Coffee Rant

I had to give up the one thing, the first thing I looked forward to each morning. A cup of coffee. It seems my over-stimulated, urban-abused body just won't tolerate the cup of joe anymore. Well I thought, maybe now things will slow down, go at a more recognizably human pace. Not even close. Without coffee, I feel like I'm in a time warp as seconds drag like hours and I stumble around in an opiate state. The old television commercial that said, "Coffee, it picks you up and calms you down." like hell. I've always known the effects of coffee, one cup leads to two, leads to a coveted pot that you won't share with anyone. The addictive affection for roasted beans and home grinding and french steeping. But it's so much more than that. Everyone silently claiming allegiance to the coffee club by aimlessly stumbling through their morning commutes while mallet-clutching a paper Venti. Young office hipsters slouching a anonymously in the back of meeting rooms acting like totally "in" while they barely keep a grasp on their personalized mugs. Yeah, coffee, the syrup that fills the cracks of virtual reality to make it all seem real in geophysical reality. The stealth speedball. The ubiquitous heroin. None of this comes as any surprise to me, I've cold turkey-ed the caffeine tar three times, so I figure, once more into the maw of oblivion is no problem, right? It's not so much the actual abstinence, but the timing. It's like being in the high-speed-car-chase-of-life and suddenly just opening the door and getting out. Folger's doesn't come with skid leathers. It's not a matter of red pill or blue pill, that's just Hollywood psychosis. You just make a choice between brown liquid or clear liquid. It’s all a matter of perspective. I thought maybe I'd lose my razor edge, that I wouldn't have that anime katana like mental prowess. Then I imagined how brutal and Caligula-like trying to cleave a winter squash with a dull butter knife is, and my caffeine deprived ego was marginally eased. Coffee doesn't make you see goddesses or machine elves, you're moving too fast, way out front, standing on the accelerator. Funny car, formula drag racing is like nursing home bingo compared to a java jag. "But it's all for the best" the tea totaling suffragettes sing-song and we all know what happened to prohibition. Remember the ad campaign against drugs, with the egg, "this is your brain on drugs" hook line? The one for coffee would be a nice juicy bug splat on the windshield of a Bonneville Flats speed record vehicle, THAT's yer freaking brain on caffeine dude. 

It's ok though, I'll just do a Miss America beauty pageant white-gloved hand wave as life now blurs by me, the rat race is more over-rated hype than pay-off anyway. Yeah, you guessed it, CHEESE is the next thing I'll have to give up.