Tonic Water

Ok, so I didn’t actually have plain tonic water. The secret is out. My family does drink a lot of flavored tonic water though, so I made myself a fizzy pomegranate coffee. I pride myself on my resourcefulness. At first glance, it looked like soda with foam on top. It also smelled overwhelmingly like pomegranate. Once again, my senses were all confused. I had to try it.
 
It was just really awful. It was so bad it was actually interesting how bad it was. I kept drinking it just to confirm that it tasted as bad as I thought. After all, I didn’t want to be dishonest. I wish I had had the opportunity to try it with plain tonic water, because I can almost see the genius behind this drink. However, my pomegranate experience was very poor.
 
Rating: 2/10
Did I finish? Yes, but I will never be able to explain why.

Coconut Oil

When researching items to put into my coffee, this one caught my attention. I knew I probably wouldn’t like it, but I also knew it had to be done. I went into this willing to sacrifice myself for knowledge. Once again, I hit a speedbump with this trial. The only coconut oil I had was from a spray can. Whether this made a difference, I will never know, but I wasn’t going to let it slow me down
 
The smell of coconut was very strong, but the taste was more or less the same. There was a hint of coconut, of course, but nothing really threw me off on this one. If you’re a fan of coconuts, I would advise you to try this one. It couldn’t hurt…I hope.
 
Rating: 6/10
Did I finish? Yes.

Oatmeal

Out of everything, I think was most excited to try this. I am a lifelong fan of oats, coffee, and efficiency while eating breakfast. This was a match made in heaven. For this one, I added just enough oats so that I could see them below the surface of the coffee and allowed them to sit for a few minutes before eating.
 
Everyone has a moment in their life where they say to themselves, “The future is now.” This was my moment. The oats absorbed the hot coffee and I found myself eating oatmeal and coffee at the same time. If I could dedicate my entire mission to this one dish, I might have microwaved the mug and added some brown sugar. Unfortunately, I had to move on, but this one was truly one for the books.
 
Rating: 10/10
Did I finish? Enthusiastically, yes.

Egg

By this point, I was extremely caffeinated. I needed to step my game up, swing for the fences. I read about adding an egg to coffee once on the internet. Like salt, I was repulsed and vowed to never do this. Once again, here I am.
 
For this one, I actually looked up some video tutorials. Something about adding a full raw egg to coffee did not seem right to me, and I figured it must be unsafe. Unfortunately, you really are supposed to add the whole egg. Many people added coconut oil along with it (see above), but a true scientific experiment must be controlled. I added an entire egg into my cup of coffee and stirred well. I drank.
 
I my humble opinion, don’t do this. I don’t see why anyone would. I won’t go into too much detail because I’d rather not think about it. All I will say is I dumped it down the drain because I am not a fan of slimy coffee. This is not for the faint of heart. You have been warned.
 
Rating: 0/10
Did I finish? Absolutely not.
 
I went into this with an open mind, but now I have had far too much coffee and one too many raw eggs. I learned a lot of valuable information though, some good, some bad. All I can hope is that my sacrifice was to the benefit of the coffee drinking public, and that everyone found a new way to spice up their morning cup, for better or for worse.

With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story coming out this week, it makes sense to take a moment to appreciate everything that has gone into the series and appreciate how much it as a saga has evolved in the last 40 years.
In 1977, A New Hope (at the time just called Star Wars) premiered in theaters yet only made a mere $2 million in its opening weekend, but redeemed itself with enormous popularity and raked in about $300 million in its entire run.
After taking the film industry by storm with its fantastic production and special effects, many of which never used before, Lucasfilm teamed up with CBS to produce a 90 TV special, the Star Wars Holiday Special, that was so universally hated that everyone involved in the production agreed to pretend that it never existed (I have a copy of it, and I do agree that it is terrible).
Empire Strikes Back, the second installment of the franchise (now the fifth… thanks prequels) became infamous for its well-choreographed fight scenes, iconic lines, and quite possibly the biggest twist in cinema history.
Up next was Return of the Jedi, which was originally called Revenge of the Jedi but was later changed for marketing purposes.  In the epic conclusion to the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker faces his demons, Han Solo gets the girl, the robots continue to be robots, and everyone lives happily ever after… until Force Awakens, but we’ll get to that.
The Phantom Menace was the first of the prequel trilogy and an all-around cinematic disappointment.  It took the bar that the originals set so high and threw it on the floor, cluttering what could be a fantastic story with way too much politics and exposition and not enough nearly enough actual Star Wars.  I like to pretend that the movie was never made, and chose not to watch it when marathoning the series.
I have just as many gripes about Episode II: Attack of the Clones, but it has many more redeeming factors that Phantom doesn’t possess.  The story is so wonderfully thought out that it could easily have been one of the best movies in the series, except the execution, acting, and animation fall vary flat.  It tells a good story, though: it begins to explain the rise of the Empire as we know it in IV through VI.
Revenge of the Sith is easily the darkest and grittiest of all of the Star Wars movies, and in my opinion the best prequel.  It explores the story of Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, and his fall to the dark side, giving some background and motivation to the all-powerful sith lord we all know and love.  There’s action, a fantastic story, and it is so beautiful and well executed that it feel like the epic that Lucas always intended on creating.
Rogue One happens here, between III and IV chronologically.  It’s the story of how the rebels acquired the plans for the infamous Death Star, but as it isn’t out yet I can only speculate how it’s going to stack up to the competition.  I’m excited, to say the least.
 
The Force Awakens, Episode VII, released December of 2016 and it met and exceeded every single expectation I had for it.  Was it basically the same plot as A New Hope?  Yes.  Do I care? No.  It was amazing.  The cast was expertly picked, the cameos from the old cast were wonderful to see, and it took everything that once (and still) filled my young self with joy and brought me back to the first time I ever saw Star Wars.  There’s an experience you get from watching a new movie that you will never get from watching an old one, an inexplicable joy that runs through your veins, and I wish I could capture that feeling and give it justice.  Force Awakens gave me this feeling.
Let’s not forget, too, the dozens of TV shows, video games, books, comics, and merchandise that Star Wars was responsible for bringing into the world.  One of my favorite spinoffs was a multi-part movie that ran on Cartoon Network called Star Wars Clone Wars (not the similarly named animated TV show), which documented the events that occur between Episodes II and III.  While the Clone Wars animated series accomplishes this same thing, it does things with the story I don’t like.  I makes Anakin Skywalker “responsible” and “adult, ” two things that he was never described in the movies as being, as well as giving him an incredibly whiney apprentice whose sole purpose in the story is to provide conflict.  Rebels, another spinoff on the Disney Channel, occurs somewhere around the time of Rogue One and focuses on a group of kids who decide to join the rebellion.  I haven’t seen it so I can’t say much about it, but from what I have heard is that it is very, very targeted towards children, and I don’t blame them.
Star Wars was a cash cow for Fox and will continue to be for Disney, with so much merchandise being produced.  Legos are possibly the most recognizable, but there are also products by Hasbro, like action figures and toy lightsabers, shoes manufactured by Vans, as well as dozens of dozens of generic items that use the Star Wars name.
All in all, I am very passionate about Star Wars.  I grew up watching the originals time after time.  I bought them on VHS because they looked cool (I don’t even have a VCR).  I made a lightsaber in my shop class.  I had almost every single Lego set when I still played with Legos.  Everything that Disney is making now from the series excites me endlessly, and I am hopeful that the next movies coming out – be it the Star Wars Stories series or the continuation of the Saga – will take my breath away just like it did years ago, that very first time I watched it.