Post by redsycorax on Jun 19, 2022 3:34:48 GMT
On Earth-862, coffee is illegal. Don't laugh. Alternate Earths do have foibles that the rest of us consider downright weird and peculiar by our own aesthetic and dietary standards. It has been historically banned on our Earth in Saudi Arabia (Mecca), Renaissance Italy (Sixteenth Century), the Ottoman Empire (around the same time), Sweden (in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries), Ethiopia (in the Seventeenth Century) and even England (again, in the Seventeenth Century). As you can probably guess, given this is a 'humorous" Earth we're talking about, the seventeenth century English ban was carried over into its American colonies on Earth-862. Instead of there being a Great Tea Party, there was a Great Coffee Party in Boston Harbour instead.
Indeed, when it came to the nineteenth century, campaigners in RUSSIA (the Remaining United States of Slightly Infringed America):
" asserted that the 'burnt particles, which [coffee] contains in large quantities, have so violent energy that, when they enter the blood, they attract the lymph and dry the kidneys.' The result, he claimed, was one of 'general exhaustion, paralysis, and impotence.'"
Needless to say, this was never scientifically verified. And so, primarily because RUSSIA is so lazy and sluggish when it comes to getting ridiculous old laws off the statute books, coffee prohibition has gone on and on and on and on and on.
++
JAVA MADNESS (1936):
"Melissa Coulton and Jim Percy are a cohabitating couple who drink coffee . The unscrupulous Jim pushes caffeine to teenagers over Melissa's objections; she'd rather stick to an adult clientele. Rob Wilson, a sociopathic college dropout turned coffee pusher , and siren Britt help Jim recruit new caffeine addicts. Rob and Jim lure high school student Brad Majorson and female college student Brit Ishi to Melissa and Jim's apartment. Jim takes Brad to a party where Jim runs out of coffee, and Rob, who has a car, drives him to pick up more illicit intoxicating hot beverage. When they get to Jim's boss' "headquarters", Rob asks for a drink as Jim gets out of the car and he gives him a cup of coffee. By the time Jim returns, Rob is instantly addicted to caffeine; he drives away recklessly and hits a pedestrian. A few days later, Jim tells Rob that the man died of his injuries and agrees to keep Rob's name out of the case – if Rob will agree to "forget he was ever in Melissa's apartment." As the police did not have enough specific details to track Rob down, he escapes apprehension. Brad, whose once-pristine record at school has rapidly declined, has a fling with Brit while high. Mavis, Rob's sister and Brad's best friend, goes to Melissa's apartment looking for Brad and accepts a hot beverage from Jim, thinking it's regular tea. When she refuses Jim's advances, he insults her. Crazed by his caffeine habit, Jim comes out of the bedroom and, strung out by too much coffee, hallucinates that Mavis has turned into a three-toed sloth and runs away screaming. As Jim is fleeing, Brad appears and knocks Jim unconscious, which means a rubber plant falls over , killing Mavis. Brad places the rubber plant potholder in Jim's hands, framing him for Mavis' death by claiming that he pushed the rubber plant over deliberatel;y The dealers lie low for a while in Brit's apartment while Jim's trial takes place. Over the objections of a skeptical juror, Jim is found guilty and sentenced to public spanking.
By now Brad is paranoid from too much coffee and insomnia. Brit is also strung out; at one memorable point she plays the saxophone more and more rapidly as Brad has an omelette. The boss tells Rob to get Brad to overdose on even more coffee to prevent him from confessing, but when Rob arrives, Brad immediately recognizes the threat and paddles him with a ping pong bat as Brit looks on and laughs unconvincingly and maniacally. The police arrest Rob, Melissa, and Brit. Melissa's confession leads to the arrest of the caffeine syndicate boss and other gang members. Brit explains that Jim was was innocent and agrees to serve as a material witness for the case against Brad, but instead, cackling maniacally again, she jumps out of a window and lands on a trampoline, bouncing up and down, traumatized by her own caffeine addiction and its role in Mavis's death. Jim's conviction is overturned, and Rob, now nearly catatonic, is sent to an asylum for the criminally caffeine saturated, for the rest of his natural life. In the distance, he can still hear Brit laughing maniacally, driven insane by drinking unnaturally large amounts of coffee"
++
TOWNOPOLIS, REMAINING UNITED STATES OF SLIGHTLY INFRINGED AMERICA <RUSSIA>:
The lights went on and the Zipper sauntered up to the stage:
"Let that be a lesson to all you young people. Caffeine is a dangerous drug. Look what it did to Melissa, Jim, Rob. Brit, the pedestrian, Brad and Mavis."
"Wow golly gee whillickers, Mr Zipper! Is that based on real to honest to true life?"
The Zipper nodded solemnly: "Yes, Little Benny. In fact, it reminds me of a case that we LIAR* superheroes recently came across...."
[*Law Infringement Action Responders, Earth-862's superhero group]
[3.38 PM, 19 June 2022]
PRETENTIOUS MUSIC: [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyHxYxc-Mo ]
["The 1978 Battlestar Galactica theme?"
"It was the cheesiest accompaniement we could find"- Ed]
The newspaper read Police Seize Twenty One Caffeine Addicts.
The Zipper mused: "If anyone had ever told me years ago that we would witness headlines like that in RUSSIA's newspapers, I would have called him crazy. Yet, here we are, reading them, in the late twentieth century, in the Remaining United States of Slightly Infringed America, hundreds and thousands of teenage boys and girls are becoming depraved caffeine addicts every year. It's fantastic, implausible and horrific, but it's sadly true. The government maintains two 'special' hospitals to treat caffeine addicts, in New Lancaster and Ostensible, Texas. It used to be a rare thing for someone so young to be admitted into this facility, but how many others 'only occassionally' succumb to the wanton wiles of the 'barista', as these drug pushers call themselves? But that belies a tragic fact. Once you sip this demonic heated beverage, you don't remain a 'rare' user very long. If you drink coffee, you will almost immediately develop a 'habit'- and it is nearly impossible to break. As caffeinds say, you're 'hooked'!"
As he spoke those stentorian words, Zipper pivoted and walked toward what seemed to be a convalescent home.
"But how does one become hooked? There's only one way to find out- talk to someone who has succumbed to the awful siren song of the steamy hot beverage! This is the home of Mr and Mrs Jacob Weiss." Out of the venetian blinds peeked someone who looked suspiciously like the Zipper's LIAR colleague, Zsazsa the Mythical, although she had hastily donned a badly fitting red wig and inappropriately clinging evening gown as she sashayed toward the door.
"Yes, darlink. Mr Weiss and I just got our daughter Carlotta back after a terrible ordeal. You can talk to her in here..."
In the living room, the Zipper met his sidekick, the Female Zipper, although she was disguised as a teenage girl (even though she was approaching her thirties).
"Now, Carlotta, I understand you want to talk to the youth of RUSSIA about how they can avoid the terrible doom that almost engulfed you, a horror story worthy of that great movie maker Ed Wood. Incidentally, this is a photograph of you several months ago, a young vivacious woman in her final year of high school."
"Just recently, I was released from the Caffeine Addiction Ward in New Lancaster, into the custody of my parents. I guess I knew about "java"... that's coffee... ever since junior high. Some of the girls drank it...the ones who were determined to be wild things, abandoned, tossing their hair back and wearing capri pants, ratted hair and chewing gum all the time. In high school, my girlfriend Annette and I went around with Tony French and Arnold Saunders. They both drank coffee, heavily- and after a while, Annette and I got hooked too. It's funny what it does to you- everything suddenly starts to hurtle around you at a thousand miles per hour and you start to laugh maniacally. But I didn't feel so good at two o'clock the next morning when I couldn't sleep. Dad knew something was wrong, but Mom didn't believe I could do something like that. I'd been drinking black coffee for quite a time before I met Mavis..." Inevitably, for the purposes of this film, "Dad" was actually her Law Infringement Action Responder (LIAR) colleague, the Purple Turtle. In order to deal with his supertardiness, the film was sped up but the camera movement was so jerky anyway, no-one really noticed.
At that point in her recollection, Carlotta/Female Zipper's memories coalesced on the form of their former colleague Off Kilter Mask, who was obviously tipsy from a certain other beverage, but whose off-centred wig and smeared lipstick were attributed to a ridiculously high caffeine intake for the purposes of this particular vignette. Carlotta continued:
"I think she was what the newspapers called a 'cafe owner.' He supplied the kids at school with whatever coffee they wanted- a cappucino, a flat white, a latte, an espresso, an arabica or a robusta... yes, the 'stronger stuff!' She looked sophisticated, and I guess my innocence appealed to her in some way. Anyway, I found out later she had an arabica habit. We started 'cafe klatsches' together and one thing led to another. I knew by now she'd started her den of iniquity because of her hardcore arabica consumption. They don't like to see anyone not consuming the 'hard stuff'- they are determined to push it on the naive and unsuspecting. At first, I thought I could 'take it', but then I got hooked- bad! I became obsessed with coffee- where to get it, how to pay for it and when to drink it. And then- the cops got Mavis! I had probably realised it was inevitable, but I wasn't ready! I searched for it high and low but I couldn't find any coffee."
The Zipper took up the narrative: "The Weisses were panicking by now, having just noticed that Carlotta had gone missing and checked newspaper stories for any mention of her."
"But I wasn't dead. If you're hooked bad, boys undertake Scottish dancing and hopscotch, while girls take up gridiron football and EEW wrestling competitions or become cafe owners themselves, pushing the product to kids like me. I was finally apprehended and pleaded with the police to rehabilitate myself. I tossed and turned, my nose ran, I passed out and couldn't sleep for five days but I eventually kicked the caffeine 'habit'. I just hope my story can inspire the unsuspecting youth of RUSSIA to avoid this shadowy menace."
"Well, that's Carlotta's story. In the late twentieth century, in the Remaining United States of Slightly Infringed America. Unbelievable. Many teenagers start off with flat whites, then take it black and then escalate to the hard stuff like robusta or arabica for the kicks- and then they're addicted and turn to crime. There are no happy endings when you fool with coffee. What's the answer? Enforcement, certainly. No, the answer is a simple one- it's the Canadians! They're promoting coffee to subversively undermine our national morality. They did it in Europe a few years back. Let's show them that RUSSIA is too smart to fall for stunts like that!"
THE END [Noon, 20 June 2022]
Indeed, when it came to the nineteenth century, campaigners in RUSSIA (the Remaining United States of Slightly Infringed America):
" asserted that the 'burnt particles, which [coffee] contains in large quantities, have so violent energy that, when they enter the blood, they attract the lymph and dry the kidneys.' The result, he claimed, was one of 'general exhaustion, paralysis, and impotence.'"
Needless to say, this was never scientifically verified. And so, primarily because RUSSIA is so lazy and sluggish when it comes to getting ridiculous old laws off the statute books, coffee prohibition has gone on and on and on and on and on.
++
JAVA MADNESS (1936):
"Melissa Coulton and Jim Percy are a cohabitating couple who drink coffee . The unscrupulous Jim pushes caffeine to teenagers over Melissa's objections; she'd rather stick to an adult clientele. Rob Wilson, a sociopathic college dropout turned coffee pusher , and siren Britt help Jim recruit new caffeine addicts. Rob and Jim lure high school student Brad Majorson and female college student Brit Ishi to Melissa and Jim's apartment. Jim takes Brad to a party where Jim runs out of coffee, and Rob, who has a car, drives him to pick up more illicit intoxicating hot beverage. When they get to Jim's boss' "headquarters", Rob asks for a drink as Jim gets out of the car and he gives him a cup of coffee. By the time Jim returns, Rob is instantly addicted to caffeine; he drives away recklessly and hits a pedestrian. A few days later, Jim tells Rob that the man died of his injuries and agrees to keep Rob's name out of the case – if Rob will agree to "forget he was ever in Melissa's apartment." As the police did not have enough specific details to track Rob down, he escapes apprehension. Brad, whose once-pristine record at school has rapidly declined, has a fling with Brit while high. Mavis, Rob's sister and Brad's best friend, goes to Melissa's apartment looking for Brad and accepts a hot beverage from Jim, thinking it's regular tea. When she refuses Jim's advances, he insults her. Crazed by his caffeine habit, Jim comes out of the bedroom and, strung out by too much coffee, hallucinates that Mavis has turned into a three-toed sloth and runs away screaming. As Jim is fleeing, Brad appears and knocks Jim unconscious, which means a rubber plant falls over , killing Mavis. Brad places the rubber plant potholder in Jim's hands, framing him for Mavis' death by claiming that he pushed the rubber plant over deliberatel;y The dealers lie low for a while in Brit's apartment while Jim's trial takes place. Over the objections of a skeptical juror, Jim is found guilty and sentenced to public spanking.
By now Brad is paranoid from too much coffee and insomnia. Brit is also strung out; at one memorable point she plays the saxophone more and more rapidly as Brad has an omelette. The boss tells Rob to get Brad to overdose on even more coffee to prevent him from confessing, but when Rob arrives, Brad immediately recognizes the threat and paddles him with a ping pong bat as Brit looks on and laughs unconvincingly and maniacally. The police arrest Rob, Melissa, and Brit. Melissa's confession leads to the arrest of the caffeine syndicate boss and other gang members. Brit explains that Jim was was innocent and agrees to serve as a material witness for the case against Brad, but instead, cackling maniacally again, she jumps out of a window and lands on a trampoline, bouncing up and down, traumatized by her own caffeine addiction and its role in Mavis's death. Jim's conviction is overturned, and Rob, now nearly catatonic, is sent to an asylum for the criminally caffeine saturated, for the rest of his natural life. In the distance, he can still hear Brit laughing maniacally, driven insane by drinking unnaturally large amounts of coffee"
++
TOWNOPOLIS, REMAINING UNITED STATES OF SLIGHTLY INFRINGED AMERICA <RUSSIA>:
The lights went on and the Zipper sauntered up to the stage:
"Let that be a lesson to all you young people. Caffeine is a dangerous drug. Look what it did to Melissa, Jim, Rob. Brit, the pedestrian, Brad and Mavis."
"Wow golly gee whillickers, Mr Zipper! Is that based on real to honest to true life?"
The Zipper nodded solemnly: "Yes, Little Benny. In fact, it reminds me of a case that we LIAR* superheroes recently came across...."
[*Law Infringement Action Responders, Earth-862's superhero group]
[3.38 PM, 19 June 2022]
PRETENTIOUS MUSIC: [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyHxYxc-Mo ]
["The 1978 Battlestar Galactica theme?"
"It was the cheesiest accompaniement we could find"- Ed]
The newspaper read Police Seize Twenty One Caffeine Addicts.
The Zipper mused: "If anyone had ever told me years ago that we would witness headlines like that in RUSSIA's newspapers, I would have called him crazy. Yet, here we are, reading them, in the late twentieth century, in the Remaining United States of Slightly Infringed America, hundreds and thousands of teenage boys and girls are becoming depraved caffeine addicts every year. It's fantastic, implausible and horrific, but it's sadly true. The government maintains two 'special' hospitals to treat caffeine addicts, in New Lancaster and Ostensible, Texas. It used to be a rare thing for someone so young to be admitted into this facility, but how many others 'only occassionally' succumb to the wanton wiles of the 'barista', as these drug pushers call themselves? But that belies a tragic fact. Once you sip this demonic heated beverage, you don't remain a 'rare' user very long. If you drink coffee, you will almost immediately develop a 'habit'- and it is nearly impossible to break. As caffeinds say, you're 'hooked'!"
As he spoke those stentorian words, Zipper pivoted and walked toward what seemed to be a convalescent home.
"But how does one become hooked? There's only one way to find out- talk to someone who has succumbed to the awful siren song of the steamy hot beverage! This is the home of Mr and Mrs Jacob Weiss." Out of the venetian blinds peeked someone who looked suspiciously like the Zipper's LIAR colleague, Zsazsa the Mythical, although she had hastily donned a badly fitting red wig and inappropriately clinging evening gown as she sashayed toward the door.
"Yes, darlink. Mr Weiss and I just got our daughter Carlotta back after a terrible ordeal. You can talk to her in here..."
In the living room, the Zipper met his sidekick, the Female Zipper, although she was disguised as a teenage girl (even though she was approaching her thirties).
"Now, Carlotta, I understand you want to talk to the youth of RUSSIA about how they can avoid the terrible doom that almost engulfed you, a horror story worthy of that great movie maker Ed Wood. Incidentally, this is a photograph of you several months ago, a young vivacious woman in her final year of high school."
"Just recently, I was released from the Caffeine Addiction Ward in New Lancaster, into the custody of my parents. I guess I knew about "java"... that's coffee... ever since junior high. Some of the girls drank it...the ones who were determined to be wild things, abandoned, tossing their hair back and wearing capri pants, ratted hair and chewing gum all the time. In high school, my girlfriend Annette and I went around with Tony French and Arnold Saunders. They both drank coffee, heavily- and after a while, Annette and I got hooked too. It's funny what it does to you- everything suddenly starts to hurtle around you at a thousand miles per hour and you start to laugh maniacally. But I didn't feel so good at two o'clock the next morning when I couldn't sleep. Dad knew something was wrong, but Mom didn't believe I could do something like that. I'd been drinking black coffee for quite a time before I met Mavis..." Inevitably, for the purposes of this film, "Dad" was actually her Law Infringement Action Responder (LIAR) colleague, the Purple Turtle. In order to deal with his supertardiness, the film was sped up but the camera movement was so jerky anyway, no-one really noticed.
At that point in her recollection, Carlotta/Female Zipper's memories coalesced on the form of their former colleague Off Kilter Mask, who was obviously tipsy from a certain other beverage, but whose off-centred wig and smeared lipstick were attributed to a ridiculously high caffeine intake for the purposes of this particular vignette. Carlotta continued:
"I think she was what the newspapers called a 'cafe owner.' He supplied the kids at school with whatever coffee they wanted- a cappucino, a flat white, a latte, an espresso, an arabica or a robusta... yes, the 'stronger stuff!' She looked sophisticated, and I guess my innocence appealed to her in some way. Anyway, I found out later she had an arabica habit. We started 'cafe klatsches' together and one thing led to another. I knew by now she'd started her den of iniquity because of her hardcore arabica consumption. They don't like to see anyone not consuming the 'hard stuff'- they are determined to push it on the naive and unsuspecting. At first, I thought I could 'take it', but then I got hooked- bad! I became obsessed with coffee- where to get it, how to pay for it and when to drink it. And then- the cops got Mavis! I had probably realised it was inevitable, but I wasn't ready! I searched for it high and low but I couldn't find any coffee."
The Zipper took up the narrative: "The Weisses were panicking by now, having just noticed that Carlotta had gone missing and checked newspaper stories for any mention of her."
"But I wasn't dead. If you're hooked bad, boys undertake Scottish dancing and hopscotch, while girls take up gridiron football and EEW wrestling competitions or become cafe owners themselves, pushing the product to kids like me. I was finally apprehended and pleaded with the police to rehabilitate myself. I tossed and turned, my nose ran, I passed out and couldn't sleep for five days but I eventually kicked the caffeine 'habit'. I just hope my story can inspire the unsuspecting youth of RUSSIA to avoid this shadowy menace."
"Well, that's Carlotta's story. In the late twentieth century, in the Remaining United States of Slightly Infringed America. Unbelievable. Many teenagers start off with flat whites, then take it black and then escalate to the hard stuff like robusta or arabica for the kicks- and then they're addicted and turn to crime. There are no happy endings when you fool with coffee. What's the answer? Enforcement, certainly. No, the answer is a simple one- it's the Canadians! They're promoting coffee to subversively undermine our national morality. They did it in Europe a few years back. Let's show them that RUSSIA is too smart to fall for stunts like that!"
THE END [Noon, 20 June 2022]