Drink Recipe: The Cool Rodney

The Cool Rodney is, quite simply, the ultimate soft drink. Pepsi pales in comparison to The Cool Rodney. The Cool Rodney makes Coke tastes like warm piss. After the first time I tasted the Cool Rodney I was so overcame by the beauty, completeness, and power of the drink that it caused me to have an epiphany. I realized that I no longer wanted for anything aside from inner peace, food, and occasionally shelter. I immediately left my worldly possessions behind and became a Buddhist monk. Anyway, that whole monk thing fell apart pretty quickly because I still had student loans to pay. The point still stands that the drink kicks ass.

So, to get to what you’re here for, anyone can make The Cool Rodney. It’s pretty simple. First, get yourself a tea kettle and a mug that can hold hot liquid, a jar of honey, some ice, and a bag of peppermint tea.

Now, before I go any further, I want to explain the exact mindset you have to be in at this point — if you do not have your head locked in the exact right space, you will be unable to make The Cool Rodney. At best, you will be wasting moments of your life which will not come back. At worst you will be so stressed by your failure to create The Cool Rodney you will have a stroke and die immediately. Conversely, if you brew The Cool Rodney correctly, you will experience the first moment of true peace your tortured soul has ever known.

To get in to the proper mental space you must first picture a beautiful waterfall — a simple stream, ideally — cascading down the face of a simple granite cliff in a temperate forest.

From there, it gathers in a small pond which is ringed by trees.

Next to the pond, I need you to imagine a Grizzly Bear.

For the creation of The Cool Rodney to be successful, you must picture a Grizzly Bear. You cannot, under any circumstances, envision a Brown Bear. Or a Black Bear. Or, god forbid ,a fucking Polar Bear. That would be a disaster of the highest magnitude.

So anyway, this Grizzly Bear is sitting on the shallow shores of this small tree-ringed pond, and he’s looking down into the water and drinking from the pond. Suddenly, this tranquil scene is disrupted by a rustling in the distance. Some trees shake on the side of the pond opposite the bear; the Grizzly looks up. You can now see the bear is wearing a pastel blue bowtie.

From the spot of the shaking, two wolves emerge from the thick underbrush of the Forest. Both immediately stand on their hind legs and one produces a switchblade. In a thick, southern accent like that of a refined lawyer in the rural parts of Mississippi, the wolf holding the knife says “Now, Mr. Bear — I said, I said, Mr. Bear — you a-best be a givin’ me and my associate a-hear your, ah, wallet, sir.”.

The Bear locks eyes with the wolf, stands on his hind legs, and then begins to speak in a thick, upper-class British accent. The bear speaks of the nature of violence — he talks about Cain and Able, he talks about the darkness in the heart of all animals, and of the impulses that spurt from the darkest crevices of the souls of each being. He gestures while he talks, and eventually begins to speak about the law — he quotes King Lear as he talks about the rights that have been conferred to each member of the forest, and then points to the sky as he begins to speak of the rights conferred on to each soul when it is formed by the divine.

As this is happening, neither of the two wolves notice that a second Grizzly Bear (who is wearing a salmon-red bowtie and is also standing on two legs) has walked out of the woods behind them and is carrying an aluminum bat. As the first bear begins to start talking about the danger of ignoring the rights bestowed upon us by the divine, the second bear hits the armed wolf in the back of the head with the baseball bat, causing him to crumple to the ground. The second wolf turns to look at the bear and is hit clean in the snout by the bear’s bat. This causes him to join the other wolf on the floor. At this point, the bear in the blue bowtie gets back on all fours and began to drink from the water again; the bear in the red bowtie then drops his baseball bat, steps over the now-comatose wolves, and begins drinking water next to the other bear.

At this point I want you to pour some water into the teakettle and let it get to a boil.

While the water begins to heat up, it is of the upmost importance to use this time to think about what you want in this world. Ask yourself questions that you’ve been meaning to for a while and think about the big things. Should you go back to school and finish your degree? Do you really need to call your mom as much as you do? Why do you spend so much money on novelty bobble heads you find on Ebay? How do they get the cream inside Ding-Dongs?

It’s important during this time to be brutally honest with yourself, but also acknowledge that any of your own personal failings are solely caused by your own unique and horrifying psycho-sexual deficiencies that were formed by your parents failing to hug you enough as a child.

Once you’ve completed a full Freudian deconstruction of your inability to commit to anything in your goddamn life or trust another fucking human being, put some honey into the mug you’ll be pouring the hot water into.

After that, drop in a bag of the peppermint tea. Once the water has reached a boil, place the tea bag flat across the bottom of the cup and pour in two fingers worth of water. You’re going to let that sit for five to ten minutes and make sure you set a timer for whatever amount of time you choose.

This is the time when you kinda have some freedom in this process: as long as you’r doing some kind of introspection you will be fine. You’re honestly allowed to really go to anywhere you want mentally as long as it involves looking within yourself.

I normally use this time to piece together a long list of things I would do if I was king of an ancient Greek city state and then try to ask what each means about me. Most times I don’t get to the second part of that before the timer goes off. I just start thinking about the hyper-specific infrastructure improvements I’d implement, then start debating my plans with a fictional set of advisors I’ve also imagined. After those advisors convince me that my ideas are dumb, I normally end up imagining myself freaking the fuck out, having one of them executed, then announcing to my kingdom that I’m retiring from public life to meditate in the mountains but then instead of actually going to the mountains I just do a bunch of super depraved shit while worshiping Bacchus in my palace. At some point after that I normally end up thinking too much about the weird shit that the Greeks probably did during Bacchanals and it freaks me out to the point that I end up vomiting. Most of the time when this happens I’m at the point there’s only a few minutes left on the timer so I just move on to the last part of the recipe.

For the final step, it’s best to remove the teabag. Then, fill the mug to the brim with ice, which should begin to melt in the near-boiling water. You can now sit back and relax: you have finally brewed The Cool Rodney.