Funny Food

[sila-lumenn.livejournal.com]

The chef at a family-run restaurant had broken her leg and went to the insurance office to file a disability claim.  As the claims specialist scanned the claim form, she did a double take.  Under "Reason unable to work" the chef had written: "Can't stand to cook."

Coffee or Tea?

[sila-lumenn.livejournal.com]

Tea is nice but coffee is good.  A Google search reveals that the phrase "nice cup of tea" appears about 24,000 times on the Internet, whereas "good cup of tea" appears only about 5,300 times.  However, "good cup of coffee" appears just over 18,000 times, whereas "nice cup of coffee" appears about 5,200 times.  All in all, tea is "nice" about four times more often than it is "good," but coffee is "good" about three times more often than it is "nice."  A search for those phrases in other electronic databases affirms these lexical patterns.  The correlation of coffee with "good" and tea with "nice" may reflect the chemical makeup of the two beverages: a cup of coffee, with its 100 milligrams of caffeine, provides more jolt than a cup of tea, with its 40 milligrams.  Hence, coffee arouses while tea merely refreshes. To put it another way, coffee is sexy, mysterious, earthy - it's good the way a passionate lover is good.  Tea is staid, reasonable, refined - it's nice the way an elderly uncle is nice.

- Mark Morton, from "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Teapot," from GASTRONOMICA (Fall 2004)

[Poll #412723]