purpose: Will Kahn-Greene's blog of Python, Linux, random content, PyBlosxom, Miro, and other projects mixed in there ad hoc, half-baked, and with a twist of lemon
Mon, 01 Jan 2001
on coffee
One doesn't drink coffee in the morning because one is
thirsty, or because it provides nutritional value, or because
one enjoys it, or because one is hooked. Rather it is a chance
to revel in life--to enjoy its dark and bitter waters, the acidic
aftertaste. Then, and only then, you know that your day couldn't
possibly be that bad and you gain in the strength to go on....
One more step.... One more day of tedium.
And it helps to focus for some reason. I find I think twice
as fast and twice as focused after a good meal and a couple of
cups of coffee. If you skip the meal, then you just get a super
caffeine high which lasts some 15 minutes and then you burn out.
But whatever.
So there is a balance involved in drinking coffee. A balance of
solid and liquid. Of drink and eat. Like the natural flows of the
universe.
There is a certain macho factor too. Like when I'm working, I
don't want a mamby-pamby cup of starbucks or green mountain coffee!
I want a cup of coffee made from dirt. I want to put my spoon in my
coffee and have full confidence that it will stand up in the coffee
and not touch any of the sides. The coffee should be either scalding
hot, or arctic cold. It should be black as night, bitter, and mildly
acidic. You should be able to use the same cup of coffee to take the
rust off your car.
Update 12/9/2004: Sometime back in 1999 or so I started getting the shakes on
the weekends when I wasn't at work. This was around the time when I was
working for a company that had one of those really fancy coffee machines.
So I quit drinking coffee. After a few weeks, I stopped getting headaches
and feeling the effects of withdrawal.
Then I started drinking tea and went through a tea phase.
Then in 2001 or 2002 or sometime around there, I started drinking one or
two cups a day. Every week or so I'd read yet another article that waxed
philosophical about the incredible HARMS or the incredible BOONS of
drinking some amount of coffee a day.
Now I'm up to two cups a day: one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Doesn't really matter if it's caffeinated or decaffeinated--I think I drink
it mostly as a habit. Drinking water doesn't really do it for me.
See, that update was really interesting! Just like the rest of the essay!
In retrospect, the "drinking coffee is macho" meme is probably a phase
most folks go through as well. Part of me wonders what the differences
between "drinking coffee is macho" and "smoking is macho" would be. Are
they psychologically similar enough to be equivalent?
pyblosxom::2.0 dev
All contents Copyright 1996 to 2008 Will Guaraldi.
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