QotD: Coffee

Coffee tastes like ass.

No, not like real ass; it's just an expression (although I suspect there has been coffee that literally does taste like ass, and I'm glad never to have sampled it). But, look, it tastes bad. Anyone who says, "well, that's just because you haven't had really good coffee" is merely saying "well, that's because you've never tasted really good ass" as far as I am concerned. No matter how good ass tastes, it's still ass. Coffee tastes so much like ass that Starbucks has managed to install itself on every street corner in America by dispensing variations of coffee whose main recommendations are that they taste less like ass than actual coffee. Mochas and lattes are to the modern era what a gravy was to the 1600s; a concerted effort to mask the rancid taste of what lies underneath. When you have to invent things not to taste a drink, the simple solution is not to drink the drink in the first place.

I'll note that coffee's not alone in this; there are lots of drinks that taste like ass, but which people drink anyway, usually to get to whatever drug is suspended in the liquid. Coffee tastes like ass, but people drink it for the caffeine. Beer tastes like ass but people drink it for the alcohol. All those energy drinks taste like ass coated in cough syrup, but people drink them for, what? Taurine? You people are all high.

And it's not just drink, of course — people are willing to put up with a lot of things that taste like ass just to get at a drug. For God's sake, cigarettes are just pouring smoke over your tongue. And as for pot — well, that stuff actually smells like vegan farts, doesn't it? Seriously: Room of pot smokers, room of hacky-sackers a half hour after a cruelty-free Thanksgiving. They both smell the same. And you suck it into your mouth just for a little THC kick. It's like I don't know you people anymore.

John Scalzi, "Reader request Week 2007 #2: Coffee, or Lack Thereof", Whatever, 2007-03-27