Now, I'm a reasonable Alaskan woman. I gave up smoking cigarettes a few years ago, and ceased the non-stop, shall we say, frolicking at bars, and started exercising again and all that healthy crap. But it was all in the spirit of keeping the old carcass running, much as one changes the oil in a Soob regularly ... not so I could be free of all toxins and have the arteries of a twenty year old and delude myself into thinking that I wasn't going to go ahead and die anyway at some point. I never turned into one of those Health Evangelicals, you know who I'm talking about, going about trying to tell everyone else how they ought to live, all, "Bacon is Satan's handiwork."
And they were gonna get my coffee mug away from me when they pried it from my cold, dead fingers.*
For years, coffee was bad for you. BAD! You know how television news goes on these benders about something and its health hazards, and then goes on a mad health craze for something else that is supposedly good for you?
Frankly, I've always felt cheated growing up in the 80s. Gone were the blissful days of guilt-free butter, bacon, sex, cigarette-smoking, cocktails, loud music, etc. Everything that made life truly pleasurable, it seemed, was turning out to be unhealthy (or in the era of AIDS, kill you.) So I've been cooking with olive and grape seed oil. I've relegated bacon to occasional visitor status in the fridge.
To let today's headline speak for itself:
"Coffee Protects Alcohol Drinkers from Liver Disease."
To have ignored one of those shrill health warnings for years and then have it turn out that not only is this particularly Bad Thing not bad for me, but actually good for me... oh, the satisfaction. It's like schadenfreude**. It is a complex emotion that needs its own special word in German.
*At least in the morning. Substitute 'beer mug' at other times. Oh, of course, not at work, not while driving, not while operating heavy machinery, blah blah blah.
** Is there a special German word for this sensation of having been defiantly 'wrong' for years, only to find out that you were not only 'right', but more than right?? Anyone? Bueller?
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