Okay, first of all, what's up with the colored tabs? red and green ones around Christmas I understand. Maybe a yellow one for summer or green for spring, okay. Seasonal tabs make sense. But someone please explain those blue tabs I see on some soda cans. And, unless I'm mistaken, it's only one soda! Not even that company's entire line! And it's not a seasonal thing! Why do it? Why have blue tabs? To tell people to recycle? Then make them all blue! Is it something equivalent to pink lids by Yoplait for breast cancer research--this is an entire rant in itself, which I'll probably get to next month--blue tabs for seacreature cancer research? Save the fish with gill cancer?

It seems pretty random to me. But not even random with a purpose. I imagine the head honchos of Coca-Cola sitting around a table thinking of new drink ideas. They got Vanilla Coke out, and it flourished. Now they're considering Caramel Coke, but they've all tasted it, and they all think it tastes horrible. The guy in charge of can design is doodling all over a sketch, and jots down the word "blue" for no reason other than because the wor dpopped into his head. Then the sketch gets sent to the factory, where they bicker over whether the tabs were supposed to be blue or not. The guy in charge sets the machine to spit out blue tabs. His underlings disagree, so one of them sneak over to the controls and change the tabs back to the regular color. This switching happens for several years on end until someone gets fired.

Now, Pepsi Blue. Yes, everyone says it tastes horrible. That's not the point. "Stop making it, because it tastes bad." No, that's not what I want to convince Pepsi. It doesn't taste like cola at all! How in the world is it berry-cola infusion? No, it's berry soda. If it's caffeinated, then make it a Mountain Dew spinoff, for can-can's sake! If it's uncaffeinated, then make it a new product, like, oh, I don't know, "Sierra Mist Blue"?!? Just don't put "Pepsi" in the title if it's not a cola product. Pepsi Twist is cola and lemon. That's a perfectly titled drink. But since everyone calls Pepsi Blue "melted, carbonated blue-raspberry Slurpee," I figure it will die out pretty soon if it hasn't already. That's what you get for calling it Pepsi Blue!

There are three primary soda companies: Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Pepsi. Dr. Pepper is not made by either Pepsi or Coca-Cola! I'm sick of people thinking this! Has it ever occurred to you people to look at the little "manafactured for" label on the side of a can or bottle of soda?!? You can learn a lot! (Oh, and 7Up is made by Dr. Pepper.)

"Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one, save February, which has twenty-eight, except for every fourth year when it has twenty-nine. But, actually, every hundred (or was it thousand) years, it only has twenty-eight, not -nine." Yeah, we have twelve months.

Is it just me, or does the fact that the months have assorted numbers of days seem very similar to the customary system. Twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, 5.5 yards in a rod, forty rods in a furlong, and eight furlongs in a mile. The metric system is definitely the way to go. Ten millimeters in a centimeter, ten centimeters in a decimeter, ten decimeters in a meter, ten meters in a decameter, ten decameters in a hectometer, and ten hectometers in a kilometer. It's really not that complicated.

But the months! Oh, the months! It would make so much sense if there were 100 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour, and 10 hours in a day. And then ten days in a week, and ten weeks in a month. And then, finally, ten months in a year.

Sure, there are logical arguments against this. A year is defined as the time it takes the earth to make one full revolution around the sun. And a day is defined as the time it takes the earth to rotate so that the same point faces the center of revolution: the sun. Technically, a day is slightly longer than one complete rotation. And changing the actual duration of all these units would cause mass confusion. When meters were introudced, they were created as new units, not as a re-measurement of the already established feet, yards, and miles. So we need some temporal units that are metric.

So I took a trip to Boston over the summer. I figured being a foreign girl in a big city wouldn't be too bad. I had to get over the fact that everyone drove and walked on the wrong side of the street, but I did. I discovered the joy that is public transportation.

Did I say, "the joy"? My mistake.

It costs a dollar every time; apparently, although tax dollars fund it, we still have to pay for every ride. Which really sucks if you miss your stop. You have to get off, then back on the next one going in the opposite direction, which costs an additional dollar. Then there are only a few seats available. You have to be pretty damn lucky to get one. And when you do, an old man or woman will stand above you with puppy-dog eyes. Never mind the fact that they've been sitting in their casual dining restauarnt sipping tea, while you've been running around, trying to make use of your tourism. My feet are tired, okay? You can stand for ten damn minutes.

Of course, if you take this attitude, they then make snide comments to each other in that grumpy-fogey sort of way. How disrespectful today's youth are, yadda-yadd-yadda. At least, I think. I don't understand English well enough. But I definitely heard "disrespectful" and "youth."

One of them even passed gas in front of me.

Then, when it's fry-an-egg-on-your-forehead hot, you have to wait twenty minutes for the train to arrive. (Many of the train stations are outside, without shade, which means that you'll be beaten upon by the sun like a whipping boy--a boiling boy.) But it's full. Oh, look through the windows: the back is perfectly empty. It's just too bad that you can only enter through the front, so the train conductor can make sure to grab your one-dollar and glare at you if you only have paper American money. So you ask the congestion of people at the front to move back. They respond, angrily, "We are!"

Then the train doors close and the behemoth takes off at a whopping 16 kilometers an hour. (That's ten miles an hour, for you metric-hating Americans.) And you're stuck there in the heat, waiting for the next train. You're sweaty and cranky and thirsty. So you decide to walk to your location instead of waiting for the next train. There's no room to walk on the median (reserved for the train tracks), and you certainly don't want to get run over by one. Even at 16 km/h, it'd be a doozy. So you cross back over the sidewalk.

At the next stop, the train arrives. You didn't see it coming. You just have to cross the street. But the freaking cars won't stop! They finally end, and you run to the train, whose doors are closing. You knock on the door. The bitter train conductor, who eats too much junk food, gives you a nasty look, and the train speeds (for lack of a better term) away.

So now you're even more exhausted, aching, sweaty, thirsty, coughing, and sunburnt, and you're still not where you need to be.

I am so getting a car when I'm an adult.