So last summer I tried some of Coca-Cola's Atkins inspired C2. It claimed "Half the Carbs, Half the Calories..." The ellipse there denotes that there was more to the slogan, but the rest of the slogan was subjective. Half the carbs and calories is a fact. It says so on the USDA mandated nutrition label. The rest of the slogan was "& All the Great Taste." That is opinion, specifically, a marketing opinion. I found that there was only Half the Great Taste. Surely there must be a reason for all these halves. There was. C2 tasted like it was a mixture of half Coke and half Diet Coke. Which makes sense when you look at the labels of all three. Coke has 162 calories and 40.5 g of Carbs per 8 fl. oz., while Diet Coke has 2 calories and .2 g of Carbs per 8 fl. oz. Then there's C2, which has 68 calories and 18 g of Carbs. Yep, a little less than, but basically half and half. Which is why it tasted so gross. It was like back in college and I wanted a soda, but I only had so much soda left, so I topped of the glass with diet. Ugh. Disgusting. And this is from a guy who's eaten cereal with Sprite. So enter the new contender. This Summer's fad. Coke Zero. I had me some Coke Zero a couple of days ago. And let me tell you what it was pretty tasty... considering that it's only Diet Coke with a fancy new label. No really. Go try some. It tastes like goddamn Diet Coke. It doesn't taste like Coke. It tastes as much like Coke as Diet Coke does which is not at all. If a horse was standing next to two men in a horse costume, from far far far away it might look like two horses, but up close you'll realize that it's just a horse and two jackasses. Yeah, so now the horse has another pair of guys in a horse costume on his other side. And he's all confused, because those other two horses are claiming to be different, but he can tell they're the same. That's Coke Zero. Somehow they managed to squeeze out the last two calories from Diet Coke, and, remarkably enough, it doesn't taste any different. All of those singing neo-hippies on the rooftop, those hipster, emo, chill kids tricked me. I was promised Coke and I chugged down a bottle of Aspartame. That's not Coke. That's deception.