On coffee.

It doesn't technically come in a bottle, but it totally could if you wanted it to. While I drink wine often and beer occasionally, I drink coffee or tea every day.

My first job was at a coffee shop. I worked weekends for a handfull of dollars an hour. Before then I didn't drink coffee. It was bitter and awful to me, but I loved the smell. Eventually waking up early on the weekends got the better of me and I realized that I needed a mild stimulant to keep me going.

I first started drinking coffee black, because I'm hardcore, right? Then I realized that it tasted like chewing on tree bark and just put milk and sugar in it. That was where the trouble all started. I began drinking coffee every morning, because it was delicious, and hey, when it's at home and at work it's free! Badass!

Eventually I started developing a really awesome condition where my heart would shudder in my chest. It wouldn't skip beats or do that fun thing where the ventricles get overcharged and contract twice in a row, it beat totally normally, but shivered while doing so. It was an intensely distressing feeling, I didn't know what was going on until I described it to my mom and she said that a coworker of hers had something similar, and it went away when he stopped drinking caffiene.

Oh. God damn it.

My friends did not understand why I switched to decaf. Why drink coffee at all when you're not getting the psychoactive effects? Because it's delicious, you bastards. Coffee is just flat out good. Of course, the fact that it's a stimulant is also pretty cool, and in college I returned to regular coffee.

That's basically all just a lot of backstory for this statement: Starbucks coffee is awful. It is the weakest. It is no good. They have excellent espresso, don't get me wrong, and if you're looking for some vaguely homosexual icey chocolate concoction then Starbucks is your man. However, if you just want a damn cup of coffee... damn they're bad.

So what does that have to do with the price of feet, Stark? Well, it's seriously interfering in my thought processes. I like to write and relax in the Barnes and Noble coffee shop and I feel vaguely guilty about doing this without buying something, so I always get one of those apple purses and some form of coffee after I get at least 1500 words down (Yes, I am attempting to condition myself to write more. Yes, this makes me a huge nerd. Yes, it's totally working.). Yesterday I got a vanilla latte, which are usually pretty good. It's hard to screw up espresso + milk + syrup. Today, however, I have a cafe au lait.

This thing is a disgrace. Instead of being rich, milky coffee, it is apparently just milk and bitter flavor. What the hell, Starbucks? What the hell?

Back in college I used to get three shots of espresso and doctor it like coffee. It was pretty damn delicious, but holy christ I think I may have gone tachycardic if I kept doing that shit.

In other news, tonight myself, BeerSnob and Kaiser TNT (because he looks like Napoleon Dynamite) are going to Max's Tap House for beers. TheIrish may join us, but we do not know. I will update again tomorrow about  the delicious beers I try.