So I've figured it out. After months of careful research -- dark nights spent poring over the Necronomicon -- I've figured it out. I haven't quite got the no-G-in-the-Alfa-Bits angle down, but the rest is sliding into place. We hard-bitten journalists don't let anything stand in the way of the truth, least of all common sense.

It should have been obvious long ago, but up till now they've been moving slowly, with patience. It's only lately that their greed as pushed them too fast, and it throws their plan into stark relief, where any dummy -- for instance: me -- can see it.

They're trying to get us to drink more Coke. The bastards.

Oh, sure, their job is to sell Coke and they obviously want us to drink more. But the devious minions deep in the bowels of the Illuminati's Beverage Division have found a way to make us drink more.

Try it yourself. Go to the store, go the cooler, and pick up a single Coke. It's twenty ounces. Those new plastic, curvy bottles; there's twenty ounces in them. Twenty, needless to say, is the average of 17 and 23.

When Coke first started bottling their bubbly little mixture, it was a mere eight ounces a serving. Then the aluminum can pushed the benchmark to twelve. Sixteen ounces arrived later, in large glass bottles. And today, today we're slugging the stuff twenty ounces at a time.

We must be easier to control when we're jittery.

The speed they've been upping the dosage has been increasing, too, with each four ounce bump coming more rapidly on the heels of the previous one. At this rate, by the turn of the century, 7-11s the world over will be stocking single-serving 55 gallon drums of Coke. There's an eye-in-a-pyramid on the side of the Big Gulp.

Why is everybody looking at me funny?