coffee

Freshmakerccino?

Back in the day, the sleeve was for your protection. It was a 60% post-consumer fiber barrier between your precious drinking hand and the scalding side effects of an otherwise delicious cup of coffee. After a little while, corporate America inevitably got around to adorning the coffee sleeve with ad copy, or at least some brand marketing. Phew! My God, people - we can’t just have blank cardboard sitting there in people’s hands!

Today the coffee sleeve marketing channel took a turn for the absurd. I wouldn’t have known about this had I not needed cash to get out of the Encino Medical Center parking lot (proof positive that the Blog God watches over us all). The parking lot attendant told me that if I bought something with my ATM card in the coffee shop, they would give me change in cash. Thus did I end up with the Mochaccino Freeze pictured here, its gratuitous sleeve adorned with the sample packet of Altoids. So I was left there wondering, just how cold is this drink? Do I need gloves? If so, what kind of protection do you have for the inside of my mouth? Based on the evidence, my breath was the least of my worries.

As pretty much anyone surely would, I detached the mints and threw them away before I even took a sip. Turns out the mochaccino tasted like it had 60% post-consumer fiber ground up inside it (and possibly another packet of Altoids, wrapper and all). At least it got my car out of the parking lot.

I was in the break room this morning making my long-overdue first cup of coffee when a co-worker named Aly came in to get herself something. She expressed her appreciation for my coffee mug; it’s a plain black mug that says “WTF?” in large white lettering. I ordered it from ThinkGeek.com.

“Thanks,” I replied. “I like it too.”

“It reminds me of something that happened with an old boyfriend of mine,” Aly continued. “He had this dog, and this one time he was trying to teach him to fetch, and he said, ‘Come on, Timmy - what would Jesus’s dog do?’ I thought he should make leashes or dog collars that said that. You know, like ‘WWJDD?’”

“I’ll tell you what Jesus’s dog would do,” I said. “He’d pee on your leg and turn it into wine.”

She doubled over laughing, almost spilling her coffee. I think if I had timed it just a teeny bit better I might have induced a genuine spit-take.

So now I’m wondering… what other cool and/or hilarious things would Jesus’s dog do?

You may have noticed that the blog looks a little different. What’s going on is that I’m switching to another theme that is a bit more adaptable, specifically the Binary Blue package. Aside from being tricked out with a lot of cool plugins and whatnot, BB incorporates the new wordpress sidebar widgets feature so that you can arrange stuff in the sidebar pretty much any way you want by dragging and dropping. This kind of idiot-proof configurability is a life raft to someone like me, who wants a stylish-lookin’ blog but whose CSS, PHP, and HTML knowledge might generously be described as “enough to be dangerous.”

I guess I should just be thankful that the real coders out there have made the sidebar widgets breakthrough. And I am, truly. But greedy bastard that I am, steeped in the American ultra-consumer mindset and barely having returned home from the mall before I want more, more, MORE, I am already yearning for widgets that can control the other parts of a blog page. Header image widgets, menu bar widgets, footer widgets, post meta bar widgets… you name it, I wanna widget.

Oh God, even I find my rapacity disgusting. Really, I’m sorry you had to see that… kind of. I guess if I’m going to be greedy and disgusting, at least I’m doing it about blogging technology - as opposed to trampling people when the doors to the mall are unlocked on the morning of December 26th.

Anyway, returning to the point - soon (knock wood) when you click back here to C&B you will be greeted by the new, improved, widgetized layout. I’ve got the resized coffee cup header, so now all I have to do is change the color scheme of the background images to suit the coffee-flavored feel I like. And change the font. And change the format of the post meta block. And, do these things without it breaking the theme.

No problem!

You know your work has cheap-ass break room provisions when you find yourself adding sweetener to your cup of hot cocoa.

Pfft. And people wonder why I bring in my own coffee.