It's senseless to go spend money there when I have no job.

Which brings me to my apartment. My home. My cave. The air conditioning is broke. I'm hesitant to call the landlord because technically I don't live here. It's a no-table-involved lease agreement that I have with Gordon Voit, a swell chap I might add, that I get this apartment for the summer for $500 bucks. That figure looked way less threatening when I was banking (literally) on $12.50 an hour, 20 hours a week. It's as hot as a human mouth in here right now. The thermostat tells me we're at or north of 90. The only light right now is from the relenting sun and this computer screen, the only other electricity being used is to power my fan, which is admirably blowing right at my face, doing its very best to keep up.

Earlier today I was wearing my fall jacket to keep me cool. But eventually I made Chunky chicken and gumbo soup, and put Frank's Red Hot in it (read: gave up). I followed that with the coldest shower I've ever taken (a bookend to the hottest shower I've ever taken, which occurred at Blaisdell Hall of PAR after getting back from the Return to Titletown celebration in Lambeau Field), which I took with the door open for good measure.

The remaining of my two roommates moved out (for a month) yesterday. So how's living alone? Well, it's lonely. But I have no problem with that. The problem is that I'm not miraculously self-motivated sans the presence of others. I'm still making good excuses not to do necessary things (what if he flips a shit and kicks me out? I'm lambed). I can't even find a good place to hang this disco ball. The one thing I need right now is for this weather to go the hell back to Texas or wherever it belongs and to let things cool around here so I can stop being all hot and bothered.

That or a vacation. My cave is a human.

--Eliot Sill