OxBlog

# Posted 9:21 AM by Patrick Belton

BAD NEWS FOR COFFEE DRINKERS: Lucky for Rachel that she doesn't touch the stuff. The rest of us, we can worry. Ozzy, who knows a thing or two about these things, says "I used to think they should legalize pot, but you know what? They should ban the lot," and then the worrisome bit: "One thing leads to another. Coffee leads to Red Bull, Red Bull leads to crank." Expresso to crack in three easy steps: you heard it here. (And for those of you not up on your Brit-slang, thanks to the South Carolina general assembly's handy guide to street jargon you can find out that crank means methamphetamine, and not turning into, say, Ian Duncan Smith or Howell Raines....)

For those of us whose life labor is the conversion of coffee into text (particularly political science scholarship, which I wake up each morning thinking there isn't enough of in the world), this last bit could be cause for some trepidation.

AND THEN A FAIRLY INSTANTANEOUS UPDATE: That, of course, requires a paean. (Hey, we do it for Manischewitz, fireworks and Irishmen, and a few of our friends in the Blogosphere; perhaps soon we'll be like the royals and have a whole set of OxBlog-approved, eco-and-hawk-friendly household products....) Pope Clement VIII, responding to mercantilism-influenced pleas from Spanish Jesuits to ban the drink when it migrated to the west from the Middle East (like, incidentally, algebra, Aristotle, the number zero, Jews, and a heckofalot of other very nice and useful additions to the west), famously responded saying: "This Satan's drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels [note: OxBlog does not endorse the branding of members of other religions as infidels, even by members of other centuries] have exclusive use of it. We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it."

Coffee. Papally approved since 1592, OxBlog endorsed since 2002.....

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