Diet Coke Quotes

Behold!" Percy shouted. "The god's chosen beverage. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!

It's truly weird how everyone just thinks they can bring me Diet Coke and everything will be okay. Especially since it's pretty much true.-Lizzie Nichols

He's not here." "Not here like he just popped around the corner to the bodega for a six-pack of Diet Coke and a box of Krispy Kremes, or not here like...

Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?

He was rewarded with a silver-and-red can of soda. He brandished it at the dolphin warriors as if spraying them with bug repellant. "Behold!" Percy shouted. "The god's chosen beverage. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!" The dolphin-men began to panic. They were on the edge of retreat. Percy could feel it.

Whitney smacked Coop's snout while simultaneously pressing herself deeper into the couch. Coop fixed her with an unblinking ice-blue stare, gray-brown fur bristling along his spine. "Tory!" Whitney squealed. "He's going to attack!" "Maybe." I walked into the kitchen and snagged a Diet Coke from the fridge. "Try to protect your throat.

[Eating disorders] are a wonderful tool for helping you reject others before they can reject you. Example: You're at a party. The popular girls are there. You know you can never be as cool as they are, but when one of the pops a potato chip into her mouth or chooses real Coke over Diet, for that moment you are better

It feels like I'm babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.

Diet Coke does not contain nasty chemicals. It contains lovely and delicious carbonation, caffeine, and aspartame. What's unnatural about that?

The god's chosen beverage. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!

Percy stormed over to the magical cooler. No one tried to stop him. He knocked open the lid and rummaged throught the ice. There had to be one. Please. He was rewarded with s silver-and-red can of soda. He brandished it at the dolphin warriors as if spraying them with bug repellent. "Behold!" Percy shouted. "The god's chosen beverage. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!

Asher smiled beatifically, as if he’d been waiting his whole life for someone to ask just that question. “How would you feel about some Mentos and Diet Coke?

In the information age, the barriers just aren’t there,” he said. “The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

For less than the cost of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke, you can buy a loaf of fresh bread and some good cheese or roast beef, which you will enjoy much more.

There is nothing more annoying than having someone tell you that everything would be fine if you were just a better pray-er. Or if you just smiled more, or stopped drinking Diet Coke. I can tell you that “Just cheer up” is almost universally looked at as the most unhelpful depression cure ever.

Rum and Coke, please," she told the bartender. Maybe that was why Liza and Bonnie never had guy trouble: great hair. She looked at Liza, racehorse-thin in purple zippered leather...Okay it wasn't just the hair. If she jammed herself into liza's dress, she'd look like Barney's slut cousin. "Diet Coke," she told the bartender.

She came back with a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke, and handed me the nonvile one.

If someone were crushed to death trying to get a frosty can of Diet Coke, it wouldn't be my fault. I'd tried to raise the issue.

You need to be healthy. You don’t need to be thin. You don’t need to be a certain size or shape or look good in a bikini. You need to be able to run without feeling like you’re going to puke. You need to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. You need to drink half your body weight in ounces of water every single day. You need to stretch and get good sleep and stop medicating every ache and pain. You need to stop filling your body with garbage like Diet Coke and fast food and lattes that are a million and a half calories. You need to take in fuel for you body that hasn't been processed and fuel for you mind that is positive and encouraging. You need to get up off the sofa or out of the bed and move around. Get out of the fog that you have been living in and see your life for what it is.

In the two months I had also dated Justin Fellowes, this guy in my Spanish class, though after three weeks we decided we should "see other people," which in my case was a joke, but it beat hearing him remark on everything I ate. 'I don't know why girls are always on a diet,' he'd say when I ordered a Diet Coke, and 'You should watch your starch intake' when I had a muffin.

It’s not really wine,” he said. “It’s Diet Coke. And if anyone ever serves you brown wine with a foamy head, send it back.

my sex life became sort of like Diet Coke—deceptively sweet minus nutrition.

Tonight, when Frankie sits at the table and innocently knocks over her glass of Diet Coke, Aunt Jayne starts to cry, and the translucent veil of general okayness evaporates to reveal the honest, ugly parts underneath.

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

Nev tossed his pen down. “Fine. Here goes: Ren and Cals lives may be torrid for the young ones in Vail are quite horrid Bine and Cos aren’t too frail Dax and Fey never pale while Ansel and Bryn might get sordid Bryn spit Diet Coke all over the table. Mason and Ansel clapped. I was too dumbfounded to react. This is qhat quiet Nev does in his spare time? “‘Bine’?” Sabine frowned while Cosette mopped up the soda that flowed to their end of the table. “Since when am I ‘Bine’? And we never call Cosette ‘Cos.’” “It’s about cadence,” Nev said. “Sorry. I said it wasn’t very good.” “Why aren’t you and Mason in it?” Ansel asked. “Oh, he has another one about us.” Mason wiggled his eyebrows.

In the information age, the barriers [to entry into programming] just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!

Diet Coke destroys tooth enamel as much as meth and crack cocaine.

I am fairly certain that I was the first Seven Sisters grad to eat duck liver chased with a Diet Coke in the lobby of a federal penitentiary. Then again, you never know.

A Diet Coke?” Kevin seems affronted. “That’s boring. Get a real drink.

He had read a headline about Diet Coke once, which was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.

We’d also left lots of time unscheduled—the long stretches of hours we’d spend at the beach or walking around or just hanging out with no plan beyond maybe getting fountain Diet Cokes. It was Sloane—you usually didn’t need more than that to have the best Wednesday of your life.

I told you, Apollo, the world has many crises. Just this morning, scientists released another study tying soda to hypertension. If they continue to disparage the name of Diet Coke, I will have to smite someone!” He stormed off to plot his revenge on the health industry.

She just fed me cheese and Diet Coke and let me sulk on her couch for a few hours.

During our Texas tour we stopped at a Dallas S&M club and drank warm Diet Cokes as we watched a woman lazily whip a guy. Nothing is more depressing than a tired dominatrix.

Four Diet Cokes, three bags of Cheetos, seven grilled cheeses, and one and a half packages of Oreos later, I had a solid plan.

Mac has a sexy breakfast story.” “Really?” Eyebrows lifted, Parker set the syrup and butter on the table of the breakfast nook. “Tell all.” “It began, and sexy tales often do, when I spilled Diet Coke on my shirt.

The internet reflects us at our eccentric, absurd, trivial best. It shows us as stoned online game-players and people wearing home-made Tron suits. It reveals that we enjoy watching people blend things like an iPhone, and mix 200 litres of Diet Coke with 500 Mentos mints. Laughing babies and sneezing baby panda’s speak to us, despite having nothing to say, and we find all these things hypnotically watchable and briefly hysterical.

Betwixt and between,” I said. “That’s the worst.” “Is that a poem?” Niamh asked. “Darnell is an idiot,” Lara said, pointing a french fry menacingly at Niamh. “Besides, the problem isn’t the city. If he got a job offer there I bet you he’d move in a heartbeat. He’s just intimidated by the thought of following around a strong woman while she chases her career instead of the other way around.” “Preach!” said Niamh, raising her Diet Coke in a toast.

I did not want to spend days on end in a car with someone who made no secret of not liking me, even though he got along with almost everyone else. Something about the two of us was like mixing Diet Coke and Mentos—guaranteed instant eruption

Dionysus probably could have enlightened me, but he'd already checked us off his to-do list. 'I told you, Apollo, the world has many crises. Just this morning, scientists released another study tying soda to hypertension. If they continue to disparage the name of Diet Coke, I will have to smite someone!' He stormed off to plot his revenge on the health industry.

From the head table a familiar voice drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete". I gritted my teeth. 'Percy Jackson . . . sir." Mr D sipped his diet coke. 'Yes. Well, as you young people say these days, whatever

If you ever meet me, you will notice that I am a very simple person. I prefer Diet Coke over merlot. A hamburger over steak au-poivre. If I have done anything with my life it is because... when I really want to accomplish something- I always begin with the end goal in mind. I start with focusing on what I want to happen, then I work my way backwards. If you truly want to, you can make any dream possible. Have faith!

I brought you Diet Coke to compensate,” he said, opening the cooler. “Also, this conversation is boring.” “Right. Sorry.” She took the can he handed her and popped it open. “Really sorry. There’s nothing more boring than talking about food.” “No,” Cal said. “Talking about food is great. Talking about not having food is boring.

I took one sip and literally spit it out. It was the grossest thing I’d ever tasted. I remember once getting a Diet Coke at a Subway without realizing that the fountain machine didn’t have enough Diet Coke syrup. That’s exactly what this fancy place’s “sparkling” water tasted like. “Something’s wrong with that water,” I protested. The

Mixing alcohol with Diet Coke will get you drunker than if you mix it with regular Coke.

I am fairly certain that I was the first Seven Sisters grad to eat duck liver chased with a Diet Coke in the lobby of a federal penitentiary.

Chris takes a swig of Diet Coke. He sometimes worries he is addicted to it. He had read a headline about Diet Coke once, which was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.

The problem was that Norvaleen had been in denial and also in McDonald's, eating the cheeseburger special with fries. Evidently, the Diet Coke had not evened out the calories. What a shock.

The crew of the Argo II assembled at the rail and cut the grappling lines. Piper brought out her new horn of plenty and, on Percy’s direction, willed it to spew Diet Coke, which came out with the strength of a fire hose, dousing the enemy deck. Percy thought it would take hours, but the ship sank remarkably fast, filling with Diet Coke and seawater. “Dionysus,” Percy called, holding up Chrysaor’s golden mask. “Or Bacchus—whatever. You made this victory possible, even if you weren’t here. Your enemies trembled at your name…or your Diet Coke, or something. So, yeah, thank you.” The words were hard to get out, but Percy managed not to gag. “We give this ship to you as tribute. We hope you like it.” “Six million in gold,” Leo muttered. “He’d better like it.

The boy that I first saw that day at the swimming pool had turned into an honorable and kind man. He opened doors for me. He bought me Diet Coke and Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey when I had a bad day.

You’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. It’s staggering how you jump straight the hell into the heart of a matter. I’m goosebumps all over… By God, you inspire me. You inflame me, Bessie. You know what you’ve done? Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve given this whole goddam issue a fresh, new, Biblical slant. I wrote four papers in college on the Crucifixion—five, really—and every one of them worried me half crazy because I thought something was missing. Now I know what it was. Now it’s clear to me. I see Christ in an entirely different light. His unhealthy fanaticism. His rudeness to those nice, sane, conservative, tax-paying Pharisees. Oh, this is exciting! In your simple, straightforward bigoted way, Bessie, you’ve sounded the missing keynote of the whole New Testament. Improper diet. Christ lived on cheeseburgers and Cokes. For all we know he probably fed the mult—

Reminders and recipes were pinned to the kitchen wall, including Death's instructions on how to recreate the Big Bang: 1 Bottle of Diet Coke 1 Packet of Mentos 1 Rubber Band 1 Particle Accelerator 1 Excitable Puppy

Sometimes I wish I could tell my younger self that. That it didn't matter. That the body I had then carried me up hills at Cross Country meets and through the water during the painful last lap at a swim meet, and that it should be celebrated instead of being picked away at and filled with hunger pangs. I should have gotten both the popcorn and the box of candy at the movies that night, instead of slipping away at a Diet Coke from the concession stand.

When he strolled into the kitchen with Samantha, he couldn't help grinning at the adoring look on Hans's face. "Hans, a cup of coffee and a Diet Coke, please." "Of course. But I have found a new cafe mocha you might like, Miss Sam. Much less coffee aftertaste. Would you care to try it?" "I trust you, Hans," she replied, smiling at the chef. "Splendid. And might I suggest omelets for breakfast?" "Sounds good. Rick?" He nodded, wondering just when he'd lost control of his household. "That's fine.

Time is weird. That much is obvious. Sometimes I think everything happens at once, which is anything but obvious and even weirder. I feel sorry for people who brag about 'living in the moment'; they're like people who come into the cinema after the film has started or people who drink Diet Coke—they're missing out on the best part. I think time is like the dial on a radio. Most people like to settle on a station with a clear signal and no interference. But that doesn't mean you can't listen to two or even three stations at the same time; it doesn't mean synchrony is impossible. Until quite recently, people believed it was impossible for a universe to fit inside two atoms, but it fits. Why dismiss the idea that on time's radio you can listen to the entire history of humanity simultaneously?

The dining table was covered with platters of food: everything and pumpernickel bagels, everything minibagels, everything flagels, bialys, cream cheese, scallion cream cheese, salmon spread, tofu spread, smoked and pickled fish, pitch-black brownies with white chocolate swirls like square universes, blondies, rugelach, out-of-season hamantaschen (strawberry, prune, and poppy seed), and “salads”—Jews apply the word salad to anything that can’t be held in one’s hand: cucumber salad, whitefish and tuna and baked salmon salad, lentil salad, pasta salad, quinoa salad. And there was purple soda, and black coffee, and Diet Coke, and black tea, and enough seltzer to float an aircraft carrier, and Kedem grape juice—a liquid more Jewish than Jewish blood. And there were pickles, a few kinds. Capers don’t belong in any food, but the capers that every spoon had tried to avoid had found their way into foods in which they really didn’t belong, like someone’s half-empty half-decaf. And at the center of the table, impossibly dense kugels bent light and time around them. It was too much food by a factor of ten. But it had to be.

I always imagined J.K. Rowling putting quill to a paper in a remote castle overlooking a spacious Scottish estate. Currently as I write this I am in my Star Wars/Marvel themed guest room,dressed in my Grumpy cat pajamas, and looking at dozens of half empty Diet Coke cans scattered across my desk.

In the cafeteria line I took a knife and fork. Ivan handed me another knife and another fork. I stared at the two knives and two forks. At the salad bar, Ivan put lettuce and tomatoes in a bowl and topped them with dressing. I also put some things in a bowl but at the end it wasn’t a salad, it was just a lot of random things in a bowl. At the soda fountain, Diet Coke seethed over my wrist. We found two empty seats at the opposite end of a table from four football players. The football players’ trays resembled futuristic cities, with glasses of milk and Gatorade shooting out like white and fluorescent skyscrapers.

The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

Whatever standard you’ve set for yourself is where you’ll end up . . . unless you fight through your instinct and change your pattern. That’s how I changed my own patterns and behaviors—how I established the rule in my life that I would no longer break a promise to myself no matter how small it was. It all began with Diet Coke.

I slipped out of the trauma bay just as the family was brought in to view the body. Then I remembered: my Diet Coke, my ice cream sandwich…and the sweltering heat of the trauma bay. With one of the ER residents covering for me, I slipped back in, ghostlike, to save the ice cream sandwich in front of the corpse of the son I could not.

At the nurses’ station the night-shift RNs cluster on chairs, looking like birds wanting to shove their tired heads under a free wing. Their lined faces and heavy-lidded eyes show how hard it is to stay awake and alert for an entire night. I don’t work a lot of nights, but when I do I feel it. I hit a wall at 2:00 a.m., then again at 4:00. The hospital’s strong tea, bad coffee, Diet Coke from the vending machine—they all help, but nothing non-pharmaceutical will really make me feel awake for the entire night, and I’m not going down the pharmacologic road. The day after, even if I sleep all morning and afternoon, it feels as though I’m seeing the world through gauze.

The French don't snack. They will tear off the endo of a fres baguette (which, if it's warm, it's practically impossible to resist) and eat it as they leave the boulangerie. And that's usually all you will see being consumed on the street. Compare that with the public eating and drinking that goes on in America: pizza, hot dogs, nachos, tacos, heroes, potato chips, sandwiches, jerricans of coffee, half-gallon buckets of Coke (Diet, of cours) and heaven knows what else being demolished on the hoof, often on the way to the aerobic class.

You like me,” I say slowly with a smile. He shakes his head, fingers over his mouth to hide a growing smile. “I put a gym in my house for you and it takes stocking Diet Coke for you to realize I like you?” I press my lips together. “But do you like me? Like really like me, Thayer?” I reach over, rubbing his scruffy chin between my fingers. The light changes and he turns left. “Yeah, Sunshine, I like really like you.

Are you kidnapping me?" He side-eyes me and laughs. "By george, I think she's got it."  "Fine," I say. "But could you just make sure I have my own bed wherever you're taking me? I really need to sleep. Oh, and in six weeks, this cast has to come off. And I get hostile when I don't get my daily diet coke."  "You're awfully demanding for someone who's just been taken hostage."  "You're the moron who thought I'd make a good prisoner.

By the time we returned to the hotel room, we were laughing again. Marlboro Man was teasing me about how many clothes I’d brought on the honeymoon, and I’d punched him in the arm; he, in turn, had trapped me in the corner of the elevator and tickled me, and I’d threatened to wet my pants if he didn’t stop. And I wasn’t kidding; I’d had a glass of wine at dinner, as well as two Diet Cokes. Tickling me in an elevator wouldn’t be a good idea for very long.

Sugar substitutes aren’t any better. Many people (including me when I was overweight) turn to artificial sugars to quell their cravings without packing on the pounds. Back then I would have happily performed heart surgery with a Diet Coke in my hand if only I could have found a way to sterilize it! But ironically, although these products are supposed to aid in weight loss, they do just the opposite. That’s because products such as sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, and other nonnutritive artificial sweeteners kill your gut buddies and allow the bad bugs to multiply. Believe it or not, a Duke University study28 showed that a single Splenda packet kills 50 percent of normal intestinal flora! It’s sad but true: if you eat too much of anything sweet, your gut buddies will starve to death, and your bad bugs will live long and prosper—and multiply. Even fructose, the sugar in fruit, has been shown to be a mitochrondrial poison! There goes the neighborhood.

In 1978, the typical teenage boy in the United States drank about seven ounces of soda every day; today he drinks nearly three times that amount, deriving 9 percent of his daily caloric intake from soft drinks. Soda consumption among teenaged girls has doubled within the same period, reaching an average of twelve ounces a day. A significant number of teenage boys are now drinking five or more cans of soda every day. Each can contains the equivalent of about ten teaspoons of sugar. Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Dr Pepper also contain caffeine. These sodas provide empty calories and have replaced far more nutritious beverages in the American diet. Excessive soda consumption in childhood can lead to calcium deficiencies and a greater likelihood of bone fractures. Twenty years ago, teenage boys in the United States drank twice as much milk as soda; now they drink twice as much soda as milk. Soft-drink consumption has also become commonplace among American toddlers. About one-fifth of the nation’s one- and two-year-olds now drink soda.

So you get fancily dressed and sometimes professionally made up. A driver in a town car picks you up, which makes you feel weird and apologetic. An upbeat public relations person you don’t know leads you onto a red carpet where you’re shouted at to “look here!” and “here” at a hundred strangers with flashbulbs for faces. And then, after those brief moments of manufactured glamour, you find yourself in a regular old creaky movie theater seat, sipping Diet Coke from a sweaty plastic cup and salting your fingers with warm popcorn. Lights dim. Mandated enthusiasm begins.

I found out that telling researchers "This is where your methods work very well" is vastly better than telling them "This is what you guys don't know." So when I presented to what was until then the most hostile crowd in the world, members of the American Statistical Association, a map of the four quadrants, and told them: your knowledge works beautifully in these three quadrants, but beware the fourth one, as this is where the Black Swans breed, I received instant approval, support, offers of permanent friendship, refreshments (Diet Coke), invitations to come present at their sessions, even hugs.

I wanted that Diet Coke. But the lines to order made no sense. Most people were huddled in random patterns, gazing up at the menu boards, eyes glazed over, touching their chins, pointing, nodding. “Are you in line?” I kept asking them. Nobody would answer me. Finally I just approached a young black boy in a visor behind the counter. I ordered my Diet Coke. “What size?” he asked me. He pulled out four cups in ascending order of size. The largest size stood about a foot high off the counter. “I’ll take that one,” I said. This felt like a great occasion. I can’t explain it. I felt immediately endowed with great power. I plunked my straw in and sucked.

In those early months of separation, my friends became my family. Or perhaps it was truer to say they always had been. I’d often been a creature turned like a compass needle toward the intoxication of falling in love. Even in sobriety. Especially in sobriety. But the weave of my everyday life had always been girls and women: bean stews and freeway commutes with my mother; a tight crew of girlfriends in high school, when I felt utterly invisible to the brash, cackling boys leaning against their SUVs in the parking lot; a college best friend with whom I stayed up until dawn drinking Diet Coke and arguing about God. Romance was what I’d always felt most consumed by, but my relationships with women were the ones I’d trusted more.

But I dealt with it. I handled it the same way I handled every wave of dread. I stayed at work until midnight on Friday and went in at seven a.m. on Sunday. I went to work on Christmas and on New Year’s Day. I sometimes worked with tears running down my cheeks, blurring the computer screen. I downed Diet Coke after Diet Coke and ran down to the Korean deli for kimbap and ate two rolls over the course of a day, and then I worked some more. I checked my email and cut my tape or logged my music, and then I texted everyone I knew asking where the next party was. I told myself that everything was fine, that my life was incredible and I wasn’t sad and I’d just send more emails and swig whiskey in order to fall asleep at two a.m. every night, empty bottles lining the foot of my bed.

You need to be healthy. You don’t need to be thin. You don’t need to be a certain size or shape or look good in a bikini. You need to be able to run without feeling like you’re going to puke. You need to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. You need to drink half your body weight in ounces of water every single day. You need to stretch and get good sleep and stop medicating every ache and pain. You need to stop filling your body with garbage like Diet Coke and fast food and lattes that are a million and a half calories. You need to take in fuel for your body that hasn’t been processed and fuel for your mind that is positive and encouraging. You need to get up off the sofa or out of the bed and move around. Get out of the fog that you have been living in and see your life for what it is.

The key here is food choice while fasting. If you eat a diet high in protein and healthy fat during times of nonfasting, your sex drive will likely increase. If your diet has a deficit of healthy protein and fats—or if it is, in fact, that Coke and Doritos diet we discussed before—you may still encounter issues in the bedroom. As I often say, intermittent fasting will benefit you regardless of how you eat—but there are limits to what it can do.

b. The imagined order shapes our desires. Most people do not wish to accept that the order governing their lives is imaginary, but in fact every person is born into a pre-existing imagined order, and his or her desires are shaped from birth by its dominant myths. Our personal desires thereby become the imagined order’s most important defences. For instance, the most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘Follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan, ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.

And now here I was in McDonald's again for the first time since my earlier fracas. I vowed to behave myself, but McDonald's is just too much for me. I ordered a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke. 'Do you want fries with that?' the young man serving me asked. I hesitated for a moment, and in a pained but patient tone said: 'No. That's why I didn't ask for fries, you see.' 'We're just told to ask like,' he said. 'When I want fries, generally I say something like, "I would like some fries, too, please." That's the system I use.' 'We're just told to ask like,' he repeated. 'Do you need to know the other things I don't want? It is quite a long list. In fact, it is everything you serve except for the two things I asked for.' 'We're just told to ask like,' he repeated yet again, but in a darker voice, and deposited my two items on a tray and urged me, without the least hint of sincerity, to have a nice day. I realized that I probably wasn't quite ready for McDonald's yet.

Some people prescribe God for depression or self-harm, and I think that can be really helpful for some people who aren't me. Some claim that depression can be "prayed away" or is caused when you don't have enough God in your life. I tried God once but it didn't work well so I cut the dose by a third and just had "Go." Go where? I asked. No one answered. Probably because I didn't have enough God in my life. Someone else told me that capitulating to my depression made me seem ungrateful because Jesus died for that I wouldn't have to suffer, but frankly Jesus seemed to have more than his fair share of bullshit in his life too. That guy got nailed to death. I bet people walking past Jesus were like, "Wow. That guy should have had more God in his life." Or maybe they just sent him those e-mails that say, "Let Go and Let God," or "God listens to knee-mail." Probably not though because e-mail wasn't popular yet, but I think that's for the best because there is nothing more annoying than having someone tell you that everything would be fine if you were just a better pray-er. Or if you just smiled more, or stopped drinking Diet Coke.

Back in bed I listen to every sound. The plastic tarp over the table on the balcony crunching in the cold wind. the two short clicks in the walls before the heat comes on with a low whoosh. I hear a constant base hum all around, the nervous system of the building, carrying electricity and gas and phone conversations to all our respective little boxes. I listen to it all, the constant, the rhythmic, and the random. It's hard to measure the night by sound, but it can be done. I know that when the traffic noise is quietest, it's about 4:30 in the morning. I know that when the 'Times' hits the door, it's around 5. Now the clock says it's morning, 5:45, but the November sky still says midnight. I hear the elevator ding twenty yards down the hall outside our door. Seven seconds later, I hear his keys in our lock, then his heavy backpack hitting the floor. I hear the refrigerator door open, the unsealing vacuum wheezing as the cold inside air meets the dry heat in the apartment. The cupboard door. A glass. The crescendoing fizz of a new two-liter Diet Coke bottle opening. It's a one-sided conversation with no one actually talking. I lie in the dark, close my eyes, and try not to listen to his movements around apartment. these are the sounds of our life together before it got so messy. I want to say something back. Anything, anything that sounds like things sounded last summer. Even just to myself. Just something out loud. The inside of my eyelids turn pink. My door has been opened and the light from the hallway shines through them. I won't open them. There is no noise. Like an eclipse, the world behind my closed eyes goes dark again. For just one second, before I feel a kiss on my right eye. I keep them closed. A kiss on the left one. I open them. Jack looks down at me and closes his eyes. He leans forward and puts his forehead on my chest and goes limp. ''Blues Clues' is on,' he says softly into my tee shirt. His muffled voice vibrating only a half inch away from my heart.

We had read about snorting chocolate and talked about it on the show, and someone in Canada, where it’s being sold, sent us some. It had fancy packaging and a little spring-loaded double nasal catapult. Goudeau cocked it and put two little coke-spoons full of their fancy chocolate-and-spice mixture in it, one on each side, and I held it under my nose, breathed in, and hit the button. We had checked with CrayRay, and he said it wouldn’t affect the diet, but it probably wasn’t healthy. I love chocolate, and I got a big blast of it up my nose and down into my lungs. I kinda wanted to love it. The idea that I’d be snorting chocolate in my office while I was writing this appealed to me. It was a little fun, but really no more fun than walking into a Godiva store at a mall. It was the good smell of chocolate, and that was about it. We all tried it and enjoyed it a little, and then the headaches hit and we were done. I got to the show that night and was light-headed from not eating, and my throat and voice were fucked-up from snorting chocolate. I’m an idiot. Matt

Also, he is alleged to drink upward of twelve Diet Cokes a day and sleep very little. Does he suffer from a substance- (in this case caffeine-) induced sleep disorder? He has a horrible diet and does not exercise, which may contribute to or exacerbate his other possible disorders.

If Linda McCartney sausage rolls came in boxes of forty-eight I would be doing batch bakes of those and then smashing them down with seven cans of Diet Coke. That’s my other issue – Diet Coke.

I quickly placed the coke back down on the table and glanced at the others. “Did someone want diet coke?” I asked, wondering whose drink I’d ended up with by accident. As much as I argued against Geraldine getting our food and drinks all the time, she insisted on doing it and never forgot our preferences so I doubted she would have made that mistake. Before anyone could respond, Geraldine and Angelica burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, drawing our attention away from Diego’s display of self pity. “I g-g-got you diet!” she cried, barely able to force the words out between her laughter. “What?” I asked in confusion. “The mayo in your sandwich was half fat too!” Angelica added, clinging to Geraldine as she wiped tears from beneath her eyes. “Why?” I asked in confusion. “H- h -hell week!” Geraldine spluttered through her laughter, her eyes sparkling with amusement. My lips parted and I threw an extra dose of false outrage into my expression in response to the ridiculous prank, placing a hand over my heart. “How could you, Geraldine?” I gasped. “I thought we were friends!” Her laughter turned to howling and it was actually kinda addictive, forcing a laugh from me as I exchanged an amused look with Darcy. (tory)

(Or Coke Zero, which he says tastes much better than diet,

Dionysus sat down and crossed his legs. He snapped his fingers and a satyr hurried forward with a plate of cheese and crackers and a Diet Coke.

Naturally, potables stronger than Diet Coke are the responsibility of the individual. As always, cocktail hour begins at sunrise.

There was more chemistry between them than a Mentos and a Diet Coke.

Whose idea was it to go vegan for six months, Michael? Not me! But I did it. I even stopped drinking Diet Coke because you told me to.’ ‘Diet Coke is poison,’ he snapped. ‘Poisonous and delicious,’ I countered.

the bottler kept her signed and working even after 1992, when Coke strategists dropped celebrities from the ad campaigns, keeping only Selena, Elton John for Diet Coke, and Christopher Cross for Sprite.

So when I presented to what was until then the most hostile crowd in the world, members of the American Statistical Association, a map of the four quadrants, and told them: your knowledge works beautifully in these three quadrants, but beware of the fourth one, as this is where the Black Swans breed, I received instant approval, support, offers of permanent friendship, refreshments (Diet Coke), invitations to come present at their sessions, even hugs.

I said I had two things to tell you. Now, scientifically, that's how it breaks down. But we're complex animals, and we're constantly changing. Things I thought ten years ago seem like absolute bullshit now. So there's no scientific formula to predict how things are going to work out with a marriage, because a marriage in year one is completely different from the same marriage ten years later. So when you're dealing with something incredibly unpredictable, like human beings, numbers and formulas don't mean shit. The best you can do is take all the information you have and, scientifically speaking, do what?" he asked, staring at me, awaiting an answer. "Uh . . . I don't know," I said, unsure if this was a rhetorical question. "I should buy you a fucking sign that says 'I don't know' to save you time. The best you can do is make an educated guess, son. "So I'll tell you what I did right before I asked your mother to marry me. I took a day and I sat and I thought about all the things I had learned about myself, and about women, up to that point in my life. Just sat and thought. I may have smoked marijuana as well. Anyway, at the end of the day, I took stock of everything I'd gone through in my head, and I asked myself if I still wanted to propose to your mother. And I did. So that's what I humbly suggest you do, unless you think you're somehow smarter than I am, which, considering you share my genetics, is unlikely," he said, laughing as he sat back and took a big sip of Diet Coke.

Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!” The dolphin-men began to panic.

Chris takes a swig of Diet Coke. He sometimes worries he is addicted to it. He had once read a headline about Diet Coke that was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.

I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.

A Diet Coke?” Kevin seems affronted. “That’s boring. Get a real drink.” I never drink alcohol when I’m on a first date with a man I’ve met on Cynch. I don’t want to impair my judgment in any way. “Diet Coke is a real drink.” “No, it’s not.” “Well, it’s a liquid.” I glare at him across the sticky wooden table. “So I would call it a drink.” Kevin rolls his eyes at the waitress. “Fine, I will have a Corona and she will have a Diet Coke.” Then he winks at the waitress and mouths the word Sorry.

Keep in mind that I have a lot of experience serving Diet Coke. You might find it interesting to learn that it’s the most annoying beverage a flight attendant can pour for a passenger in flight, because in the time it takes us to fill one cup, we could have served an entire row of passengers. For some reason the fizz at 35,000 feet doesn’t go down as quickly as it does for other sodas, so flight attendants end up standing in the aisle just waiting to pour a little more . . . and a little more . . . and a little more . . . until passengers sitting nearby become impatient and begin shouting out drink orders I can never remember.

It would be my first official reintroduction to the college community since I’d switched from regular to Diet Coke.

Instead, we spent our downtime prodding at lifeless characters and wondering how long a human body could subsist on a diet of ramen and Coke before liver function ceased entirely.

put Mentos in his Spanish teacher’s Diet Coke.