The Continuing Search For Pepsi Ice Cucumber

Why is it whenever I find something that I thoroughly enjoy in life the Gods, or the suits or some football player with bigger biceps and more athletic ability has to take it away? Was it not enough to take away the Megatron that transforms into a gun? Were you not satiated by the canceling of ALF? You took away Han shooting first, you decided Canada was no longer worthy of Cookie Crisp and took away John Mcclane's right to profanity. Yes, you even snatched away that beautiful blonde girl who decided to take a chance on that nerdy guy with the poor fashion sense by honoring him with her lips behind the school one Friday morning. And now, in what may be the biggest travesty of them all, you have chosen to deny me the very nectar of life. You have thieved away my Pepsi Ice Cucumber. You bastards! You greedy, heartless, vengeful bastards! You disgust me more then a mound of rotting pumpkins that have been shat on by elephants who instantly died due to the putridness and, in falling upon the mound of rotting pumpkins and elephant excrement, are now rotting along with the pumpkins and stinking along with the elephant excrement and if this was not bad enough Keanu Reeves is performing a one man production of The Taming of the Shrew right on top of the festering heap of rotting pumpkins, dead elephants and crap. I loath thee.

Two weeks ago I started to notice the Pepsi Ice Cucumber bottles were becoming sparse. You could still walk into a 7-11 and find one but where there were entire shelves devoted to the drink now there were only two places in the freezer. My alarm bells should have gone off there. I had read that the drink was to be a limited edition beverage. Limited edition is tossed around so much these days when it comes to DVD collecting that the term has become meaningless. Oh yes, Fox, that Independence Day Limited Edition has been available for over three years and is just a repackaging of a disc that has been available for seven. Limited edition my I’ve eaten too much curry and thank Christ that the bathroom is only three steps away and please, for the love of God, no more noodles aching Canadian who just happens to be in Japan ass. I didn’t doubt the limited quantity of this drink but I figured they’d have made enough supply to carry out the demands of the summer. Here we were nearing the end of June, the drink had only been out for a month, and the thing was become as none-existent as a new Guns ‘n’ Roses album. Come on Axl, just freakin’ release it already! Soon nine or ten bottles became two or three and then, like Keyser Soze, they were gone.

They could here my mournful wail clear to Okinawa when I walked into the 7-11 that morning to find that the beautiful green bottles of Pepsi Ice Cucumber had been replaced by the menacing black bottles of Pepsi Zero. Take your zero calories and stuff it, Pepsi, and give me back my green cucumber soda! Give me millions of calories, billions, just please bring it ba-a-a-ack. Looking at the black spot where my love used to be images of our times together came flooding into me, memories of days I may never experience again. Remember the time, PICy (that was my pet name for you, remember? You thought it was so clever how I turned your name into a cute little acronym), when you first gave me a taste there on my couch listening to some slow jazz piano by Monk. What about the time we sat together under the sun in the shade of that cherry blossom tree, me reading a book and you chasing dandelion spores floating on the wind. Or the time we had our first fight and I told you that I hated you and that Vanilla Cherry Coke was a better beverage. Oh, how you stormed out of here taking all of your things and leaving only your spare bottle cap which I cuddled in the darkness sobbing like a child with a broken toy until the knock came after midnight and you stood there, your green seemingly glowing, looking up at me awash in the luminance of the moon. But now it is just starting to sink in. For two weeks there has been no knock. This time you are never coming back.

I have searched for you throughout this country leaving no vending machine, grocery store of 7-11 unchecked. I have shown your photo to store clerks who simply shake their heads. Sold out. SOLD OUT! How can this be? And then I read that the drink was only going to be available for two weeks. TWO WEEKS! So it is really, truly over. I wish…I…well, I just wish I could have said goodbye. Now the only refuge I have of our love, Pepsi Ice Cucumber, is the wrapper I saved and the few droplets that I split on the table, now sticky and a containing hair and dust. Some say it is wrong to lick them once a day in remembrance but those people just didn’t understand our love. And then, as much as I hate to admit it, there are always the whores. I am so weak, Pepsi Ice Cucumber, but you left me with little choice but to stoop so low. I have found myself searching Ebay for the pimps that are prostituting you for up to $25 a bottle. Those heathens! Do they not know the beauty they posses that they are selling for so little what it is worth. They say, well, Faster Pussycat said, you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone and now I am living a bad 80s power ballad. Pepsi Ice Cucumber, no matter what soft drink enters my life in the future I will never forget you. Never. And if you ever did decide to come back, my green liquid love, the key is under the doormat and the Monk is always cued and on standby.