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They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

“woke” is the new caravan.

You cannot shame the shameless.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Let’s finish the job.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Your Coffee is Shitty

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94Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    In the fifties and sixties, the frying pan (used to brain the dumbfuck bitching about his coffee, which was, btw, shitty by design) had not been invented to provide the proper percussion to a coffee commercial.

    Needless to say, but I will anyways, I learned this from McMegan. Well, the frying pan part. She’s clueless about the shitty coffee.

  2. 2.

    Tonybrown74

    The proper response would have been to throw the coffee in his face and then yell, “F*ck you! Make your own damned coffee!”

  5. 5.

    donnah

    Gah! Those commercials are horrible! Really cringe-worthy.

    Yet just this week there was a story about Penneys selling t- shirts about a girl being too pretty to do homework and letting her brother do it instead, so I’m not sure how far we’ve come in fifty years.

    Had my husband ever said anything like that to me, he’d be curled up on the kitchen floor with a coffe mug wedged in his ass.

  6. 6.

    kindness

    No it’s not. My coffee is damn good. Right now I’m sipping a cuppa Peets House Blend (not my favorite blend but that’s what the Peets shop was serving).

    Peets rocks. Is this going to be another of those Mac/PC posts but with coffee instead?

    @donnah: Man, isn’t that something that can wait till Friday night when it’s more appropriate?

  11. 11.

    Ooparts

    I love offensive ads from the mid century. I remember there was some magazine ad – I can’t remember what for, but it had a tag along the lines of “is it always wrong to beat your wife?” Greatest generation, indeed.

  12. 12.

    JGabriel

    TPM:

    FOX Poll: Bachmann Getting Hammered By Perry’s Surge In Polls

    Of course the Teabaggers prefer Perry to Bachman. Perry has all the batshit crazy of Bachmann, but with none of the vagina.

    .

  14. 14.

    Roger Moore

    Of course their coffee was shit; they were probably using (gasp!) percolators. You want decent coffee, you have to start with a decent way of making the coffee.

  17. 17.

    JGabriel

    @kindness:

    Right now I’m sipping a cuppa Peets House Blend (not my favorite blend but that’s what the Peets shop was serving).

    Kindness, for future reference, which blend is Peet’s best?

    (Beatles pun unintended, but enjoyed nonetheless.)

    .

  18. 18.

    scav

    Open threads really are the only ones that stay on topic here aren’t they? Speaking of which, I need coffee.

  22. 22.

    Culture of Truth

    I’m sometimes informed through angry eyes, swats and vocalizations that my cat food sucks, had improper ratio, or is not being dished out with sufficient rapidity.

  23. 23.

    The Moar You Know

    Do these men have no sense of protectiveness towards their testicles?

    I ask only because that’s where the pot of coffee would end up getting poured if I ever said anything like that to my wife, not that I would, she makes a great pot of joe, but you get my drift.

  26. 26.

    kindness

    @JGabriel: Tastes vary. What your making makes a difference too. For morning brew, our house rotates between Major Dickinson, 101 Blend, Garuda, House & what ever specialty they have that month (occasionally a Sumatra). If you’re going for espresso that’s when the Italian & French blends work.

    Not much a Mocha fan. As you can see though I do prefer the blends.

    @jeffreyw: Most here prefer a French Press if I’m not mistaken.

  28. 28.

    TheOtherWA

    @JGabriel: I like Peet’s Arabian Mocha-Java and Major Dickason’s Blend®. Actually, I’ve never had a coffee from them that I didn’t like at all, just some I like more than others. YMMV.

  29. 29.

    ruemara

    I think that physical violence in a relationship is sometimes appropriate, nay, required to make a point. The neo-pig douchebag generation has returned because women did not beat the shit out of these men.

  31. 31.

    Gunner

    Here in Tennessee, we’re appalled by those commercials. Women should never speak to men before they’re given permission.

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @jeffreyw:

    All others are pretentious or pretenders.

    I really like my Chemex. You might call it pretentious, but it makes really great coffee and is easy to clean. If it ever breaks (heaven forbid) I think I’m going to get one of those little mug-top filter holders that use the same style of filter.

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    @The Moar You Know:

    Do these men have no sense of protectiveness towards their testicles?

    Of course not, they’re fictional characters created to make a dramatic point in a TV commercial, not real men saying that to their actual wives. Though I guess there are plenty of real-world men who are emotionally abusive, and experience shows that it results in damaged testicles a depressingly small fraction of the time.

  36. 36.

    Mike Goetz

    I’m a French presser all the way. Though I will say that my grandfather’s old percolater made some good coffee, so there.

    I’m glad to be talking about this instead of politics, which has been so brutalizing and dispiriting in this last month it’s not even funny.

  37. 37.

    burnspbesq

    Our favorite Nobel-laureate Cassandra put up a music post on his blog this morning (probably because he couldn’t bear the thought of writing about the latest jobs report). The comments are worth perusing: a lot of data about bands you may never have heard of.

    Going back to it later. Right now, I have an office to go set up. Have a great day, y’all.

  38. 38.

    shortstop

    The third baseman makes all the coffee in this house, and he makes it damned well. But before I get all self-congratulatory…I do all the cooking.

    Edited to remove idiotic and melodramatic frowny face. I don’t really mind doing all the cooking, since I love it and he hates it. And he is the most grateful audience.

  41. 41.

    Chat Noir

    Those ads are ghastly.

    @kindness:

    Most here prefer a French Press if I’m not mistaken.

    Back in 1998, a friend told me that once you have French press coffee, you’ll never prepare it another way again. And she was right! Been using a French press ever since.

  42. 42.

    scav

    I’m rather enjoying that my 20+ year-old no-plug-involved French press is pretentious while a 124$ automatic drip is home-spun authenticity. wonder if it would help if someone rebranded it as a Freedom Press in which patriotic ‘mercan housewives waterboarded the ground up remnants of Arabian beans for their picky husbands.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @scav:

    wonder if it would help if someone rebranded it as a Freedom Press in which patriotic ‘mercan housewives waterboarded the ground up remnants of Arabian beans for their picky husbands.

    Where would you like your Internet delivered? (Quoted just because it deserves to be repeated.)

  46. 46.

    jeffreyw

    …it would help if someone rebranded it as a Freedom Press in which patriotic ‘mercan housewives waterboarded the ground up remnants of Arabian beans for their picky husbands.

    Ooh! I like that! Hee hee, a sound business plan with just a tweak or two!

  47. 47.

    gogol's wife

    @Yevgraf:

    James Mason for Thunderbird is of course the greatest commercial ever made, but you’ll be happy to know that DougJ front-paged it a few months back.

    I love you guys. You make me laugh when it seems impossible.

  48. 48.

    eemom

    Only on this blog, ladies and gentlemen, can one awaken to a coffee/sexism/1950s/domestic abuse open thread.

  53. 53.

    Comrade Mary

    If you want violence with your old coffee ads, search YouTube for the Wilkins commercials with Kermit. Yes, Kermit.

  55. 55.

    JGabriel

    @henrythefifth:

    Do you think the headline is intentionally suggestive?

    Hadn’t thought about it till you pointed it out. But, yes, it’s both, suggestive and intentional. Of course.

    .

  57. 57.

    Roger Moore

    I should also stick in a word in favor of Turkish coffee, or “Armenian coffee” as it’s euphemistically known in the Glendale/Pasadena area. Not necessarily what you want to have with breakfast every morning, but it’s really great with Middle Eastern food. And I’m surprised that there hasn’t yet been a great horde of Espresso fans claiming that anything less than 15 bars of pressure is incapable of producing proper coffee.

    And, just because:

    All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot,
    I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot.
    Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me!
    If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

  58. 58.

    Dead Earnest

    It is tempting to see these ads and think, by comparison, things are significantly better today. But the goal of advertising remains the same. The manipulation of peoples hopes, dreams and fears continues but with greater skill and subtlety.

    The old ads are akin to stones and spears, the new ones are stealth bombers and nanotechnology drones.

    If I were a modern advertiser I’d like nothing better than to cause the old ads to go viral; “no rocks and spears here. Please enjoy our new, entertaining and respectful suggestions for goods and services to enhance your life. Thoughtfully created with your mind in mind”.

  60. 60.

    JGabriel

    @Dead Earnest:

    It is tempting to see these ads and think, by comparison, things are significantly better today. But the goal of advertising remains the same. The manipulation of peoples hopes, dreams and fears continues but with greater skill and subtlety.

    Not even with greater skill and subtlety, just with the subtlety appropriate to the prejudices and insecurities of the time.

    I have no doubt that in 30-50 years, today’s ads will be just as revealing as the coffee ads compiled above.

    The sexism displayed in those ads was entirely unremarkable to the people of the time. One wonders what unnoticed prejudices or insecurities in today’s ads will look incomprehensible to the next generation or the one after it.

    .

  61. 61.

    eemom

    @Yevgraf:

    omg. I am not the only one old enough to remember when cigarettes were advertised on teevee? And I totally remember that one in particular.

  63. 63.

    maya

    But..but…isn’t this the Merkin era Boehner, Bachmann, and the TBaggers want to time travel back to – bad coffee and the Beav?

  64. 64.

    shortstop

    Does replying to three comments at once get one in hot filtered coffee water here? (I was admonished for my spammin’.) If so, I’ll just compliment scav, Roger and JGabriel en masse and without detail.

  65. 65.

    Violet

    Wow, I just watched the video. Men really were free to treat women like crap. It’s amazing how far we’ve come, yet we’ve got a long way to go.

  66. 66.

    catclub

    @Roger Moore: “Espresso fans claiming that anything less than 15 bars of pressure is incapable of producing proper coffee.”

    I am pretty sure that bar is not an SI unit. Pascals and MPa are what the true European influenced espresso snobs are referring to these days.

    (My advisor insisted on ocean profiler graphs in MPa rather than meters. Correct but highly pedantic.)

  68. 68.

    NonyNony

    @maya:

    But..but…isn’t this the Merkin era Boehner, Bachmann, and the TBaggers want to time travel back to – bad coffee and the Beav?

    They want you to travel back to the era where you could jab your finger at your wife’s face like the jerk at 0:46 and she’ll stand there and take it. And nobody will make you feel bad for being an abusive asshole.

    The bad coffee and the Beav are just the burdens one must bear for the “right” to not be called out as an asshole when you act like an asshole. Which is about 90% of what the resentment-based politics of the right boil down to these days.

  69. 69.

    JGabriel

    shortstop:

    Does replying to three comments at once get one in hot filtered coffee water here?

    Four links, whether to other sites or in-thread comments, throws you into moderation. Three or less is fine.

    .

  70. 70.

    JGabriel

    @Bnut:

    Don’t know if this one has been posted yet, but it’s fucking scary.
    __
    Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American

    Well of course it’s UnAmerican! This country was founded on “One Dollar, One Vote!”

    This “One Man, One Vote!” nonsense is pure anti-democratic COMMIE drivel! Who ever heard of democracy that allows everyone to vote? Obviously, none of you libtards know what democracy means!

    .

  72. 72.

    Yutsano

    @Bnut: It’s like every right-wing bugaboo wrapped up into one neat nifty little article! Except, y’know, the whole voting being Constitutional thing and all.

  73. 73.

    elmo

    The antidote to those ads is, of course, the best series of coffee ads of all time – Taster’s Choice from the 80’s. (Can’t link from work, sadly). Tony Head FTMFW!

  75. 75.

    JGabriel

    @shortstop:

    I only had three (links), but it was the response to (organ chord) YOURS that arrested my progress!

    That’s only because I’m such an arresting fellow.

    ETA: Seriously, if there were only three links, then you must have unknowingly used an FYWP forbidden word.

    .

  76. 76.

    catclub

    @Yutsano: You ain’t kidding.

    his book “Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.”

    so why do a version control system and star trek extras have it in for the the American taxpayer? Inquiring minds and all that.

  77. 77.

    Roger Moore

    @JGabriel:

    One wonders what unnoticed prejudices or insecurities in today’s ads will look incomprehensible to the next generation or the one after it.

    I’m guessing that today’s appearance ads, especially ones for weight loss schemes, will seem really freaky in 50 years. I’d also guess that Carl’s Jr. “without us, some guys would starve” ads will seem impossibly bad within 20 years.

    @catclub:

    I am pretty sure that bar is not an SI unit. Pascals and MPa are what the true European influenced espresso snobs are referring to these days.

    A bar is a pseudo SI unit; it’s 0.1 MPa. It gets used a lot in engineering because it’s within an engineering tolerance of one atmosphere, so they can pretend to be using a SI unit without changing much. All of the pump driven Espresso machines I’ve seen advertised talk about the pressure they can deliver in bar. So does the high pressure lab equipment (e.g. HPLCs) that doesn’t use psi. For low pressures, they tend to use either bar/mbar/etc. or torr/mtorr/etc. Every once in a while I’ll see something calibrated in inches of mercury(!) but that’s usually for what we call “plumber’s vacuum”. I don’t remember ever seeing something with low pressures calibrated in Pa/mPa/etc.

  78. 78.

    kindness

    @shortstop:

    Does replying to three comments at once get one in hot filtered coffee water here? (I was admonished for my spammin’.)

    No but the hallmark of a good liberal seems to be the need to ream other good liberals for their thoughts & liberalness if the comments on this blog are any indication. (snark – before I get hoisted on my own petard)

  79. 79.

    pete

    Except for the guy turning down the Thermos, everyone of the complaints in the video up top could (and should) have been followed by: “… and the portions are way too small.”

    Which of course immediately suggests a response.

  80. 80.

    kindness

    @JGabriel: OMG, The American Thinker… I saw that earlier this morning. Apparently this mob of preening ‘patriots’ is the biggest bunch of fascists since Mussolini was hung after WWII in Italy, and they don’t even realize it. How do you show a bunch of fucked up dictator lovin’ idiots that they are fucked up dictator lovin’ idiots? I haven’t a clue. The hypocrisy meter zoomed past 11 & broke into a thousand pieces over there though.

  81. 81.

    Roger Moore

    @JGabriel:
    God, I thought that title was a snarky reply to the usual Republican vote suppression tactics; I didn’t think any of them were bold enough to come out and say that in public. WTF is wrong with these assholes?

  83. 83.

    The Other Chuck

    I used to like a french press, but for some reason it started tasting too harsh (and yes I cleaned the thing thoroughly). I switched to an aeropress, which is pretty good and is basically mess-free (just untwist the bottom and pop the puck into the compost bin). Doesn’t quite get enough of the oils through though, so I wonder if I can get some coarser filters.

    Meh, I probably need to drop a few thou for an espresso machine … or hey I’ll just put on clothes and go to peets.

  84. 84.

    normal liberal

    @Roger Moore: Living among tea drinkers, I’ve used those Melitta one-cup things with the wedge-shaped filters for ages, and they work just fine. (I alternate between Major Dickason’s [assume registered trademark symbol here] and what Seattle’s Best used to call Henry’s Blend.)

    Hario now makes a version with a Chemexesque conical paper filter and a single larger drainage hole. There’s one in clear plastic, which allows you to see if you need to top off the grounds to fill your mug.

    Re the American Thinker clown – another for the list come the revolution.

  86. 86.

    Brian

    In an effort to make the most juvenile comment on this thread, I’d ask that you watch (re-watch) the clip, subbing the word “coffee” out and placing in its stead your own favorite term for “lady parts.” It doesn’t work on clips 2 and 3, but as for the rest, well, it’s a hoot and a holler. If you’re as immature as I am. Which may be impossible.

  89. 89.

    Less Popular Tim

    @Brian:

    In an effort to make the most juvenile comment on this thread

    Speaking of juvenile, I’m surprised nobody has alluded to “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” and the scene where Kumar imagines being married to a giant bag of pot. During the montage, Mrs. Kumar nee Giant-Bag-of-Pot makes him coffee, and he yells at her about the quality. She cries and he apologizes. It’s fascinating that there is so much precedent for that scenario…

  93. 93.

    Lesley

    I have a story that explains why my 1960’s era mother became a feminist. My father bitched and complained constantly about his eggs one morning. He didn’t like them scrambled, he didn’t like them fried, he didn’t like them boiled. My mother kept returning to the kitchen until finally she cracked two raw eggs on a plate and set them down in front of him.

    I believe he beat her for it but that part’s vague in my memory. He used to hit her.

    I was a very young child at the time and have never forgotten how she stood up to him.

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