Posts tagged with "coffee" - Faerye Net

P.D. James and the mystery of the missing tea

2008-07-14T08:01:55+00:00

Now, being of sound mind, I like a good Dalgliesh novel. P.D. James writes lucid prose, human characters and an intriguing mystery to boot; that’s not getting into her skills with suspense. However, in listening to my current audiobook, Original Sin, I have realized something chilling.

Everyone drinks coffee. Every suspect or interviewee who offers anything offers coffee; the sister of the victim feels the need for coffee. Even in the murder-plagued publishing company’s ‘tea room’ presided over by the tea lady we find coffee, coffee grounds, people kicking in weekly for coffee. This can’t be simple find-replace regionalization (my mother owns the British versions of the Harry Potter books, so I do realize it happens), because the French suspect and his Anglicized daughter, independently, bring coffee to the police in cafetières. Somehow I doubt P.D. originally wrote théière and expected us to understand!

Casting my mind back, I remember some cups of coffee being plot points in earlier P.D. James novels. But try as I might, I cannot recall seeing a single character drink a cup of tea in one of her books. Does P.D. James hate tea?

As Xander once said on this very subject, “You’re destroying a perfectly good cultural stereotype.”

Update, July 19, 2008: She’s messing with me. Now I’m listening to A Certain Justice and tea has been made, been made fresh, and offered to the bereaved in its capacity as the British panacea. She saw me post this and went back in time to 1997 and changed all the coffees to teas in this novel. Really.

Another reason not to drink Coffea robusta

2007-06-06T19:10:51+00:00

It tastes like rancid carrots and some of it is being illegally grown in an Indonesian national park? What next, it kicks puppies?

POOR man's latte?

2007-05-07T23:59:12+00:00

There’s a petty little custom I was taught at Queequeg’s Qoffee Qasa to call “the poor man’s latte”. Someone comes in and orders a few shots of espresso, but over ice in a big cup. He then fills the cup the rest of the way with half-and-half from the condiment bar, usually shielding it with his body because somehow he thinks the Queequeg Qrew doesn’t get precisely what he’s doing. He thus gets an iced breve latte for significantly less money.

Some people say, “Where’s the harm?” It’s worth debating, perhaps. It cheeses off the brewed coffee and americano customers (for whom the half-and-half is provided) to find the pitcher empty constantly because some yabbo took 16 ounces of it. It creates more labor for the Qrew to constantly replenish the condiment pitchers because of this (which probably, unless the company higher-ups are very clever, will eventually result in the brewed coffee prices going up.) It also signals an amazing lack of self-awareness (“I am totally the first person to think of this, and those Queequeggers have NO idea I’ve hoodwinked them!”) and self-respect. Really, guys, you aren’t Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread. You’re not Robin Hood stickin’ it to the man. You’re trying to get a fancy-ass espresso drink for cheap. How petty.

And in case anyone thinks, “Oh, they probably really can’t afford the drink they want! Poor bebbies!” I’d like to share my amazement. The other day a guy ordered a poor man’s latte in a particularly annoying way. He asked for straight shots of espresso with flavored syrup, then asked the Qrew-member at the handoff for a cup of ice; thus an extra cup was expended so he could feel as if he’d deceived the Qrew. At the condiment bar, he hid his drink with his body as he poured the shots and syrup over the ice and filled it with half-and-half. So wily!

Then he threw out the wasted cup and carried his drink to his Hummer H3.

I weep for humanity.

It's official...

2006-09-04T21:30:06+00:00

I hear one has no cred as a starving artist until one gets a day job, so I hastened out and got one. I now sling beans and brew at a coffee establishment that shall remain nameless. I am waiting for the cred to start rolling in!

I have kibbled up the speak-talks

2004-06-25T11:24:19+00:00

I have kibbled up the speak-talks that come from my mouth. In my headplace there are thinks that have form and fluid, howso when they tiptoe from the dribble lip they are brokens. Is that the coffee is adulterer of syrup and foamy, theretwo not make fluids the tick-talk? Is picketty nonsense all the throw-out of my crane now? I have tripping in my tongue, and knot in lacey poem paths. I have silence when I speaks and speakses when I try quiet. I have blicky-blicky stick talk tongue and the fractal-fracture jars of words under my hair.