<\/p>\n
The morning ritual.\u00a0 With the morning comes coffee.\u00a0 It\u2019s either that or a gun.\u00a0 The coffee, such a vital element of my life, has always been cause for constant comment from those who share my mornings \u2013 women, roommates, family\u2026\u00a0 The number one complaint from others: I don\u2019t drink all the coffee I make.\u00a0 Like it\u2019s truly wasteful or something.\u00a0 Like the starving children in Africa need coffee.\u00a0 Sit at the table until you\u2019ve finished all your coffee.\u00a0 Lick the motherfucking boiling pot clean.\u00a0 Suck the filter dry.<\/p>\n
Honestly, fuck you all.\u00a0 It’s my coffee.\u00a0 This is America, last I checked.\u00a0 This is the great State of Maryland and it\u2019s fucking shaped like a gun because this is America and dearest God in heaven, I am a free man.\u00a0 I can make 13 gallons of coffee and dump it out the window.\u00a0 That’s what our boys in Iraq are dying for, those poor sons of bitches!<\/p>\n
Why does everyone have to have a say about my coffee habits?\u00a0 Maybe I leave enough for a cup of coffee, or more, in the pot.\u00a0 Is that enough to tip you over?\u00a0 Can I refer you to a psychologist?\u00a0 Oh, doctor, I don\u2019t know what to do, he wasted a cup of coffee today, I\u2019m holding the razor blade to my wrist until he drinks it!<\/p>\n
Once the rage passes, I find the Coffee Psychology interesting.\u00a0 Up until the late 90\u2019s, Americans weren\u2019t a people known for their coffee.\u00a0 Not like now.\u00a0 We drank the cinnamon roast bullshit you got at the diner, where you could see the bottom of the cup.\u00a0 The only romance associated with coffee in this country was cowboy shit.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Come join us for some coffee, cowboy.\u00a0 We were just about to fuck a cow.<\/p>\n
But then something changed.\u00a0 I won\u2019t name names, Starbuck, but you\u2019re the man for me.\u00a0 And we love our addictions.\u00a0 And we love them in large quantities.\u00a0 Those retarded little European espressos in those ridiculous little cups.\u00a0 Over the shoulder!\u00a0 Against the wall!\u00a0 I want the gallon bucket size loaded with so much sugary shit that I get horrified phone calls at midnight from doctors I\u2019ve never met before.<\/p>\n
We became the coffee nation.\u00a0 Now the former coffee nations respectfully serve us a cup, eyes downcast, backing away slowly, waiting in the wings for: \u201cCAN I HAVE ANOTHER ONE OF THESE!?!?\u00a0 GAH!!\u00a0 AND A COKE!\u201d<\/p>\n
Sadly, this means that the morning coffee ritual has become much more difficult.\u00a0 Coffee is given respect \u2013 value.\u00a0 Black gold.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 You could drop your mug off the balcony and tee-hee twiddly-dee-dee.\u00a0 Another pot?\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t matter!\u00a0 How about I pour this entire pot into the plant?\u00a0 Ho-ho!\u00a0 Blinky-blee!<\/p>\n
Now every drop is holyholy.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the other problem I have \u2013 the complicated coffee machine. \u00a0You 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\u2019t there then this will do this and the whole house will burn down.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I just want a cup of coffee.\u00a0 And shut up.\u00a0 And go away.\u00a0 Go to wherever it is people go to when they’re not needling me.<\/p>\n
What is it with the fancy machines?\u00a0 Used to be that the only complicated coffee machines were in the houses of the rich.\u00a0 Unused, on a counter, something you stared at in wonder when you visited your silver spoon friend.<\/p>\n
Now the rich have taken over, haven\u2019t they?\u00a0 We all want that untouchable machine.<\/p>\n
Do coffee machines represent America?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This is why we’re losing wars.\u00a0 This is why things are so embarrassing.\u00a0 We\u2019ve even turned making coffee into some sort of OCD meltdown neurosis.\u00a0 Look at the Mideast.\u00a0 What the fuck is that?\u00a0 The result of a nation that cannot properly make or enjoy coffee each morning.\u00a0 If we all just went pop-pop Mr. Coffee we\u2019d be fine.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 How can those people be expected to responsibly run a war?\u00a0 Or vote or raise children?\u00a0 Or be allowed outside, or anywhere near me?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a cup of coffee.\u00a0 Sit down.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to finish it. Everything\u2019s okay.\u00a0 I have Miss Manners on the phone and she says that we don\u2019t even have to touch a drop.\u00a0 We can dump it all out and the world will spin on.<\/p>\n
Maybe then we\u2019ll be able to run Iraq in the good old, tried and true, American way.<\/p>\n
What would Ronald Reagan do?\u00a0 He would get on the TV and say:\u00a0 I am not going to attack Iraq.<\/p>\n
Next morning, the \u00a0news would come on and tell us that, while we slept, Saddam’s entire family was murdered by a nuko-super-cyber-bomb!\u00a0 Then they would pause, get those Jap-animation eyes and say: We heart Ronnie!<\/p>\n
The entire world would respond with:\u00a0 WHAT THE F– Oh…nevermind.\u00a0 We “heart” him, too.\u00a0 Fuckers.<\/p>\n
And you and I?\u00a0 We would drink only half the coffee we made that morning, because we\u2019d be busy making love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[298,353],"class_list":["post-2534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-coffee","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2644,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/2644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}