I've been a naughty boy

I can't do it.

That's me on the pavement.
You might remember my Quixotic plan to quit drinking coffee. It hasn't gone so well. I went cold turkey for the first week and I was, by all accounts, a lump of crap. That's a technical, medical term. With the dog waking up at 5:30 a.m., Fresh as a Daisy, I needed to be awake. It was a struggle.

A couple of weeks ago I started drinking 50/50 coffee first thing in the morning. Two cups. Nothing crazy. My God. Half-caff coffee. Now that I type it out I see how depraved I've been. I need a priest and some holy water.

That brings me to this morning. I'm sitting here with my family. I'm drinking a cup of fully caffeinated Green Mountain coffee. Southern pecan flavor. This brings me to a critical question: Is it wimpy or manly to drink flavored coffee? I'll argue both sides here.

Does it get any more manly?
A friend of mine, Josh, got me into dark coffees in Duluth. Mud. French roast, dark roast, grainy and thick. Gorgeous stuff. At first I forced myself to drink it. I was an affirmed candy-as-coffee person. Lots of milk, lots of sweetener. I was drinking the dark roasts with plenty of sweetener, but no milk. I gradually decreased the sweetener. Manly stuff, that. Proved my toughness cup by cup.

Thing is, I enjoy lighter roasts as well. Dunkin' Donuts coffee is a wonderful, smooth, light roast. Easy drinkin'. We moved to the East Coast and I was in heaven. And then I discovered a little New England roast at the grocery store: Blueberry cobbler flavor.

And here's the argument for flavored coffee: It's got more caffeine than the dark stuff. And it takes a man who is not afraid of public ridicule to admit he likes flavored coffee. I'm not alone in these tendencies. I have a burly friend, Big Tom, who shaves with a woman's shaving cream. It smells better. That's why he uses shampoo that's marketed toward women. So do I.

So, here is my question (split by gender): Ladies, what habits do your male friends have that are less than manly? Gents, what are your guilty pleasures?

Comments

  1. BobApril 7, 2011 at 7:02 AM

    So, it's a dirty rotten lie that lighter roast actually has more caffeine in it? I like my over-priced Gevalia "gourmet" coffee. Kenya. Tanzania. Mocha, occasionally. French roast, sure. Avoid the civit shite coffee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak). Not gonna pay $49.50 an ounce for pre-digested coffee beans. Same logic there, to me, as paying someone to drive a spike through one's tongue. Declare something cool, and, kaboom, the elitists happily quaff caffeinated sewage, delighting in the sting makes on that nice new stainless steel piercing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JillApril 7, 2011 at 7:21 AM

    Drinking coffee again? I believed in you, Schorty. I thought we had something special. 21-4-2.

    P.S. Drinking flavored coffee doesn't make you less manly.

    ReplyDelete

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