On wickedness

The Last Great Coffee Adventure

I enjoy spending time with my many human friends. While I do not understand it, I am endlessly fascinated and delighted by their need to consume food. I am particularly enamored of the way they take their coffee: ritualistically, covetously, with pleasure.  Each person keeps their own special mug, just for themselves. They fill it with their custom brew: straight or with milk or sugar, just-so. Another adverb: jealously. Drinking someone else's drink is simply not done.

Now, in my study of Western Penology, I learned of the concept mens rea, or "guilty mind." Simply put, to be guilty of many crimes, you must be guilty of wickedness: you must know that what you are doing is wrong, and do it anyway.

So, I was aware of all this, but I also really, really wanted to try this so-human "coffee" drink. Is a sip of coffee stealing? Given how my friend feels about his coffee, emphatically, YES. But is it wrong? Is a sip so much to steal? Isn't this little bit of wrong also just a little bit of... awesome? Maybe it's wrong/awesome because I wanted a sip of his coffee.

Trying to look innocent. GUILTY MIND.

As a Polyp, I can be any shape and size. My potential for hugeness is unbounded. I could form myself into King Kong, seize my prize, and take it to the top of the Empire State Building. Once there I could delicately sip my coffee while swatting down a passing biplane or two, their machine guns CHUG-CHUG-CHUG-ing ineffectually at my impervious greatness.

But most of the time, I am small. It suits me just fine, especially when I'm having dark thoughts about black coffee. So here I am, a quick vanity shot before taking the plunge. My friend was distracted by Christmas and family. I leapt in...

Cold feet / Cosmic joke

... and out again, as quickly as my supple Polyp extrusions could take me. Such bitter blackness! Imagine, surrounded by coffee's dark wetness, unable to sense anything but acid and arabica. I lost my cool, sent out feelers in every direction. Finally I found purchase, pulled and pulled until I broke the surface. Light! Air! Dryness! I scrambled out and regained my composure.

Taking stock: this coffee adventure had been a sad failure: minutes of wanting, plotting, waiting for the right moment... for nothing. Crime does not pay. Indeed, crime is awful. Never again would I question the wisdom of the great thinkers on this.

Rind and pith cannot resist my will!

Or at least, that's what I thought, until I saw these tangerines...