NAIL IN THE COFFEE

This morning I ordered an Americano instead of a Latte. With hot milk for prolonged rapture. And it made me wonder where this is going. I’m guessing the next step is drop the milk. Then add an extra shot (whatever that is). Then two extra shots, then three, four - I don’t know, what’s the maximum? When do they pat you on the shoulder and say ‘I think you’ve had enough son’ and alert the security staff to see you off the premises?

For years I held out against coffee. It was tea all the way, the comforting and benign ritual of bubbly water on herby pillows. The aural equivalent of a hot bath - every half hour. Because that’s the thing about tea. It’s such a non event that you just keep doing it. Not so much a drink as a periodic change of texture. In those days the coffee drinkers were a dark and mysterious under-class. Masters of the infernal filtering apparatus that summoned forth the pungent black liquid of their desire. I treated them with suspicion, nay disdain.

GOD AWFUL ADVERTISING

Funny how the laws of advertising don’t apply when it comes to God. You’d think a once all-powerful worldwide movement trying desperately to hang on to the last remnants of credibility would try a bit harder.

You can imagine God’s brand people briefing the agency:

"Okay, so the challenge we have is that people are repulsed by our use of meaningless cliches, antiquated language and constant references to insanely cruel and sadistic ancient torture techniques." 

And the agency goes away, gives it plenty of the old blue sky, and comes back with this:

At which the brand people pop a bottle of bubbly, give each other a hearty pat on the back and brace themselves for an unprecedented surge in church attendance and a complete reversal of society’s encroaching secularism.