Coffee.

(Tuesday, June 28, 2005 4:55 PM)

I trekked over to Wal Mart in the wee hours of this morning to buy some coffee. I just quit my graveyard shift job, so I need some assistance reversing my sleep schedule. Broke as a joke, I went there in hopes of something inexpensive but decent; Eight O Clock Bean Hazelnut, which they didn't have, so I settled upon the Eight O Clock Colombian. Why I chose "Colombian" I'll never quite understand,..."Colombian Coffee" is a marketable term, but it's validity EXPIRED in the 80's, right alongside the novelty of pastel sport coats and Colombian drug lords ala MIAMI VICE. Let's be realistic, who gives a fuck about Colombian coffee in 2005? With all the crazy nutty wacky bean choices out there, what the fuck is so special about it? I was later reminded of the olfactory approach to choosing coffee--> If it smells good, it'll prolly taste real good, and if it smells like shit,....well.....


First off, the coffee grinding machine and it's accompanying Millstone display is fucking TRASHED. There are coffee beans EVERYWHERE. You can tell little kids walk up and push on the dispenser and let beans fly everywhere. And in true Kenny style, I walk up and press the dispenser and start chewing on a small palm-full of coffee beans;^) There's a half-full bag of beans just sitting there near the grinder. There's a huge mess around the grinder itself too. A pile of ground coffee under the chute, a conglomerate of whole beans AND already GROUND coffee inside the top of the machine,...WTF? Someone poured ALREADY GROUND COFFEE back into the top of the machine?!!? Add that to the corresponding pile of ground sitting below the chute where you would normally place the bag, and the half-full bag of whole beans,...and what do you get? I really can't say. A caffeine-addicted retard with a taste for Millstone Swiss-Chocolate-Almond was just there? I dunno...

In any case, I'm standing there trying to navigate this mess, cause I just wanna grind my Eight O Clock beans. Noting the already ground coffee inside the top where you would pour your whole beans, I get kinda skittish about even grinding mine. There's some other mystery-strain of ground coffee inside the machine that's no doubt going to contaminate MY Eight O Clock Colombian and it's flavor, of which I'm not yet even familiar with.

BREAK--> A memory jumps out of my psyche like an unexpected insect flying at my head in the summer, lusting after the smell of my beeswax pomade: My best friend in Ohio told about a lovely little coffee-scam he and his lady would pull at the grocery store cause they were poor, but had to allow room for their discerning taste for good coffee. They'd grab a bag of the cheaper stuff(sometimes Eight O Clock Bean...), dump the contents, and fill the bag with something yummy from the dispenser, like Millstone. Thus, paying the Eight O Clock price for Millstone beans, which is nearly HALF. $3.99 vs. $7.99 per pound. So I thought about doing it, and then shot my eyeballs directly at one of the big camera-globes hanging from the Wal-Mart ceiling.....yes I'm a pussy.

Trudging on--> I gotta get this "other" coffee outta the top of the grinder somehow. I don't want it contaminating my bag man......

Coffee grinding machines in grocery stores are one o' those few unsanitary elements in the foodservice industry that are just accepted. When you buy a cup of coffee from Wawa, there are these little "communal" pints of milk and flavored creamer that are just sitting there in the coffee-fixin's bar that everyone just pops the cap and uses. Plus coffee pots just sit there, no "lid" to cover it's contents, that's a just-about-everywhere thing. If you REALLY hated coffee drinkers, you could poison them all, lickety-split! No one really implements any regulations regarding the fact that anyone can just walk up to the grinder machines and grind something up that you're going to consume, no gloves, no cleansing of the machine and it's innards, nothing. What if there was an option in a grocery sore to grind your own hamburger meat on a machine right there in the store? Yep, first choose your favorite slab of beef, unwrap and insert it into the top of a big stainless steel grinder. Would you like auto-drip, espresso, or Turkish-ground hamburger meat? The same machine that someone else used before you. My point being, besides the coffee that gets ground in there every day,....considering the mess undoubtedly made by pilfering, unmonitored children, what else could have been ground in there? A die-cast metal Hot Wheels Batmobile? A foam-rubber Spongebob? BOOGERS?

Pushing that thought aside after noting that the machine is very high off the ground, approximately 5 feet, 8 inches to the top of the machine. I remember this measurement so well because I'm 6ft 3 in tall, and I had to get on my tippie-toes just to see inside the top of the machine to see what the fuck was in there. I always do this at these coffee-grinding machines due to above-mentioned paranoia.

I ascertain(thank you Bruce McCulloch and Kids in the Hall for I've always wanted to use the word "ascertain" in real life...) that I have to turn on the grinder and perhaps agitate it a bit to make it grind and dispense whatever's left in the top. Okay, press "start",...not happening. OH! I see,...there's a little safety lever that keeps the grinder from starting unless there's a bag under the chute!!! How clever! That also means that whoever made this fucking mess was probably an adult! So I press the damn thing and grind the unsavories away...

Now. To grind MY coffee. Engine whirs, grinding noise ensues. Hummm-hum-ho-hum, dooo-doot-de-doo, looking at other coffees whilst mine grinds away, chew on a nother sampled bean in my hand. I used to eat coffee grounds when I was a little kid you know,...other kids ate sticks of butter, spoonfuls of sugar, snuck cans of sweetened condensed milk, learned the near-fatal lesson of "baking chocolate",....I ate fucking coffee grounds.

Okay something STINKS now. Something smells like shit,...not literally,...but you know,...something smells of inferior, not-so-pleasant coffee. Hmmm. Trust my nose? It's definitely what I'm grinding. Shrug it off. Maybe it'll pan out, fooling me later by actually tasting good? FUCK NO.

Fuck you Pablo Escobar. Fuck you Juan Valdez. Fuck you donkey. Wrap it up, your days in the coffee spotlight are OVER. The REAL money is in public meat-grinders....