TIB: Another joke for Amy (and Kirsten, and her family)


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TIB: Another joke for Amy (and Kirsten, and her family)




Kristen:  Read and give to Amy.  Thanks!

This one is real interesting...  I think it was a column in a news paper
someone typed up.  Its not exactly relay funny, but its kinda weird...  :)

---
Decaf Poopacino
BY DAVE BARRY

I have exciting news for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money
for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive
tract.  And you just know there are plenty of people who would.
Specialty coffees are very popular these days, attracting millions of
consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me
whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup
on my way to catch a plane.  These  consumers are always ordering
mutant beverages with names like "mocha-almond-honey vinaigrette
lattespressacino," beverages that must be made one at a time via a
lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean,
three quarts of dairy products and what appears to be a small nuclear
reactor.  Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience
among those of us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our
brains will start working and we can remember what our full names are
and why we are catching an airplane.  We want to strike the
lattespressacino people with our carry-on baggage and scream "GET OUT
OF OUR WAY, YOU TRENDY GEEKS, AND LET US HAVE OUR COFFEE!"  But of
course we couldn't do anything that active until we've had our coffee.
 It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine
medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently
view it as some kind of recreational activity. I bet this kind of
thing does not happen to heroin addicts.  I bet that when serious
heroin addicts go to purchase their heroin, they do not tolerate
waiting in line while some dilettante in front of them orders a
hazelnut smack-a-cino with cinnamon sprinkles.  The reason some of us
need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes us alert. Of
course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and,
like any drug, it is a lot of fun.  No!  Wait!  What I meant to say
is:  Like any drug, caffeine can have serious side effects if we
ingest too much. This fact was first noticed in ancient Egypt when a
group of workers, who were supposed to be making a birdbath, began
drinking Egyptian coffee, which is very strong, and wound up
constructing the pyramids.  I myself developed the coffee habit in my
early 20s, when, as a "cub" reporter for the Daily Local News in West
Chester, Pa., I had to stay awake while writing phenomenally boring
stories about municipal government.  I got my coffee from a vending
machine that also sold hot chocolate and chicken-noodle soup; all
three liquids squirted out of a single tube, and they tasted pretty
much the same.  But I came to need that coffee, and even today I can
do nothing useful before I've had several cups. (I can't do anything
useful afterward, either; that's why I'm a columnist.)

But here's my point: This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far.  I
say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert reader Bo
Bishop.  He sent me an invitation he received from a local company to
a "private tasting of the highly prized Luwak coffee," which "at $300
a pound is one of the most expensive drinks in the world."  The
invitation states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member
of the weasel family" that lives on the Island of Java and eats coffee
berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural
fermentation" takes place, and the berry seeds-the coffee beans-come
out of the luwak intact.  The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted
and sold to coffee connoisseurs. The invitation states:  "We wish to
pass along this once in a lifetime opportunity to taste such a
rarity."  Or, as Bo Bishop put it:  "They're selling processed weasel
doodoo for $300 a pound."

I first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee
craze. Tragically, it is not.  There really is a Luwak coffee.  I know
because I bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta.  I
paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans.  I was expecting the beans to
look exotic, considering where they'd been, but they looked like
regular coffee beans.  In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they
were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off. Then I
thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might
be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a
weasel?

So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some.
 You know how sometimes, when you're really skeptical about something,
but then you finally try it, you discover that it's really good, way
better than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with
Luwak coffee. Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed
a dead cat in it.  But I predict it's going to be popular anyway,
because it's expensive.  One of these days, the people in front of me
at the airport coffee place are going to be ordering decaf poopacino.
I'm thinking of switching to heroin.