Well, it’s official: the world is going to hell in a hand basket. It is clear to me that man’s inhumanity towards man knows no bounds and that even as I write, Great Cthulhu must surely stir in his slumber ‘neath R’lyeh, sensing his imminent freedom. No matter where I look these days, I cannot buy caramel flavoured milk.

What sort of world is it where you cannot buy caramel flavoured milk? Milk is supposed to come in four basic flavours: vanilla, pink (strawberry, but let’s face it, tastes nothing like a real strawberry. Credit for the notion of something tasting like pink must go to Terry Pratchett, but it is an incredibly apt description of ‘strawberry’ flavoured milk.), chocolate and caramel. More exotic flavours like banana and peppermint certainly have their place, but not at the expense of the Four Fundamental Flavours.

But over recent years, I have noticed a disturbing trend: increasing proliferation of iced coffee flavours at the expense of caramel. It has reached the point where most shops now stock vanilla, pink, chocolate, about six variations on the theme of iced coffee, including iced coffee with caramel, but no bloody caramel. Now, I steer well clear of anything which is coffee flavoured. I do not understand how people can drink the stuff, given that its aroma is somewhat less pleasant than that of a tyre fire, and it tastes a zillion times worse than it smells. But to all those coffee drinking wackos out there, do we really need so many different types of iced coffee? Would it kill you to lose just one so that we can have caramel back? Of course it wouldn’t, which leaves me somewhat perplexed about the dearth of caramel milk in shops. Here are the theories I’ve come up with to explain this phenomenon:

1) Problems with supply and demand. Let’s examine supply first: caramel, in case you weren’t aware, is basically burnt sugar. All you need for a supply of caramel is a supply of sugar, and some heat. Now, what is one of Queensland’s biggest crops? Oh yeah, sugar cane. If milk company executives cannot find caramel flavouring to put in their milk then they aren’t looking hard enough. I would suggest that removing their heads from their arses might be a good way to start. Now let’s turn to demand. I demand caramel milk. I’m sure I’m not alone; you can still get caramel ice-cream, caramel mudcake etc. People like caramel. So there is demand, there is ready access to supply, and still there is no caramel milk. For anybody out there in the flavoured milk industry, I will be conducting classes in basic economic theory out of my garden shed over the holidays. Mate’s rates apply for the first company to guarantee a return of caramel milk.

2) The hearts of coffee drinkers end up like the beverage in question: dark, bitter and foul. Iced coffee drinkers are like the junkie that has become a pusher to support his habit: it’s not enough that they pour this toxin into their own bodies, they feel it necessary to foist their addiction on everyone else, eliminating different flavours of milk until we have no choice but to indulge in the soul-destroying vice of iced coffee. Coffee aficionados know just how much the people of Australia cry out for caramel milk, but refuse to give it to them purely out of spite. They have been corrupted by coffee. Numerous scientific studies have been done to rank coffee drinkers on the Carmody Evil Scale, where 1 is puppy dogs and 10 is the hypothetical love-child of Hitler and Gretel Killeen, and they have consistently shown a score in the range of teraEvils (for the non-science nerds, more Evils than you can poke a stick at). To put it simply, people who sell iced coffee typically drink iced coffee, and people who drink coffee typically take pleasure in the suffering of others.

Theory 2 seems the more plausible of the two. I suspect most successful businesses employ people whose job it is to know about stuff like supply and demand, which puts theory 1 on very thin ice. Unfortunately, it also means that we won’t see a return of caramel milk just by writing irate letters to milk companies, because they will ignore all such correspondence and delight in our misery.

So it is to be done about the lack of caramel milk, faced with companies who just don’t care about the little man? The only think we can do: open revolution! I declare here and now, sedition laws be damned, my intention to form a revolutionary militia: the Caramel Flavoured Milk Liberation Army. If the milk companies won’t listen, and the government won’t make them, we will storm the Parliament and initiate a coup. Long will the streets flow with the blood of those who stand in the way of caramel milk! So join the C.F.M.L.A today for liberty, equality and caramel flavoured milk!

Dan Carmody