We’ve all got our own calibrating benchmarks. You know the ones that literally gives the final clarion call–the ones where we just KNOW God’s gonna finally pull the rip-cord on the Great Anthropological Freak Show down here.

Even I thought I had it tagged when the guy who made me idolize him circa 1976 on my Wheaties Box is now engaged in a histrionic, three-legged race down the halls of media narcissim with his ex-wife, step-daughters, and monomaniacal son-in-law.

But no.  That wasn’t it.  Who was I kidding anyway?  Just when I think we have plumbed the depths of human self-absorption to it’s final stratum before hitting the Mantle–something else comes along. Taco Bell.

Me: I’d like two Soft Taco Supremes, and a Diet.

Speaker: Um, Pepsi or Diet Mountain Dew?

Me: Excuse me, Diet Mountain Dew? Who’s playing a joke in there?

Speaker: laughing.

Do I really need to go on? Diet MOUNTAIN DEW.  The go-to choice in the crack-versus-cocaine-economic-windfall-margins for every church lock-in this side of the planet.

Mountain Dew is one molecular tick away from tasting like Codeine-enhanced cough syrup.  They are’t even trying to hide the fact that its bad for you. In fact they could place a sub-slogan, “”It will dew you in” right under the corporate moniker, and no one will care. They won’t care because people drink it precisely because it is reputed to be the ONE morally-obbfuscated way for kids to get jacked upon caffeine while maintaining that Children’s Television Workshop kind of faux innocence.

So DIET Mountain dew comes along.  No idea why.  Is there some sloganeering vortex afoot in the Halls of Pepsi that says, “Let’s push that Diabetic milestone a few years down the road.”  Trust me, I understand departmental myopia when it comes to dopey mission statements COMPLETELY devoid of substance, but c’mon. You’re going to dial back the one drink that has predicated itself on ZERO shame?  Please don’t.  I NEED the depraved to remain that way.  This is soda sophistry at it’s worst. People will just move on to Red Bull at a higher cost.

Does Strychnine have a modular half-model that promises, “Now with only half the violent, convulsive paroxysms?”  I doubt it.  Cyanide doesn’t make some dopey claim to making “Goebbels-children resistant” half-solutions. (Okay, settle down.  I’ve been reading a lot of Holocaust literature lately. And while that last joke is somewhat dark, I’m a bit calloused. Sorry).

I’m just not sure what kind of diplomatic gains are made by this development.  And for all I know, DIET Mountain Dew has been around for years, but it has never been a part of the conversant gradations of my drive-through order.

Because at the end of the day, I neither care nor partake of neither the annoyingly-boring Kardashian/Jenner media grabs, nor Mountain Dew.

Because neither have any value.