What else is new?

Having spent more time lately in the U.S., one thing has become abundantly clear - Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi is the nastiest beverage ever created. If ever there was a product that proved that American ingenuity is dead, it's Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi.

My theory on how Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi was created is that someone was wandering the desert in the Southwest, stumbled across an ancient spittoon, took the ingredients from said spittoon, re-liquefied it, added a tiny amount of carbonation, and then started selling it.

If Rocky 6 was a carbonated beverage, it would be Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi -- all preachy yet hard to understand, stupid and in bad taste.

If you haven't tasted Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi, but would like an idea of what it tastes like, do this - keep a straw in your pocket and wander around outside until you find a pigeon or squirrel that's been dead for, oh, say three months. Stick the straw into the dead animal and suck. Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi tastes like that, except worse. Plus, the taste lingers in your mouth for months. And gradually gets worse until it's like your mouth was invaded by the notoriously rare and deadly Asian Shit Ant.

What gets me is that they had high-paid executives sitting around a table, drinking this dreck and all nodding approvingly, "Oh yes, this is what America wants, a 'light, crisp, refreshing' beverage that tastes like Cheney sputum."

You want to defeat terrorists? Force them to drink Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi. I'm sure it would violate the Geneva Conventions, but they'd immediately tell you anything they knew, then hang themselves. Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi is torture in a 12-oz can.

I'm not an extremist. Really. I don't believe immigration will destroy the U.S. I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job. I don't believe a group of guys hiding in caves will emerge and force us all to live under sharia law. I don't believe that allowing same-sex couples to marry will eventually lead to men marrying the rare and deadly Asian Shit Ant.

But having tasted Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi once, I'm certain that the end of civilization is about three weeks away. Even the irritating gold, white, red, blue and black can should be enough to tell you that.

But hey, don't take my word for it, go ahead and find a way to get a free sample of the stuff (if you pay for it, you'll just encourage the folks at Pepsi to make more). You'll quickly see that I speak the truth: Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi is the worst tasting thing on this, and very likely any other, planet.