I need another cup to face the day

I always start the day with a couple of cups of coffee. Not lattes. Not half foam Americana's. Just plain joe. Black. In a big cup.

We often argued when we were first married about coffee and how to make it. I had a old fashioned Faberware percolator that I had for about twenty years. It  had  a plug and you had to take the guts out to clean. It didn't have paper filters or any of that bullshit. Just hot strong coffee. It was the best coffee pot I ever had.

It finally gave up the ghost and we proceeded to buy a new one. Unfortunately it was a disaster. You see China had bought the company and everything was being produced over there. Which means it works for about a year and then the heating element goes.  So for the past six years or so we would buy a new one and throw out the old one. It was a disaster.

Finally someone gave us a brand new Mister Coffee.  I hadn't had one since the seventies. I hate the coffee it makes. But I had to use it because I was tired of the complaints of the weak coffee a dying Faberware pot would make. I have to make sure I have the fucking filters and all that shit. The only solace I have is that I use high octane coffee and make it incredibly strong. I used to hate Mr. Coffee because that is what we always had in the accounting offices I used to work in. They would always make bland insipid coffee and it was like drinking dishwater. I guess I just have to get over it and take it like you have to do with so many things as you age and lose agency over your life.

I was introduced to coffee by my grandma when I was six years old. When I would go over her house she would give me a shot of espresso before I went around the corner to Sacred Hearts grammar school. So I am used to really strong black coffee since I was a kid.

I hate Star Bucks and all of those fancy bullshit coffees. I would always get my coffee and buttered roll from the little aluminon carts that the have in front of subway stops and the LIRR. It was always hot and strong. I would always make friends with the guys running the carts giving a cheery hello and a good word as I am happy in the mornings. In the last couple of decades these guys always seem to be Muslims. In fact I vividly remember one of them asking me what train I took to get to the Flatbush Avenue stop on the LIRR. I told him the G train and he said that was good. It was around 1997 or 98 and later that month a couple of mooks got arrested for planning to bomb the Flatbush Avenue station of the IRT. See it always pays off to be nice even if you don't mean it.

So excuse me while I fire up the pot. I need some more caffeine to get through the day.

I never eat food*

...due to profound food allergies, so I don't usually post recipes. But while reading A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain I found a recipe I simply could not pass up. Top notch writing, and the food sounds divine, to wit:

RECIPE FOR AN ASH-CAKE

Take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse Indian-meal and about
a quarter of a lot of salt. Mix well together, knead into the form of
a "pone," and let the pone stand awhile--not on its edge, but the other
way. Rake away a place among the embers, lay it there, and cover it an
inch deep with hot ashes. When it is done, remove it; blow off all the
ashes but one layer; butter that one and eat.

N.B.--No household should ever be without this talisman. It has been
noticed that tramps never return for another ash-cake.

That's my kind of eats right there, simple, wholesome, high fiber, plenty of carbon - and butter. Mmm, butter...

His pie recipe and description of German coffee are also excellent.  Makes me thankful that I avoid the stuff.

*Not true, I exaggerate a bit. But not by much.

Twain mentioned this song, too. I had never heard it, but he liked it. Here you go.

Comedy tonight!

I alluded to watching a Netflix series in a previous comment. It is true -- I watched Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I like cars, I like comedy, have only had maybe two cups of coffee in my life, so that part didn't matter much to me, although the riffing about civet cat coffee was mildly amusing.

The show was put together by Jerry Seinfeld, who, although he is a leftist near-billionaire, doesn't really touch on politics that often. And since there are a ton of epis and they are very short you can skip any particular one that features an out-and-out anti-American comic, and if you see who his guests are you can figure out who I mean by that.

The cars are interesting, with too many German cars, and that strikes me as peculiar, but what are you going to do, eh? Jerry (can I call him Jerry?) is well known for his love of Porsches and how many of them he owns. The local fine art museum had a show that featured Porsches and several of them were from his collection, so I have seen them in person. And now I have seen them on television and that makes them more real, right? Ha!

Jerry drove a rusty VW dual cab pickup to meet Michael Richards, AKA Kramer. Michael was contrite, knew he screwed up royally, and they discussed it. Mr. Richards put it in terms of being selfish rather than selfless when he used a racial epithet toward a heckler. Some words can only be used by a minority of our population. He says now that the heckler was correct, his, Mr. Richards, material really did suck, and if he could have a redo he would have admitted that and walked off stage rather than attack the heckler and, in effect, kill his career in less than a minute. And kill it he did -- it is irretrievably deceased. That epithet was, as the locals mispronounce it, truly an epitaph.

Jerry was conciliatory and he said an interesting thing -- he wishes that Mr. Richards could use his "instrument" again, and by that he means his unbelievably excellent physical humor. He had a gift, that was always evident, but his ego ended any possibility that we will see him work ever again. So it goes.

"Drinking more coffee may undo liver damage from booze"

Instapundit asks "Is there anything it can't do."

Drinking more coffee might help reduce the kind of liver damage that’s associated with overindulging in food and alcohol, a review of existing studies suggests.

Researchers analyzed data from nine previously published studies with a total of more than 430,000 participants and found that drinking two additional cups of coffee a day was linked to a 44% lower risk of developing liver cirrhosis.

“Cirrhosis is potentially fatal and there is no cure as such,” said lead study author Dr. Oliver Kennedy of Southampton University in the U.K.

“Therefore, it is significant that the risk of developing cirrhosis may be reduced by consumption of coffee, a cheap, ubiquitous and well-tolerated beverage,” Kennedy added by email.

Cirrhosis kills more than one million people every year worldwide. It can be caused by hepatitis infections, excessive alcohol consumption, immune disorders, and fatty liver disease, which is tied to obesity and diabetes.

Starbucks got my name wrong

I'm never going to another Starbucks again ;-) 

"Why Does Coffee Always Get the Blame?"

"Sometime in the future, a friend comes over to my house, looks around and says: “John, how did you and Lisa afford such a beautiful house?”

“Well, Scott, I didn’t think we could do it, but we gave up lattes for twelve-hundred-and-seventy-five-years, and we were able to make a down payment. Of course, there has been a downside: we’ve been dozing off the entire time because of the lack of caffeine.”

"I saw online that there was a Dumb Starbucks sign. One of my friends posted about it, and I live across the street, so I just walked over,"

"A store labeled as "Dumb Starbucks," using the Starbucks corporate logo and bearing an almost identical look to an actual Starbucks, opened up in Los Feliz on Friday, according to employees."

It's open until 6 p.m. Saturday, and the drinks are free as part of what a barista called a "grand opening," but it was unclear if they would remain free Sunday. The menu was limited."

Business was steady Saturday afternoon — although there was no business license or health code rating posted in the establishment. The baristas said they were hired from Craigslist."

Customers seemed confused about what exactly was going on."

Brown speculated that it might be either an art project or a TV prank show."

The @dumbstarbucks Twitter account was already picking up steam Saturday."

“It’s tea, not coffee, you know.”

“My dress, my dress, my dress, my dress!” she repeated, grabbing on to the ends of her expensive-looking, body-hugging white dress. A thick, brownish liquid formed an egg-shaped stain, dripping off the end of the cloth. A pool formed there, the liquid encompassing her white high-heeled shoes, staining them likewise. Next to her stood a tall man, unmoving man, holding a tilted cup, empty but still dripping with the last of his beverage.

Then, the woman turned into a tornado of fury and brown stain.

“WHY THE [expletive deleted] WEREN’T YOU CAREFUL WITH YOUR [expletive deleted] COFFEE? THIS IS A [expletive deleted] TRAIN! YOU KNOW TO HOLD IT BETTER THAN THAT! I HAVE A [expletive deleted] INTERVIEW, YOU [expletive deleted] KNOW!” she wails.

As the brakes started to squeal and the train entered 79th Street, the tall man smugly motioned to get off the train.

A Spilled Cup on the No. 1 Train

What Have You Tried?

27 Drinks Made From Coffee

Coffa-house

From Book I, page 66, of George Sandy's A Relation of a Iourney Begun An Dom. 1610. Foure Bookes Containing a Description of the Turkish Empire, of Ægypt, of the Holy Land, of the Remote Parts of Italy, and Islands Adioyning, first published in 1615. Sandys was an English traveler, writer and translator who, from 1621-31, lived in Virginia and during that time served as a council member of the crown colony of Virginia.

I've transliterated the paragraph pictured above, for those not familiar with 17th century typographical conventions:

Although they be destitute of Taverns, yet have they their Coffa-houses, which something resemble them. There sit they chatting most of the day; and sippe of a drinke called Coffa (of the berry that it is made of) in little China dishes as hot as they can suffer it: blacke as soote, and tasting not much unlike it (why not that blacke broth which was in use amongst the Lacedemonians?) which helpeth, as they say, digestion, and procureth alacrity: many of the Coffa-men keeping beautifull boyes, who serve as stales to procure them customers.

Some notes:

1. It's amusing that Sandys thought the Turks' coffee tasted "not much unlike" soot. Another early English writer, Edward Terry, thought that coffee beans didn't really change the taste of the water they were brewed in. We may, then, surmise that coffee of the period had a taste somewhere between 17th century English water, and soot.

2. Sandys asks in an aside: "Why not that blacke broth which was in use amongst the Lacedemonians?" Good question, Mr Sandys! Why isn't coffee the same as the Lacedemonians' (Lacedemonia is an old term for ancient Sparta) black broth? Well, because Spartan black broth was blood soup, made from pig's trotters, pig's blood, salt and vinegar; a concoction whose flavor couldn't possibly have been mistaken for coffee, or 17th century English water, or soot. Well hopefully not, for everyone's sake.

3. "Stales" is an old word for a lure or decoy. Interestingly (and perhaps relatedly), Shakespeare also used the word "stale" in Much Ado About Nothing to mean "a cheap prostitute".

Anyway, let us now helpeth our digestions and procureth ourselves some alacrity, beautifull boyes optional.

Abundance of Elements

"This is just a basic display of the abundance of elements in the known universe, the Earth, the Earth’s crust, the ocean, the atmosphere, and the human body" says jonathanorjack at a visual.ly TOP worthy post with a subheading that starts "Start creating, sharing, and exploring great visual content today." I started thinking what a wonderful subheading that would be for here, to replace the dying Dali quote and then I remember how Tropper might interpret "sharing, and exploring great visual content today."... nttiawwt, not at all.

Whatever Kev... Check out the top worthy visual content I started talking about.

   
  

    

As I was going to say , before Trooper jumped in and interrupted, coffee is truly an abundant element known in the universal ocean and atmosphere that is the human anatomy.

Sorry... there goes Trooper butting in again. What a joker that guy is. Let me not talk about him too much, lest I jinx the Sox playing against his Yankees, underway as I type this lousy post, I never quite know how to close.

Coffee In An 18th-Century Cup

... but coffee in any sort of cup will do. Let's talk...