I been havin a snake

Take that in any form you'd like. You could be a DJ, you could paint, you could write, you could even code. Still, you hold whatever you do as Art. You are passionate, and you can also try too hard. What kind of goth are you? Created by ptocheia

Last night, Jeff and I went to visit Consuela at her new bartending job. This involved us visiting the slightly more tourist-friendly outer bar of a Goth establishment in the Quarter. I was careful not to wear all black. We shot some pool (the table is covered with dark-purple felt), selected the happiest songs available on the jukebox (the Ramones and Nirvana), and tried our best to ignore the clientele (a bizarre mixture of frat boys in khaki shorts looking for a Hardcore Experience on the dance floors upstairs and leather-clad bikers requesting that Consuela turn up the Megadeth).

One of Jeff's favorite activities is subtly fucking with the minds of whoever's sitting next to us at any given bar, so I rolled my eyes when he feigned interest in the black and red paintings shown to him by one Melody, a girl with ink-colored hair and pasty skin. I knew he was just wasting her time, since he obviously wasn't going to buy her shit. Still, I played along as Melody asked me and Consuela which paintings we preferred ("Uh, the tree one," I said), and as she appealed to Jeff on our behalfs ("She likes this one! Buy it for her!"). But I was stunned as I saw the boy actually handing Melody a twenty-dollar bill, and even more shocked as, with a wink, he handed a painting each to me and Consuela. Later, he said, "She offered me a two-for-one deal. I guess she really needed the money."

Melody's art can be viewed at her Web site as well as (of course) Boutique du Vampyre. Sadly, the prints now owned by Consuela and me aren't on the site.

Yeah, so anyway, I went to the grocery store tonight (the A&P on Magazine) and, while standing in the soft drink section, noticed a sign above my head. The aisle was bedecked with the sort of markers one expects in a grocery store: "Juice" appeared over the juices, "Sodas" over the Coke and Pepsi, etc. But hanging off the bottom of each drink sign was another printed placard inscribed as follows (punctuation and capitalization follow the original):

The Dawn of a new age. From teas to drinks, "ready to drink."

Huh? This inspires a number of questions, including:

1. What new age?
2. Are teas not drinks?
3. Are the drinks not actually ready to drink?