Or The Great Percolator in the Sky…
How many times have I absent-mindedly nodded my head when a waitress inquires “More coffee sir?” (usually while about halfway through pouring), eventually ending up drinking about 10 litres of the stuff and then spending the rest of the day on a caffeine cloud.
I never noticed before that the endless coffee cup is a typical North American invention. In most other countries (apologies to my home and native land, but in terms of torrefaction, Canada and the US are ground from the same bean) you get A coffee, and if you need an extra hit of caffeine, you get ANOTHER coffee.
In the US on the other hand, when you sit down in a diner, you get the endless cup, you are hooked up to the great intravenous percolator in the sky, the sacred spigot of infinity, the never-ending caffeine high…
So what?
Why all the excitement about a cup of coffee, be it bottomless.
Well, isn’t it a bad habit, this notion that we are always entitled to more? More this, more that, 20% MORE candy bar, soft drink, whatever (what does that MEAN anyway, so there’s 20% more in the same wrapper/box/cup, it’s not as if you’re not paying for it).
I dislike this notion of enforced abundance, that we are entitled to a lifetime subscription of something as our due. That our rights are infinite, that when we are momentarily sated, there is always more should we wish. I dislike it because it is an insidious notion, and it covers up something deeper and harder to define. While it is confined to a plastic cup on the table of a diner, it’s just weak coffee, but what about the air we fill with poison, the forests we raze, the water we sully… sometimes it seems we are like the compulsive eater who makes the midnight refigerator trips through lack of love and attention. Food fills the emptiness, and being replete with latent guilt is better than nothing.. Why can’t humanity just love itself a bit more rather than stuffing its face to compensate? It’s as if we’ve confused our senses and our souls somewhere along the way.
More coffee anybody? That last cup got cold before I could finish it…
Gandalf the Grey:
A few more images from Oscar.
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Summer break:
Even illustrators take time off and hang up their brushes periodically. I think. However, while it’s a vacation from the NEWS, the brushes won’t have time to get lonely, there’s all those shutters to paint…
See you in a few weeks.
