LaVarious just scored a new job recently and
it is kicking my ass. Wow, first and third person in one sentence,
I completely rock! To get to work from my new house takes about
3 years, so I have to wakeup really early so I can go sit in traffic
like Peter Gibbons from Office Space. Well, I haven’t quite
figured out yet that in order to wake up really early you have
to go to bed really early. I am a night person, what more can
I say?! I need a little boost in the morning and I just can’t
stand coffee, so as we were browsing around the grocery store
tonight we happened across the energy drink isle and I decided
to have a show down to see what drink tastes the best and what
drink will actually kick me in the fatass and wake me up.
Each day I will wake up and slam an energy
drink to see which one works the best. I will have to consume
the entire can/bottle/vessel within 15 minutes and will note the
taste, texture, and hopefully energy it will give me. Based off
this information I will then formulate an very extensive plan
on how to go to the store and purchase the correct energy drink
for me. You could also buy the same drink based on my findings
and we could be both scientists and energy drink partners. Do
you have an energy drink partner yet? OMG!!!! Neither do I!!!
Monday
I pop open my first energy drink
of the week, a can of Red Bull, and notice it has a very acrid
flavor. It is kind of what I imagine goblin piss tastes like,
but I can’t be 100% sure on that because I don’t want
to discriminate against the goblins when their piss might actually
taste like applesauce or blueberries. Sticking to my initial plan
of consuming the entire beverage in 15 minutes is quite a chore
on this can. I am afraid to taste the other drinks the rest of
this week because Red Bull is a pretty common name and it tastes
like shit, so I can only imagine what the rest of the crap I bought
is going to taste like.
Maybe I am expecting too much out of an energy drink. Red Bull
has definitely not given me wings, unless by wings you mean a
case of herpes. I didn’t feel anymore awake 1 hour after
drinking the vile mixture than I did before. The only noticeable
effect Red Bull had was impregnating me with am alien embryo which
grew in my belly and had be doubling over in agony. I seriously
thought any minute Ripley was going to bust through the door and
open fire on me and my little chest-burster.
Overall Red Bull sucked. It tasted
like ass, didn't provide me with any of this so called "energy",
and it make me stab myself repeatidly in the stomach with a letter
opener. How people could want to drink this is beyond me, but
maybe since Paris Hilton already has herpes she doesn't mind a
mild outbreak every now-and-then. Valtrex, Paris, Valtrex.
Tuesday
The next on my list of awesome
and zany energy drinks is Monster Energy. The first thing I notice
about Monster is the horrendous taste it has. It is almost like
it has a zesty lemon Pine-sol flavor mixed with a bit of Jack
Daniel’s and Old Milwaukee beer. I don’t think I have
ever tasted anything quite this bizarre or disgusting. It sort
of burns the throat when you drink it, which means my esophagus
is getting extra clean by this killer lemon engine degreaser.
Is a beverage really supposed to burn your nose when you drink
it?
This damn drink came in a tall-boy filled with 16 fluid ounces
of pure pain. Yesterday’s Red Bull seems mild in comparison
to this hell. Not only was there less of the Red Bull to drink,
but there was also less of a burn on the throat. I am pretty sure
after I finish this I will no longer be able to have children,
but this is all in the name of taste-a-palooza…screw kids.
I wasn’t able to drink the entire can in my allotted 15
minutes because my throat feels, and I imagine looks, like some
Mexican street vendors 3-day old overcooked pork carnitas. It
took me almost double the amount of time to consume the can coming
in at 28 minutes. Those were 28 minutes of pure death and mayhem
for my taste buds. If you listen closely you can barely hear their
screams of agony below the popping fizz of Monster’s demonic
carbonation.
What is it with energy drinks and my stomach? My gut feels like
it has the Candyman’s rusty hook digging through it looking
for golden gems. I can assure you, there are no golden nuggets
to be found buried deep in my intestines…I have already
looked. Other than sweet ass stomach cramps I am also noticing
another side effect with Monster. If you belch under your breath,
because you are at work, it will bring tears to your eyes since
the gas is so caustic. Maybe the “energy” these drinks
are touting you get actually means “brutal intestinal cramping”
which your body uses as a natural “pick-me-up”.
Other than pain, Monster Energy drink provided nothing in the
field of “energy”. I felt just as tired after choking
it down as I did before I ever felt its vile caress. This was
a 16 fluid ounce can of crap that can suck it. I hope I never
had to taste that swill again because I am afraid I will be outside
eating dirt the rest of the day just to dull the burning sensation
in my throat and stomach.
Wednesday
Round three is here and with it
brings us Rockstar Energy Drink. The can proclaims that you should
“party like a rockstar”, but after my first sip I
instead think they have just canned the “vomit of a rockstar”
after a 3-day bender. Although the taste isn’t as bad as
Monster, it still has a nasty citric acid taste that leaves the
mouth begging to be scrubbed with steel wool. Where Monster left
a burning sensation in your mouth, Rockstar leaves behind a weird
Mylanta aftertaste that is hard to forget. How can something that
tastes like it could burn through steel give you an antacid aftertaste?
Why do turkey basters amuse me? We can only speculate my
friends.
The common ingredient in all of
these drinks has been something called "Taurine", which
must translate to "cow piss" in scientific terminology.
I guess I don’t understand why this “taurine”
is required in these drinks. When I was growing up I drank Jolt
Cola, which has like 300% more caffeine in it than regular soda,
and it didn’t taste like rotten kangaroo placenta.
Again I am facing consuming an
entire 16 fluid ounce tall-boy of this crap, so I am not looking
forward to the next ½ hour. I don’t even think they
sell Rockstar or Monster in anything smaller than a tall-boy.
When browsing at the store this was all they had or I would have
purchased something smaller in size. Had I known I would be drinking
bacteria infested stagnent pond water I would have skipped this
article altogether.
The can is gone and I am pleasantly
surprised I do not have the feeling a mongoloid midget is biting
my lower intestine. I don’t know if my stomach lining is
getting use to the abuse in the morning or if Rockstar just
didn’t spike its energy drink with tacks, but I am glad
I don’t have stomach cramps. I actually feel a little bit
more awake than I did before the drink. Sort of the awake you
get when you get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night
and then stub your toe on the way back to bed. I am not awake
enough to recommend using Rockstar on a daily basis, unless you
like the taste of raw sewage first thing in the morning.
Thursday
Thursdays drink is called Bomba
and the friggin thing is shaped like a grenade. Do you know how
much satisfaction it was to carry a glass grenade into work this
morning? I got ruby orange flavored Bomba, which kind of tastes
like someone dissolved some Fun Dip into a Sprite. I wouldn’t
say I taste an overtly orange flavor, but maybe something akin
to a suicide mixture of several different kinds of flavor, like
you used to make when you were 8 years old at McDonald’s
with all the soda, or like I just did last night
Bomba is the beige of the energy drink world. It is neither disgusting
nor tasty. It doesn’t kill me to take a sip, yet I am not
inclined enough to drink it on my own because it has very little
flavor. I am pretty indifferent to the whole Bomba experience.
It does contain that elusive Taurine, but I can’t really
pick it out of the overall blandness.
For marketing purposes I really like Bomba. It is shaped like
a grenade, so I can pretend I am Rambo going up the elevator to
work. Sure, some people may stare when I take off my shirt and
tie that red bandana around my head, but I have a glass grenade
and all they have is a bottle of water and a poppy seed bagel.
Bomba fails on the taste side because it is sort of like drinking
water that has been soaking with fish tank gravel. Sure there
is a hint of flavor, but not enough to make me buy it again.
Bomba also fails on giving me any energy at all. I felt like a
garden slug when I first rolled into work and I still feel like
a garden slug now. There is one difference though; I am now a
garden slug with an 8.4 fluid ounce glass grenade. I probably
won’t ever buy Bomba again, but at least I didn’t
want to swish some bleach around in my mouth after drinking it
and I didn’t have to rush to the bathroom with tears of
pain streaming from my fat face. Thank you Bomba, for not giving
me intestinal cramping and bleeding.
Friday
Well, today is the final day of
the Energy Drink Taste-a-palooza and our final drink is called
UpShot. It comes in a very small container that holds only 75ml
of liquid. It says you can drink it in one quick shot or your
can mix it in with your favorite beverage. I think I will do neither
and sip it slowly like an aged brandy so I can give you the dirt
on it.
Holy shit this stuff is rancid! No wonder they
want you to drink it in one shot…it tastes like mustard
gas. It has a very strong cola taste, like if you walked down
the side ditch of your local freeway and found an old bottle of
coke that had been uncapped for weeks with some rain water, bugs,
and maybe a little spent chewing tobacco throw in for good measure.
There is no carbonation to this horrible horrible foul mixture
and trying to drink it makes my gag reflex act up. I haven’t
tasted anything this bad since I drank Jone’s
Soda: Brussel’s Sprout soda.
Drinking this shit seriously makes me rethink
continuing to live. The aftertaste it leaves behind is something
related to black licorice that has been shoved up the ass of a
bloated decaying corpse of a yak with a hint of generic cola you
might find at a discount supermarket. The aftertaste is so potent
I want to go scrape the taste buds off my tongue with a used heroin
addict’s syringe I just found in the gutter. Thanks UpShot
for making me question life!
Now my stomach is starting to go all bat-shit
crazy from this stuff and I feel like I am going to vomit. I guess
both would technically make you feel more awake than sitting in
front of your computer like a zombie…but at what price?
Who wants to feel like they have morning sickness to be more energized
and alert in the morning? Sure, I may look like I am pregnant,
but I don’t need to feel like I am too.
UpShot gave me no energy but I think they should
re-brand their product and call it UpChuck, because that is what
it made me want to do. I guess it made me not want to go back
to sleep because I am afraid that after drinking it I might vomit
it my sleep and drown in it like Jimi Hendrix, only less glamorous.
If you have the choice of either drinking UpShot or stabbing yourself
in the thigh with a screwdriver I would choose the screwdriver.
Stay away from this crap or you could end up like me having severe
mental retardation and being part of the helmet and chin-strap
league...now with more drool!
Overall the energy drinks I tried were a big
let down. They didn’t give me any energy, tasted nasty,
and most of the time caused me some form of pain; be it emotional
or physical. I believe I may have to seek out the old Jolt cola
to see if it is still in production, because it didn’t taste
bad and actually gave you a boost. I can’t recommend any
of the products on the above list unless you want to get some
sort of sick pleasure out of tormenting your friends with them.
If you are going to do that I would suggest hitting them in the
side of the head with a baseball bat and lighting them on fire
as well because it would be just as painful and equally funny.
***Bonus Crap***
I couldn’t stop with
just energy drinks. While I was out last weekend we spotted Mad-Croc
Energy Gum at Target and I just had to pick some up to try it
out. Instead of one piece the pack says you should consume two
and they will contain about as much caffeine as one 8 oz. energy
drink or one cup of coffee. No one tells me how many pieces of
gum I can consume, so I had all 10 pieces at once.
Good god I have a buzz going on now. I think my teeth are actually
aching because my mouth is absorbing so much caffeine. My hands
aren’t shaking yet, but I can definitely feel the effects
of the gum with a slight tingling going on in my body. My poor
fat heart probably won’t be able to bear the strain and
I will keel over dead during this article. I can see the headline
now: “Fat man dies as result of caffeine laced gum”.
If I do die you will know I did it all for you, my one fan.
The flavor I chose was Power Peppermint and it has a bizarre taste.
When you say Power Peppermint I expect something that when I bite
into it will send me into convulsions and have me bleeding from
the eyes because it is so peppermint-riffic, but Power Peppermint
has a weird almost smoky flavor to it. At first the gum isn’t
too bad, but then you get this rank aftertaste built up after
a little chewing. The packaging says “Peppermint kick with
a wild bite”, but unless “wild bite” translates
to “wildebeest ass” I am not falling for it.
I wouldn’t recommend this gum to wake you up. Had I only
chewed 2 pieces, as suggested, I wouldn’t have gained anything
in the form of energy. By chewing 10 I have permanently altered
the chemistry of my mouth and fear I will now always taste Power
Peppermint in the deep recesses of my oral cavity. The buzz I
got could have just as easily been achieved by taking some No-Doz
or slamming a 7-11 Big Gulp, or really doing both at the same
time. Overall this gum can suck a fat one and I wish Mad-Croc
Energy Gum a fiery death in the 9th circle of hell.
-LaVarious
9 -1-06
