Coke

I have to admit that Charlie got me. In my defense, I didn't read it until today.

It was the comment, "HA HA. :-)", that made me reconsider the wisdom of recommending shorting Coke stock. So I looked up "coke goes green" on Google, and got Charlie's post as the best match. But among the other, less good, matches I found this:

Wacky Uses for Coke. It's got all sorts of ways to use Coke and put its various properties (phosphoric acid, sugar, bubbles) to work. Just a few:

Clean a toilet bowl. Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl. Let the real thing sit for one hour, then brush and flush clean. The phosphoric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous china, according to household-hints columnist Heloise.

Clean tarnished pennies. Fill a drinking glass with Coca-Cola and drop in the pennies. Let sit for one hour, then wipe clean with a soft cloth.

Get rid of fruit flies. Use an electric drill with a one-quarter-inch bit to drill a hole in the cap of a two liter Coke bottle. Leave one inch of Classic Coke (not diet or caffeine-free) in the bottom of the bottle, and set outside. Fruit flies will crawl into the bottle to enjoy the Real Thing, but won’t be able to get back out.

That last one was a problem at my house last year. I kept having fruit flies around the kitchen, and I'd spray them with shower spray or smash them (when they agreed to land on something) with a paper towel, but they just kept coming. It made me wonder why the grocery store was having such a problem keeping the flies from the fruit.

But then I discovered that the girls, who had gone camping with my ex-husband, had never cleaned out the cooler. They just tucked it into an out-of-the-way corner to wait for the other one to clean it. When I came across it, I saw fruit flies hovering around the edge of the lid. I just made sure the lid was shut tight, carried it outside, and put it in the garbage can.

We haven't had a problem with fruit flies since. But if we do, I'll buy a bottle of Coke and drill a hole in the lid.

So thank you, Charlie, for your fine Business Reporting. With all these new (to me) uses for Coke, maybe I should buy (not short) some stock in the company.