Still formulating words for Violet Core, don't worry, but they didn't get written today for reasons that I will elucidate shortly
(Tomorrow I'm running a pair of Lancer games so it's unlikely I'll have the post up then, but it's a-comin', don't you fret)
So anyway, there's this guy I know. His name isn't James but I'm gonna call him James. I like James. He's a swell guy. We've been through some rough times but like, on the list of 10 Dudes I Trust, James is now up there. He's one of the rare men I know who went through a shithead phase and then fuckin' reinvented himself after realizing that maybe he was being the shithead in this relationship. Mad respect for James.
I like coffee. I also like tea, if anything I'm a bigger tea bitch than I am a coffee snob, but I like coffee, a lot. And it is a Known Thing, among a circle of my friends, that Mara likes coffee. And so there was this period, a few years ago, when a whole bunch of my friends were like "oh James makes great coffee, he makes the best coffee I've ever had, fuckin LOVE James' coffee, Mara you like coffee, you should get James to make you some, hot damn, it's good coffee, it tasted so good, it's not bitter at all, I thought I hated coffee but then I had his, nobody else makes it like he does, it doesn't taste bad at all, wow, holy shit, try James' coffee" and like, wow, ok, you are raving about it, non-coffee-loving friend to me, the coffee-loving friend, it must be good, what's so good about it? "I don't know but you should have it you'll love it" wow okay, sure. And then I was just never really in a position to ask James if he'd make me a coffee, we kept running into each other at a different friend's house, or what have you, and like. You can't say "make me that excellent coffee I keep hearing about" when you're at someone else's house, or he's over at your place, right? It just doesn't work that way.
So eventually, things line up, and I'm able to say "oh hey everyone tells me your coffee is great, can I get a cup?" when we're before a tabletop session at his place and he's all 'hey can I get anyone anything' and he says sure, and like, great! I'll have a cup of good coffee and we'll play a game this'll be lovely.
So I also ask, hey, can I watch, and he gives me this weird look but says okay, and I explain hey if people say it's so good I want to see how you make it, what prep method do you use, what kind of water do you use, and he just looks at me like I'm giving macOS console commands on a WindowsXP machine.
And then he makes the coffee.
The recipe, because I still remember it, was as follows:
- 2 scoops vanilla ice cream
- a big squirt of redi-whip
- 8oz whole milk
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1oz vanilla syrup
- 2oz chocolate syrup
- 0.5oz instant coffee, brewed separately, poured in at that point
- 1 more scoop vanilla ice cream
- 8oz whole milk
- another spray of whipped cream on top
- caramel drizzle
in a big 24oz mug
and I'm staring at this... dessert... in bewilderment as James beams and says "here's your coffee, I hope you enjoy!"
And to this day, I'm sitting here like. I do not even know if I can call this "a coffee" conversationally. It's not about "was this good" - if you like milkshake-like drinks, this was fine! It was a sweet-ass drink! That's not the point. The point is - when I say "a coffee", I mean "the majority of this drink is coffee", or "a preponderance of this drink is coffee". I ran a starbucks for a while, I got used to people calling the latte "a coffee" or a mocha "a coffee", but even there... a shot of espresso is FAR more coffee than was in this thing.
But the fact that coffee... a carefully measured half-a-shot-glass, half-ounce of weak-brewed instant coffee, at that. The fact that coffee had TOUCHED this beverage is apparently enough to label it "COFFEE" despite the fact that, honestly, you could take it out and not affect the drinking experience at all (I know, because at a later date, James made Coffee again and completely forgot to put any coffee in at all and no one noticed, even me, until he slapped his head and said "I forgot to buy coffee!") and like. At what point do you admit that while this drink has coffee in it, somewhere, it is not "coffee", and is only technically "a coffee drink"?
Anyway this is on my mind because I spent a very frustrating back half of today trying to help some friends with their frustrations with D&D, frustrations they asked me to help with, only to wade through hours and hours of "oh but our DM homebrewed this and that and this other thing and that whole subsystem isn't in use and these classes are banned and here's the list of other classes that replace them and here's the alternate spell list and here's the spellchanneling system and here's the overchanneling system and here's the power ascension system and"
but of course, when I suggest that I may not be able to help them with their dissatisfaction due to it, y'know, not actually being D&D anymore, and when I suggest that maybe they want to try another game that does the things they want with less kludgework, or failing that, maybe roll the game back to core everyone-on-the-same-page D&D, I'm met with the voicechat equivalent of blank stares and "it's D&D. you're supposed to be some kind of RPG expert, and you can't even help with D&D problems?"
so, coffee.
Anyway, I hope to have more time Sunday and hope to write then.
in the same way that it's completely insane to call it "coffee" when you have a massive milkshake whose only inclusion of coffee is one of several flavor shots, it's similarly insane to say someone isn't drinking coffee because they added a bit of cream and sugar
