Breaking an Addiction

Some time ago, while I was working as a pizza delivery guy, I tried to give up caffeine. Within 48 hours, I had a raging migraine, couldn't focus on anything, and felt like throwing up. It was all I could do to keep from curling up on the floor in the fetal position and rocking back and forth until the darkness came.

Let's back this story up and get a bit of context.

When I was a young child, my grandmother thought it was just the cutest thing that when she would spoon-feed me black coffee, I would drink it. Apparently I liked it. So, whenever she would see me - which was pretty regularly when she babysat me as a child - she would sit me on her lap and spoon feed me coffee.

It didn't take long before I was begging for sips of my father's coffee, and I became a coffee drinker of my own accord before I can remember, ordering it at restaurants and having it at home whenever I could. For the last several years, coffee has been my primary source of fluid intake - often it is the only thing I drink all day. Why would you drink water when you could have coffee?

You might be thinking at this point, "How is this man still alive? Shouldn't he have died of dehydration?" Well, perhaps that's a lesson for another time on how popular science has failed us. But it is also something that I have wondered on occasion.

So about a year ago, while I was delivering pizza for a living, I thought I would try to give it up. I figured that my caffeine addiction was probably not healthy, and I might benefit from trying to break it. The experience left me, as outlined above, broken and helpless.

And now I'm trying again!

I gave up my (hopefully former) lifeblood nearly 48 hours ago, and have so far suffered only mild headaches and lack of concentration. We'll see how the next 24 hours go. Stay tuned for a possible post in which I type random numbers and letters because I can do no more than bash my aching head against the keyboard in agony.

This Is Ogden

So, I'm thinking of starting a project. Not that I don't have enough projects - as if I actually need something else to fill my time - but this is something that struck me last week and has been festering in the back of my mind, fighting for my attention.

I plan to start a YouTube channel, tentatively called "This Is Nash," that will consist entirely of dramatic readings of Ogden Nash poetry.

For those unfamiliar with Nash, he was an American poet, known for writing light verse. He was born in 1902, and published over 500 poems by the time of his death in 1971. My hope is to film myself dressed in formal attire reciting some of my favourite Nash poems in an environment that is relevant to the poem's content. For example, I may film myself shaving my face, looking into the reflection of the camera in the bathroom mirror, reciting Song Before Breakfast:

Hopeful each morning I arise

And splash the cobwebs from my eyes.

I brush my teeth and scrape my chin

And bravely at the mirror grin.

Sternly I force myself to say,

Huzza! Huzza! Another day!

Oh happy me! Oh lucky I!
Another chance with life to vie!

Another golden opportunity

To rise and shine in this community!

Another target for my aim!

Another whack at wealth and fame!

Almost I feel within me stir

A budding force of character...

... And so on and so forth, with all the seriousness I can muster. I would hope to film quite a few of these, and release them on a YouTube channel for the world to enjoy. Because I can't think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy a good dramatic reading of a Nash poem.

 I am immensely excited for this project, and I'll be posting again once I've filmed a video. I'll leave you with the first few lines from one of my favourite Nash poems, simply entitled, Splash:

Some people re do-it-some-other-timers and other people are do-it-nowers,

And that is why manufacturers keep on manufacturing both bathtubs and showers,

Because some bathers prefer to recline

On the cornerstone of their spine,

While others, who about their comfort are less particular,

Bathe perpendicular.