Fuck your Sociopoliticcultural DramArguments! In this thread we talk about BOTTLES!

[PyrosNine]

So, so, now that I've got your attention (ESPECIALLY YOURS, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), I just want to say that as I , and others get older, we begin to look around us and consider and contemplate the world around us more, we experience other people's perspectives and worldviews and that allows us to adjust our own views and determine a new sense of self. Part of what makes us adults is our ability to accept another person's views as well as determine for ourselves where we differentiate from other people without needing violence or outright conflict and say that yes, That is who that person is, and this is who I am. It is a voyage of discovery that knows no equal.

And I recently just came on to the fact that glass bottles are FUCKING AWESOME.

Glass bottles! FULL OF SODA! Or Soft Drinks! Or Pop! Depending on where you live and what's hip these days. I had an aunt call them Fizzies once, and that sounds like those alkasetzer-y drink tablet things you get from Museum gift shops and novelty candy stores.

I'll admit it. I'm a soda junkie. I've been drinking Sun Drop and Coke and Dr. Pepper and Mello Yello and Cheerwine and I know enough to tell you that A Vanilla Coke goes well as an after dinner dessert and that my liver is probably yellow 5 colored.

I probably drink more soda than I drink water, actually. Yeah, I'm probably gonna die some horrible diabetic cancerous death and/or need like, a Caffeine rehab or something.

But as I've gotten older, I've kinda sought out new thrills of soda. New flavors, new ways of drinking (High voltage is best Mountain Dew, a proper Taco Bell self service suicide never mixes lemon lime with coke unless you get your portions right, drinking Sun Drop with a shot glass to make it last longer) in the same kind of way a long term wine aficionado starts looking for particular years and possibly imbibing additives like human blood in their wine.

So, as you can probably guess my new it-thing is drinking from Glass bottles, and I'm not sure when or where they stopped being a novelty: Sure, you could always buy a six pack of Root Beer, Cream Soda, and the like, and Coca-Cola has always sold novelty packs of the classic "Contour" style glass bottle that gives it an Iconic Visage, but now you'll find you can get a glass bottle of Coke and a few other brands at every Gas Station and Walgreens, and not just when a local Soda company decides to sell some novelty bottles for an anniversary I think getting glass bottles was still a common thing in Mexico and the like, they never really stopped selling them, and you can usually get a glass bottle of Fanta, Coca-Cola, y Jarritos from your local supermarket/Walmart's International section precisely because of that.

Seems to be some particular brand's gimmick, like say, Jones Soda, and a lot of Indie sodas seem to focus on bottles as it needs a less extensive production system and holds a higher shelf cost because of the bottle- but I digress.

It's paying a little more for less soda in some cases, but in others it's a value- I'm not paying 1.50 for a normal sized plastic bottle when the glass version's a buck.

But nowadays, when Soda seems to pour out of everywhere, in crappy plastic cups because the restaurants are too cheap to afford logo'd ones, in crappy McDonald's cups because after five minutes the soda eats through the bottom part, in crappy styrofoam cups which are too big and once punctured or squeezed all that soda gets in your car/lap and you have sticky pants until you get time to change. The plastic bottles are terrible for the environment, the cans accumulate (and sometimes you cut your thumb on the razor edge of the drink hole when snapping it open)-

and in short, sometimes it feels like one takes Soda for granted. It's a drink, it's readily available, some dieticians say you should drink less of it, but there's been a loss of the experience of drinking a soda. I guess if you wanted a legitimate experience you could find some place with a Soda jerk and get it all old fashioned and like, but that's purely an issue of venue.

So here comes the glass bottle: There's not just the novelty of a classic means of containing soda, but there's also the luxuries a glass bottle provides. The drink is so cold, when cold, the glass is frosted. The bottle, when popped open, emits a simple tantalizing cloud of cold water vapor/carbon dioxide instead of a possibly violent hissing reaction. The bottle fits comfortably in the hand, feels cold, stays cold, and you know when it's about empty without having to shake it like a dumb can. There's enough to sate a thirst, but not enough to be more than you can drink.

The soda, je ne sais quoi, it just tastes better in a bottle.

I've gone out of my way to get a few Glass Sodas for the fam', and even my Mother, who doesn't drink soda after 6:00 pm for fear that she won't get a good night's sleep and tries to avoid sweets because she's aiming to start a diet she keeps putting off, she prefers a bottle of Cream Soda or Cherry Lime with her dinner.

Helps that most glass bottle sodas are usually caffeine free/ low caffeine (if at least by volume) and usually have Cane sugar instead of artificial sweeteners or that lame beet sugar crap.

Glass bottles have kinda become my new Luxury. I'll still drink Sun Drop by the 2 Liter, but every now and again, on special occasions or when I've got a few loose bills to spend, I'll get a few glass bottles. Some of them are Sun Drop glass bottles.

I'm even collecting them! In the old days, you collected the bottle caps, but today a decent collection of glass bottles is significantly rare in my neighborhood. That, and I stepped on an upside down bottle cap with my bare foot and therefore hold for them a degree of enmity.

I have like, 30 glass bottles, of which about I'd have to say 20ish are unique- I might have five glass bottles of Sun Drop or Coke, but even within a brand a bottle can be unique. I've a bottle marketing Sun Drop by it's original name of Golden Cola, another with a white etching of the Logo on the front, and a third with a smaller white etching on the top of the bottle but a large colored logo sticker on the front.

In my view, there's a hierarchy of glass bottles in terms of "worthwhile to keep".

A great glass bottle has the logo and info as part of the bottle. Either the glass is stained or etched, or there's a thin plastic spray that paints it all on. Kudos if it's still in full color.

Then comes the kind where the logo and like are actually stickers: a printed wrap around not unlike the kind put on plastic bottles, and which is why they're not as worthwhile to keep. Aside from the bottle cap, once the wrapping label or sticker is ripped or torn off, all you have is a bare glass bottle. Jones tries to get around this by having a unique picture on each bottle, but if I was into pictures I'd just collect the wrapping.

And of course, there's the kind where the bottle is etched into, but is kind of a plain made in bulk style like your typical bottle of Stewart's Root Beer. There's more reason to keep the folded cardboard bottle holder than the bottles themselves.

In closing, I'm a mad collector who collects heavy glass junk and is all bourgeoisie with my drinking of the glass sodas while some poor poverty stricken raped transvestite is beaten up by Atlus.

I recommend watching Modern Marvels episode on Soft Drinks (here's an excerptabout Jones)

I will post creepy pics of my growing collection later.

Any thoughts?