Coffee and Scotch Mailbag

     I’m proud to say that my blog has really taken off lately. I hope I’m not putting the proverbial cart before the horse in saying so, but don’t be surprised to see me writing for a major publication soon. I’m in active negotiations with MacInAmish Quarterly, a digital magazine for Amish Apple enthusiasts. I’m told circulation is poised to push beyond ten subscribers sometime in the next 5 years, which would be twice as many readers as I have now. I’m also flying down to Washington next month to meet with some top brass in the CIA. Evidently they’re interested in my writing as an effective replacement for water-boarding prisoners in Gitmo. Preliminary tests show that being subjected to my blog is a 73% more effective form of torture than having your testicles connected to a car battery. I finally found some job security. So, in my continued effort to give something back to my readers, I’ve decided to put aside this weeks regularly scheduled content and tackle some fan mail questions. My inbox has been flooded with letters from adoring readers the world over. I’ve picked out a couple random questions to answer in the premiere edition of the Coffee and Scotch Mailbag.

     Hey Brad,
I’m kind of an idiot, how many ingredients should my peanut butter have in it?
- G.W. Carver (Missouri)

     I’m glad you asked G.W., because it seems like a lot of you morons out there have no idea how to read and interpret the ingredients label on the packaging of the foods you eat. Ask yourself, what do I think peanut butter should be made of? Now go to your cabinet and look at the label on your jar of Skippy. If you see anything other than peanuts and salt, punch yourself in the face because you’re stupid. Why would you have to add or subtract anything from peanuts to make peanut butter?


     Dear Brad,
I’m hoping you can settle an argument my husband and I have been having, can feminism and chivalry co-exist?
- Constance Elizabeth Henderson-Garfunkle (Connecticut)

     Thank you for your question Constance. This seems to me like one of those, have your cake and eat it too, kind of scenarios. On the one hand, bra burners like yourself have fought long and hard for equality and a level playing field. On the other hand, you don’t want to let go of the equally archaic idea that men should treat you chivalrously. I’m afraid my position is no, feminism and chivalry cannot exist together. The life of one is the death of the other. Let’s agree to hold doors open for each other because we’re civil and polite human beings, not because of some arbitrary delegation of sexual organs. You’re voting now, fighting on the front lines and captaining industries, don’t pretend like you can’t open your own car door anymore princess.

     Coffee and Scotch,
I like sprinkles on my ice cream but when I go out I’m to embarrassed to ask for them because I know it emasculates me. What should I do?
- rainbowsprinkles44@aol.com

     For Christs sake, I don’t even know where to start with this one. Is that really your email address and do you really still use AOL? Is it 1996 again and nobody told me? First of all, get a fucking gmail account and step into the future big fella. As far as your question goes, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that you can never eat rainbow anything ever again, especially sprinkles. The good news is, you can enjoy your favorite ice cream topping, but you need to man it the fuck up a few dozen notches. Rainbow sprinkles will never be a part of the Coffee and Scotch vernacular, but chocolate shots might have the girl behind the counter looking at you like a fresh piece of man-meat. It's all about the image. You didn’t mention anything about sugar cones versus waffle cones, but let's not open Pandora's Box of De-Pussification all at once sprinkles.

The Truth Hurts

      Well here we are, ten weeks into this blog writing experiment and it’s been ten weeks of sarcastic, opinionated, belittling, bitter dross. I thought this might be an apropos time for a little change of direction. I don’t have it in me to be any less abrasive, but like Frost’s famous traveler, I thought I might choose the other path this week and try turning the tables on myself. It’s entirely possible that I’m a giant loser. Honestly, my hobbies aren’t exactly what the cool kids are doing these days and looking back on things, I suppose they never were. I’m sure you’re thinking  I must be taking some creative license here, in order to have a little fun at my expense, but I’m afraid what you’re about to read is the whole truth and nothing but. Hopefully, any of you I’ve alienated over the past few months will consider this, my autobiographical comeuppance, as satisfactory recompense. Or, quite frankly, you can go fuck yourselves and say hello to your therapists for me this week, you insecure losers.

Waiting for a match in World of Tanks.

      Hi, my name is Brad, I’m 33 years old and I spend entirely too much time on my computer contributing nothing to society. That’s one of our big imaginary goals in life right, contributing to society? I can’t just be a selfish prick, I have to make sure every dirt farming African villager has clean water and a sack of beans to eat? Unfortunately for starving Africans, I’m more interested in my own little delusional Facebook world, which is ironic because I’m not much of a socialite. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about you, less so if you live someplace I have to spin the globe to find, and you don’t give a shit about me. So why do I do it? I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve become obsessed with playing Facebook games, which has created a compulsion to be online that should have me institutionalized. Sure, I’ll harvest your watermelons, join your mafia, and help you assemble the Vorpal Bastard Sword of Virgin Slaying. I also like to whore out this atrocious blog, which I’m inwardly grateful but outwardly aloof about you reading. I don’t want to seem needy but I like the idea that a few people like reading this garbage I’m churning out. Beyond Facebook games, I find entirely to much pleasure in other computer games, most of which involve me dying endlessly to 13 year old computer hackers from around the world. Anyone better than me is obviously cheating, fucking noob-tubers. I’ve met and been killed by people from places my Social Studies teacher couldn’t find on a map. I’m essentially 33 going on 15 and as much as I know I should be growing up, I’m fighting it with every fiber of my juvenile, irresponsible, lazy being. I’ve wasted an incalculable number of hours of my life accumulating a treasure trove of pixels, with absolutely nothing tangible to show for it. My admittedly thin defense is a quote from T.S. Eliot I fall back on like the French fell back on the Maginot Line, “time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.”

The big guy in the middle is my Gold Severum, Fred.

      Coupled with my moonlighting as a closet gamer, I’m an avid tropical fish enthusiast. That doesn’t sound so bad until you try using it as an ice breaker at the bar, “So, you wanna come back to my place and check out my sump filtration?”. I have a 150 gallon freshwater reservoir in my living room, which serves as a constant reminder of my wife’s tolerance with my eccentricities. While video gaming puts me in a social bracket with teenagers, keeping a fish tank slides me to the other end of the spectrum; into the early bird special, Sansabelt slacks, buy a Cadillac and retire to Florida crowd. The big problem for me is I have a bit of an obsessive personality. I can’t just throw a few goldfish in a bowl and be satisfied. When the desire to do something arises, like setup and maintain a fish tank, I fully commit myself to the project and set about doing it on a grand scale. Custom Starphire glass tank built in Texas, plumbed and configured in Rhode Island, delivered and installed in Connecticut...check. Anything less than what I feel is the best is not worth the time, effort and money put into doing it. Perfection is a demon I live with everyday, pity me.

Searching for my dignity...

      Lastly, and also chronologically my most recent endeavor, comes the desire to go out and buy a metal detector so I can be a beach bum this summer. This one leaves me scratching my own head and I really have no idea where the impulse to do it came from. I’m certain my inner philanthropist wants to discover a trove of Civil War era relics to donate to some lucky area museum. Honestly, this hobby trumps the other two put together on the scale of lame-assity. There’s been more than one time already where I’ve been down at the beach metal detecting and I’ve noticed some awkward looks from people. Frankly, I can’t blame them. I know full well I look like a giant toolkit with my wannabe DJ headphones on, stumbling up and down the beach with the intensity of Jacques Cousteau probing the seabed 100 meters down for a chest full of Spanish doubloons. If bottle caps were quarters, I’d be rich by now. Actually, if I had a nickel for every girl at the beach who reached into her purse to make sure she had her mace when she saw me coming, I’d really be rich by now. Could the true value of a metal detector be it’s secondary function as a chick magnet? Only time will tell but unless getting tasered is a new form of foreplay, things aren’t going so well.

Image Is Everything: Obey Your Thirst

     Last week I started a new job at a Hedge Fund. It’s my first time working for a Fund, but I’ve been in the financial industry most of my professional life. Finance is generally a nice niche to work in, as the money attracts talent and the talent encourages the companies to invest in employee retention, which is just bullshit corporate jargon for not treating the people you rely on like shit. Anyway, my department has an overzealous, still wet behind the ears intern who likes to tag along with me to the kitchen in an attempt to tap into my vast pool of technical knowledge. Whilst on a recent foray into our sectors designated kitchenette, said intern and I got into a conversation regarding beverage selection and the image associated with what you choose to drink. The refrigerators in the office are teeming with choices; sodas, waters, seltzers, energy drinks, juice drinks, sports drinks etc. We got into a conversation about what the other chose to drink, which trailed us back to the dim sector of our office where they banish the IT group, and quickly enthralled the other acolytes of the Church of Coffee and Scotch. As my devotees imbibed the sermon I was preaching from my full-time cubicle/part-time pulpit, I knew with divine certainty that I had a message I needed to chisel into the stone of the Internet, like a modern day blogging Moses.

     Your image is an extension of who you are, where you’ve been, and where you hope you’re going. It’s outwardly evident in many ways, but in true Coffee and Scotch style I’m focusing on the relationship between what you drink, and what you want people to think of you. Stopping at Starbucks on your way to work for a grande, decaf, extra hot, soy milk latte with no whip? Look in the mirror, do you see a pretentious douchebag behind the wheel of a Saab wearing designer sunglasses? This is the part where you lecture me about what safe cars Saab’s are while I’m tea-bagging your grande, skinny, iced, carmel macchiatto, which happens to be the perfect temperature for cooling my balls off on a hot summer afternoon. Do you really need to spend five bucks on a shitty cup of coffee that tastes like burnt vegemite or do you just need the other people in the office to know that you can afford to? Hey, instead of that hippie hangout, full of wifi loving yuppies banging away at their Macbook Pros, commanding an army of zombie barista’s in green aprons, maybe you’re stopping at Dunkin Donuts on your way to work instead. Ordering coffee there is a hell of a lot simpler, but the odds that your job involves wearing a shirt with your name on it quadruple when you drink your morning joe from that vaunted white styrofoam cup with the orange and purple letters emblazoned proudly on it. You can swap out the Saab for a van with a 1-800 number on the side and a “How’s my driving?” bumper sticker on the back too. Have you seen a lot of construction sites littered with Starbucks cups recently? Dunkin Donuts is working class coffee that keeps America running, served by little old ladies wearing brown visors and smiles.

     The astute reader is probably ready to ingest my thoughts on scotch drinking but I think a more appropriate libation for this dissertation is beer. You know that moment standing at the cooler in the package store, trying to figure out what the hell to buy? It’s the same feeling you get when you’re in a crowded bar staring at the tap handles like a monkey staring at the keys on a typewriter, trying to crank out some iambic pentameter. Beer is all about image and you don’t want to make a bad impression. I thought it might be helpful to break down a few bad beer decisions, so you don’t blow your limited opportunities at landing some skanky bar meat this Friday night. The average bar is filled with potable pitfalls for the unwary, and the tube tops are sizing you up as soon as you walk in the door. So when the bartender, who is the odds on favorite to be the hottest chick in the place anyway, asks you “what will it be?”, don’t fuck it up right away and order a light beer. If you order a beer based on how many calories are in it, or worse how many carbs it has, you might as well just go home now, sit on your left hand until it falls asleep and enjoy a few blissful minutes with the stranger. Don’t order a fucking Bud or Miller either you hillbilly, unless you’re looking to go home with the toothless chick rocking the Dale Earnhardt t-shirt and you don’t mind getting your freak on in the bed of her pickup truck. I’d also advise pumping the brakes if you’re ordering a beer that comes with any kind of fruit garnish. Strictly speaking, I wouldn’t drink a Corona if I had a mouthful of fire ants and nothing to wash em out with except the aforementioned beer or a bucket of warm donkey piss. If you’re a recent burrito convert or it’s Cinco de Mayo and you need to go south of the border for your beer, stick with a Dos Equis. I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I make sure it doesn’t make me look like a pussy. Incidentally, no matter what beer you ultimately decide on, if it comes in anything but a pint glass or maybe a mug, you should pour it on the bar, light it on fire, and go someplace else. That shit really pisses me off. Nothing says, “I’m not gonna get laid tonight” more than sitting at the bar drinking a light beer with a lemon wedge floating in it, out of some kind of over-sized brandy snifter. Good luck out there single guys.

Can It Be A Vacation Without Chevy Chase?

This is not my topless neighbor or the UPS chick.

        So I’ve been between jobs for the last couple of weeks, which is to say I’ve been sitting at home in my underwear, growing a beard and eating cereal three times a day for the last couple of weeks. Incidentally, since I despise laundry, its been the same pair of underwear for about 14 days now but I did turn them inside out after the first week to keep them fresh. I kind of feel like I’m on Survivor without the bad-ass teal bandanna “buff”. I’m not sure if I’m a villain or a hero yet but I formed a strong alliance with the pizza delivery guy, the UPS chick and my retired neighbor/crossing guard, who in true Survivor fashion doesn’t wear a shirt nine months out of the year. I’ve named our tribe Nosferatu because I’ve fallen into the classic vacation pattern of sleeping all day and staying up all night hunting for boobs on Cinemax. I planned ahead and bought enough milk and Fruity Pebbles to hold out for the duration and using the same bowl and plastic spoons saves me from doing dishes. It seems my laziness is highly motivated. There’s no need to start sending me donations via Paypal to ensure I can continue brightening your dreary lives every week. I have something lined up and I’m starting my new gig on Monday, the day this blog hits the press, and I thought this might be an appropriate time to share what I’ve learned from my time on unemployment Redemption Island.

I thought "Dutch" was a good movie.

        I’d like my staycation shockumentary to be a cautionary tale for all the teenagers out there who are trying to get pregnant so they can be on MTV’s newest craptacular show about transgender amputee high school students from Bumblefuck, Arkansas who are pregnant and cooking meth in their double wide trailers. Don’t do it! Kids are hard work and there is no way you can prepare for the rigors of graduating from Sweet Valley High, maintaining your 2.0 GPA and training to be a pixie dust spreader on the tilt-a-whirl, while taking care of an infant. While I was working a full time job I did the typical evening and weekend super Dad stuff; sweep in at the end of the day for bath time and bed time, order pizza for dinner, stick my hand down the front of my pants in true “No Ma’am” style, watch some TV and call it a day. Being home 7 days a week has given me a fresh perspective on what it means to be a parent and what it takes to care for a child full-time. My hats off to my wife, my mother and all the other parents out there. Abstinence is the best policy, but if you accidentally slip one past the goalie, consider yourself warned.

        I’m fairly certain that 85% of all work that is done in the universe occurs before McDonald’s is done selling breakfast. This isn’t strictly a vacation related phenomenon, but the severity of the problem is amplified when you’re sleeping until 10:00 everyday. Every time I have a week or more off from work I tell myself I’ll drag my ass out of bed by 8:00 and try to maintain a normal schedule. By the second day I’m staying up until 2:00 and sleeping until 10:00. I’m rolling out of bed with maybe an hours worth of usable, productive time to spend. Assuming no occurrences of rectal tenesmus, I’m ready to roll in about 15 minutes, leaving me with a solid 45 minutes to get shit done per day, giving me a grand total of 450 minutes per two week vacation. Frankly, I’m downright astonished with the amount of things I’ve managed to take care of with such a brief amount of time available. After crunching the numbers on it, I can understand the shocked looks on my wife’s face when she comes home from work to see what I’ve managed to accomplish with a mere 45 minutes of labor a day. On behalf of men everywhere with growing honey-do lists to accompany their growing prostates, to the wives of said men, with shrinking patience and shrinking understanding, you’re welcome for all the hard work. We hope you appreciate it.