Editor’s Letter

Summer is in full force. This means nothing but reruns on TV and soulless films that will make you stupider by merely thinking about them. This also means “A hotdog from 7-11 and a tallboy of Budweiser” is an acceptable answer to the question “What did you have for breakfast?” After you load up that delicious dog at the topping bar, you may notice a sinister presence at the counter of your favourite convenience store: shots! Not the delightful kind your friends try to force on you at bars which cause you to pick a fight with a bouncer or flash your tits to the man with a video camera for a free hat, rather, highly concentrated doses of energy drink.

They come in 50ml vials, which is perfect because you’re too busy to drink a standard sized 250ml energy drink and getting caught with amphetamines will violate the terms of your parole. They’re also the perfect size for dropping in a pint full of Jagermeister and chugging down with your brahs at the bar. With awesome names like Insane XXX, Blast, Xtazy, Monster Hitman and Talon… you’re not quite sure if you’re getting an energy drink or a WWE wrestler in liquid form.

This concern will be quickly quelled when you knock it back and the taurine, guarana, creatine and glucuronolactone hits you. Screw caffeine or Mountain Dew—these bad boys will make you do things that are way more extreme, like ride your bmx off a canyon cliff into a whitewater river infested with sharks. Be sure to do a 360 as you fly off the ledge, points are awarded for style.

It’s not just convenience stores that are embracing the shot. Restaurants are getting in on the action too. They used to be called miniburgers but now they’re sliders or burger shots. Shots of beef and bun and condiment. Delicious and efficient! Where are the hotdog shots? (Note: writing an idea in an editor’s letter in a magazine is the same a registering a copyright for an idea. So send me my royalties after you take that idea.)

Shots are a rather Orwellian Newspeak approach to food and drinks. Instead of our language getting smaller every year, what we’re ingesting is getting smaller. True, having a meal that consists of burger and energy shots has the same health benefits as injecting black tar heroin into your heart. But eating a burger the size of your head with a few cans of Redbull had the same effect anyways. So at least we’re saving time. Sure we could all try and eat healthier, but that’s just not going to happen.

When the economy completely collapses, we’re unemployed and hungry and martial law is declared to suppress the food riots, the powers that be will inevitably look to the shot to soothe the masses. After all, it’s what happened in the film Soylent Green. In Soylent Green, the solution to food shortages brought on by overpopulation was to give everyone their food in tiny wafer form. (Spoiler alert: the wafers are actually made of people, also reducing overpopulation.) I doubt the government will resort to feeding our friends to us in shots though. It’d be tough to keep that quiet as people would probably be tweeting about it on their iPhones as they went down the conveyer belt to the meat grinder. Na zdorovya!

Photography by Toby Marie Bannister