RIP, Dublin Dr Pepper

As readers of my blog may remember, I mentioned in June that Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Inc. had sued the bottlers of Dublin Dr Pepper.  Sadly, that case has ended with the result that I, at least, expected:  Dublin Dr Pepper is no more.

Per The Dallas Observer:

From here on out, per a settlement agreement just announced in the case filed by Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group in June, the Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Company will now be known as Dublin Bottling Works Inc. And it will no longer manufacture Imperial Pure Cane Sugar Dr Pepper at its bottling plant.

It will continue to manufacture soft drinks with pure-cane sugar: Triple XXX Root Beer, NuGrape and SunCrest among others. But Dr Pepper Snapple Group has purchased from from the Kloster family all of its Dr Pepper-related assets, as well as the right to distribute Dr Pepper in the six-county territory (Comanche, Eastland, Erath, Hood, Hamilton and Bosque) previously served by Dublin Dr Pepper. Corporate says the product sold there and elsewhere will continue to be made with pure-cane sugar at the Temple bottling plant, and that "it will still be bottled and canned in distinct, nostalgic packaging." The only difference, says the announcement, is that "it will not reference Dublin on the label."

The good news, I suppose, is that per the information in the Observer article, Dr Pepper Snapple is going to continue to support Dublin's long history with the brand.  But still, for me and, I'm sure, many others, this is the end of an era.

At least for the moment, though, you can still buy Dublin Dr Pepper at Amazon, and for your convenience there happens to be a link right here.*



*I get paid a small commission for orders made through this link.

Unfairly forgotten song #10: Girls With Guns by Tommy Shaw

I'm not gonna lie:  what made me think of this was a recent comment by one Sarah Palin (as quoted by National Review via Conservatives4Palin) in which she stated, "I’m all in favor of girls with guns who know their purpose."

How could this child of the 80s not think of Tommy Shaw?

Tommy Shaw, as most of my readers probably don't know, was the lead guitarist for Styx through the late 70s and early 80s but left the group due to dissatisfaction with the direction in which other members wanted to take the band.  (Meh, go look it up on Wikipedia.)

Mr. Shaw's first solo album, which came to mind after I heard Governor Palin's statement above, was called "Girls With Guns", and its title track was Mr. Shaw's only Top 40 solo appearance, spending a grand total of three weeks on the Top 40 charts and peaking at #33 on November 17, 1984, before falling completely off the charts the following week.

It should be noted that, as I and others (such as "cassiemay10" over at SongMeanings.net) understand it, Mr. Shaw was writing not necessarily about girls carrying actual guns, but about strong, independent women.  (Women like Sarah Palin, perhaps.)

An interesting trait about the video for this track is that it is all one take; there are no cuts, which is quite different from the frenetic editing seen in most videos that I've ever watched.  See for yourself:


(All copyrights acknowledged.  Presented under Fair Use clause, and this was posted before SOPA, may it die in flames, ever passed.)

While I have never heard this song on the radio in the past 20 years apart from Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber's "Crap From the Past" on KFAI Minneapolis, you can purchase the MP3 right here (full disclosure:  I'll get about a penny if you purchase through this link):



*Note:  most information in "forgotten songs" entries comes from the always-reliable Wikipedia; as such, its veracity may be questionable.

I am resolved

I'm not usually one to make New Year's resolutions.  Really, the most I generally strive to reach when a year begins is to try to write the correct year on all my checks.  (Yes, I still write checks, which may very well make me a relic in 2012.)  I tried actually writing some resolutions down back when I was a child, but they were mostly just habits that I was trying to break.  Such resolutions were generally forgotten by the middle of the month.

Since, thanks to my typically timely posting, it is almost the middle of the month already, there doesn't seem to be any point in writing down any resolutions such as, for example, "I will stop eating junk food every night," particularly since, thanks to our current financial situation, we've already chosen to allocate our money in places other than supporting the junk food industry.

However, I think that a new year is a good time to, perhaps, make a few goals for oneself.  (Really, any time is good for self-improvement, but a new year, like a birthday, gives most people I know a special opportunity for thoughts of how they can live better than they did in the previous year.)  And so I put forward these goals, which are not resolutions and therefore cannot be broken within two days.

• I want to blog more.  (My track record over the fourth quarter of 2011 shows that improvement in this area probably shouldn't be too difficult.)
• I want to spend more time offline.  (This may not seem to jibe with the previous goal, but there is a lot of time that I have spent online in which I was not blogging.  Those who know the real me on Facebook can attest to this.)  My kids want to spend time with their father now, and I owe it to them to give them that time.
• I want to meet Sarah Palin.  (Sorry, I believe that entry belongs in my list of pipe dreams for 2012.)

But my main goal, which is going to receive enough exposition that I am not putting it behind a bullet point, is that I intend to read less comments this year.  Now, while all of my readers are well-reasoned, intelligent people (notwithstanding the amount of spam that gets filtered before reaching some of my older entries), there are some people who appear to do little more than spend their entire day, every day, posting comments on news articles.  And, unfortunately, many of these perpetual commenters are, shall we say, not the most well-informed of people.  And what appears to go hand-in-hand for some of these more ignorant commenters but which also can be found, sadly, even in the more savvy net presences, is a tendency toward rude, boorish behavior toward others with whom these serial commenters disagree.

As an example, simply view comments on any article on Hot Air discussing Sarah Palin.  (Did I mention that I want to meet her?  I did?  Good.  Moving on...)  Now, in this case, many of the people participating in the threads there are well-informed on the issues of the day.  But the rudeness of some people toward anyone who disagrees with them makes reading any comments on that site unpalatable at times.

While we're at it, I'll probably curtail my viewing of C-Span's "Washington Journal" for the same reason.  There are only so many times that I can hear ill-formulated opinions spewed from callers, and I think I'm nearing my limit, at least for the moment.  (This is also why I don't always listen to talk radio once the host starts taking calls, but at least then the host generally will challenge any incorrect statement from the callers, and so the annoyance factor is decreased there, at least a little.)

It's all part of trying to live by one of my favorite writings:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 

(Phillipians 4:8, from the New International Version, copyright 2011 Biblica, courtesy BibleGateway, used under Fair Use guidelines, at least while SOPA hasn't been passed.)

Too often, blog comments, loudmouthed callers, and others are anything but true, noble, etc.  For my spiritual health, I need to move my focus away from them, and put it back where it belongs.  Hopefully that will make for a much better 2012.