I don't have time to think tonight...

So I'll just fling some links at y'all.

From the InsideCatholic.com blog, a post on how looks matter in tasting wine. (Not in the sense of the wine having no visible grape skins in it.) A distressing line in the post: "Forty experts said [a particular wine] was worth drinking..." Now, I could say that a wine is or isn't worth buying, but isn't any unadulterated wine worth drinking?

From the same website, a column about Muslims, aesthetics, and the Blessed Sacrament.

Since our house doesn't have TV, the recent TV writers' strike hasn't affected me much- but I have read quite a bit about it. The best perspective on it that I have seen is here, on a post written before the strike actually began. I like the closing line of the post.

From Darwin Catholic, a post on the problem of evil. I have to admit, I don't really worry much about why God allows evil in the world, since from early childhood I have been taught that

1. Good things come from God, and
2. If something is bad, it's because mankind/the Devil messed it up.

My sister is preparing to resort to armed coercion to make me go to bed mow, so goodnight, everyone!

This is what I'm REALLY addicted to.

I am 75% Addicted to Coffee

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

I love coffee. So, thank God, did Pope Clement VIII.

Speaking of which, I read that Sufi mystics would try to get high on coffee. The more fool them - I know what happens when you drink too much coffee, and it's not pleasant, let alone desirable.

I just had to post this.

Coffee, in my opinion, should have a maximum of three ingredients: coffee, sugar, and cream. Yet I'd pay extra on coffee to get Internet access, so you know where I stand on this particular subject.

I don't live in South Dallas, if you're wondering.

Tea and Coffee

Of all things that are spiritually opposite, tea and coffee are foremost in the class of edible things. Indeed, the world can be split into Tea-Drinkers and Coffee-Drinkers, much as Europe was split into Catholic and Protestant. Yet they are disturbingly similar.

Tea is a ritual drink, in direct contrast to Coffee. Look no further than the three countries best known for drinking tea to prove this. Japan makes a small worship-service of coffee. China, whence Tea originally came, does the same. England made a meal based upon tea. But did the Americans (the chief consumers of Coffee) make a ritual of it? No. To them it was a habit and a habit alone, like cigarettes. The extraterrestrial plotters of Starbucks had to come along and make it a ritual. (Contemptible cappuchino-swingers!).

Arrogance and Militance are the opposite vices vices of Tea and Coffee. Teacups are usually held by, one finger. This finger (usually the index finger) is pointed by the tyrant at his victims and subordinates, by the informer at the guilty man, by the scolder to the scoldee. It subtly reminds us of the Gesture Which We Do Not Make in Traffic. In short, Tea is held by a contemptuous finger, which smears but will not fight. Coffee is not so. It requires a warlike fist to hold its mug. Indeed, a coffee mug makes an excellent brass-knuckles (ceramic knuckles, that is.) The fist also holds the club with which peasants and cavemen, but also knights and kings, fought. Coffee is not ingorant of this; it demands a warlike salute from its drinker; not infrequently it punches him in the mouth. Or did until Star- but you understand me.

Yet Tea and Coffee are one. They are not sufficient in themselves, for no drink is an island. They require the same hot water, the same osmosis, the same filter paper. And even in the cup they are insufficient. They require sugar.