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Posts for the date of Friday, January 25, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 12:37 PM |
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Random Friday Notes:
Do saints have to audition for the job of Patron Saint?
If a dot com failed and noone was around to hear it, would the employees still sue?
Only Canadians would have this problem.
Is this guy an ass?
Darwinism at work.
Check out the liner notes for the soon to be reissued "Brutal Youth" by Elvis Costello. Few musicians these days have the eloquence or wit that Mr. Costello possesses.
Finally, today marks my final day in a corporate structure. My family and I are rather excited about my impending new life. I've always wanted to be a full-time dad. Now I can be. Yay!
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Posts for the date of Thursday, January 24, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 12:32 PM |
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You know what? I have nothing to write about again today. It seems like things have been pretty normal this week, so I have no fodder for subjects. Odd, ain’t it? So, if you’re looking for entertainment below, stop here. What follows is a bunch of random thoughts. And when I say random, I mean totally random. You were warned.
The coffee grinder is working out well. I’m apparently the only human being in the house capable of operating it, but I’ll get over that. I like coffee. Coffee likes me. It’s a good match
Technically I’m not supposed to drink coffee anymore. It’s bad for me. My stomach isn’t supposed to be able to handle it. However, my doctor has never spoken to me early in the morning. My wife said, “I know it makes your stomach hurt. However, if you don’t drink coffee you snap at me in the morning. And I swear, if you snap at me one more time in the morning you will find out what real pain is.”
See? I have to drink the coffee. It’s to save my marriage.
I guess I haven’t talked about the kids lately either. I’ve been too obsessed with coffee. Matilda: Still a kid. Gertrude: Still a baby.
Well that was interesting? What next? Ooh, something shiny!
Seriously, I just don’t seem to have much on my mind today. I suppose I could talk about a million things, such as the American Taliban, Camp X-Ray, Anthrax, Tax Spending, Medical Breakthroughs. But . . . that’s all so serious! I’d rather talk about something silly. Thing is, I can’t think of anything silly.
Doctor! Gary’s brain has gone code blue! Get 10CCs of great entertainment STAT!
Hey look! I made an Amazon Wishlist. Go look at it.
Funny word of the day: Defunct.
Best color of the day: Clear.
Best song of the day: Birth, School, Work, Death by The Godfathers.
Best movie of the day: Horse Feathers
Best element of the day: Hydrogen.
Must leave now to go locate my brain. Here brainy brainy brain.
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Posts for the date of Wednesday, January 23, 2002
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Posts for the date of Tuesday, January 22, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 1:24 PM |
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I was talking to a friend today about the coffee thing. (By “talking” I mean, “typing.” By “coffee thing” I mean the previous post. By “friend” I mean someone who is highly talented and creative who needs to take a leap of faith for his art.) He expressed sympathy for my flavored coffee dilemma and explained to me that is one of the reasons why he drinks tea. He has complete control of the quality.
(Interjection: That’s not the only reason he drinks tea. The other reason is that coffee has an odd effect on him. It’s like over winding a toy. He goes into fast forward. I’ll never forget the time he was laying on my floor clutching his chest, panting and yelling, “I’ll be fine! I’ll be fine! I just need some water and some cookies. Start the movie without me. I’m sure normal blood flow will resume in a moment.”)
I like tea as well, thanks to him. He introduced me to brands and flavors (is that what you call them? Flavors? Leaves? Twigs?) that I hadn’t been aware of. Granted, I was brought up on Lipton teabags. I thought tea grew in bags. Who knew that there were actually dried leaves in there! Go figure!
At home, I’ll drink tea when the mood hits me. I prefer coffee. It has weight. It feels like it’s going somewhere. It’s like drinking a magic elixir. Tea is more of refreshment. Granted, when I’m sick nothing hits the spot quite like tea. In that respect it’s magical.
Since this conversation occurred while I was at work, I explained that I couldn’t drink tea here. First, our water tastes AWFUL. Out of the tap it tastes like I’m licking a geological survey. Even our shipped-in filtered water tastes bad. Once, I swear this is true, it tasted like a basement. An old, musty, dirty basement where someone has hidden the bodies of missing vagrants.
The other issue is the fact that the only means by which to warm the water is a microwave. Normally that isn’t so bad, if I’m at home, that is. Here, no matter what you do, the machine smells like the Ghost of Lunches Past.
So, if I make my tea here my refreshing vanilla blend comes out tasting like fluoridated Dinty Moore Beef Stew, now with scaly minerals!
Tea’s just not my bag. Besides, part of my freelancing fantasy has never been to sit at my desk drinking tea. Let me paint you the picture of my perfect day as a self-employed man:
I’m a successful writer. Or perhaps I’ve won a large settlement in a class-action lawsuit. Hard to tell. Things are fuzzy. Anyway, I wake up in the morning and put on a fuzzy, green, ratty, terrycloth robe.* I pad downstairs in my Mickey Mouse slippers and put the coffee on. I wake up the wife and tell her it’s time to get ready for work. She uses bad words. I laugh. I wake up the kids to get them ready for school.
I head back downstairs to make breakfast and watch the news. The family comes down and has some breakfast. Wife leaves for work. I take the kids to the bus stop. They beg me to stay inside, but I refuse. The other kids ask “who’s the scary guy in the ugly green robe?” My girls lie and say they don’t know.
I go back inside, finish the first pot of coffee and shower. I put on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and the fuzzy green robe. Second pot of coffee is prepared. I check my email and answer my massive amounts of fan mail. Or maybe it’s hate mail. There’s a fine line.
I crank up some good indie music. Maybe Cherry Twister or maybe Linus of Hollywood, or perhaps some Splitsville. I guess it depends on the mood. I finish the second pot.
With the third pot brewing I sit down and do some serious thinking about the various articles I’ll be writing that day. Having three syndicated columns is rough, you know! By noon I finish the third pot. So, I have lunch.
Around one I get back to work. I start jotting notes down. I watch a squirrel running by. I change CDs. I get tired and start the fourth pot. I finalize my topics and get more coffee.
By now I realize it’s 2:45 and the kids will be coming home from school soon. In 30 minutes I pound out all three articles. They are all brilliant. Pulitzer worthy. Then I make dinner for the family. Start the fifth pot of coffee. Put the kids to bed, watch a movie or two and go to bed around 3 a.m.
Somewhere in there would be a heart seizure or two.
My friend ended his tea proposition with, “Doesn’t really matter anyway. You’ll be working from home and in control. Hey, you’ll need to take on an extra project just to pay for your extra bean consumption.”
True. True. But, it’ll still be much more affordable that scotch. Even if that did work for Faulkner.
*Green fuzzy robe idea is copyright 2002 Pengelly Enterprises. All rights reserved, but not deserved. Void where prohibited. Not valid with all offers. Pengelly Enterprises is not responsible for any rashes, welts, hives or other socially embarrassing side-effects from its products, or the products of its subsidiaries.
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Posts for the date of Monday, January 21, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 12:42 PM |
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I have won the war on coffee. For this, in part, I must thank James Lileks who finally fueled my ire into fire. Without his rants, I’m not sure I would have finally taken action.
Admittedly, I am a coffee snob. The coffee must be good, it must be hot, and it must be strong. No Yuban or Folgers for me. I need freshly ground coffee that was hand picked by a Guatemalan who needs the money. My coffee must come from South America, Africa or some other place I’ve never been. Coffee grown in Ohio . . . that’s bad.
Also, I don’t like companies that try to prove how good their coffee is by promoting “100% arabica beans.” Whoopdedoo. Roasted coffees are generally made from Arabica beans. There is only one other option and it’s CRAP!
So, traditionally we buy coffee out of the bulk bins at the grocery store. We have three options, good, better and best. Each blend has a varying degree of success. The problem is that people use the same grinders for real coffee and imitation flavored coffees. So, I’d grind up a nice pound of Mocha Java and get home with coffee that tastes like a melted Russell Stover chocolate box. Including the cardboard. No matter what I did, the coffee would invariably come home tasting like a hybrid between what it was supposed to taste like and a vending machine.
So, many moons ago, we bought a grinder. We were happy for a bout a day. That’s when it broke. So, we went back to suffering with the masses.
We hit a good streak for a while. Seemed that the sales of flavored coffees went down in our area and I was free from Mocha-Almond-Hazelnut-Vanilla-Crunch. We went through all three brands, decided one was too expensive, one was over roasted and the other was just right! (Goldilocks then went and slept in our beds.)
Well, when the wife was preggers, she couldn’t have coffee. Consumption went down and I started to get lazy. When she came back to the world of caffeine-induced zealotry, we hit the racks with vengeance. Quickly we discovered that our beloved brand of coffee has gone down hill. Or the same beans had been sitting there for quite some time and were about as fresh as Mariah Carrey’s music. It was like drinking muddy water. Awful, awful.
I began to wonder if there had been a bad crop. Did a big storm hit the port? What was wrong with my beloved coffee? Why was it stale? Was there a fish in the percolator? It was awful.
After several weeks of this, we had gotten a good streak again. Then, Saturday morning disaster struck. I guess we didn’t sniff the grinder well enough because . . . my morning cup of joe was flavored.
Here’s what I don’t understand about flavored coffee. When you brew it, you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. Chocolate? Maybe. Maple? Possible. Hazelnut? Dunno. Isn’t the point of a flavor to be . . . well . . . a flavor? Coffee flavors seem like an idea. Or perhaps an after thought. Either way, it’s ill advised.
To quote Mr. Lileks, “Coffee IS a flavor.” ‘Nuff said. And don’t get me started on the fact that MOCHA is a PORT and has nothing to do with FLAVOR, unless you are tracking flavor by region (which you should). It certainly isn’t chocolate, though they do export chocolate in Mocha as well. (Hence, Mocha Java. Named after the ports in which the coffees were exported from. Then, they mixed the two beans together and roasted them. Hence the term “blend.” Got it?) In fact, Mocha is in Yemen, a country that suddenly everyone knows because they don’t seem to like anybody.
We went out and bought a grinder. It’s a sweet little deal, too. More than anything else, I like how it makes me look. Like a SNOB. Now when I ask if someone wants coffee, I can grind it. Make them feel guilty for giving me Folger’s Crystals when I visit them. Bastards.
We also bought a gold filter. Paper filters soak up a large amount of the oils and acids that give coffee its flavor. So . . . a metal filter will allow them to get through.
Naturally, we had to test the sucker out when we got home. Stopped at the store and picked up some new beans. Listened to the magical electric whir and crackle of the new grinder and popped the coffee into the new filter. And we let it brew.
What can I say? I’ve rediscovered coffee. I’ve been worried because I was starting to not like coffee. Anyone who knows me knows my life is defined by my coffee. Family members ask me to make the pot at functions; for fear that they offend my palate. I like that power.
Now there’s a new level to attain. My freshly ground, fully robust cuppa joe. Can you beat it? I think not.
One side effect . . . Couldn’t sleep last night! Tested too much coffee.
I think it’s a plot. The coffee cartel in Yemen is trying to get rid of me by depriving me of sleep and causing me to use the bathroom every two minutes. Bastards!
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