The Monkey Cage

Those of us who enjoy the taste and smell of said vile-tasting stuff are apparently more evolved than fruit flies:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060918165430.htm

Or, so I like to tell any fruit fly colleagues when I am driving them insane with my up-tight, obnoxious behavior.

Related, there are some simple studies on humans (as opposed to fruit flies) that show there to be variation in the behavioral effects of caffeine consumption. There are tolerant individuals and there are sensitive individuals. Perhaps, you have spent too much time around the latter?

I am, of course, well behaved. My wife, on the other hand, is barred from the vile-tasting stuff because one cup during the day will cause her to wake up at 3AM with the goal of starting a remodeling project.

Lesson: all things in moderation (or abstention if you cannot handle it at all).

Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who silently judges when surrounded by a group of people having fun.

I’ll amend the comment above: all things in moderation, including moderation (that latter clause, I feel, applies to you).

Hear here.

I spent my entire childhood smelling my parents’ brewing coffee every morning, thinking it was the most wonderful smell in the world. Then somewhere around 13 or 14 I had my first cup — and just about spit it out. I never forgave the stuff for smelling so good and tasting so, well, vile. Haven’t had a cup since.

I was born in 1930 and as a pre-teen had been introduced to Turkish coffee, which was vile for me. My folks made American coffee and I enjoyed the smell of the brew. They used a percolator which continuously, while the heat was on, passed and repassed the boiling water through the coffee grounds. A great uncle of mine had a restaurant where I enjoyed for the first time a cup of coffee. He used a large coffee urn with the coffee grounds at the top over a cheesecloth filter and would pour boiling water from another urn on top of the grounds; then the coffee would be repoured again before serving, but maintained at a non-boiling temperature. I learned that boiling coffee brings out the acids in the grounds that result in bitterness. So I convinced my mother to make coffee by the drip method.

I continue to the present with the drip method coffee making. But my kids won’t drink it - it’s too weak. They prefer Starbucks and other coffee shop specialties.

So perhaps this is a generational thing, although the coffee customs in Italy seem to continue generation after generation.

I am now down to one cup in the morning, which seems to satisfy any addiction I may have had to caffeine. Moderation may be the key to many things in life, such as reducing coffee intake. Now if only I could revert to what was once moderation (for me) in sex as gravity and old age take their toll.

RE: I love your comment. Keep ‘em coming.

Walker: I tend to do abstention better than I do moderation, but that’s my problem. I do like to see people having fun, as long as their fun doesn’t impinge on others Yesterday, for example, two people within a space to which I’d been assigned engaged in a very long, very loud conversation from which there was no escape for the rest of us. They — the conversationalists — were having a lot of fun. The rest of us, to judge from muttered comments and rolling eyes, were not. I silently judged those who were having fun.

Jeff: Our experience was similar. For me, too, it was one sip, spit it out, and never again.

Shag: Ditto from my response to RE.

But coffee caused the Enlightenment! (Perhaps Lee thinks that was a bad thing?)

Cosma: After giving the matter due consideration, I have decided that the Enlightment was not a bad thing. Others may disagree, but if they do I will argue with them — in moderation, though my consumption of my fourth Diet Coke of the day will make this difficult. (

Yes, Diet Coke, too, is vile-tasting stuff, and the ambivalence I experience from detesting coffee and drinking so much caffeine-laden soda is all that keeps my criticism of coffee within the ever-so-moderate bounds displayed in my posts on the subject.)

Others: Follow the link in Cosma’s comment. Very nicely done.

A ha!

Lee, you’re not “type B,” you’re just understimulated!

Lee’s attack on coffee drinkers is absurd and shocking. I do not say this because I drink 6-8 cups of coffee a day and consider (or perhaps considered) Lee a friend. I guess I expected a more restrained approach from a guy who for years consumed on a daily basis “the whole nutrition bar for women”—a Luna Bar—for lunch.