An email to some friends

I was bored at work the other day, I decided to send off this email to some friends. It's original title:

Kids: Stay in School, Don't Drink "Mochaspressos"

Normally, I make coffee in my office. Today, however, the hard water of DC has clogged my high tech $12 one-cup coffee maker, forcing me to employ my degree in chemistry and brew a few rounds of vinegar. Since I find the flvaor and body of warm vinegar to be less fulfilling than coffee, I turned to the Behemoth of Brew - the 4-foot tall automated coffee machine in our office's galley. This amazing contraption can fire out coffee, hot water, or hot chocolate and only requires a user to hit some buttons and place a cup or mug in a well-marked area near the device's bottom ($10 for whomever can use that last phrase in a joke in the next 24 hours).

Normally, I hit this beast up for coffee. However, experience dictates that the Behemoth's coffee comes with a 90% chance of excruciating abdominal pain and the desire to slice into one's own appendages within 3 hours of ingestion. So, I turned to the hot chocolate, which is much gentler on the GI tract and probably packed with enough sugar to make a 6 year old's head explode. Just before I depressed the "dispense" button, I got a wacky idea. The Behemoth, being made in America, is all about choice. You don't have to pick from JUST coffee, or hot water, or hot chocolate - you can COMBINE any of them! You can get an espresso (concentrated coffee), you can get an americano (concentrated coffee with water), you can get an extra strong coffee (more coffee, less water), or...you can have a MOCHASPRESSO (strong coffee AND hot chocolate). i figured that this would be a great compromise - all the sugar of a hot chocolate, all the caffeine of a coffee, and a heightened chance of avoiding an incident that may require a change of pants before Noon.

So, I gave it a try. While it was delicious at first, I soon realized that I was wrestling with a force greater than I could handle. The sugar and caffeine had combined in that maniacal machine to produce a toxic hallucinogenic that my poor nervous system had not seen before (which is saying something). Within an hour I was mesmerized by how my wall calendar had transformed into a kaleidoscope of pastels, how my computer screen started to sing showtoons, and how my desk's surface became covered with small ants that spoke to each other in French.

Bottom line - Mochaespressos are drugs. Keep that shit away from kids.

I really hope that you guys can avoid the temptation to mix hot beverages with such detrimental consequences.

I have to get going, since there are some dragons in my office that are taunting me.

Have a blessed day,