A while back, the entire Quizno's chain changed its drink selection from Coke to Pepsi. Because of that, today at lunch I was able to purchase a 20-ounce Pepsi to accompany my lunch.

It was not a winner. I should have gotten a fountain drink, which would have been cheaper. I am now 13 for 30 (8 songs, 5 free Pepsis).

The other Pepsi I acquired at Sav-on yesterday garnered me another buy-one-get-one-free cap, so I'm now 13 for 29 (8 songs, 5 free Pepsis).

Yesterday at Sav-on, the cashier didn't know exactly how to handle a "buy one, get one free" Pepsi cap, so she ended up taking one of the two 20-ounce Pepsis I had presented her with completely off the receipt. I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be a "promo" key involved, and I'm still supposed to be charged the 4-cent "CA Cash Refund," but whatever.

Anyway, I'm back on track, because the first of those two Pepsis won me a free song. I'm now 12 for 28 (8 songs, 4 free Pepsis).

My list of "singles I'd like to download from the iTunes Music Store" is now 73 songs long. It's hard trying to decide on a song, so I let random chance do it for me, although I guess mathemeticians would actually call it pseudorandom chance. But it's good enough for me. I went to this web site that generates random numbers, clicked on "Generate a Decimal One-Time Pad," and used the last two digits of the first group of five numbers that came up.

Unfortunately, the first try was 75, and the second try was 95. But the third try was 42, and that turned out to be "Wildfire" by Michael Murphey, a Number 3 hit in 1975, and now generally considered to be one of the most annoying songs of the 1970s. It's featured in Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, for example.

Incidentally, it's less than two weeks until this contest officially ends, on April 11th, although codes can be entered into iTunes until May 23rd (and the iPod-Mini-an-hour giveaway ends April 30th). Last year, as I recall, Pepsis with the caps were still available until way after the official end of the contest.

Last Monday, Ralphs didn't have the magical stack of Pepsi set up anymore; in fact, they only had two 20-ounce Pepsis in the refrigerated area, both of which I bought (well, one was free), and both of which turned out to be non-winners.

Perhaps more troubling, I went to a different Ralphs today to pick up a few things, and the 20-ounce Pepsis there didn't have the iTunes caps. The contest is supposed to officially run until April 11th, although codes can still be redeemed on the iTunes Music Store almost until the end of May, so I wonder if they were just older Pepsis that someone found in the stock room, or something like that.

I bought a Sierra Mist, even though I'm not a big fan of lemon-lime soda pop, and it had a buy-one-get-one-free cap. So I'm now 11 for 27 (7 songs, 4 free Pepsis).

I got a bad batch from Sav-On: three non-winners, although one was free. So now I'm 10 for 24 (7 free songs, 3 free Pepsis).

Once this contest is over, I'm going to start making my own music with the second-hand Casio keyboard I bought today. Plus the G5 desktop computer I'm going to buy once Apple speed-bumps them or whatever they're going to do to them, and the GarageBand software it will come with.

I've changed my mind. Wal-Mart is great. They should have stores everywhere.

This is because my third and last Pepsi from Wal-Mart held a winning song, so I'm now 10 for 21 (7 songs, 3 free Pepsis). The song I purchased was Barry White's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," which is specifically relevant to my life in that I was born during the one week it was at #1 in Billboard (the week of September 21, 1974).

One problem with the advance of technology: there's quite a difference between saying to a woman "here, let's listen to Barry White on my hi-fi" and "here, you listen to Barry White on my iPod."

In other news, the cashier at Sav-On did know what to do when handed a "buy one, get one free" cap (it came out as "0.00 PROMO" on the receipt), so I've got still more 20-ounce Pepsis in the fridge, to be posted about here in further updates.

Original comments...

Levi: I assume this is all part of a nefarious deal in which, in exchange for better positioning at Wal-Mart, Pepsi agreed to up the percentage of winning bottles shipped to Wal-Mart. And the federal government probably got involved in the negotiations just so they could, like, exempt Wal-Mart from those onerous minimum wage laws and such. Nefariousisity.

I guess Wal-Mart isn't completely evil, because one of the Pepsis I bought there yesterday has now netted me another free Pepsi. Still, I'd rather have some more free songs instead of some more Pepsi. I'm 9 for 20 (6 songs, 3 free Pepsis).

The fifth of the five Pepsi bottles from Ralphs was not a winner. After the four winners in a row, it was a distinct shock to read "PLEASE PLAY AGAIN" on the bottom of the cap.

Now, then, today's adventure resulted from me reading somewhere that Wal-Mart's regular price for 20-ounce Pepsis was 98 cents. So I made a special trip to the Wal-Mart in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles (which is way in the northwest part of the Valley, but it's the third-closest Wal-Mart to where I live, and it's all freeway from here to there).

Turns out the 98-cent price was either a limited-time promotion, or didn't apply in California, because this Wal-Mart was charging $1.28 for 20-ounce Pepsis. And I thought they always had low prices! That's 9 cents more than Ralphs. (I had also forgot to bring my "buy one, get one free" bottle caps.)

All was not lost, though, because I bought a Wal-Mart Edition of the 2005 Rand McNally Road Atlas, to replace the 1995 Rand McNally Road Atlas that I bought at the Wal-Mart in Carmi, Illinois, on Thanksgiving weekend in 1994. Wal-Mart's price has gone up: $3.96 in 1995, $4.97 in 2005 (but the "retail price" listed was $8.96 in 1995, $11.95 in 2005, so it seems like a better value). Anyway, the MapQuest road atlas is still better.

I also bought three Pepsis, since I made the trip anyway. Turns out Wal-Mart's evil reputation is deserved: it wasn't a winner, so I'm now 8 for 19 (6 songs, 2 free Pepsis).

When I was at Ralphs on Monday, I bought five 20-ounce bottles of Pepsi. Instead of taking them from their usual place in the cooler, I took them from a special display: a stack of trays of bottles they had at the end of one of the aisles.

I mention this because four of the five bottles from this batch have turned out to have winning caps, and I haven't opened the fifth bottle yet. I am now 8 for 17 on winning caps (6 free songs, 2 free Pepsis).

If the fifth bottle is also a winner, I'm going to go to Ralphs ASAP and hope that display is still there.

I forgot to mention this after I watched my TiVo recording of it on Wednesday: during "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" on Tuesday night, KNBC-TV -- excuse me, NBC 4 Los Angeles -- ran a ticker listing the current vote percentages in the L.A. mayoral primary election. (The vote count was delayed because, due to fog, they couldn't use city fire department helicopters to carry ballots from the outlying areas. That's how big the city of Los Angeles is.) The ticker ended with the statement "Stay tuned for the latest returns on 'Today in L.A.,' starting at 5:00 A.M."

I can't believe anyone who was watching "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" at 1:00 A.M. would have stayed tuned for the next four hours, as instructed.

Just when I had despaired of ever seeing such a thing, there it was under the cap of the Pepsi I opened today: "BUY DEW/OR PEPSI/20oz GET/1 FREE." Now the problem is that I have to have this cap lying around until the next time I buy Pepsi (so I can't let the cat get at it and play with it until it ends up behind the refrigerator), and I'm not convinced that the average checkout clerk has any idea of what they're supposed to do with these caps; they clearly won't fit in the cash drawer under the money tray, with all the rest of the coupons.

Anyway, this means I'm 7 for 16 on winning caps (6 songs, 1 free Pepsi).

Second winning cap in a row; I'm now 6 for 15. This time, the song I chose was from the cheesy '80s: Lita Ford's "Kiss Me Deadly," a #12 hit in 1988. It's from her album "Lita" -- at last, a decent reason to get an iPod Photo, with it's "album cover art" display feature.

Original comments...

Levi: I'm surprised this wasn't a bigger hit. Seemed to be all over the place on 99.5 WKDQ.

Jim: Not anymore it's not! Yes, not since the Top 40 station of my youth became a country station as "104.7, The Bee" has there been a more strange animal association with a country radio station. (But they've since changed formats again and are now Oldies 104.7. Why is every radio station web site horribly ugly?)

Levi: Because radio is tacky through and through. That doesn't mean it can't be great, but it's unredeemably tacky.

At last, a trip to the supermarket for more Pepsi, and I got a free song on the first bottle, so I'm now 5 for 14. The song, at last, is not from the '70s: "I Hear a Symphony" by the Supremes, a #1 hit for two weeks in 1965.