LAST WORD
                               By Parker Bennet

"Hate Cola, the cola you hate to love, has twice the sugar, five times the 
carbonation, and thirty times the caffeine of regular cola."

        It happened sometime in the seventies. Maybe it was the UFO's. Or a 
communist plot. No one is sure, but somehow our favorite products began to 
undergo subtle, hideous changes. They got lighter, leaner, lower in alcohol, 
lower in calories. Some got decaffeinated.
        The sugar, the sodium, the cholesterol-all the substances that made 
our favorite products, well, our favourites-were removed, reduced, or 
replaced. 
        But now, thanks to Rambo and men like him, America has come to its 
senses. We're not going to take it any more. Wimpy products are out. Americans 
are demanding newer, gutsier, "heavier" products, and manufacturers have 
mobilized their corporate research labs to satisfy this demand.
        A sampling of some of the newer products we can look forward to:

HATE COLA. Although the cola wars have subsided, the appearance of Hate will 
set off a new round of battles because of its special formula and its unique 
sales campaign. "You don't need caffeine, but you're goddamn well gonna get 
it. Introducing Hate, the cola you hate to love."
        It has twice the sugar, five times the carbonation, and 30 times the 
caffeine of regular cola. Let's face it: Your body needs the caffeine; you 
enjoy burping; and a cola just isn't a cola unless it has enough processed 
sugar to frost a wedding cake.

DENSE BEER. The long national nightmare is over. Real beer is back. The light 
beers and low-alcohol imposters are now used chiefly to water the house 
plants. Americans everywhere are discovering that Beer Is Good Food.
        And so there will be Dense beer. Great taste, more filling. It's 
everything you've always wanted in a beer...and then some. Dense beer is made 
with 30 percent pure grain alcohol-to get you drunker faster-and plenty of 
real beer sediment, giving you 42 times the calories of regular beer. Best of 
all, Dense beer will really fill you up because it is brewed with heavy water 
piped directly to the brewery from Two Rivers nuclear-power plant. 

SCOTCH COOLERS. Like its wimpy counterpart, the soon-to-be extinct wine 
cooler, the scotch cooler is a refreshing, lightly carbonated alcoholic 
beverage. But it is not only scotch and soda, it is scotch and only a little 
soda in a convenient 12-ounce bottle with a handy twist-off cap. This is just 
the beginning of a new line of products. Start looking for: bourbon coolers, 
boilermaker coolers, and double martini coolers in handy six-packs.

RECAFFEINATED COFFEE. If you love the taste of decaffeinated coffee but miss 
the caffeine, this is the coffee for you. Through a costly and time-consuming 
process, the caffeine is first removed from the beans for that light, 
decaffeinated flavor. Later, while the beans are being ground, an even 
costlier and more complicated process mixes in nuggets of pure caffeine. Sure, 
it costs a whole lot more, but with that great taste and at least twice the 
zip of regular coffee, it will be worth it.

SUGAROOS. Is it a cereal? Is it a candy? It's hard to tell when you bite into 
these delicious, crunchy-sweet rings of sugar-frosted sugar. People can't seem 
to get enough sugar, which will enjoy a huge surge in popularity when 
NutraSweet is banned by an act of Congress.
        Sugaroos are the answer. They're made with the golden goodness of 
glucose, and they're fortified with 12 essential sweeteners. Any time is great 
for Sugaroos, the first presweetened cereal that is postsweetened, too.

GRANOLA-FREE CANDY. For the past decade granola has insidiously crept into the 
candy aisle, multiplying and mutating until it has even started to resemble 
candy - disguising itself with peanut butter, chocolate chips, even 
marshmallows. Now the candy industry is fighting back. Candy bars are proudly 
displaying the GRANOLA FREE seal on their wrappers. Let's hope they win the 
fight and that future generations will never have to experience the horrors of 
granola. 

WIDTH-WATCHERS FROZEN DINNERS. These may not look like much at first, but 
these babies relly pack a punch. Because of the latest breakthroughs in food-
concentrate technology, each Width-Watchers frozen dinner has all the calories 
of an eight-course meal and twice the minimum daily requirements of 
carbohydrates and cholesterol. Plenty of salt, too.
        Take the Meat and Potatoes Special, for example. This is no sissy 
entr‚e but a full-blown, gut-wrenching feast. It comes with red meat 
(artificially colored with red dye numbers one and two), mashed potato helper, 
and four different desserts (none made with either natural substances or a 
fleck of granola). The wonders of food technology will soon be producing other 
heavy dinners: Mean Cuisine, Massive Menu, the Angry Man's Dinner, and the 
Burgeoning Gourmet.

LEAD-SPREE GASOLINE. If God had meant for gasoline to be unleaded, he wouldn't 
have created the V-8 engine. Furthermore, with the return of the American 
muscle cars-the Corvette, the Mustang GT, the V-12 Chevette-regular gas, even 
premium, just doesn't make it. That's why fuel technology has produced new 
lead spree: dangerous gas for dangerous cars. This high-lead fuel boosts the 
octane, reduces engine knock, and the fumes alone are enough to shield you 
from radiation in the event of a nuclear blast.
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Parker Bennett is a "heavy" freelance writer from Chicago, who has twice the 
rejection slips of our regular contributors.

This article appeared on page 158 of OMNI magazine between February and June 
of 1986.