Coffee Culture Club
     The culture that surrounds coffee consumption has been a mystery to me, primarily because I have abstained from drinking any caffeinated beverages since my freshman year in college. It all started when I joined the crew team in Boulder. The other guys seemed so health conscious, and refraining from the drink so many of my engineer (read "geek") colleagues cherished as a saveall, seemed the natural thing to do to fit in. Somehow, the habit just stuck with me long after I left Boulder. Despite sinking deeper into my hacker profile, I've managed to stay away from it. Until now. The past couple of weeks have caught me sneaking into the drive-thru coffee shop on the corner to get free mochas, stealing quick cups of coffee from the office breakroom, and brewing secret pots of coffee in my own kitchen. The caffeine addiction has begun, and my GOD is it incredible. The difference is amazing. I often congratulated myself on being so "health-conscious" that I would abstain from caffeine (while, ironically, consuming other illegal substances on the side), but the big bonus to being anti-coffee was the incredible kick it would give me on the rare occasion I would indulge. Since adopting this new vice, I've discovered an entire subculture dedicated to coffee consumption, even websites that sell caffeine-related merchandise. There is a definite schism between office cliques that consume coffee and those that don't. I even suspect a covert, quasi-guerilla war being waged between them, in which power struggles between the quick, nervous intelligence of the highly-caffeinated and the calm, low-blood pressure, sleepy logic of the celibate cause major political catastrophes and undue bureaucratic protocol. I imagine certain members of upper management target those that do not drink coffee and label them as slow and unproductive. How else would I explain the sudden niceties that have been going my way in the hallway while running into managers while precariously balancing a full cup of watery coffee in one hand and fumbling for my access card with the other? One thing is for sure, I would never be this wordy in a journal entry if I were uncaffienated. Perhaps that's the problem with so many people that talk too much. I wonder if a settlement could ever be reached with the coffee manufacturers for emotional damage caused by failed relationships due to the inability to listen caused by too much caffeine. Inhale. I'm going to get some more coffee, you want some?

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Good God, I could use some coffee myself these days. Thing is, the last time I made the mistake of trying to use coffee to help wake me up for my essays I wound-up on a trip so drastically bizarre my friends likened me to a rabid squirrel hopped-up on speed.

Another time I wound up staring at the wall for about half an hour.

Glad to see that though caffeine messes with most folk's sleep-cycles it induces paranoid delusions in you ;)

Posted by Steve @ 04/08/2001 09:43 PM MST

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