coffee

Gimme a (Coffee) Break
By
Jaron Summers

Although I am in prison, I am innocent.

The one thing I might be guilty of is living The American Dream.

I hit upon a legal and (if I do say so myself) an ingenious method to earn $6,000 a day using cats and several items that anyone could purchase.

I followed the suggestions of one of the world’s richest men—J. Paul Getty who said, “find an economic demand for a commodity and fill it.”

Okay, what commodity creates the greatest demand in our society as we gulp it around the clock? Hint: think commodity. Second hint: think gulp. Third hint for Mormons: Think of the title of this essay.

Got it? Right. Coffee!

Now, what is the most expensive coffee in the world? One that The Royals shell out $500 a pound for? Yes, I said $500 a pound.

Answer: Kopi Luwak coffee, a rare Indonesian gourmet drink, created from beans passed through the digestive system of “monkeys.”

The monkey is really “a palm civet, a tree-dwelling cat (paradoxurus hermaphroditus) that scampers around Southeast Asia.

These cat-like creatures consume coffee beans and fermented palm sap. The beans are flavored but undamaged when they exit the civet's, uh—his or her bum. The coffee has a much sought after “earthy flavor.”

Natives track drunken pussies and gather up their beans. Pussy perusing in the Indonesian jungles is a time-consuming and labor-intensive profession. Workers deal with a lot of, well—crap. That’s what makes the Kopi Luwak coffee bean so darn expensive.

Enter good old American ingenuity.

I bought some coffee beans, rescued a dozen Tomcats from the local pound and my cousin (who has a nursery) supplied me with thirty Indonesian palm trees.

I distilled the palm sap to 90-proof. The cats lapped it up. I fed them coffee beans and waited.

I soon harvested twenty pounds of what I dubbed California Kopi Luwak. At my cost of only $18 a pound, the cats were pooping me a fortune. I turned down $300 per pound from a wholesaler.

I wanted a hunk of the American dream. I opened my own retail outlet and sold my special California Kopi Luwak brew at $7.95 a mug.

I attracted java lovers from Reo to Rangoon. Franchise offers poured in.

Always community minded, I dispensed free coffee to policemen.

How sweet it was…until one cop (who was illegally peeping into the rear of my new café) videotaped my scooping up what he thought was cat feces (technically it was) and presenting it in boiling water to his brother officers.

(Apparently some motorcycle officers had been served spit-sandwiches by irritated waiters who had racked up too many speeding tickets. The local gendarmes were checking what went on “behind the scenes” in restaurants.)

One of LA's finest asked me if I liked coffee, then hurled a cup of it into my face. Ouch.

Assuming I was a cop super hater, the LAPD threw me in a paddy wagon, padlocked my café and whacked me repeatedly with telephone books. Double ouch!

Even though I've caused an S-storm in the media, my lawyer feels I will be exonerated. He knows I am innocent as I am sure you do too.

I think you’ll also agree that the trumped-up charges by the Humane Society are terribly unjust.

If my Tomcats could talk they would certainly testify they got the deal of a lifetime.

You can read more about Kopi Luwak coffee by clicking here.

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