Coffee: Benign beverage or WMD?
I am not a coffee drinker. Never have been. I like the smell of freshly ground coffee and fresh coffee beans but that’s about it.
My wife, on the other hand, is a devoted coffee drinker. She knows what she likes, brews her own using old technology (no Keurigs here, folks), and needs it each day to get her day started right, and I respect that.
But there is a problem here in paradise and that is the subtle, but always lurking destructive power of coffee. I mean this stuff doesn’t need to be weaponized; it already is.
Take coffee’s destructive staining power. A few drops on lighter colored material can destroy it for all time. White blouse? Wrecked. Beige pants or skirt? Destroyed. And light colored auto upholstery? Time for a new car.
And if you really want to do damage, drop a really hot cup of coffee on someone wearing white pants. They’ll be incapacitated by third-degree crotch burns and their pants will be destroyed for all time. If we could come up with smart coffee bombs, wars would be over in minutes.
And why does spilled coffee leave brown marks everywhere for a five-block radius? It’s worse than changing the toner on a copier while wearing a white tuxedo.
Coffee is also hell on electronics. How many laptops, tablets, keyboards, cell phones and other electronic devices have been rendered dead by the judicious application of spilled coffee? It brings a new dimension to cyber warfare.
If we could replace all the coffee cups in secret computer installations with ones that spill or explode when sent a remote signal, we could knock out the entire technical infrastructure of a country, army, or company in one, fell swoop. And we’d also wreck all those clothes too!
What about the human dimension? Imagine, if you will, what would happen to Seattle, LA, or NYC if all the coffee there were suddenly secretly replaced by decaf. You’re talking lethargy on an epic scale. Whole cities brought to their knees by a lack of chemical stimulation.
Traffic in LA would grind to a halt due to thousands of commuters asleep at the wheel. Seattle traffic (as bad as LA these days) would also grind to a halt (The Space Needle elevator would never rise again).
Companies would have to close due to no conscious employees. Government offices would be paralyzed, schools would shut down (no teacher can function in a class of 28 without that java jolt) and Starbucks, well, there’d be riots of zombie-like patrons who would pile up like snoring cordwood, blocking the doors. Mass hysteria!
But there would be some bright spots. Tea drinkers, like myself, would suddenly be operating in a quiet, calm world. We’d get a lot more done, as our phones would be silent and our e-mail boxes empty.
Social media, long driven by over-caffeinated thumbs would be a ghost town of cute kitties and no tweets. Countries like England would suddenly rise to world dominance, as they’d be the only places with functional populations.
People worry about legalizing pot and yet they daily consume brown liquid dynamite. It makes you wonder what the real story is.
Was coffee put here by aliens who like watching our planet size anthill writhe in a constant state of mass hyperactivity? Was it created by world leaders looking for a way to unnaturally motivate otherwise calm, relaxed populations in order to extract more productivity? Or was it Juan Valdez and his famous donkey from the old coffee commercials in the ’70s who were just trying to get revenge on the greedy gringos?
If you look at places on Earth where coffee isn’t widely used, you generally see calmer, saner and more well adjusted populations. The Amazonian pygmies seem like a mellow bunch as do the aboriginal peoples in Australia. You definitely don’t see too many Buddhist monks lining up for a double-shot espresso every day before morning meditation.
I understand the need many people have for a morning boost each day. Many western nations have done studies that show their people don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis. Thus, the need for coffee.
But, what if people suddenly figured out that getting enough sleep and working fewer hours was the answer? Then they’d start taking more time for relaxation and exercise. This could all move them into a mental and physical space that doesn’t require artificial stimulation. Oh dear, what am I saying?
Starbucks and Dunkin’ would fail, leaving thousands of empty, ugly buildings dotting the landscape from LA to Boston. There would be fewer empty cups at the sides of the road; clothes would be less stained; thumbs, less jittery; and people calmer. In other words, the end of western civilization as we know it.
Where do I sign up?
Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg says he has probably tried coffee twice in his life and, thanks to years of therapy and medication, he’s mostly over the experience.