A presence that disturbs
(I believe baron_scarpia (or someone) has reported on this phenomenon before, but I thought I'd add my own experience. People need to be told.)
I wasn't particularly in the mood for lunch today--have been feeling very down all morning--but on wandering down to the canteen for some crisps and standing staring at the drinks refrigerator, I noticed a large number of cans of the same kind of drink on the top shelf. I have noticed their existence before, and suspect they have been there for, well, ever, but had not looked at them in any detail. Now I took a look and was quite scared. Scared enough to buy one of the drinks and test it for myself.
So it's a drink, an energy drink apparently, called Relentless. I know this because it has RELENTLESS writ large along the side of this 500 ml can in sprawling pseudo-Gothic lettering that looks as if it should appear on the poster of a bad metal band. I know it's an energy drink because it says ENERGY DRINK above RELENTLESS, and above that it says NEW 50% JUICE. This last part is perplexing. What's new about the juice? Was there old juice there before? And is it the juice that's new or the fact that there's half of it? Did there use to be more? And the lack of an exclamation mark is, for some reason, disconcerting. It's as if they're making some kind of flat statement, impossible to argue against: this juice is new, and there's 50% of it: deal.
Below the name of the drink (RELENTLESS) it says JUICED ENERGY, which I can only assume is the name of this flavour of the drink. It doesn't particularly help though. Did they take raw energy and then somehow liquify it? The words below this are even more frightening: NO HALF MEASURES - ENERGY - STAMINA - FOCUS - DRIVE. Now, either someone's found themselves a thesaurus or I'm supposed to take it that this beverage (RELENTLESS) is going to provide me with all these synonyms if I drink it (all half a litre of it). I also take the NO HALF MEASURES part as something of a threat: I must drink it all or someone will do something to me, possibly involving shouting lots of words like STAMINA and DRIVE. I don't like it when people do that.
But the front side of the can is as nothing to the back. Seriously, this can has more writing on it than Robert Downey Jr's police record. At the top it finally explains (kind of) what I'm about to drink. It says: RELENTLESS JUICED ENERGY IS AN ORANGE AND TROPICAL FRUIT ENERGY JUICE DRINK WITH 50% JUICE AND 100% ENERGY. Something in the maths there doesn't quite add up, but any such issues are blown away by the next bit. MORNING HAS BROKEN it roars nonsequiturally, like some sort of professional wrestler running out of relevant bon mots. It's in yellow text too, drawing the eye inevitably to those three words. What's it to mean? That the a.m. has now basically ceased to function? Or that day has broken anew now that this juice (RELENTLESS STAMINA DRIVE ACTION POWER ENERGY) is in the world? Am I, perhaps, meant to drink this as a breakfast pick-me-up? And isn't that the most disturbing thing ever? Cornflakes and RELENTLESS. Hmm.
But the makers of this drink (RELENTLESS OMG STAMINA MORNING IS FUCKED DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE ENERGY BITCH) kept their last orthographic power smackdown til last. After MORNING HAS BROKEN we get...a quotation from William Wordsworth. Yup, someone has been reading Tintern Abbey and decide that this is the most awesome thing to put on the label of an energy drink can:
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
It ends there, in the middle of a sentence in fact, but seriously--what? Wordsworth? Tintern Abbey and the river Wye? RELENTLESS? I'm just bowled over. I think it's simultaneously the scariest and coolest thing ever. I think drinks should have Romantic poetry on the labels more often. Maybe Coca-Cola can start quoting Tennyson, or Rupert Brooke can adorn bottles of Dr Pepper. Because if the makers of RELENTLESS are to be believed, within these cans of ordinary beverage actually lives God. Nirvana. Sublimity. The pathway to the inner soul. And so much more than NEW 50% JUICE.
So what does it taste like? Well, kind of like 5-alive mixed with acid. It's not too unpleasant, actually. Although I do feel as if I've been beaten up by a transexual prostitute with a knuckle duster and methanol addiction, so it's swings and roundabouts.
RELENTLESS. Wow.
I wasn't particularly in the mood for lunch today--have been feeling very down all morning--but on wandering down to the canteen for some crisps and standing staring at the drinks refrigerator, I noticed a large number of cans of the same kind of drink on the top shelf. I have noticed their existence before, and suspect they have been there for, well, ever, but had not looked at them in any detail. Now I took a look and was quite scared. Scared enough to buy one of the drinks and test it for myself.
So it's a drink, an energy drink apparently, called Relentless. I know this because it has RELENTLESS writ large along the side of this 500 ml can in sprawling pseudo-Gothic lettering that looks as if it should appear on the poster of a bad metal band. I know it's an energy drink because it says ENERGY DRINK above RELENTLESS, and above that it says NEW 50% JUICE. This last part is perplexing. What's new about the juice? Was there old juice there before? And is it the juice that's new or the fact that there's half of it? Did there use to be more? And the lack of an exclamation mark is, for some reason, disconcerting. It's as if they're making some kind of flat statement, impossible to argue against: this juice is new, and there's 50% of it: deal.
Below the name of the drink (RELENTLESS) it says JUICED ENERGY, which I can only assume is the name of this flavour of the drink. It doesn't particularly help though. Did they take raw energy and then somehow liquify it? The words below this are even more frightening: NO HALF MEASURES - ENERGY - STAMINA - FOCUS - DRIVE. Now, either someone's found themselves a thesaurus or I'm supposed to take it that this beverage (RELENTLESS) is going to provide me with all these synonyms if I drink it (all half a litre of it). I also take the NO HALF MEASURES part as something of a threat: I must drink it all or someone will do something to me, possibly involving shouting lots of words like STAMINA and DRIVE. I don't like it when people do that.
But the front side of the can is as nothing to the back. Seriously, this can has more writing on it than Robert Downey Jr's police record. At the top it finally explains (kind of) what I'm about to drink. It says: RELENTLESS JUICED ENERGY IS AN ORANGE AND TROPICAL FRUIT ENERGY JUICE DRINK WITH 50% JUICE AND 100% ENERGY. Something in the maths there doesn't quite add up, but any such issues are blown away by the next bit. MORNING HAS BROKEN it roars nonsequiturally, like some sort of professional wrestler running out of relevant bon mots. It's in yellow text too, drawing the eye inevitably to those three words. What's it to mean? That the a.m. has now basically ceased to function? Or that day has broken anew now that this juice (RELENTLESS STAMINA DRIVE ACTION POWER ENERGY) is in the world? Am I, perhaps, meant to drink this as a breakfast pick-me-up? And isn't that the most disturbing thing ever? Cornflakes and RELENTLESS. Hmm.
But the makers of this drink (RELENTLESS OMG STAMINA MORNING IS FUCKED DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE ENERGY BITCH) kept their last orthographic power smackdown til last. After MORNING HAS BROKEN we get...a quotation from William Wordsworth. Yup, someone has been reading Tintern Abbey and decide that this is the most awesome thing to put on the label of an energy drink can:
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
It ends there, in the middle of a sentence in fact, but seriously--what? Wordsworth? Tintern Abbey and the river Wye? RELENTLESS? I'm just bowled over. I think it's simultaneously the scariest and coolest thing ever. I think drinks should have Romantic poetry on the labels more often. Maybe Coca-Cola can start quoting Tennyson, or Rupert Brooke can adorn bottles of Dr Pepper. Because if the makers of RELENTLESS are to be believed, within these cans of ordinary beverage actually lives God. Nirvana. Sublimity. The pathway to the inner soul. And so much more than NEW 50% JUICE.
So what does it taste like? Well, kind of like 5-alive mixed with acid. It's not too unpleasant, actually. Although I do feel as if I've been beaten up by a transexual prostitute with a knuckle duster and methanol addiction, so it's swings and roundabouts.
RELENTLESS. Wow.