Dear Dad,

It is unlikely that I will even open your forwarded emails if they are titled any of the following:

To My Conservative Friends…
American Socialism
American Marxism
American Communism
Obamunism
You Might Be A Redneck If

Thanks,
Your Son

Coffee Talk

Dear Downtown Orlando,

I need to talk to you about coffee.  I’m just coming off a rough relationship with Starbucks.  I’m not proud of it.  Hell, I don’t even know how it started, but for a while it was the easiest place to get a cup of coffee.  It wasn’t ever really that good, but it must have been laced with crack, because I kept drinking that shit for weeks, months.  I’m in a very vulnerable state, and I need a convenient place to get coffee on mornings, like this one, when I find the coffee that has been sitting on my counter (maybe a bit too long) has little, winged, dead bugs in it.

I tried 7-11, the epitome of convenience and cheap to boot.  There is a whole array of coffee.  During the summer, I tried their version of an iced mocha, something I knew to be a bastardization of coffee, but, much worse, turned out to not really have any actual coffee in it at all.  I found out the hard way when I had a withdrawal headache later that day.  Now that I’ve switched back to hot coffee, I tried, of all the choices, 7-11’s Brazilian Bold.  It was pretty bold of them to name the coffee “bold,” seeing as how it tasted like hot water.  Fuck you 7-11.

I’m sitting at Panera this morning (can you already see this disconcerting trend of chain businesses?) and my coffee is burnt.  It tastes of charred earth.  This is unacceptable.  It doesn’t help that the muzak sounds like a fucking rhythmless three-year-old playing chopsticks.

I need a french press, stat, and some bug-free coffee.  I like my coffee how I like my women: organic and fairly traded from a third-world country.  And I’m going to lock myself in my apartment for a week, and when I come out I want to see some fucking respectable coffee establishments or I’m moving back to Audubon Park.

Downtown: you’re on warning.

Good day.

R