It was a typical national news broadcast. I sat twisted in my chair, watching with a superior gleam of holier-than-thou-ness projecting from my eye. There were crowds of people on that TV screen, milling about, while a disembodied voice of the anchor lorded over the scene.

He seemed properly quizzical at the subject matter, as I am sure he was schooled to be. Soft drinks, which I don't drink anymore—for many reasons, but mainly because carbonation sets off the raging temperaments of IBS—spike blood pressure.

I don't recall ever having IBS until after I lived with Sarah during college...and I think it's something I would have noticed, trust me. They SAY it isn't contagious...but don't you find that curious? That my bowels should go all wussy after living in close proximity to another set of unstable intestines? I had never heard of Irritable Bowel Syndrome before Sarah...and I found the name humorous. I still see an intestinal caricature vibrating on the ground in a cloud of dust with flailing fists and guttural growls emerging now and then. When she told me she ate lettuce and it came out whole, my all too vivid imagination saw her gastrointestinal tract as a master gardener to produce heads of lettuce from sparse leaves. What magic my friend possessed in her posterior!

Sarah, I am SO sorry. I deserved what I got. You can spit in my eye next time I see you...it's okay.

But, this post isn't about IBS. Why is it that when I'm on a tight time schedule that my super-tangenty tendencies surface? Maybe it's God's little reminder to slow the heck down and start looking for the world in a grain of sand. Or maybe it's just fodder for weblogging.

Back to the newscast, the milling people, the anchor, and for God's sake: soft drinks. Soft drinks, they are finding, cause hypertension. Caffeine spikes blood pressure, you know...but why isn't coffee a masked menace along with the fizzy stuff? The anchor seemed to mull over the question as if its answer would unlock the meaning to life, the solution to patch the hole in the ozone layer, and make clear which pair of socks to wear on Friday. At a loss (but clearly needing to know about the socks), his voice dissipated and the program began to focus some of those people milling...the millers, we'll call them.

One miller's theory was that people drink soft drinks all through the day...and only one cup of coffee. Believe it or not, folks, that last sentence is what I've been working toward since I keyed, "It was a typical national news broadcast." This is the point of the post, and please try to stick with me as I wrap up what should have been a ten-word writeup.

My lusty laugh painted the walls and echoed back over and over again until the kitchen sounded like an orchestra of drollery and I hiccuped. One cup of coffee? The idea is nothing if not absurd. One cup of coffee is like consuming just one kernel of corn at a given meal, using just one pun a day, or chewing through just one measly pack of gum every twelve hours. My near-ribaldry heightened as my eyes lowered to slits and I tucked my tongue in my cheek to announce that most mornings my very-low-blood-pressured self brews a second pot.