Archive for category ‘screeds’
Wednesday, November 1st, 2006
true, candied razor blades are a thing of the past. then again, your vac-packed brick of jack daniels-flavored gourmet coffee particles comes pretty doggone close, in terms of satanic cruelty!
the bursch-head gave us this, just for the holiday we hate most. some thanks, given the lengths we've just gone to ...
Posted in screeds | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
this blog's miserly strategy for warding off trick-or-treaters: "greetings, inky patrons. care ye for a ghoulishly carved fruit of the branch, hand-wrested from yonder mountains and filled to sloshing with espresso blackness?"
by this point, this blog is usually speaking to itself. candy hunters, it would seem, aren't a likely crowd ...
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Monday, October 30th, 2006
let's pen a strenuous, over-earnest paean to the working barista, shall we?
let's make it all about cracked, dry fingertips and indelible brown oil stains on the lower right side of the jeans buttock. let's marvel at people who stand for eight hours, pulling spot-on espresso shots and making endless conversation ...
Posted in screeds | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
we bet that people who work for mecca-proximal establishments don't know the joys of seizing the refrigerator pitcher designated Filtered Water, abdicating its contents into the maw of the isomac's tank and discovering that it had been recently replenished with ... orange juice.
Posted in screeds | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
the intervening silent vacuities, it should be noted, have been filled of Trial by Espresso Machine Innard. meaning, basically, that to know the depths of this blog's flummoxed anguish you pretty much had to be there. will that keep us from attempting strident, curmudgeonly rehash? why, no!
clearly, one of the ...
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Monday, October 16th, 2006
at long last, this blog's closest inanimate life partner sings again (audio link).
said the blogson: daddee, did you fix the tay-AH?
said the tay-AH fixer: i did. now say, "daddee, you are the fix-it wizard."
said the blogson: daddee, you are the fix-it lizard.
Posted in screeds | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
linda asher, translating czech novelist milan kundera, quoting french novelist marcel proust in the new yorker:
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen ...
Posted in screeds | 3 Comments »
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
mystical reflection of the day: there are ALL SORTS of ways a person can, with his body, inadvertently complete random electrical circuits while his arms are ensnared in the innards of an espresso machine and someone innocently approaches the on/off swit...
Posted in screeds | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006
would this blog churn 500 mystical words on the fundamental human needs at least partially met by coffee and not post them here? why, no!
Posted in screeds | No Comments »
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
nagging serbc remainders, bulleted for easy culling.
* exhaustive coffee innerneck trollers already know that this blog's primary spro-progenitor is profoundly broken -- not unlike a barista competition! no, wait. the comparison applies to the other machine, the antiquated levered wonder that requires a painstaking amount of wiping, bleeding and ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
roughly on par with its usual logical pace, this blog just discovered what it REALLY meant to say about, you know, larded corporate zombies winning all the barista competitions. slog through all 72 76 77 80 88 89 comments, or go straight to the economic analogy!
this blog is calling ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 5 Comments »
Friday, September 22nd, 2006
was all the bench-testing and advance slobbering over the la marzocco gs3 really worth it? the price seems only to be inflating. this could be because delays have fattened production costs -- or because slobbering + delays = a higher tolerance for premium pricing!
Posted in screeds | No Comments »
Thursday, September 21st, 2006
yes. yes, i do. i carry a slightly tapered ridgeless double portafilter basket everywhere i go. shades, car keys, ridgeless. right front pocket. my thigh bears its imprint.
there are problems with this arrangement, of course. the occasional glances of alarm at what appears to be a "chaw of terbacky" ...
Posted in screeds | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
it turns out the perfervid poet himself quite effortlessly dismantles our passing quibble with his usbc performance in the inner bowels of the comments section -- two months after the fact! mighty charitable of him to wait so long.
seriously. read jon's truly scintillating elucidation -- and watch us madly ...
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Sunday, September 17th, 2006
you know how it is, when about 17 possible blogposts are percolating ... er, extracting themselves down through the wrists and knuckles toward the fingertips, but none are quite complete ideas. half-baked hackery? never stopped you before, you say. hmmm, well, yes. still, something should be ready for typing by, ...
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Thursday, September 7th, 2006
having scanned the stat page this morning, this blog just wants to say it is humbled and honored to receive page views from people googling such high-minded word clusters as "flame+Nick Cho+Mark Prince." also: "espresso+lack+South."
anything this blog can do for more reasoned and enlightening coffee dialogue...
UPDATE: add "pearls before swine ...
Posted in screeds | 2 Comments »
Saturday, September 2nd, 2006
the sulawesi, it tasted of baked hash. maybe some newt tail. extraordinarily gritty.
thus, conjuring the notion that brew temperature is how one buys espresso solubles, the conclusion was reached that we were, ah, overpaying. that is, the extraction of oils was heavily tainted by the extraction of bean infrastructure ...
Posted in playing with (roaster) fire, screeds, subjective swilling | No Comments »
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
this blog's beef with equipment supplier extraordinaire chris nachtrieb is NOT that he plasters his business vehicles with espresso machine images -- that's rareified geekery that makes this blog look placid and erudite by comparison! no, we quibble with the guru's newly birthed foray into specialty roasted coffee ... ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | 2 Comments »
Monday, August 28th, 2006
the boss's porch-grown coffee cherries are now de-muscilageed, or however you say it. mystically patio dried and treated with estate-like reverence, their wilting husk remainders nonetheless prompt this blog to marvel: the pry-with-your-thumb method is for the birds. if opposable thumbs are the ethiopian tool of choice, then theirs must ...
Posted in screeds | 3 Comments »
Saturday, August 26th, 2006
rumor has it that nate the finger -- who has an uncanny ability to produce sublime-as-espresso single-origin roasts in a jerry-rigged, flea-market-purchased, lidless popcorn popper -- has produced new offspring. hopefully the coffee-roasting sort. in celebration, we'll post some of nate's early stabs at silvia-enabled latte art. because, ...
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Thursday, August 24th, 2006
"i live for your coffee," said the lady for whom i was walking barefoot on midsummer asphalt while trying hard not to slosh the latte art. she was four doors down, the mother of a friend, and had managed to flatter me into whipping up a brimming beverage, hand delivered ...
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Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
scintillating, charbucks-earnings-drop-related thesis: "the cost of living well is rising more rapidly than the cost of living."
which holds a certain ring of truth for this blog. it was only last week that the meager writer's salary failed to cover the cost of beaufort special reserve french import cheese for the ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | 6 Comments »
Friday, July 7th, 2006
this blog's brother: an establishment shunner so thorough he even eschews the traditional use of the cup warmer!
... though a taxidermied boar's head would be better than paper towels, bro ...
Posted in screeds | 4 Comments »
Sunday, June 25th, 2006
forget trips across the lake -- this blog's chicago-bound brother tells me he may eschew the lake altogether (and intelly's sizeable markup on sister esmeralda) for a brief, eight-hour highway jaunt for the sole purpose of partaking in the lusty array of panamanian coffees on which this blog has rashly ...
Posted in screeds | 10 Comments »
Saturday, June 24th, 2006
strangely enough, this blog has been humming (ok ... belting) a jarring medley of pining ditties, careening unpredictably from "she'll be coming around the mountain" to coldplay's "see you soon" to "someday my prince will come" from dawn to dusk. this may or may not have anything to do with ...
Posted in screeds | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
this blog had fomented evening plans including the consumption of the latest netflix installment, deep thoughts on the subject of pending panamanian goodness and perhaps shots from the long-neglected levered device.
alas, it is becoming evident that when innocent bystanders realize you're the sort of blathering nutcase who would drop a ...
Posted in playing with (roaster) fire, screeds | 2 Comments »
Saturday, June 17th, 2006
this blog feels it is its duty to inform you that barista-blogger james hoffmann just said "surfactant." also: "lactoglobulin." we don't even want to know what sort of edgy euphemisms those might be. it reminds us of an old and dense discussion on "foaming fractions" -- also known as "crema."
this ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | 3 Comments »
Saturday, June 17th, 2006
this blog doesn't mean to gloat -- ok, it does -- but it is about to immerse itself in the sober study of panama's best.
you might ask this blog why three pounds of coffee is worth $100. easy! the blogwife didn't say no! in this peerless wasteland, a pursed lip ...
Posted in screeds | 3 Comments »
Saturday, June 17th, 2006
it was just one of those feckless days, when the wet-aroma wake of the blueberry bomb had even the bronze desk monkey indulging in a little kow-tow.
Posted in screeds | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
now this, i say, is what this blog calls a truly visionary investment tool.
it tells me, for example, that if i were to purchase every coffee that i currently drink at a local chain store, i would spend about $4,200 a year. this would seem to breathe new life ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | No Comments »
