After I lost my battle with fatigue and nodded off during my 9:15 class, I decided that I should obtain some caffeine before my next lecture which was sure to be painfully uninteresting.
Being relatively inexperienced at buying coffee on campus, I reasoned that I could easily procure some from the convenience store-esque shop inside the D.P. Culp center. This was a mistake.
Bring to mind, if you will, the worst cup of coffee you have ever had. Now take that offensive brew and let it sit in an urn (not a coffee urn mind you, but the urn that contains stinky Uncle Greg’s remains) for two weeks. At the end of said two weeks, pour the malodorous, evil paste that Uncle Greg has become into a coffee maker. Then load the machine with the cheapest, roughest, and oldest (all three factors are important) grain of coffee that you can find.
Throw in some sand and cigarette butts for good measure. Do not use a filter.
The poisonous tar-like substance that your coffee maker will produce, assuming that it is able to function at all, will still be hundreds of times better than the horrible slime that oozes from the coffee maker at the Buc-Mart.
“Go to The Cave,” you say. “Their coffee is not weapons- grade waste,” you tell me.
That’s fine, I agree. The Cave has perfectly acceptable caffeine products, but, where was your sagely advice when I needed it? Where were you when I was drinking toxic sludge!? Not there to warn me, that’s where.
There were no signs, no biohazard stickers, and absolutely no indication that I would be endangering my life by taking that cosmic horror into my body. Just an innocent row of coffee machines with the innocent, simple and wholly inaccurate labels of “Decaffeinated,” “Dark Roast,” and “Hot Water” sits smugly in the corner beside the cappuccino and hot chocolate machine. I shudder to think what variety of awful it produces.
I selected “Dark Roast” assuming that its poignant flavor would be an added kick to the caffeine itself and help wake me up. The fluid that came from that spout was certainly dark, but I question whether it was roasted or not.
It was, however, evil. Evil as absolute as the one I had encountered is not the type that can be brewed, but the kind that must be summoned up from the underworld.
I call upon you, Dark Lord! Enter into this world spread your pestilence through …”Dark Roast!”
I have written most of this article in between angry glances at the offending cup of so-called coffee which is sitting a few feet away from me at the end of the bench.
I have not yet poured it out for fear of the consequences.
A quote from Star Wars keeps running through my head – “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”
I imagined it seeping through the ground and into the water supply in order to reach more victims.
Administration and Students of ETSU, I implore you! Stop this evil. Abandon the petty and self-centered issues that you choose to occupy your time with.
Ignore the war in Iraq. Don’t worry about the hurricanes raging in Florida. Forget about the upcoming election and come to terms with the real world, true-to-life problems that are staring you in the face.
If it is too much to ask for the Culp Center to offer non-lethal beverages, then a little community awareness program is in order.
Think of the tender freshmen. Think of the few upperclassmen like myself who are unaware of The Cave and what it has to offer.
Corrective action or preventative awareness, something must be done about the coffee being presented to the unknowing masses at the D.P. Culp center.

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