4 A.M. Reflections on the Monster Energy Drink Warning Label
I’m drinking a Monster Energy Zero Ultra as I write this at 4 a.m. from my one-bedroom apartment in Koreatown, and while examining the can this morning between increasingly aggressive sips, I noticed an advisory label that reads: “Not recommended for children, people sensitive to caffeine, pregnant women or women who are nursing.”
Apart from Monster Energy’s apparent disregard for the all-important Oxford comma, a few thoughts come to mind as I struggle to repress the urge to smash a hole through the wall beside my bedroom desk and reach into my neighbor’s studio apartment for no reason other than to witness their terrified looks as I perform a silent pantomime of Steven Tyler’s vocals from the video for “Walk This Way.”
Because I’m wearing scarves.
Lots of scarves.
Only scarves.
My thoughts on Monster Energy’s “warning” label are as follows:
Children: While I would agree that the children of 20 years ago should be advised against imbibing a beverage that tastes like it may second as the active ingredient in a can of Raid, I would argue that today’s obesity epidemic should qualify as an occasion to encourage, and not discourage, children to start mainlining anything that might compel them to get off of their doughy, self-entitled asses and venture out of doors. The point being that it’s exceptionally difficult to maintain motor control of your PlayStation or XBox controller when you have 100% of your daily intake of B3, 5, 6, and 12 vitamins coursing through your beleagured veins. That flush of synthetic vitamins is far more conducive to the sort of intense physical exertion associated with running from your worst fears that have recently become manifest in a hallucinatory army of animated Beanie Babies wielding pick axes made from the bones of vanquished Care Bears, or doing endless cartwheels down the hallway of your apartment complex in order to dislodge the skittish termites that seem to have burrowed their way beneath the flesh of your upper respiratory system.
People Sensitive to Caffeine: Let’s just get this out of the way: “people sensitive to caffeine” are no one you’d want to be caught speaking to at a cocktail party, and we don’t need to cater to them or worry about whether they have the intestinal fortitude to withstand the awesomeness that is Monster Energy Drink.
Pregnant Women or Women Who Are Nursing: If you are pregnant and your shopping list includes Monster Energy Drink, the cashier at Safeway should go ahead and provide you with a list of items that you can and cannot bring with you during prison visitation hours because cell block eight is guaranteed to be your child’s future address if you consider energy drinks an important part of prenatal development. Of course, your familiarity with those items you can and cannot bring with you on visitations is probably already well established from your frequent trips to visit your child’s father, so in this case that Safeway cashier is off the hook.
Women Who Are Nursing: I imagine that the milk of women who are nursing while slamming Monster Energy Drink tastes like battery acid and I also imagine that it comes shooting forth like water from a high-pressure washer at those coin-op car washes. And while that’s pretty fucking awesome, it’s probably another reason why Monster Energy should be fortified with RU 486 so that pregnant women who believe that it’s a good idea to consume inordinate amounts of caffeine and synthesized vitamins might spare the community at large one more future parole violation.
