Living the cliche

AHAHAHAHA!

I love power outages.

Here's the skinny. I've started working at a coffee shop so I can get time for writing in the morning. Not just blogging writing either, some freelance work. Yay for me! Sure it's a pay cut, but now I can get back on track with writing and perhaps even get better at it.

And believe me, you won't miss what I had going on here before the power outage.

Here's something a bit less whiny and more "what's inside my head":

A logic riddle for you: George, Helen and Steve are drinking coffee. Bert, Karen and Dave are drinking soda. Using logic, is Elizabeth drinking coffee or soda?

Elizabeth is drinking tea. Coffee is the drink of the proletariat, after all, she thinks. Despite what all of those coffee huts want you to believe with their double shot espressos, half-caf lattes with soy milk and a shot of mocha. Nothing more than a working class ruse so these people can dull the pain of the day with something they think is extravagant. And soda is made for the uneducated masses. Sugar laden concoctions meant to rot the brain as much as the teeth. Almost as addicting as those cigarettes so many of these types leave hanging on their lips as they talk to you. Squinting like some ghetto Dirty Harry, trying to blow the smoke away from their eyes in a variety of ways that, on some level she supposes, is meant to make them look knowledgable. Perhaps even worldly.

Come to think of it, why is she even here with these people? Helen is her friend, and perhaps the most educated of the group. But these others? They've been talking about television since walking through the door of this dirty spoon and being visually assaulted by the graying white board that asked, "Who is your favorite American Idol?" in bold pink and green letters. As if the question were one of deep intellectualism that anyone could get behind and debate.

Every once in awhile Elizabeth would throw a few words into the pool of conversation at her table. More as a social experiment than anything else. Each word would set them off on a new tangent, each tangent more absurd than the last.

She sipped the bitter tea that the waitress had bought. The tea was probably left out in an unsealed box, as much a mix of the dust that settled on the high shelves as anything that resembled a tea leaf. The coffee pots didn't get dusty. Neither did the soda machines. They were dulled by use, by the constant demand for production and endless needs of their consumers.