#moondrel

You're not bothering me at all, I love to talk about everything Sonny related; and honestly I could talk for hours about all the small little details about meeting Sonny but I'll try to keep it shorter than that haha~

I'm signed up for Nest IV, lets you get access to tracks he spotlights or his music earlier than other people; cost $12 a month. They have sign up sheets to meet him on the site, the owsla peeps called us the day of the concert and told us to meet up and they took us to Skrill-ville.

I definitely forgot how to breathe when I first saw him walk out onto the amphitheater stage where we were meeting him, he came up and hugged everyone one at a time and I was just frozen in awe after he hugged me; my skin tingled where his hand skimmed across my arm on his way to hug me. I got like 5 hugs from him, his hair is super fucking soft even though it looks greasy in pics n' stuff it was actually just shiny and fluffy.

I almost cried thanking him for saving my life with his music, my sister Moon had to finish what I was trying to say while I took a moment to get a hold of my emotions; which was difficult because Sonny means the world to me. Owsla mailed the meet and greet people a special poster signed by some of the artists on the Mothership tour.

I met DJ Snake too but I kinda felt bad cause I had my eyes trained on Sonny the entire time he was introducing himself. He seems to have some sort of inside joke with Sonny, they were joking about how he doesn't smile in pictures.

Sonny and I traded glasses for a pic, that was my favorite one because when he came out he had sunglasses on and I didn't think he had his glasses with him; then he just pulled them out of his pocket when I asked if we could trade glasses for a pic. (Totally bias, but he looks perfect in this picture ok, look at those come hither eyes with my glasses on *-*)

They wouldn't let me film him at all, and they took our phones to take most of the pictures for us, but it was still amazing to meet him and get my Nest IV card signed.

(He was signing a wheelchair during this pic, edit found the other pic)

The first question I asked him he asked me to repeat cause I’d asked it kinda shyly, I asked if Flim still his favorite song; he said, oh always, definitely. He also took a selfie with me and my sister, she held the phone and he took the pic. (And I think that's TomLube in the background, I met him too while I was there; if you're not familiar with him he posts a lot of Skrillex related stuff on reddit)

Gotta say it was probably the happiest moment of my life meeting him, I feel like I owe him so much for how profoundly he has effected my life; unfortunately I didn't remember to ask him to set up a fan mail address ^_^; I will next time tho!

TwipzDance flys to Space with Skrillex

I probably drink a lot more pop than is healthy, or rather I don't exercise enough for the pop I'm drinking, so finding an at home soda maker that boasts no high fructose corn syrup and less overall calories while saving you money, was an exciting prospect. However, at $90 for the most basic model I had to do a little digging first.

 The two things that most people will probably care most about are the taste and how well it works (or perhaps just how easy it works). Personally I don't give a shit about the taste, as long as it mildly resembles something like 7up, I'm cool. But for those who do care about the taste it looks like it does a pretty good job of mimicking the flavors of many popular sodas. Ease-of-use also seems to live up to their claims. Although every taste tester I have seen says the recommended level of fizzing this is nowhere near that of fresh pop.

 I'm not really going to get into the calorie side of things, let's just call it broadly how healthy it is, because frankly I don't really care all that much. I read through a 30 page 5 year-long debate over the fructose and sucrose and all these other minute factors (check out the amazon comments section for the SodaStream kit at your peril), and I'm not convinced it is any better or worse than regular soda. I will make one exception however, the diet version looks like it has a scary additive and from what I'm I've heard taste like shit.

   Without knowing any of the above the deciding factor was ultimately the cost. SodaStream says that using their product carbonated water will cost you $.20 a liter or $.25 for the final product of soda. This might very well be true if not for three factors:

   The ones size of CO2 cartridge the system requires says that it fills 60 L worth of water with carbonate. Unfortunately I have not read a single review out of hundreds that agrees with this. That was one or two that suggested it might come close but most said it fell short by anywhere from 20 to 30 L.

 Falling short by a few liters might not matter so much if the recommended dose was exact or even close to the amount of bubbles you need you quickly find out however that this is not the case. To get soda water that tastes anything like fresh pop most people say you need an additional two pumps on top of the original three to get it right. This cuts the potential 60 L the canister could fill by close to a third.

 In addition to the nutrition debate was also a lengthy debate about the price of getting the CO2 cartridges refilled. The first thing to note, and I just found this out this morning after apply from SodaStream themselves, for at least one model of the product the first canister the system comes with is only filled to 17 L. this seems pretty slimy to me. Like selling you a car that's running on fumes while at the same time generously offering to sell you gas from the very same lot. More importantly, let's say it had been fully filled, there are only two ways to get it filled back up. The first is to find a participating store and exchange your empty canister for a filled one at a cost of about $18. The other is to exchange your canister directly with the company by mailing it to them this again costs $20 plus probably about the same in shipping fees.

 Without getting into the debate over so-called “food-safe CO2”, it is rather shady to make the refilling of these canisters so proprietary. I understand the need to make a profit but it becomes less and less understandable at this point. Especially when they're marketing now very clearly implies that they have some environmental agenda.

  So without making this any more complicated it boils down to the system being able to make a liter cost me anywhere from $.50 to a dollar. Like I said earlier though I don't really care too much about taste so unless my wife orders me not to I usually buy the $1 - 2 liter bottle of no-name crap soda. That means I'm already paying $.50 a liter. So what am I saving with SodaStream? the convenience of walking to the corner store? I like the walk, I already recycle every single pop bottle I throw out, and the system wouldn't even eventually pay for itself.

   This means it's not helping me save the environment, it's not saving me money, and I don't care for the convenience. Three strikes and the idea is out.

   I don't even want to bring this part up (because it is largely irrelevant to the product, for most... looking at you iPhone users) but in addition to all the other factors I should mention that there is a great deal of controversy with at least on of their factories. The company is based out of Israel and at least one of their factories is located on land that the United Nations has declared as illegally occupied. Without getting into “who owns the land”, you may or may not want to get involved with a company mired in this type of human rights controversy. I'm sure this company did not directly have anything to do with taking over the lander kicking anybody out of their homes but it seems that they are now part of the outcome of those two things.

    Cons:

   Expensive to get into

just as expensive as your average cheap pop to maintain

either inconvenient or expensive to refill the poor quality CO2 cartridges

the company has a history of lowering the CO2 cartridge size while raising the prices repeatedly over the years

   Pros:

     Fresh pop at a moments notice

  ignoring the price of the initial kit, it is indeed inexpensive (or at least no more expensive than your average no-name store brand)

once everything is set up it is very convenient and easy to use

for those too lazy to enjoy a walk, saves me having to walk two blocks every day or two, as well as saving me from having to store and then walk to the corner with a recycling bag filled of pop bottles once a week