Johnny Wraith Stories

Rambling

Rambling
Johnny Wraith - Sun Jan 07, 2007 @ 05:22AM
Comments: 3

Early one Saturday morning, I sat at my desk with the keyboard at my fingertips, sipping cold, instant coffee. Yes, cold instant coffee. Not brewed coffee. Brewed coffee takes too long to prepare. It's hot and burns your mouth, unless you first add ice. It's easier and faster to wake up and straightaway spoon instant Folgers into tap water, right from the faucet. The caffeine buzz comes quicker. And never use cream or sugar. Stir it all up in the steel martini shaker I never wash. I drink everything from my steel cup: wine, tap water, and coffee. Using just one cup has advantages. The dirty dishes don't pile up so fast.

Each morning at 5:00am, weekday or weekend, the beep of an electric alarm startles me awake. I stagger out of bed, shuffle into the kitchen, and reach high for the steel cup on top of the refrigerator. Before adding tap water and instant coffee, I squint into the cup to make sure there aren't any bugs, lint balls, or rotting food pieces in the bottom. One time a little spider made a web in my cup, and I didn't find out until I'd spit the little bugger, along with chunks of silk and cold, instant coffee, into the sink. I learned the hard way that the best precautionary measure is to always inspect for any contents in your cup before you prepare your coffee. You can't always remember to do so. Another time, I went into work really early on a Saturday morning and started drinking cold coffee that had been brewed 24 hours earlier. A fly had fallen into that brew, and drowned. I had to spit that fly out too. It wasn't an ordinary fly. It was much bigger, swollen like a grape, with a shiny green body. It may have been grossly pregnant. So, always look in the coffee pot too. Something might be floating in it, especially if it's an old batch.

However, you don't have to rinse or wash your cup. I don't. As I've said, just make sure the bugs and lint don't end up mixed with whatever you are drinking. The hardened residue at the bottom of your cup, the dried remains of your previous drink, will dissolve into whatever you drink next. For me, each morning, red wine is dried in the bottom of my steel cup. I don't clean or rinse it out. I just add the coffee and tap water, then stir. It really doesn't change the taste much. A practical, self-cleaning process.

As a side note, tap water is just fine. Drink it. Don't be a pussy. If you live in a civilized nation, the tap water from your kitchen faucet is good for you. It has fluoride in it plus many other nutrients. Scientists work at your local water treatment plant and know what is best for human consumption. I've drank tap water all my life. This is why I never have any cavities when I go to the dentist. One time, I went for a week drinking only bottled water, and my ejaculatory volume was reduced by half. I started getting headaches and my vision started to blur. I developed an erratic heartbeat, became bed-ridden. Only by returning to tap water did I convalesce.

What's up with the bottled water craze of the modern age? Why are so many of us always proudly proclaiming:

"I don't drink tap water. I only drink bottled water."

Bah! Go ahead. Spend your hard-earned money on bottled water when it flows cheaply from the tap. I think 2007 should be the year we start insisting on only breathing bottled air.

I remember when those little plastic bottles of water were first introduced. Since then, everywhere you look, people at the shopping malls, on the sidewalks, in cars, they're all sipping water from plastic bottles. Don't forget the bottled water! You need to stay hydrated! It seems so absurd. In school it used to be the rule that no drinks were allowed in the classroom. We just lined up three times a day at the water fountain and drank fucking tap water. And we were fine. Now every little grade schooler must have a god damned little plastic bottle of water sitting on his desk, or he is going to dehydrate and die. The youth of today are in enough fucking trouble already. They are all fat as hell and becoming diabetic because we feed them poison and gaming consoles with their potato chips. Now, to add to their ever-increasing obesity epidemic, all their teeth are going to rot out. They aren't getting the fluoride they need.  

On the news the other day, I heard that drinking water from plastic containers is dangerous. By doing so, you are ingesting dangerous, microscopic plastic particles found floating in the packaged water. Tap water isn't stored in plastic.

Early one Saturday morning, I sat at my desk with the keyboard at my fingertips, sipping cold, instant coffee. Yes, cold instant coffee. Not brewed coffee. Brewed coffee takes too long to prepare. It's hot and burns your mouth, unless you first put ice in it. It's easier and faster to wake up and straightaway spoon instant Folgers into tap water, straight from the faucet...

Comments: 3

Comments

1. chris   |   Tue Jan 16, 2007 @ 02:34PM

Really enjoyed that one johnny. Like the way the ending bookends the beginning. Really liked the indirect and subtle yet powerful development of the narrator. Even though it was about basically nothing, it totally held my interest. Made me think of this Sacremento woman who died the other day by winning a radio contest by drinking the most bottled waters of all the contestants without taking a piss. She went thru like 5 gallons I think. Won her kid a video game of some sort. Then died of water poisoning. Probably kidney failure.

That's also the 2nd great efficiency tip I've learned from reading your stuff. The other was how to save on toilet paper by spreading your ass cheeks when you take a shit.

2. Johnny Wraith   |   Wed Jan 17, 2007 @ 01:14AM

Chris,

I'm delighted to hear that Rambling had some value. I wasn't sure it did anything but take up space. Rambling started out as another story, but I just couldn't get it going, so I wrote whatever I could force out and post, just to feel I'd accomplished something. Maybe the fact I wrote about something I felt passionate about: the absurdity of bottled water, made it interesting. I'm starting to learn that just writing, just putting the words down, can help me develop my storytelling powers. Now I'm rambling again... I'm delighted to hear that Rambling had some value. I wasn't sure it did anything but take up space.

Johnny

p.s. I remember you telling me something about a flow of thought style of writing, or something like that. You kind of ignore structure, or seem to do so, or tell stories within stories. What is that technique called?

3. Ronald Matthew Kelly   |   Tue Sep 11, 2007 @ 04:09PM

Johnny,

What an appropriately named story. I agree with Chris: it was about nothing, really, but it totally held my interest. Thanks.

Now, as to not cleaning the steel cup. In the story, you say that what you put into the cup now, will rinse out what was in it the previous time you used it. That may well be so, but I can't help thinking that this is just a lame rationalization for laziness. At least rinse the cup after each use. But don't use bottled water for this. Use tap water. It's good for you!

Ronald

P.S., When I was your landlord, you were somewhat obsessed with espresso. Have you really downshifted that much that you now drink cold instant? Not being critical - just asking.

Can I have your old espresso machine?

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