Where the Monster Played Compliation

This is, sadly, a story that is still being written … This was written as a PSA, a real-life diary over one woman’s use, though not the target customer, of Monster in 2023. This is a compilation as best she can assemble from real-life diary entries!!! She couldn’t expel the monster until it came out in the form of a true story - a speech followed by a broadside. Consider this taped to a bpu

Monster

Of all the advocacy work in my life, I looked at my forehead in the mirror one day and literally saw an empty “M.” I’m their product – I’d been branded. 

But they were so addictive, soon all she saw was the M, or rather chasing it. She was writing and losing it, losing her teeth and urinating on herself because of the high caffeine content against a human bladder. The M became a pick-ax, a skeleton hand, a cigarette constantly being ashed. She knew the Monster made her sick and she knew it was so heavily marketed, sometimes she thought the Ms would all make a picket fence if she lined up the cans. On the cans the Ms became picks running through her hair as she saw her ghost face in the mirror. Everyone was driving around with them, like a hundred million tiny spears. 

I was embarrassed, but you’re not the only one who has been here and neither am I. Lets’s hold them up for what they are, Ms are pitchforks in the night. Soon, the glitter will catch everyone’s eye.

I give you, the Monster …

Washed in The Rain

A Test of the Emergency Broadcast System

When you’re alone in the house with the rain

Sometimes it’s there to let you cry again!!!

Diamonds from the Mansion let you see clearly 

Decorating the view from what you’d worked for so dearly – 

And if you stop and listen for a bit

You’ll find it even had a drumbeat, a heartbeat yours to it –

I star your windows and look like diamonds as I fly –

Pretty, I see from your eyes –

Sleet – reminds you your softness is just powerful enough – 

And the snow coming down – Sometimes the stars need to fall totally down

So you stop and see the swirling of each moment of your life – 

Cartwheeling angels in gowns –

Snow making a blank canvas on the ground

Reminding ourselves what was then, and love what we’ve found – 

Getting to be a kid a bit – stopping clocks, ice cream snow

It’s like angels giggling and we giggle along with it – problems fall below 

The snow washes us clean of our pain and makes room for our dreams

And after rain or snow and a good hard cry

Your windowsill still listens — old you released with the steam – 

Like an opera’s last notes – trembling shine

Because you listened – 

Sometimes to stop the world we get to walk through lace

Because by being lost we get to find our place – 

Sometimes we get snow because we don’t know what we need

And staying still in the weather – we watch and are freed! 

(Drink refill, yes) … M is for Monster.

The brand wants you to look at the M and think about it.

I kept looking at it till I saw a Mirror in the M.

Because it was all that was left of me.

– The M could be skeleton claws, vampire teeth. –

Sometimes it looked like a plug in but it didn’t plug me into anything.

No sleep, instead of connecting to each other we’re all just chasing the rush in circles!

People are addicted, angry about it while buying it by the case.

I felt so good, I kept buying it, too!

But drink it and you will glow in the dark!

I made bad decisions from no sleep, and soon

All that left was … the shiny mirror

On can after can

More lies about my feelings, not buying real food –

The Ms lining up started to look like warnings, angel wings.

My real self was empty

Like can after can on the counter

Till all the Ms started to look like a picket fence

Keeping my real self out.

(People think different things … I think the secret is the energy can is empty inside. What really gives you energy is the true you - even if you’re trying to hide inside … there’s nothing in the bottom!!!)

(This has been a PSA of … I don’t want to know who.)

Monster Ballad: Life on High with Monster Energy Drinks

To me Monster energy drinks are a reminder of the importance of consumer rights. I am a baby in diapers as I write this, one kidney down, teeth angry as fangs on the Monster M. What if we took pictures of everyone running around chasing the Monster? What if the people were already X-rays, skeletons? Monster is like the uranium girls dying with glowing lips. Nobody knew. What if everyone posted the pictures and the Ms were turned upside down, rising like a thousand tiny pitchforks? We could turn them into a nail bed. That might stop another “me, too.” ((Monster is death marketed. I learned this, am writing it from my sickbed; others don’t know it yet.))

These are marketed: We need a movement. I was making images every day of the “M” until I learned this is what Monster wants you to do. A thousand social media images. AI already. The M’s would indeed make a pitchfork, or together, a picket fence.

(Back story.) It was like a flip book, where there’s a picture on each page so when you flip through it it looks like there’s motion. 

You know why I finally stopped? Looking at a morning that had resulted in no writing, a cat peeing on the floor, extra bills looming, empty pizza boxes next to full bottles of (more) Monster energy drink, empty Starbucks cans, a budget template, broken diabetes supplies, four extra errands, strangers fighting in my parking space, shelves falling over on me, having not taken off headphones for a few days, food in the freezer, everywhere – emails making more emails!!! BUT I’M QUITTING COFFEE! Things needing money, things needing time; needing time for money and vice versa. I knew what I couldn’t afford. I quit to take a walk. (Coffee just sped the cycle up.)

Monster is how I overcame being a perfectionist, indeed. Much like the bleeding Ms on its can, it stopped me in it's tracks.