Category Archives: Life and Stuff

Working Through the Pain and Nausea and Piercing White Light

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One of the few things that’s improved about my health as I’ve aged is my ability to deal with migraine headaches. When I was younger, partly as a result of being allergic to pretty much everything in Colorado, I used to get nasty migraines. That carried into university and into Japan, but then, once day I learned to work through it.

One of the problems with getting migraines, in my case, is that I get a warning. As I’ve said before, when I’m in the early stages of a migraine, an aura appears in my vision. Eventually the aura fades and I have about 15 or 20 minutes to get to a cool dark place before the pain and nausea set in. To give you a sense of what the headache itself is like, imagine an ice cream head ache pulsing in your right temple for two hours while someone presses their knuckle into your temple.

What makes the aura phase difficult is that I know I’m going to be sick, but there are no physical signs that I’m sick. I’m therefore in the odd position of trying to explain to people why I’m having to cancel plans. This happened once when I was teaching at Kansas State. The aura hit about 30 minutes before my class was supposed to start. I told a student, who was one of the rare students who actually came to office hours, that I was going to be sick and asked her to hand out a few things to the other students and cancel class. She did so, but reported me to the head of composition. (If I’d gone to class she could have watched my face drip off my skull which probably would have inspired a different kind of report.)

(Note: This page gives a good description, with drawings, of what the aura is like. Mine is similar.)

The migraine I got after I left the Air Force Officers’ Qualifying Test was one of the worst I’ve ever had. I ended up sleeping in the TV room in my fraternity because it was the coolest and darkest room I could find. It was also in the basement which made it the quietest. In those days there was no comfortable position to lie in that didn’t hurt and didn’t make me sick to my stomach.

Since I’ve been in Japan, I’ve learned to work through the migraines. As soon as I get the aura, I drink some coffee and pop a couple extra strength something or other (not a real medicine) and I can usually muscle my way through the headaches. The next day I have a migraine hangover, which means I’m weak and have no energy.

Once, I didn’t get an aura; instead my right arm started shaking uncontrollably. I was worried I was having a stroke, but 20 minutes later the migraine hit. (Something similar happened to Serene Branson when she started speaking gibberish at the Grammy’s in 2011; she has since said she suffers from migraines.)

I also get fewer migraines than I used to. This is most likely the result of slightly better sleeping habits, less stress, and having my allergies treated. The ones I get now are almost exclusively stress-related.

As I get farsighted and start to worry about those kids on my lawn–and I don’t even have a lawn–it’s nice that something’s actually improved.

 

The Liniest Place on Earth

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This weekend is the start of Golden Week here in Japan. This is a glorious period where four different national holidays all fall in the same week, including a block of three holidays in a row.

Unfortunately, because the holidays are based on the birthdays of late emperors (unofficially, of course) this is a holiday that shifts around and some years it’s awesome, some years it’s average. This year the block of three fall on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Because one of the days falls on a Sunday, the government provides a substitute holiday on Tuesday. It doesn’t do the same for Saturday, though, because that’s a work day for many people. However, a Saturday holiday doesn’t help me and is therefore useless. (Bah humbug. Something like that.)

Many Japanese combine these days off with their paid holidays and do some traveling. The smart ones get out of the city and/or the country. The foolish ones go to Disneyland.

The Tokyo Disney Resorts (which are actually in Chiba, not Tokyo–this makes sense when you remember the New York Jets and New York Giants actually play in New Jersey) consist of Tokyo Disneyland, which looks a lot like the Disneyland in Anaheim, except is about three times as large, and the nautically themed Tokyo DisneySea, which is intended as a date spot and is the only Disney resort in the world that serves alcohol. The food there is awesome, too.

Unfortunately, they are also the most popular Disney resorts in the world and pretty much the entire population of Japan tries to squeeze in them during holidays. I’ve dubbed the place Tokyo DisneyLine, because pretty much all you do once you get there is stand in line and tell your children, “No, we are not there yet. We are yet hell and gone from there.” One time we had to wait 45 minutes just to get a Fast Pass that would let us cut the line at a popular ride. (Don’t you judge me; the stand-by line for the ride was over 90 minutes long.)

I remember a couple hundred years ago, I think on a high school trip when I was still living in Hayden, Colorado, we went to the Disneyland in Anaheim and, although we had to stand in line, I remember the Space Mountain line wandering around a performance area where Pat Boone was singing. If I remember correctly, he was putting on a surprisingly entertaining show (Although at that age, seeing someone you’ve seen on television is kind of cool no matter who it is.) Or that was the trip where we tried to smuggle my dad in the country via Tijuana, Mexico and our stuff got stolen out of our car in the Disneyland parking lot.

Tokyo DisneyLine has nothing like that, though (the small music performances, not the smuggling and theft). You just stand and move, move and stand, spend five minutes on the ride and then go stand in another line for 90 minutes for the next five minute ride. (There’s something disturbingly philosophical about that now that I think about it.)

The best time to go, though, is during school. You just play hookey and head down there. We did that once with our oldest and I got to ride Space Mountain three times in 20 minutes.

That’s a happy place to be.

Leads a Lonely 2 Unlimited Ma Baker Country Music Life

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It’s fair to say, although I’m loath to admit it, what little sanity I have left is a direct result country music.

Because my Peace Corps batch arrived in Albania only a few months after the country’s first free election, and because that election was preceded by six months of anarchy in which almost everything that could be smashed ended up smashed, there wasn’t much to choose from on the radio and not a wide variety of music to be found in the market. (Because that’s the most important thing when you’ve been sent to a country to help in its development. Well, it is.)

Partly because of this, and partly because the Albanians were interested in trying out non-Communist media, and partly because, apparently, someone copied the same mix tape ten thousand times, there seemed to be only three songs played in constant rotation.

(Note to people under a certain age: music used to be recorded on magnetic tape that was contained in a small cassette and then inserted in a device called a boombox which is larger and heavier, and had better batteries than most Priuses–Prii?)

The songs, unfortunately, even the one that was kind of good at first, soon wore on the nerves after you heard  them in every coffee shop, restaurant, bar, taxi and bus in the country, usually on an endless loop, every day for months and months.

Coming in at number three, and at most inexplicable, was Boney M’s Ma Baker, which is, well, unique. But it wasn’t played as much as number two, 2 Unlimited’s No Limit. Turns out, that yes, in fact, there is a limit. Usually more than seven times in one day. (Yeah, I know, that’s an easy and obvious joke. So what?) However, topping the chart at number one was Ace of Base with All That She Wants. (My apologies to any fellow Albania 001 batch members currently suffering flash backs.)

To make matters worse, foreign radio was also limited, unless you understood/could tolerate Italian radio. We got BBC–We will now say something full of wit but in a rather dry and droll tone that conveys no sense of excitement or energy. You’re eyelids are getting heavy. Send money. Pay your licensing fee. This is BBC. We are watching. (Something like that.) Then there was Voice of America, which featured such standards as Casey’s Top 40 and American Country Countdown.

After a few months, although I’m not a huge fan of country music–I don’t hate it; I’m just ambivalent about it–I found myself listening to the country countdown more often than Casey’s Top 40.  The rock/pop top 40 seems set in stone. You hear the same songs constantly and, after a while, the titles begin to program you. Just in 1992 the message was: Tears in Heaven End of the Road Jump Under the Bridge Baby Got Back To Be With You.

Mind you, country music isn’t always happy with its songs about how my dog stole my pick up truck and crashed into my favorite fishing hole while driving drunk with my ex who lived in Texas (Oh, don’t act like you’ve never heard that song) and it did give titles that when strung together sent the message No One Else On Earth Past the Point of Rescue Straight Tequila Night, but the country charts are volatile which means a song spends a few weeks at number one and then quickly begins to fade. The chart is always changing and crap song will be gone soon. This means you don’t have to listen to “I Will Always Love You” for 14 weeks at number one and then for another seventeen years as it slides down the top 40.

My friends, of course, were very supportive. During the dead of winter one fraternity brother sent a mix tape that included such uplifting groups as Depeche Mode and the always cheerful Morrissey with his lyrics “I will live my life as I will undoubtedly die– alone.” Exactly what you need to hear on a cold February when the power’s out and the batteries in your music player are slowly dying.

Had to listen to “Achy Breaky Heart” just to stay sane, which gives you an idea of how bad things could get.

Pro Patria Pro Deo Pro Coffee

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As I’ve written before, I discovered coffee at university and my tastes evolved from gussied up dessert/coffee combinations to pretty much main-lining espresso doppios. I am quite willing to admit I’m an addict, don’t understand why you are not, and that I’m a bad person before I’ve had coffee (and only slightly better after). I’m also quite willing to admit that although I’m a reasonably patient person, the exceptions to that involve family, people who walk and smoke, a handful of Canadians, morons on bicycles and people who mess with coffee.

I bring this up because one of the cliches about Japan is that it’s a smoker’s heaven and a coffee drinker’s hell. At one point a cigarette company had a great commercial about smokers from the USA arriving on Japanese shores via makeshift boats and being welcomed by the locals with a pack of smokes. One town used to have a “tobacco tax” goal meter to encourage people to light up.

When I first arrived in Japan, though, there were only a few coffee shops around and I was shocked that, although the cake part of the Coffee and Cake Set was delicious, the coffee was a tiny little half cup that wasn’t even an espresso and that cost seven dollars.

Now, a few wishy-washy artistic types have argued that the half cup is special and that some Japanese have raised coffee making to the level of a martial art. They have carefully selected and hand-roasted the beans and carefully ground them in a burr grinder. Some of the beans have been carefully “processed” by civets (i.e. eaten and crapped out by civets). They boil carefully filtered water and pour it over the perfectly measured grounds which sit in a special canvas filter hand made from organic hemp by a 120 year old zen master in a secret location in the Japanese Alps. The coffee masters pour slowly until it seems as if the water is about to flow over the brim of the filter. Then they tap it and the water and coffee flow into the pot below.

At this point some people give polite little golf claps and say “That’s amazing. He’s a true artist. The coffee is beautiful.” while I’m in the back shouting “just pour the damned coffee!”

When the coffee is finally served it is typically half a glass. I’ve asked if it was just a sample and been told that, no that was my four dollar cup of cat poop coffee. (For the record, civet coffee is actually a hundred dollars a cup so I’ve never actually tried it, also, it’s cat poop.) I’ve also made them bring the pot out and add more coffee to the cup.

I did this in front of She Who Must Be Obeyed once and she was pretty close to walking out of the coffee shop. I told her I loved her and would do anything for her and that I’d catch up to her once I got my cup of coffee filled properly.

Mercifully, since those days, the Japanese have discovered coffee. This is important because, as shown in the book The Devil’s Cup, the strongest empires are those which hold coffee in high esteem. Once they switch to tea, they are doomed. (r.e. Turkish Empire, British Empire).  This also means that there are now many chains to choose from, including Starbucks which I never patronize outside of Japan, unless it’s in an airport. There are also some Japanese chains serving decent and cheap coffee now.

If there’s ever a ban on coffee, I will start my own mafia and smuggle it in. Well, at least as far as my house which, I admit, will make it hard for me to keep my goons well paid and well fed, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I need a cup of coffee first.

Neither Fit Nor Fashion Because This Head Wears No Hats

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It’s a basic fact of life that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who look good in hats and those who should never, ever wear hats.

I am in that latter category.

Now, it’s partly not my fault. For reasons I still don’t understand, I have a malformed head (I mean physically malformed, so shut up). My hat size is around 7 7/8 but my head is longer and narrower than it should be and has an odd bump at the back. In fact, it’s fair to say my head resembles that of the alien in Alien more than that of a normal human being. (This may explain why my mother is short and I am tall; she’s not my real mother. I killed my real mother when I burst out of her chest. Something like that.) This makes it extremely difficult for me to buy hats (and, after that last aside about my mother, extremely difficult for me to visit the USA again). Any hat that’s large enough to fit me is either too wide for my head, or gets stretched and deformed to fit the length. I look a lot like those in-bedded reporters who donned K-Pots or Crye Precision Airframe  helmets to look like Special Operations Operators: i.e. an out of place poser in ill-fitting gear.

This has never stopped me from attempting to wear hats. When I was in high school I used to wear a bucket hat everywhere because I was a teenager and such things make sense when you’re a teenager. (Well, actually, such things don’t make sense, but you’re a teenager so such things are expected.) I also had an Indie Jones hat that, now that I think about it, was a bad idea in many ways. I used to have a Colorado Rockies baseball cap that fit but gave it away to a local baseball fan when I moved from Niigata. (I really wish I hadn’t done that.)

Oddly, the only hats I’ve ever looked reasonably good in, other than baseball caps, were cowboy hats and there aren’t many people who can say that.

Several hundred years ago, at the beginning of one of his mid-life crises, my father started a small photography business in Hayden, Colorado called Dwight’s Photography. He shot a few weddings and a some portraits and, on occasion, I would “help” out, although my assistance skills were questionable and ran the gamut from “pretty much useless” to “blatant saboteur.”

One year, though, he was hired to shoot the rodeo in Hayden during the Routt County Fair. I was brought along to carry stuff, but the rules required that everyone in and around the ring wear appropriate Western attire. This meant I needed cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. Unfortunately, this meant every person on the planet (Hayden being pretty much my world at the time) got to see me in the hat. Oddly, although there were comments, no abuse followed. (I did discover, however, that I was allergic to pretty much everything at the rodeo. Another post, that, involving swollen eyeballs.)

Now, the only hat I can find that fits is a woodland camo boonie cap that I wear during summer outings to nearby parks and Tokyo Disney Land (a whole series of posts resides there, too). It keeps the sun off my face and neck, but I’m embarrassed by the Mall Ninja “Hey, guys, check it out I’m totally an Operator” look to it, and it looks goofy with the brim down and floppy.

It looks better, though, when I fold up the sides like a cowboy hat. Not good, just better.

You Are All About to Die and Welcome to Bunkerland

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Over 20 years ago, in a fit of pique, and with a vague sense of needing to do service and nothing resembling a plan, I decided to join the US Peace Corps. This involves a surprisingly lengthy selection process including interviews, health checks, background checks and lots of shots. Somewhere in this process you get to list your preferences. I picked Europe, Asia, Africa and Central/South America in that order.

Once you’re accepted, the Peace Corps gives you some control over where you’re sent. They tell that a position in XYZianastan (not a real country) is available and you leave in two months. If you’re not interested in that, you go on hold until another position is available. That could be one month, it could be six.

In my case, I was offered a chance to teach English in Albania as part of the first Peace Corps group. I checked the map and Albania appeared to be attached to Europe. I didn’t notice, though, that the cheapest ways out ran through the war zone in Bosnia and Serbia which meant Albania wasn’t actually attached to Europe. Armed with this ignorance, I said yes.

A few months later, I was in an airport in Rome choosing which of my two large pieces of luggage I loved best and which I wanted to leave behind on a Roman holiday. I was like, the bags can go on ahead, I’ll stay here but the Peace Corps was like, um, no.

We than boarded the Alitalia crop duster that would take us across the Adriatic Sea to Albania. I was teased for a brief second when the luggage handler picked up my second bag and started to carry it toward the plane. I celebrated too early, though, as he took two steps, looked at the bag, initiated scientific weight measurement by raising and lowering it twice, and then chucked it back on the cart.

I slept through take off, but I do remember the sound of panic when one of the propellers either stopped or appeared to stop during a throttle down. I also remember the look of operatic, yet surprisingly attractive horror on the face of our Italian flight attendant when we hit a nasty batch of turbulence. We all turned around expecting to see a hole where the tail had been and prepared to pray for our eternal souls. Instead she was worried about her loose drink cart. Even through it was harmless, the look of horror woke me up.

The real shocks hit when we landed on the cobblestone runway at Rrinas International Airport. It was a series of hexagons designed to be replaced quickly during an attempted bombing by US forces. We also noticed the dozens of pill-shaped concrete bunkers surrounding the airport designed to keep invading US forces off the cobblestones. When we finally finished the welcome ceremonies and met our language trainers and got on a bus, we noticed dozens and dozens more bunkers built at random locations as we drove to Tirana.

As we passed a vineyard, we noticed that every vine was attached to a concrete pylon that was topped with a nasty looking spike. We were told the spikes were intended to, how shall we say, become intimate with the buttocks regions of US paratroopers dropping in the vineyard during an air invasion.

Needless to say, with all the stuff designed to keep us out, it was sometimes hard to feel welcome–we’d later learn, as mentioned before, that our hosts thought we were being punished by being sent to Albania. Finally, we arrived at the Hotel Arberia–which would eventually become my home away from home–and discovered we’d missed the time of day when running water was available. If we wanted a shower, we’d have to wait until two, or maybe three a.m.

Culture shock hit at about that moment, became worse when we met our host families the next day, and, in my case, lasted the remaining two years.

What You Think You Know is Not Enough

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I usually get a couple of questions when people find out I’ve been studying karate for a long time.

1) Have you registered  with the government as a deadly weapon yet?
Answer: No. I haven’t and I won’t. That was a temporary thing the occupying forces did after WWII.

2) Does that shit really work?
Answer: Yes; unfortunately, so does a lot of other shit.

3) You study sword defenses? Where the hell are you ever going to need to defend yourself against a sword?
Answer: Scotland.

The longer I’ve studied karate the more I’ve realized it’s best I stay out of fights. It is a sport/art for the small and fast. I’m neither. I’m pretty sure I could hold my own long enough to make an exit (which, by the way, is pretty much required by Japanese law: when you can get away, you are obligated to get away) but I also think it’s best I never try to prove that.

Part of this is the way my style–and I’m sure many others–teach the various techniques. For example, one of the first things we learned was a defense against a knife attack. As the attacker slashes down at you, you stab both arms up and catch his arm between your crossed fists (right on top). Then, with your arms still extended, grab his arm with your right hand, and twist down as your left hand pushes on his shoulder and you drop to a low stance. At this point he should be bent over facing the dirt with his arm across your knee. Finish with an elbow blow that dislocates his shoulder.

Now, this all well and good and it’s awesome the first few times you do it. You start thinking, who do I know back home that lives in a bad neighborhood? What’s the worst neighborhood I don’t have to travel too far to get to?

Then, at the peak of your power and knowledge, as your aura glows blinding white with flashes of purple spirituality, they teach you the shockingly simple counter technique. You stab up with your fists to block the knife, but as you connect, the attacker jerks the knife hand back whilst simultaneously pushing your arms down with this free hand. He puts the knife to your throat and says “So you studied a little karate, eh?”

Every technique we do has a counter technique and we are authorized to do them at any time if the other guy is screwing up. We are also told to resist any techniques to force the other person to do them correctly. When we’re doing techniques against multiple attackers, the attackers are authorized to grab us from behind. They’re also authorized to go ahead and hit us with the knife or sword if we really screw up (been there, done that).

It helps you focus on the techniques. It also makes you think there’s no shame in running away. Or in using a can of pepper spray.

 

Booze Boxes and Backing Up Badly

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I got my first summer job thanks to the 80’s hair band Ratt. This is amazing because I was not a fan of Ratt and not a fan of summer work. My musical tastes are absurdly eclectic (translation: moody) but I never got around to enjoying “Round and Round”. As for work, I was too much of a fan of loafing, in the Larry Darrell sense, to seek out summer work.

Instead, for reasons I don’t remember, I volunteered to help out my mother’s sorority who, I think as part of a fundraiser, were managing a concession stand at the Bicentennial Center during the concert. I apparently managed to impress one of the men working there because I was offered a job at a local liquor wholesaler.

Although delivering booze to liquor stores seemed, at least at the time, a noble cause, and did earn me some initial brownie points in my fraternity, there were a couple issues.

1) I would be driving.
2) I would be driving a van.
3) Driving a van would often involve backing into small spaces.

I am, at best, on a good day, an average driver. I never took to cars the way many of my friends did. Cars were merely transportation from point A to point B and a way to spend money on something other than myself. Driving in reverse in what, at the time, seemed like a giant vehicle was intimidating.

Once I got past that, I had a good time in the job. I became a slightly better driver and learned how to pack 150 boxes into a van with enough space to hold 120. I also got to know the locations of all the liquor stores in Salina, a couple in Abilene and one in Concordia. I learned which store owners deserved business; which were assholes who didn’t deserve business; and which needed business enough to sell to someone underage. (For the record, when I started working at the wholesaler, I was old enough to drink watered down beer. By the end of the summer, thanks to Kansas’ goofy drinking laws, I was no longer old enough to drink. Legally, that is.)

I didn’t go back to that job, not that they would have had me–hey, I only tried to knock out a roof support once whilst backing up the van–and eventually ended up working for a Peace Corps-esque project that sent young K-Staters to small towns to do development work and, for a while, a place where I built and smoked toxic disposable buildings.

I also ended up making pizza and tacos. That’s another post though. Time to loaf.

 

 

Night Flight on Friday Nights

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Throughout my life, I’ve been plagued by persistent memories of surreal snippets of film and TV–a door breathing at the top of a flight of stairs; a bouncing red ball George C. Scott can’t get rid of; a man with a glass hand who discovers he must spend over a thousand years alone. They are sort of the visual equivalent of an earworm. For some of the snippets I could remember the source; for others I couldn’t.

All of them can most likely be attributed to my habit of staying up too late.

I’ve heard that it’s normal for teenagers to suffer from “Lost Boys” syndrome: up all night, sleep all day, and it’s true my oldest has begun to develop that quirk, but I’ve retained that well into my late 40’s. During long vacations, I slowly invert my sense of time and find myself staying up later and later.

When I did that as a teenager, not long after we got cable, I discovered a USA Network program called Night Flight that came on long after my mother had gone to bed. Night Flight specialized in showing odd things that no other program would show. Being a good Christian lad and member of the First Baptist Church in Hayden, Colorado, I wasn’t supposed to watch MTV–because it showed such degenerate, racy fare as The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Bow Wow Wow’s version of “I Want Candy” and Tony Basil’s “Mickey.” Night Flight, though, was running the uncensored version of Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” and running special features on videos too racy for MTV.

(Note: NO, I wasn’t, technically, supposed to watch Night Flight either, and NO, I didn’t have any discipline when no one of authority was around.)

(Note to Young People Under a Certain Age: MTV used to actually play music.)

I remember Peter Ivers spouting crap at the beginning of “New Wave Theater” and interviews with punk bands and young comedians. It also showed cartoons, Japanese action shows, short films and cult movies. For many years I remembered snippets of a cartoon where giants kept small humans as pets. Thanks to the internet, a couple years ago I searched around and figured out I must have seen Fantastic Planet one night. I also remember seeing Kentucky Fried Movie there and something that I think was The Clash’s Rude Boy.

Night Flight wasn’t watched, so much as experienced. Add in a half-asleep teenager with a brain of questionable status, and you get something epic.

Oddly, I didn’t watch it much after we left Colorado. I don’t know if that was for the best or not.

The Only Thing Constant is Changing Tastes

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I just finished two fingers of the first bourbon I ever drank: Jim Beam. I remember drinking it for the first time when I was 10 or so. I didn’t drink very much and I didn’t drink it on purpose. I grabbed the wrong glass and thought it was iced tea. Luckily, there wasn’t much left in the glass which meant my entire head didn’t burst into flames, only my throat.

I also remember my parents giving us very watered down white wine for Christmas or Thanksgiving. The amount was barely enough to make the bottom of the glass wet.

All this has me thinking about one of the quirks of life that amazes me to this day: the way our tastes change over time.

As I became a teenager, I would try an alcoholic beverage that was called “beer”, more specifically Coors Light, and that pretty much meant that I wouldn’t be a huge fan of beer until a trip to England when I was at university. Mind you, I would drink beer, but it was mostly an alcohol delivery system, not something to be savored.

Dark beer eventually gave way to screwdrivers (orange juice and vodka) which gave way to Bloody Mary’s which, for reasons I still don’t understand, gave way to straight vodka, scotch and bourbon. (I’m guessing lack of money was involved and remembering that Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar liked straight vodka because it didn’t taste like anything which probably got me to try it.) I’m still not a fan of mixed drinks, especially sweet ones. I’ve slowly developed a taste for wine, despite unfortunate adventures with kosher wine and things called Mad Dog and Night Train.

Now, here in Japan, I’ve rediscovered beer and become an amateur sake snob.

I had a similar journey with tea. When I was a kid I remember putting enough sugar in a glass of iced tea to have a centimeter of undissolved sugar at the bottom of the glass. I remember gagging the few times I drank unsugared tea (that’s “unsweet tea” to those of you from the U.S. South). Now, though, and I don’t know why, tea is the only thing I can’t drink sweet. When I was in Albania I used to horrify the Albanians, for many reasons actually, but especially for drinking hot tea without sugar.

Finally, there’s coffee–blood of life. The first coffee I ever tasted was a gruesome concoction of non-dairy creamer and artificial sugar. When I started drinking it at university, I ordered elaborate coffee drinks such as the double espresso, double double chocolate, double mint-mocha at the Espresso Royale which were basically desserts served with the coffee inside to save on cup cleaning costs. A lack of money got me back into tea and got me to try something they called “Americano” which the coffee shop claimed was a regular cup of Joe. Then I saw them make it and realized it was just a shot of espresso diluted with hot water. After that I put aside that “Tea, Earl Gray, Hot” bullshit and all that water ruined nonsense and started drinking “pure” coffee.

As for Jim Beam, it’s smoother and sweeter than I remember. Of course, I haven’t had any since I was 10.