Then and Now: Coffee

In my younger more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Coffee stunts your growth. Now I'm much older and wiser and drink coffee when I need to, but not as a morning routine. My dad is shorter than me, and I'm short. But my mom is shorter than my dad, so who am I? Coffee (thats a math joke). But then I look around at the rest of my family, and they're short too. It's almost like I'm Snow White and the more than Seven Dwarfs. Then I come to school and I'm the shortest of the group. But anyway, I googled my burning question and it turns out the be false. What a relief, now I can drink coffee by the gallon. But coffee is much more prevalent in my environment than it should be. I see it everywhere in the mornings, I see it in advertisements, I see it where I work to be used as more of a drug than anything else, I see it as birthday presents, and even in my own hands. But one thing I just haven't gotten a hold of, Starbucks. I just don't get it. I'm pretty sure I've talked about it before, so I won't go into my problems with Starbucks. So I've slowly been slipping into this whole coffee fad, and then I've noticed my teeth are looking a lot less white than they used to. So I stopped. Now I only take coffee in from an IV, and it seems to be working out pretty well. Just kidding, but I did slow it down to about a cup every other day, mostly at night. From what used to be something I saw as not very attractive to my five year old self is now something I use to my advantage. I use it for cycling, which makes a huge difference from winning and losing, but of course not around NICA, which bans the use of caffeine in cycling. I caught on to that from a friend who's a world champion in mountain biking and he drinks it religiously. In any other case I use it for late nights when I need to stay up. Mornings and coffee don't mix with me, just because it's too mainstream. Coffee as a drink is as far as I am going  to take it, no more no less. Not art, not as a present, not as a lifestyle, but as a drink that I drink. But there are certain situations when coffee becomes a part of a lifestyle, unconsciously. Like if someone asks "Well would you like to come upstairs for some coffee?" or "Hey maybe we can go out for coffee sometime".

You see, tea drinkers lives are much more simplified, that's why I sometimes prefer tea over coffee (unless it's social, then I go to coffee). Because tea is not as flamboyant as coffee. Coffee has more friends than tea because tea has only two friends, Green and Black. But tea can always make amends for  more friends, because if the Brits can do it so can we (just don't add milk).

Note: I am not a pretentious coffee or tea drinker. I'll even microwave my instant coffee to prove it. 

Elias & Friends Season Three 2014-2015

Season Three of Elias and Friends Beginning September-ish 2014

Kidnapped all of Late Night's sketch-comedy writers. This year is gonna be great.

The worst books I have ever read

I've read a lot of good books in my lifetime. I've also read many bad books. But the bad one's are the one's you never hear about. I stumbled upon this question as I was ease dropping on another student and teacher. Well not really, they were talking fairly loud, and I could hear it.
Anyway, they were talking about how they've read so many good books, but end up sometimes choosing books that they had no idea would be so bad because they only looked up "Best Books for  "x" ", not "worst books" or "books to never choose for an English class" because sometimes teachers love to throw those in.
So here's a bit of some of the worst books I have ever read (not in any particular order).

Herman Hesse, author of Siddhartha 10 years after it's publishing

The Master and the Margarita Bulgakov

An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore

Animal Farm Orwell

Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler

Catch-22 Joseph Heller

Siddhartha Hermann Hesse

If you ever have the chance in your life to read these books, don't. Although some might praise these books as a must read, they're books that are a must read for the wrong reasons. You might have read one of these books and found them to be cool, but for the average reader, not so cool.

Going off topic: Surviving on my own

In two years, I'll be in college. I don't know exactly where or how, but I'll be there. That also means I'll be put out into the wild to survive on my own. I can't remember the last time I've been out on my own for at least a week, ever. If it was, I was probably with someone or having my parents on me 24/7 asking if I'm "okay". But I'm not babied, no that's not the kind of  kid I am or was. I prefer to be treated like a normal person. For example, whenever I'm at Thundercloud picking up a sandwich with my mom or dad, the guy never talks to me. He just says "lettuce, tomato, onion?" with no side conversations whatsoever. But the last time when I was on my own, the guy had opened up to me about how bad his morning was and into serious depth about his girlfriend and personal life. But if I were working there, I wouldn't want to be talking to a momma's boy about my morning either so I guess it's a normal thing. But then the worst part is that I'll have to be paying for it all the time and paying bills which means getting an actual job doing actual things. I mean, the only adult things I did today was drink coffee and have awkward conversations. But no Starbucks. Starbucks is probably the last place I'll pick up coffee. I'd usually just go to any restaurant or coffee shop next to my house, because it's all the same really. There's only two kinds of coffee in this world, pretty good coffee, and eh I'll drink it. There's no cafe latte with a mochachino frap vanilla and cinnamon category in this. That's not even coffee, it's warm milk! It  falls into the pretty good category. The instant coffee you make at home is also pretty good if you add enough creamer. Then there's the one's who drink it with only sugar or only one thing. That falls into the "eh, I'll drink it" category.

I majored in sociology and look at me now! (3rd time I've used this picture)

I went into a Starbucks one time. It was the first and the last time I went there. I walked in and asked for a large coffees. The girl there said "We don't have large coffees, we have ventis." So I said "Alright well give me a venti." They also spelled my name wrong but hey, they work at Starbucks. I won't give them too much of a hassle. But anyway, then they asked what I wanted. I said "I told you I wanted a venti." But they wanted to know what to put in it and I said "COFFEE." "Well what kind? there's a menu." And by now I'm a little frustrated with this girl and so I just said "Surprise me, just give me one of those vanilla cafe swirl things." or something like that, you get the idea. I was then charged four dollars for coffee and milk that tasted like hot cocoa. That was the first and last time I ever went to Starbucks.

You can judge a person by their playlist

This question came to me as I was flipping through the R&B/Soul section of the whatever people call it record store on Record Store Day. Whenever you ask someone what their favorite kind of music is, don't they usually reply with a boring "Well everything really, except for country."? It happens to me every time I ask that question. It's either that or country only, there's nothing else. If you asked me, I'd narrow it down whatever's on KUTX, except for the folk music. I can't take folk music, I can't even think straight when it's playing. I don't know how I started listening to that station either, but I've been listening to it since the first day it started last year in 2013. Another reason I listen to it is because of how sometimes the DJs with the slower/deeper voices can go on talking about nothing for twenty minutes without you noticing. It sounds something like:  "And it's kind of nice outside today, a little cloudy, but I like cloudy it gets me in that feeling, you know that feeling. I was at Threadgills and they had this thing were, and the sky, cloudy, this concert, they havent been here in a long time, the last time they were, I remember they did this thing and it was also cloudy on that day."

And then you realize what the hell you were listening to for the past twenty minutes.
But I had a conversation with a friend about that station, and they said they listened to it too and I could actually relate to the different shows that come on and it was really great. It was the first time I didn't have to say "Well, have you ever heard of this band?"
 "Nope."

Ghostland Observatory, remember  them?

So music must be some sort of identification card in this world that we live in. You can probably tell a lot about a person by the music they listen to. Maybe that's why their insecure, because they know I could tell something about that person if I checked out their playlist. Probably not what their favorite color is, but something like their age, coolness, stuff like that. It's not rocket science, but I bet a school like Harvard will come up with a study based on this blog with just a bunch of graphs and charts added into it.

My house is haunted (Spoiler Alert about ghosts)

Alright, so I know this sounds normal, but my house is haunted. I'm not just some guy who thinks his house is haunted, I AM a guy who KNOWS that his house is haunted. I had this "lucid" dream (if I'm using that word right) where I'm pretty sure something woke me up and turned me into a zombie one time. In my "dream" I went inside every room in my house and touched the floor, and then touched the ceiling. But I had to watch out for the candy Dots that flew around my house, looking for zombies. Unfortunately on my first trip, I was caught by a Dot, and I woke up. The second time, I was able to get to every room, even the one's people were sleeping in and do my zombie devil ritual thing, unconsciously, because I was possessed by the devil ghost in my house at the time. I noticed I was having these sleepwalking things when all of my pillows and sheets were upstairs and I sleep downstairs. I also have a spiral staircase in my house, and that makes it even more creepy. I also noticed that my house was haunted when my clothes were all moving on their own in my bedroom. They were moving in a wave motion, but they were my clothes so I wasn't too freaked out. So is my really haunted? I don't really know, but it probably isn't cause isn't everyone's house haunted? There are also so many things that have an influence on us that makes us think that things are haunted. I can't remember, but I'm sure I had watched a movie with ghosts, a book (probably not), or something else that made me think that if anything else had the same characteristics like in the movie, it's haunted. So if you're that kind of person who watches ghost shows and exorcist documentaries, chances are it's 1000% fake.                                                    

Going off topic: What's that smell? In the public library

"Can I borrow your library card?" - The stink in the library (Steve Buscemi in Big Daddy)

I like the library. I like it more than bookstores. But I've been visiting bookstores more often now. I don't think it's a bad thing though. It's just that feeling of ownership over a book that makes me feel good. But then, I don't know why I need to buy a book. I realized this when I was watching an episode of Seinfeld and George had just broken up with a woman when he realized he left his books at her house. Jerry asked if he had read them, he said yes, and then told him to forget about the books. So that's what I'm trying to do, forget about the books. Once I read them, they leave back to the 'SELL HERE' section of the bookstore. Along with the old CDs I have because who listens to CDs anymore, right? It's all about the vinyl now, but I can't stand it. But the weirdest part, and the hardest part about going to the library, is that smell. It's the smell, the same smell when you walk into one (especially Faulk). The gross, hot summer stench of a dead rat that keeps showing up around the computer area. Hobos don't really care about the ownership of a book, so that's why they end up in the library. But what is it? Does it make me look intellectual? Does it make me cool? Do I want people to know what I read? And what is that smell? Anyway, I'm just going off topic.

If you're homeless and visit the library, please don't.