Coffee Comics

Write What You Drink

Several years ago, I started writing about a coffee cup. It’s really inevitable for a coffee cup to become a loud, hyper character.

After all, who’s there to support a writer through thick and thin, late nights and cold mornings, and through good times and bad? A spouse? Ha! Noooo. It’s coffee.

Despite my characterization in the comic, coffee is loud without producing noise. That’s really the key to the whole relationship. If you need someone who’s cheerful and stimulating without making a concentration-shattering sound, you need coffee.

Admittedly, I’m writing this as I drink tea. Tea is the drink for guilt-free writing in the middle of the night without over-caffeinating yourself. Tea can hype you up just as much as coffee, you just have to drink twice the amount. How do I know this? Hey, I’m a professional. I’m a cartoonist. I know just how much to drink before shattering my sleeping schedule for the week.

Haha, just a little joke there. I have no sleeping schedule.

The problem with tea is that it can take your teeth from Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura to Jim Carrey in The Grinch in as much time as it takes you to hum God Save The King, which is why it’s best to consume tea using a feeding tube. You really have to weigh the costs of a viable feeding tube against your dental bills.

Yes, coffee also stains your teeth. It’s just more likely to be able to scrub coffee stains off with something lighter than a Brillo pad.

I know it’s heresy, but there’s more to coffee than caffeine. There’s something about a hot drink that warms your body and clears the head. It could even be (I’m sorry to curse) decaffeinated, yet still provide a level of comfort that you really can’t get outside of general anesthesia.

But I like my coffee the way I like my conversation, with a point. If it’s not caffeinated, I’m not wasting my time. I’ve come to enjoy coffee for coffee’s sake, without cream or sweetness, secure in the knowledge that soon, very soon, it will make my hands shake. My shaking hands will prevent me from falling asleep, make me frustrated, cause the blood in my brain to simmer towards a boiling point, and possibly ignite creativity. It’s a very solid trade off.

I started drinking coffee at a very young age. How young? It was in the thermos of my Charlie Brown lunch box. I didn’t think there was anything odd about this, but I used to babysit for a couple who did. The father was a pediatrician. He did a double take at the coffee but eventually showed me how he was making beer in the garage. Coffee, if anything, is a conversation starter. I learned that if you’re old enough to drink coffee, even if it’s from Charlie Brown’s head, you must be old enough to learn how beer is made.

I realize that some people are way too obsessed with coffee. I’ve waited on my turn behind individuals in gas stations who are mixing up their coffee like they are creating an award-winning souffle. Hurry it up, pal. It’s gas station coffee.

I won’t pretend an expensive cup of coffee tastes better than some of the gas station stuff, either. My taste buds are shot from years of antibiotics as a kid and covid, so I’m not picky. I can tell if it’s burnt. I can tell if it’s weak. I can also tell if it’s not hot enough. Beyond that, I’m way too impatient to act like I’m at a wine tasting event. It’s probably too much caffeine. Either way, hurry it up with the coffee preparation. It’ll be urine soon, let’s not get carried away.

There was a time when a lot was written about how coffee is bad for you. Those writers are now dead. Today we have a lot of evidence supporting the health benefits of coffee.

I like to think that researchers are inspired the same way I am. They’re sitting in their labs, late at night, wondering what to research. They’re all thinking the same thing. “What will benefit mankind?” Sorry! God, what planet is this? Earth, right. They’re thinking, “Where’s the money at?” Then they look down, their sweaty palms wrapped around a steaming cup of Joe, and smile knowingly. Coffee! Of course. Let’s prove that coffee is good for you. There’s a lot of money in coffee.

I now drink my coffee from steel containers that are capable of keeping my coffee hot through entire presidential administrations. We live in amazing times.

My coffee has traveled all over the country, has gone biking with me, and has been carried solemnly to funerals and joyously through weddings. It’s quite the pal, coffee.

My coffee tumblers have been through countless abuses. Dropped from high balconies, rolled into icky depths of public spaces, and even driven over by passing cars this summer, those steel containers have survived it all. I should put my most valuable possessions in them, but I think they’re already holding it. I can always obtain another family heirloom. I need my coffee now.

Of course, there’s a time to calm down and relax. “There is no down like calm down,” you frequently hear from nobody, and it’s important to step back from all of the activity that mindlessly consumes life, breathe deep, and focus on your peace within.

Coffee does that too.

Don’t believe me? Pick out a good book, sit in a very comfortable setting, and ooze into its pages.

Something will be missing. It’s coffee. Sipping coffee as I quietly read is the only kind of meditation I practice, and by god it works.

So we’ve learned that coffee is your friend, your health advisor, and your spiritual guide. Is there a bad side to coffee? Anything can be a bad thing, after all, especially when you overdo things, or, in the case of coffee, consume too much. Surely, coffee is not the end all/be all of human consumption, right?

I can only answer this question once the research grant comes in.