Freshen your cup?

The morning ritual.  With the morning comes coffee.  It’s either that or a gun.  The coffee, such a vital element of my life, has always been cause for constant comment from those who share my mornings – women, roommates, family…  The number one complaint from others: I don’t drink all the coffee I make.  Like it’s truly wasteful or something.  Like the starving children in Africa need coffee.  Sit at the table until you’ve finished all your coffee.  Lick the motherfucking boiling pot clean.  Suck the filter dry.

Honestly, fuck you all.  It’s my coffee.  This is America, last I checked.  This is the great State of Maryland and it’s fucking shaped like a gun because this is America and dearest God in heaven, I am a free man.  I can make 13 gallons of coffee and dump it out the window.  That’s what our boys in Iraq are dying for, those poor sons of bitches!

Why does everyone have to have a say about my coffee habits?  Maybe I leave enough for a cup of coffee, or more, in the pot.  Is that enough to tip you over?  Can I refer you to a psychologist?  Oh, doctor, I don’t know what to do, he wasted a cup of coffee today, I’m holding the razor blade to my wrist until he drinks it!

Once the rage passes, I find the Coffee Psychology interesting.  Up until the late 90’s, Americans weren’t a people known for their coffee.  Not like now.  We drank the cinnamon roast bullshit you got at the diner, where you could see the bottom of the cup.  The only romance associated with coffee in this country was cowboy shit.  Tumbleweed against the night sky, three homos in Levis crouched around a fire, some cracker motherfucker leaning against a rock playing sad tunes on a harmonica.  Come join us for some coffee, cowboy.  We were just about to fuck a cow.

But then something changed.  I won’t name names, Starbuck, but you’re the man for me.  And we love our addictions.  And we love them in large quantities.  Those retarded little European espressos in those ridiculous little cups.  Over the shoulder!  Against the wall!  I want the gallon bucket size loaded with so much sugary shit that I get horrified phone calls at midnight from doctors I’ve never met before.

We became the coffee nation.  Now the former coffee nations respectfully serve us a cup, eyes downcast, backing away slowly, waiting in the wings for: “CAN I HAVE ANOTHER ONE OF THESE!?!?  GAH!!  AND A COKE!”

Sadly, this means that the morning coffee ritual has become much more difficult.  Coffee is given respect – value.  Black gold.  Used to be you could drink half a cup and throw the rest on the person who annoyed you the most and it would all be shits and giggles.  You could drop your mug off the balcony and tee-hee twiddly-dee-dee.  Another pot?  Doesn’t matter!  How about I pour this entire pot into the plant?  Ho-ho!  Blinky-blee!

Now every drop is holyholy.  People from LA to London sit around and make comments about how I make my coffee, how much of it I leave unfinished, how I have a primitive coffee machine.

That’s the other problem I have – the complicated coffee machine.  You put it in the top, it grinds it, the thing clicks and snaps and moves over… Make sure this is that and this is there because if that isn’t there then this will do this and the whole house will burn down.  Sweetheart, I’m hungover, I’m awake against my will, everything in the world hurts and the only awareness I have is that I have to go nose to nose with evil until I pass out tonight.  I just want a cup of coffee.  And shut up.  And go away.  Go to wherever it is people go to when they’re not needling me.

What is it with the fancy machines?  Used to be that the only complicated coffee machines were in the houses of the rich.  Unused, on a counter, something you stared at in wonder when you visited your silver spoon friend.

Now the rich have taken over, haven’t they?  We all want that untouchable machine.

Do coffee machines represent America?  From the glory days of my youth — where everything was one or two steps and the flick of a switch away — to these complicated zoloft breakdown machines.  This is why we’re losing wars.  This is why things are so embarrassing.  We’ve even turned making coffee into some sort of OCD meltdown neurosis.  Look at the Mideast.  What the fuck is that?  The result of a nation that cannot properly make or enjoy coffee each morning.  If we all just went pop-pop Mr. Coffee we’d be fine.  Instead we have to put on a special suit and twist, turn, fill, flip, drop, snap, click, make sure the handle is turned this way OR ELSE.  How can those people be expected to responsibly run a war?  Or vote or raise children?  Or be allowed outside, or anywhere near me?  Everyone wants to feel good in the most complicated way possible and with the most medication they can possibly get their hands on instead of, say, just fucking shutting up for once in their goddamned lives.  Here’s a cup of coffee.  Sit down.  You don’t need to finish it. Everything’s okay.  I have Miss Manners on the phone and she says that we don’t even have to touch a drop.  We can dump it all out and the world will spin on.

Maybe then we’ll be able to run Iraq in the good old, tried and true, American way.

What would Ronald Reagan do?  He would get on the TV and say:  I am not going to attack Iraq.

Next morning, the  news would come on and tell us that, while we slept, Saddam’s entire family was murdered by a nuko-super-cyber-bomb!  Then they would pause, get those Jap-animation eyes and say: We heart Ronnie!

The entire world would respond with:  WHAT THE F– Oh…nevermind.  We “heart” him, too.  Fuckers.

And you and I?  We would drink only half the coffee we made that morning, because we’d be busy making love.