Caffeine Madness!

Look into his cold eyes!

A Kentucky man with the unfortunate name of Woody Will Smith (Protip: avoid middle names that are homonyms for verbs) goes on trial today for strangling his wife with an electrical cable. To this, he claims it's not his fault, it's the caffeine!

According to the reports, Woody would consume "five or six soft drinks and energy drinks a day, along with taking diet pill." Wow, word is Woody was wound! "...it all added up to more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day."


Wait, what? Woody Will unwillingly wacked his wonderful wife with only FOUR CUPS OF COFFEE coursing through his wooden veins? Pardon my incredulously. I'm pretty certain that I regularly did more then that over the summer. What a light-weight. 


So either someone took the caffeine curve a bit too seriously, or someone just found a rediculous scapegoat. Jacob Scullum, over at Reason, has a very insightful comment:

I suspect the notion of a caffeine-crazed killer will strike most people as risible, since caffeine is a very familiar drug—the most popular psychoactive drug on the planet, in fact...

People are much more credulous about such tales when they involve less familiar drugs such as crack, PCP, or methamphetamine. As I show in my book Saying Yes claims that such drugs turn people into killers, like similar stories that were told about marijuana in the 1920s and '30s, have little basis in fact. 

Coffee: It's the new reefer madness!

Someone didn't refill the pot again! I bet is was Frank over in accounting. Why, I outta...

Black and Steaming

I should stop drinking so much coffee. It will give me stomach issues earlier in life then otherwise might occur. It makes me feel like a junkie who always worries about his next fix. Yet, I feel like its worth it, at least for now.

My morning ritual is something like this: I drag myself to the machine and somehow prepare it with the proper reagents to create its magical brew. I am so well versed in this procedure that I can do it BEFORE my first cup of coffee. After the torturous process of waiting for the machine to slowly drip the life-juice into existence, I pour it into a vessel worthy to contain it. Bringing it to my lips, I savor the aroma as it fills my being, and then take the first, tentative sip.

At that moment, it rushes through every vein in my body. My mind becomes an oracle. Thoughts rustle my brain cells like autumn leaves next to a rushing train. I write down these thoughts, so that I might retain at least an outline of their brilliance before they leave me as fast as they first came.

This process occurs every morning at for at least a hour before it leaves. I pay for this gift by getting crabby and passing out promptly at 2:00 in the afternoon. Perhaps it is a gift best enjoyed in moderation.