Giant Robot Invasion!

A few years back I quit drinking soda, in a feat of endurance I’ve had trouble duplicating since. Now, once you get used to drinking water, it becomes a lot more delicious than you’d expect. But variety is the spice of me, and every now and then I desire a drink with some seasoning, if you know what I mean. Something that fits my current mood, like Snapple mixed with chili salt for bronchitis.

Enter Vitamin Water, a handy line of flavored water that gives me a burst of flavor without the calories of Comrade Coca-Cola. Well…they used to, at least. A few years back they offered Vitamin Water with only 25 calories per bottle. But the American people wanted more flavor and ran back to support Pepsi, Duke of Getting Fat. Unsurprising. Why do you think McCheese, a guy with a burger for a head, became the mayor of McDonaldLand? There’s a reason his campaign team scheduled the voting around lunch.

Anyway, there are now two styles of Vitamin Water to choose from. You can either go for Vitamin Water Zero – which you can make at home by tossing a pack of Kool-Aid into the Pacific Ocean – or you can stick with the normal variety. Of course, a normal bottle of Vitamin Water is 125 calories while a can of Coca-Cola is 140, so any benefit you might gain from the water is minimal. Sure, it’s got vitamins, but who cares about those? Nobody likes them. The only reason I ate Flintstones vitamins is because I liked to bite off Betty’s head and pretend her lawn mower finally had enough.

Despite that, though, I still indulge in Vitamin Water. Even though I don’t drink the stuff obsessively like I did with Coca-Cola, Vitamin Water is tasty enough to make me demand more, with a bigger sack and knife each time. And if you haven’t tried Vitamin Water yet, now’s the perfect time for a crash course. Here are all the flavors I’ve tried and which ones are superior.

Basically like this.

Focus (kiwi-strawberry): This is a pretty nasty flavor. If Vitamin Water flavors were beloved TV characters, Focus would be a mailbox. Kiwi-strawberry sounds like a fruit combination that should work. Unfortunately, this flavor tastes like they ignored the kiwi fruit in favor of the kiwi bird. They’re endangered, you know. Maybe that’s why I feel bad whenever I drink this.

dwnld (berry-cherry): “dwnld”? What the hell kind of word is that? This isn’t a spelling error, this is the Alphabet Sniper picking off victims one-by-one. I had big hopes for this drink, too. Berry plus cherry sounded like a flavor match made in heaven. Instead, it was a match that lit a middle school on fire.

Revive (fruit punch): I can understand why people might not like this flavor. It’s very plain. I think if you go to Purgatory, this is the drink they serve with Nilla wafers. But I rather like this flavor. If I can’t find anything better, I’ll use this one to quench my thirst. Sorry, Sprite. I don’t drink stuff named after things from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Why do you think I stopped buying donkey’s blood?

Essential (orange-orange): This flavor is basically Tang, but it has one advantage: it’s not called something asinine like “Tang”. As such, this is a pretty interesting flavor. Nothing cleanses my palate more than a rush of artifically created orange goodness. Just goes to show that two oranges are better than one, unless that metaphor can describe your wife’s rack.

Multi-V (lemonade): This is the flavor that got me hooked on Vitamin Water. The gateway drink, if you will. It’s watered down lemonade, yes, but in the sense of watering down a chocolate cake mix with M&Ms. Unfortunately, I can’t find this flavor anymore where I live – only the Vitamin Water Zero variety. This annoys me, but not nearly as much as Lady Gaga.

Spark (grape-blueberry): I would be depressed over the loss of Multi-V if it wasn’t for this great replacement. Spark isn’t as strong as Multi-V, but the grape/blueberry combo still resonates with my heart. Together they make a company called Delicious Inc., who will hopefully serve my taste needs for many years to come. Here’s hoping they merge with Ben and Jerry’s and change Americone Dream into a sports drink.

Connect (black cherry lime): I’ve recently discovered this lost ark of flavors in the dusty halls of Wal-Mart, and it does not disappoint. With a pleasing lime scent in each sip, it’s a novel of taste I can’t put down, which wouldn’t be true if the drink was by John Grisham. Of course, it has the downside of being assosciated with Facebook. According to Internet complainers, that makes this the only bottled water who wants to look through your W-2s. Time will tell on that one!

They are also probably dressed like this.

Of course, Vitamin Water is no substitute for real water, but it’s a rewarding change of pace. That’s why I always try to keep my Vitamin Water intake limited. You should, too. Drink Vitamin Water sparingly. Treat it like a one-night stand – grab a small taste of her, then keep her in the fridge until a few hours later, or until you forget that she’s still there.

This week we’re taking a look at The Now Habit, a book by Neil Fiore on how to stop procrastination. I’ll admit that I used to have a problem with that. I used to put off so many things, and I the only reason I did that was to finish all the OTHER stuff I put off. I mean, my father threw a tantrum ten years ago and it took me that long to get all the soy sauce out of my hair.

Anyway, the book starts off by telling us why we procrastinate, and it says that procrastination helps us find relief from difficult work. Trust me, that’s true. The longer I put something off, the more afraid I get to finish it for good. Eventually I get so freaked out that I have to rebuild my confidence before I can get back into action. By the way, quick way to feel better about yourself – watch someone fail a driving exam. Your self-esteem will skyrocket.

The book also talks about how free time is a better way to motivate yourself to work instead of forcing yourself to do it, and that you should actually take time off more often to be more productive in the long run. Now, that might be true if you’ve got a BORING job, but if that’s the case, you should be more like me. I get paid to write humor for a living, and it’s the BEST job in the world. I have fun all the time. And I’ve learned a lot, too. For example, when you can’t sell any of your work and all you’ve got is ten bucks for food at the dollar store, just remember…you’re not buying food past its expiration date. You’re just buying food and eating it fashionably late.

Now, to help you take more time off, this book has a really good tool called an Unschedule. How that works is that the only thing you schedule is stuff like free time, chores, things like that. You leave everything else blank, but you color parts of it in whenever you do work. And that adds up. I tried it for a while and it felt really good to see all the work I did that week by looking at the spaces I colored in on my schedule. The only problem is that you have to draw up a new schedule every week. I don’t got time for that, I’ve got fart jokes to make, okay?

The book also covers how you talk to yourself. See, when we talk to ourselves using words like “I have to do this” or “I should do this”, it causes resentment, which makes us slack off. The book shows you about words you can use instead to make it easier. I needed this more than I thought, because I’ll agree with whatever my voice says. I love my voice. If it was real, I’d give it a half-naked nelson in a pigpen if I could.

But like I said, some of the self-talk exercises are helpful. I had a speech I was working on and I kept telling myself, “I have to work on my speech, I have to work on my speech.” But then I started using better self-talk, and I started telling myself things like, “I have to work on my speech…but I can’t play Mass Effect 2 until I beat the first.” And now I just finished Virmire, so it’s been really effective.

All in all, though, this is a good book. If you’ve read up on procrastination, you’ve seen some of these ideas before, but the book packs it all together in a usable way. If you’re just getting started at trying to improve your productivity, this book is a good place to begin. On the back, it says that it’s “simple, effective, and immediately useful”, and that quote is definitely true. In fact, I liked it so much that I wrote it down for future reference, under a little section I call “Quotes That Accurately Describe Me”.