Corperate America

atlanta is home to two american institutions, coca-cola and CNN. it is also home to dr martin luther kings birthhome but i havent figured out how to make an interesting post out of that experience. now i was quite excited about going on a tour of CNN headquarters. ive got quite into it and its usually what thay screen on the tv while you wait for the greyhound. i find the cable news network strangely mesmerising when waiting for a bus at 2am. their headquarters are housed in a building which used to hold an indoor theme park and hence you get to satart your tour by ascending into a giant globe on the world's highest escalator. the tour itself is not that enlightening although i did discover they no longer use a green screen to do the weather which was a bit disappointing actally. none of the news rooms were very busy, probably because it was the friday afternoon of a bank holiday and everyone was lke do you think anything big going to break? nah, i mean main story is the hurricane in mexico so we can pretty much just leave that to CNN en espanol. i also went to the world of coca-cola which is a sort of museum/theme park/shrine to the marvel that is the coca-cola company. it presents the brand as a sort of magical religion that can solve all the worlds problems. i felt queasy at some points and not just from drinking too many free samples. thay say little about the developement of the 'secret formula' and even less about the corporations dubius use of 3rd world resources. the collection of memorabilia is good though and at the end you get to tastes coke products from around the world. i thought i was prepared for this. i thought foreign soft drinks all tasted like rubicon guava. no. the ones from africa were particularly foul, including fanta exotica. some of them werent even sweet. really soft drinks wiothout sugar do not work, i wanted spit some of them out. 2nd worst after africa, bizarrely, was north america (they organise by continent). i think its all the root beer variations. i dont understand root beer, it tastes like cough mixture and not in a good (calpol) way. you could also sample 'tab', cokes first attempt at a diet cola from the 70s. if you think coke zero tastes bad (which i do) you shouldve tasted tab.