I tried an experiment this morning where I secretly switched my regular four-dollar Starbucks coffee with this energy drink called Vault. Let's see if I could tell the difference.

Yes. Yes, something was amiss with my morning beverage, like it just wasn't waking me up the way a grande double no-whip soy mochachino would. And also, it's sort of the color of pee... or more precisely, it's this neon green color that your pee would be if you spent too much time at Chernobyl. I have to admit that I was a little hesitant about drinking this stuff, because I have a rule that says nothing gets ingested into my body that looks like it already came out of my body, but I didn't want the dollar I spent on this concoction to go to waste. Vault tastes kind of like Mountain Dew and Sprite had a baby, then raised that baby at Chernobyl. Every time I took a sip of Vault, I wasn't sure if I was going to burp up carbon dioxide or a mutated second nose.

I don't actually like soft drinks, or anything carbonated, so I expected Vault to be a somewhat gross, painful experience. These are the sacrifices one makes so that one can get only four and a half hours of sleep a night and still function during the day. The real test of any of these energy drinks is whether they behave as advertised and live up to their x-treme youth-friendly otherwise-meaningless names; essentially, I'm expecting to open the bottle and liquid crack pours out. So I'm gullible... I'm also thinking about maybe buying a bottle of that Axe Body Spray stuff. :(