The Voice of Treason

The good news first. Usually the stories that come out of Los Alamos are depressing accounts of incompetent or drug-addled employees going home at night toting classified documents and top secrets. But now there might be something constructive going on up there. It’s been happening for some time, but now even Al Jazeera is reporting it. Scientists have been training bees to stick out their tongues when they smell explosives.

Straight from the lab:

“…Creating a controlled environment in which they could accurately determine the bees’ capabilities, the team demonstrated that the bees’ natural reaction to food - a proboscis extension reflex (PER) in which they stick out their tongues - could be used to record an unambiguous response to scent. The bees responded with a PER when they were exposed to explosive vapors. This paradigm has been tested many times in both laboratory and field settings and is a viable alternative to using dogs or elaborate hardware to detect explosives at low concentrations.”

Say, are we putting dogs out of work? Aren’t bees busy enough? There are so many things to consider here. Bees work themselves to death very quickly and die young. No problem, say researchers, because they’re trained so quickly that orientation time is short - they can begin sniffing out explosives almost immediately after hire.

And this will be good for the economy. We’ll need entrepreneurs to design and manufacture contraptions to carry the bees (dogs just need leashes and collars, but have you ever tried to leash up a bee?); in addition, bees work cheap. All they require is a little sugar water, they don’t take breaks, and they never call in sick.

(With all the security issues at Los Alamos, someone might consider training these insects as “watchbees.”)

In a somewhat related story, there is a website out there that sells radioactive materials. The Albuquerque Journal has chronicled this, but somehow I’ve missed the specific articles. Sounds like the site could be here in Nuevo Mexico. Cool. I was wondering where I could pick up some barium, bismuth, and polonium 210. Wonder if President Putin shops there, too.

Great. Now that I’ve said that the CIA and the KGB will be after me. Well, might as well tick off the IRS, too. What’s up with Estonia? Is Steve Forbes their president? Not only are they going to a paperless government (hence the nickname “e-Stonia”) but they have implemented a simpler, kinder, and gentler tax system. They have a flat tax!

And now our president is talking about coming home and chatting to Congress about the idea. Oh, really? George, I still like you, but where were you on this from 2001 ’til now? Yeah, yeah, I know tax reform was on the agenda, but where was the big push? It’s too late now, damn it. Sigh. Yet another opportunity squandered. May I remind you that I vote for you guys for specific reasons?

1. The Libertarians still need some fine-tuning and a decent candidate before they get my vote (they also need to get on the damned ballot)

2. The three T’s: Tax reform, Tort reform, Terrorism (i.e. national defense)

3. The alternative parties (i.e. the Democrats et al)

It appears I’ll be waiting for tax and tort reform like I’ll be waiting for the Cubs to go to the World Series; can you guys throw me a bone and concentrate on my third T for now?

“Senator Biden, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, recently suggested a plan for fixing Iraq by breaking it apart. He says he wants to give the various ethnic and religious components of Iraq ’some breathing space.’ But what about everyone else in the Middle East who is gasping for air? Fragmenting a country as focal as Iraq sets an intriguing precedent for the entire region: it is an admission that the post-World War I security arrangement arrived at by former colonial bureaucrats while dismembering the Ottoman Empire has failed, and that a radical reappraisal in the direction of matching borders to strongly held identities should be made.

Mr. Biden is running for president, and there’s an element of political showmanship in his plan. However, it is a fresh look at a seemingly intractable problem. I like this approach, and have been considering it myself for a while, but what applies to Iraq has to apply to the Middle East, for Iraq today is the incubator of general fixes for the wider region. Superficially, the plan works great, but only to a certain point - for I am always stumped by the question, ‘What about the Druze?’”

– Nibras Kazimi, “What About the Druze?”

Precisely! Nobody ever seems to mention them. It’s sort of like the discussions during the last election cycle that omitted Israel. I was listening, but didn’t hear an answer regarding the Democrat plan on our friends. We know there are entities in the Middle East who refuse to recognize Israel, but have Democrats joined their club?

I’m reminded of the little old lady in Louisiana who called C-SPAN to invite the Israelis to relocate to Nawlins. I wrote about her yesterday and suggested there might be problems associated with her solution. To invite Israel to pick up and move to the Gulf is making the assumption that all Israelis are Jews. Three quarters of the population is Jewish, but twenty percent is Arab, mostly Muslim. There are also Christians in Israel. And then - and this is what got me on the subject - there are the Druze.

If Iran refuses to recognize Israel, aren’t they also refusing to recognize Arabs, Muslims, Christians, and the Druze?

“The survival of the Druze, and their political importance, are just one of a multitude of things about the Middle East that don’t fit into a rational framework. Politicians such as Mr. Biden can leisurely contemplate drawing neat lines on the map, just like the colonial bureaucrats did, but will it translate into security?”

I said yesterday that drawing new borders and moving people around like chess pieces was out of the question. Can you imagine the crazy quilt we’d end up with?

“Mr. Biden’s proposal in Iraq was probably not thought out in terms of how it could fix the larger Middle East, but Iraq is the model for all the others. What fails - or works - will be the rest of the region’s future. Any grand restructuring has to be careful that the finished project does not end up like a do-it-yourself project with extra nails, screws, and parts that were part of the original design but were somehow left over after completion. The Druze, as well as other historic, cultural and political anomalies, are too relevant to be dismissed.”

I was up early yesterday morning and watched President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia as she introduced President Bush before his speech. She said something that will stay with me forever. She spoke of Latvia’s struggle for freedom and once it had been secured, the people were carefully “blowing on the flame of liberty” - and what a perfect analogy. Being so careful not to extinguish the flame, but instead to encourage it so it would intensify and grow stronger with measured breath and hope.

And then Bush:

“…We refuse to give in to a pessimism that consigns millions across the Middle East to endless oppression. We understand that, ultimately, the only path to lasting peace is through the rise of lasting free societies.

Here in the Baltic region, many understand that freedom is universal and worth the struggle. During the Second World War, a young girl here in Riga escaped with her family from the advancing Red Army. She fled westward, moving first to a refugee camp in Germany, and then later to Morocco, where she and her family settled for five and a half years. Spending her teenage years in a Muslim nation, this Latvian girl came to understand a fundamental truth about humanity: Moms and dads in the Muslim world want the same things for their children as moms and dads here in Riga — a future of peace, a chance to live in freedom, and the opportunity to build a better life.

Today, that Latvian girl is the leader of a free country — the Iron Lady of the Baltics, the President of Latvia. And the lessons she learned growing up in Casablanca guide her as she leads her nation in this world. Here is how she put it earlier this year, in an address to a joint meeting of the United States Congress: ‘We know the value of freedom and feel compassion for those who are still deprived of it. Every nation on Earth is entitled to freedom,’ your President said. She said, ‘We must share the dream that some day there won’t be a tyranny left anywhere in the world. We must work for this future, all of us, large and small, together.’

Like your President, I believe this dream is within reach, and through the NATO Alliance, nations large and small are working together to achieve it.”

We’re so afraid those evil neocons are stealing our freedoms, yet we don’t seem to care that our friends in Israel are living with the constant threat from nations who refuse to “recognize” them and want them to disappear; that the Druze, spread over four countries, are never part of the debate; and the Iraqis, for some reason, don’t seem to merit the type of freedom they’re entitled to. If we don’t help Iraq and make it possible for them to blow on that flame of liberty, who will?

My hope is that, like the people of Latvia, Iraqis will embrace the concept of freedom and help us help them. The flame of liberty - yes! Setting fire to your countrymen - no! This will take time, but it’s better to invest it now than later.

“…Iraq is succeeding because the Iraqi state has weathered the worst of the insurgent storm and survived, and because the Sunni insurgency is fatigued. ‘What about all the bodies? What about all the bombings?’ Indeed, it’s the worst it has been, but not the worst it can be. I see many hopeful signs that cannot be dismissed. To me, the numbers of the dead — painful as they are — are not as critically dangerous as a much talked about shift in American strategy away from the goal of securing a democratic Iraq.

– Nibras Kazimi, “Iraq Is Succeeding”

I spent a part of yesterday going back and forth over the war in Iraq on a blog I’ve mentioned here several times before. It’s interesting that a group of people - Liberals, to be exact - are quick to extol the virtues of dialogue but find it so difficult to engage in the practice themselves. I said I was up for solutions and I threw out some questions, hoping that I might at least get some thoughtful responses. Even a “that’s a stupid idea and here’s why” would have been welcome.

Part of what I said:

“…It doesn’t matter if it’s their intention or not to influence elections because, like it or not, the influence is felt. It’s not accidental. The violence in Iraq and the anti-American/Israeli/Pontiff protests are effective. If the problem, as you say, is a power vacuum and a civil war, then what’s the solution?

Another Saddam? Separating the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shiites? Impossible…

…Should we have taken out Muqtada al-Sadr instead of allowing him to become even more powerful? Do we pack up and go home and turn the place over to the radicals? Do we ask for help and continue to look weaker, act weaker? Do we go in, guns blazing, and kill more insurgents? Do we kick the current ‘democratically elected’ government out and put one we like better in its place? (Uh, I think we’ve done that before…)

At any rate, what’s the answer?”

I’m not sure I got any. So I brewed some Earl Grey and switched on C-SPAN to watch a repeat of the morning call-in program. I’ll give their callers that - they’re not shy about offering up their ideas.

The Usual Suspect: “The issue here is that Bush needs to go on trial for war crimes. Simple as that.”

New To The Debate: “Yeah, we should be talkin’ to Iran and Syria - why not? They’re gonna want us to do somethin’ about the whole Israel thing, though. You know, the way we back them and everything. That’ll need to change.”

The Little Old Southern Lady: “Nawlins is still so empty. I was just thinkin’ — wouldn’t it be nice if those Israeli people could move here to be safe? We have hospitals and shoppin’ malls and houses standin’ empty, an’ I sure would love to see ‘em come on over. We’re invitin’ ya, ya hear?”

The niceties were dripping like honey, the Southern hospitality was palpable. Was she sincere or was she being sarcastic? It’s so easy these days to throw something out there then say you were just being sarcastic.

If someone thought she was serious they would have thought she was a simpleton. But there’s something to admire about her solution: “We’ll move those people out of harm’s way and we’ll protect them on our soil. It will be mutually beneficial.”

But simple solutions aren’t simple when problems are so complex. We could go on for days. Israelis surrender their home for Nawlins? And is Nawlins really safer than Israel? Sure would be crowded with seven million new residents - twenty percent of which would be Arabs (mostly Muslims). Couldn’t we give them New Mexico instead? Doesn’t that mean we drop to 49 states and have to redo the flags? Again, we want to shift the problem, not solve it, thereby creating even more problems.

Like in Iraq, we want things to be simple: “If the people there just can’t seem to get along, why don’t we just keep them separated? We’ll make three countries instead of one big one and the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds will each get their own country and everything will be fine.”

The idea that we can draw new borders and move people around like chess pieces is an interesting concept. I recall when certain groups in America weren’t getting along we stopped trying to keep them separated and forced them to mingle. Now we’re so intermingled that dividing us back into neat little groups would be impossible.

“Blacks here. Gays there. Jews over there.”

“Uh, what if you’re black, Jewish, and gay?”

Nibras Kazimi, Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Abdel-Aziz al Wandawi, Director General of Information of the Higher National Commission for De-Ba’athification, were part of a forum on sectarian violence in Iraq - it was on C-SPAN last week - and both agree that there are too many subgroups and too many mixtures in Iraq for any type of geographical separation to work.

“I’m a Sunni married to a Shiite - what do I do?”

Next idea, please?

Well, we can talk to Iran and Syria! About what? Our problem was talking to them in the first place and believing what they told us: “You want to establish a democracy in Iraq? Go for it! We won’t get in your way.”

How nice of us to remove Saddam and train an army for our “friends” in Iran and Syria. Every country should have such helpful occupiers.

So now what? I refer to my previous questions. The only one that seems to be considered is the “easy” out. The “peace with honor” plan. To that I say: “Piss on your peace.” Abandoning the Iraqis again will not create peace. Peace through strength is a better option, but it’s clear too many Americans are getting wobbly. If we leave, we’re damned forever.

Kazimi, who writes a column for The New York Sun and maintains a blog - Talisman Gate - warns:

“…This evasion of reality has resulted in the bizarre situation, where describing the enemy as evil is somehow not politically correct, even after September 11, the graphic beheadings, and al-Muhajir’s words, while tagging the neoconservatives as nefarious is a journalistic standard.

– Nibras Kazimi, “Al-Muhajir’s Evil Presence”

As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes it feels like the political lines are blurring. Those on the Left are leaning right on some issues; those on the Right are leaning left. You’d think there’d be more Libertarians out there, wouldn’t you?

We don’t know what to make of these “tweeners,” so we call them “moderate.” Really not the most accurate term. We also lump them into a group called “independent.” Some prefer to call this group “the majority.” The purple people.

The way I look at it, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, yellow or brown, red or blue, or even purple. There’s no escaping the fact that the most basic issues apply to everyone. Many of these are the various wars we wage on vice.

It’s easy to say that Libertarians have led the way in speaking out against the War on Drugs in particular, and have advocated decriminalization/legalization of certain “substances.” Many Conservatives share this opinion.

But how can this be? Aren’t Conservatives those religious fanatics who always warn of the slippery slope, the coarsening of our culture, and the decline of morality? Aren’t they the ones who always say: “Just look at Amsterdam. Do you want to be like that?”

True, there are social conservatives who worry that we’re becoming “piggish.” The most socially conservative - the radical Islamists - are convinced we are pigs and consistently refer to us as such. Can we blame them for not wanting the West to corrupt their culture?

Still, many on the Left continue to refer to Islam as a loving, peaceful religion. They don’t seem to care much for Christianity or Judaism, and aren’t quite as vociferous in their defense of Jews and Christians; yet Muslims somehow pass muster.

Evangelicals are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, ignorant, and intolerant; Muslims are not. Tell that to the Dutch.

Guess who’s moving to Amsterdam? It’s odd: After spending nearly a quarter of a century in Northern California and watching conservatives flee the Bay Area, it’s interesting to watch Muslims migrate to “pig pens.”

No offense to those who live in the Netherlands, France, or San Francisco, but you people are meek, weak, and ripe for the takeover. You are, like it or not, appeasers - and fear rules you. You say you are crusaders and protectors of the oppressed, but where is your outrage when Muslims are the oppressors?

You worry that Neocons and Christians are out to get you, strip you of your rights and freedoms, and put you in camps. To you I say, keep an eye on Amsterdam. The “free-est” spot in the world is quickly becoming less free and quite a bit scary. Gay couples are afraid to go out together and are avoiding physical contact in public. That includes holding hands. Going out after dark is no longer a good idea.

It’s time to be confrontational when it really counts. They’re coming to get you and you just don’t seem to realize it. The ultimate irony is that the Jews and Christians will be the ones who’ll save you. In the meantime, how ’bout a little effort to save yourselves?

The V.O.T. list of Republican candidates for 2008:

Official:
1. Duncan Hunter

Exploratory phase:
2. John McCain
3. Rudy Giuliani
4. Tommy Thompson
5. Mitt Romney

Running whether we like it or not:
6. George Pataki

There’s been talk:
7. Bill Frist

And speculation:
8. Newt Gingrich
9. Sam Brownback
10. Chuck Hagel
11. Mike Huckabee
12. Tom Tancredo

Please…not now and not another so soon:
13. George Allen

Won’t run if nominated, won’t serve if elected:
1. Richard B. Cheney

In the same boat:
2. Jeb Bush
3. Condi Rice

Condi had been in the “Musing” category but I’ve moved her for three reasons:
a. She insists she doesn’t want the job and plans to return to Stanford
b. She’s too closely related to a war that’s become increasingly unpopular
c. She’s reviled by the Left, whose members would rather see a nuclear device take out the Eastern Seaboard than a black female Republican in the White House. (They want one of theirs, qualified or not, to be first.)

Jeb would be a fine candidate but he’s also smart enough to know that this isn’t the time for him. And that’s unfortunate.

So now we wait to see how long it takes the Left to destroy Romney, and the Right to destroy McCain and Giuliani. Wheeee.

The V.O.T. list of Democratic candidates for 2008:

In the exploratory phase…officially:
1. Tom Vilsack
2. Joe Biden
3. Barack Obama

Hasn’t stopped running:
4. John Edwards

Being coy, but everyone knows they’re running:
5. Hillary and Bill
6. Bill Richardson

Waiting to hear something from them:
7. Evan Bayh
8. Wesley Clark
9. Tom Daschle
10. Chris Dodd
11. Algore

Possible add-ons:
12. Howard Dean
13. Nancy Pelosi

Jumpers:
1. Mark Warner
2. Russ Feingold

Miscellany:
· John F. Kerry - was thought to be a jumper but refuses to go quietly, so I’ve taken him off the “Jumper” list and am moving him, officially, to the “Pariah” list.

· Patsy Madrid, in her less than gracious concession speech, hinted that she might run again, but this time for a “bigger” office: a Senator or Governor Patsy. She also said that if John Edwards runs in 2008, she will support him. Does he know this?

· Does John McCain belong on the R-List or D-List?

Just the name of this legislation gives me the heebie-jeebies. Would someone please stand up and say that not every vote should be counted? Not every vote is valid or legal, so shouldn’t we be saying “Every Legal, Valid Vote Counts Act,” instead? Are we sincere about the purity, legitimacy, and authenticity of our vote? Do we genuinely want to be above-board, official, and bona fide? Are we willing to accept only real and true votes?

Says our Lt. Governor: “I want to ensure that the vote of each and every New Mexican is counted properly and fairly to provide voter equity and foster confidence in the democratic process.”

This legislation will provide automatic recounts in federal and statewide races in Nuevo Mexico when it’s determined that the final vote margin is less than one-half of one percent. In other words, after ten days of counting every vote, Heather still came up with 875 more than Patsy and officially won the race. And this is pissing off the Democrats something fierce. In 2000, the party “found” just enough votes (a tad over 300) to put Algore over the top - how is it that they couldn’t pull it off for Patsy? A recount would have bought more time. So now we’ll get an automatic-recount bill. Swell.

Let’s see. Bill Richardson pushed for and got the dreaded paper ballots; same-day registration/voting is next; and now we’re going to be forced to recount even if we don’t want to.

How ’bout instead of all these measures, we implement a voter i.d. system instead? A valid photo i.d. or you don’t get to vote. If we’re serious about the truth, let’s start here and demand that the Democrats tell us why they’re always against the one thing that might just “provide voter equity and foster confidence” in a system that no one takes seriously anymore.

1. The new twelve 5 ounce cup Cuisinart Brew Central, so far, has been cooperative

2. I managed to find fresh Brussels sprouts for our holiday dinner - something you’d think would be easy but, remember, this is Albuquerque

3. The indefatigable Butterball frozen turkey - this one took a whopping six hours to reach temperature and still came out perfect

4. I’m not Michael Richards

5. Patsy conceded and Heather Wilson remains our District 1 Representative

6. The National Dog Show, co-hosted by John O’Hurley: Would someone please sign him up for Westminster?

7. Global warming - has this been great weather here or what?

8. The courageous and honorable men and women in our military - and their families, too

9. Mom had a pretty good day

10. The impetuous decision to serve the Turkey Flat Rose with dinner

I don’t want this to turn into a product review - really, I don’t. I went back to Linens & Things knowing that the 14-cup Cuisinart would be gone, considering it was the only one left on the shelf on Sunday. I had read more online reviews than I care to admit and they left me confused and depressed. It shouldn’t be this difficult to make a @#$%ing cup of coffee. No wonder people pay Starbucks four bucks to do it for them.

So I get to the store, clutching that 20% off coupon they always have in their ads that never applies to any item you ever want to purchase, and I look at the 14-cup maker again. I’m still an appliance racist. I see that black plastic and I cringe.

On the bottom shelf is a lone stainless and white 12-cup model: The Brew Central. Twelve cups should work for us, I thought. (”Ah, but don’t be so sure,” said the little voice in my head.) That’s when I started talking to the appliances. I noticed a woman was staring at me. I was compelled to bore her with the entire story about my quest for a decent coffee maker. She was helpful in that she told me that she thought the 14-cup model was unattractive, too.

I went with the white and stainless - begrudgingly. The good news is that it was the first time one of those coupons was accepted. Already the Cuisinart is cheaper than the KitchenAid. Good, because I’m going to have to spend a fortune on little replacement water filters and carafes for the bastard.

I won’t compare them feature to feature because there are things I love and hate about both designs. And the 14-cup model, I realize now, would have been a smart choice because Cuisinart considers a cup to be not 8 ounces, not 6 ounces, but rather 5 ounces. That is not a cup of coffee; that is a few drops more than demitasse.

This entire excursion into appliance shopping madness has got me thinking about my sister. It’s been three and a half years since her death and it’s the first time I realized that she was probably Amish. I knew she was an atheist, but I’m thinking now that somewhere in our genetic make-up - no doubt on the English/Dutch side of the family - there were weird Amish genes.

My sister insisted that the fewer bells and whistles the better. There’s more that can go wrong, she said. I’m looking at this Cuisinart and thinking she had a point. I’m not fanatical about it, but I don’t particularly like too many functions, either. My sister, on the other hand, was a bit of a zealot. My stepfather tried to convince her to buy the green car with more options, but she insisted on the beige AMC Hornet sedan with no air conditioning, radio, power steering, power windows, or power brakes. She just didn’t want anything to go wrong on it and require repair. What was wrong with it was that it rarely ran. (To be fair to AMC, her second Hornet - “The Blue Bomber” - was a pretty reliable wagon.)

I remember we bought her a microwave oven that never came out of the box. I sent her a snazzy radio/CD player with Vivaldi and Glenn Miller CDs, and that, too, stayed in the box. (She preferred to listen to El Rushbo and Lee Rodgers on a portable battery-operated radio with a handle and antenna.) The washer died and I sent her a $500 gift certificate from Sears that sat in a drawer and was never used. When her TV set blew, she never replaced it. Same with the fridge. And she refused to use an automatic drip coffee maker - that’s why I had to send her my percolator when hers fried.

For my sister, life was not about convenience. This was a girl who pulled her own teeth.

So by now you’re probably saying: “Cut to the chase - did the Cuisinart make an acceptable cup of coffee?” Eh - mezza mezz. The true test will come when I brew a full pot. But, for the eight cups I produced today, I was pleased. It needs to be stronger, of course, but too much ground coffee can result in a mess. I’ll use stronger, darker beans to compensate. For the most part, the Amazon reviews were helpful and I see what some people meant about “quirks.” A word to the wise: Do not buy a coffee maker with a flat bottom brew basket and filter (like the KitchenAid); instead, go for a cone shape. There seems to be more room to accommodate more ground beans.

Now, if money had been no object and I’d been able to find these quickly on a store shelf this week, I think I would have liked to have tried that pricey beaker-style DeLonghi (I give it points for originality and design) or the Zojirushi ZUTTO model that is so wonderfully simple. A pity that it’s too small, but the feature it has that I’d like to see in more coffee makers is the removable (and cleanable) reservoir. What a concept.

But time was not on my side. I needed something fast and I didn’t want to shop around to find the best deal. After reading countless reviews on Amazon I’m prepared to start researching now and give myself more time to track down the next replacement.

I have a nagging feeling the microwave is going to go next.

There’s been a death in our family. I shouldn’t have been surprised: All the warning signs were there, so on some level I guess I was expecting it. Still, even when it was clear that there would be no recovery and the end was certain, the pain and confusion were palpable. After all these years, my all-white DeLonghi 12-cup drip coffee maker has given up the ghost.

I’d picked it up at Sam’s Club several years ago because I knew our coffee maker was getting ready to “let go.” I’d never owned a DeLonghi, but the price was right, it had a reusable filter system, and it was completely white. At the time, an all-white coffee maker was a rarity, so I scooped it up and placed it in the cart. “What the hell,” I’d thought, “even if it’s crap, it’s no big investment.”

But it’s also important to have a back-up method, because you don’t want to get up in the morning and discover that you have no way to produce a hot cup of coffee. It’s like my sister and her beloved Farberware percolator. Mother burned it to a crisp and my sister couldn’t find a replacement in the Bay Area. I found one here in Albuquerque (mine, still unused and in the original box), so I shipped it to her, averting catastrophe.

So one day I was out and I saw a marked down item that would not only be good for emergencies, but it wouldn’t take up a lot of storage space, either: a 6-cup French style coffee press made by a company called Progressive International Corp.

I picked it up and stared at it. Most of what was written on the box was in French: suddenly all those years in class — j’achète, tu achètes, elle achète, nous achetons, vous achetez — didn’t seem like such a terrible waste. I felt like I should be driving a Volvo and shopping at Whole Foods. Would I be required to buy a specially ground organic fair trade variety from Starbucks for this new press? And would I now have to re-register as a Democrat to vote?

So many questions, so few answers. I got home and put the press, still in its box, on the bottom shelf of the kitchen island behind the turkey platter. Where it sat, untouched, for several years until Saturday morning.

I mean, T and I are not like my mother and stepfather, who went through coffee makers the way some people go through socks. For my mother, coffee is heroin. I have to hand it to her - she gave it up when she was pregnant. (It’s no wonder she hated us.) But she and my stepfather, both serious addicts, finally invested in a restaurant coffee maker and always had two pots going at once. The thing was so enormous and generated so much heat that Heather, the gray and white dog-sized cat, made the top of it her home.

Frankly, I’ve been gradually cutting back on my coffee consumption over the years and recently have been drinking more tea again. A very nice Englishman gave me a gift tin from Harrod’s last year, so I’ve been working my way through that.

And T never drank coffee until he met me. So when he went online and announced that the best machine for us would be the Cuisinart 14-cup stainless steel and black monster I’d just seen in the Sunday ads, I was skeptical.

“We really need 14 cups?”

I’d scoured the ads earlier that morning and found the sale items, then looked them up online only to discover that they had a tendency to spontaneously combust and kill their owners or, worse, leak all over their kitchen counters.

So we went out to get the new coffee maker. I thought we were good to go. T picked up the box - the only one left on the shelf - and I stared at the display model. He saw the look on my face.

“Something wrong?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong. Let’s just get the thing and go.”

“Obviously there’s a problem. Is there one you like better?”

“This is fine. Let’s just get it and go.”

“I can tell there’s something wrong. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is?”

“There’s no problem.”

“Yes, there is.”

“No, there’s no problem. Let’s just get this one and go.”

“Okay, I’m going and you can get it. See ya.”

I stood there holding the box. I put it back on the shelf and left the store knowing that we would be going back to a house that has only a 6-cup coffee press in it.

Truth is, I’m an appliance racist. I can’t live with black appliances. Had the same problem with all that black lacquer furniture from the eighties. Don’t like black cars, either. Fact is, I can and do live with dog hair — but I don’t need to see it all over my black coffee maker first thing in the morning.

We probably should have just bought the damned thing right then and there, but instead we waited until T’s mother’s visit . It’s 10:00 P.M. and we still have no coffee maker. There is tension.

We agree that we don’t go out and get one; instead, I will get up and get one first thing in the morning. T’s mother and I end up at Target and I buy the Empire Red KitchenAid Java Studio. It matches the store perfectly. It’s more than I want to spend, but the trend now is black and stainless steel, so my options for color are limited. A Mr. Coffee is red and stainless, much cheaper, and is mucho attractive, but there are quality issues to consider.

The red KitchenAid is adorable. We do all the pre-use preparation according to the instructions and brew the first pot. I like my coffee thick - this pot was decidedly weak even though I used extra scoops. Brewed a second pot. As with the first, there was an overflow issue, and because I used even more coffee so that the liquid would actually taste like coffee, we ended up with a pot of grounds.

Hmmm. This leaks like a Mr. Coffee for two to three times the price. Sweet.

I tend not to believe everything I read in consumer reviews, but I went online and discovered that others had experienced the same problems. But how do you explain those who say it’s the greatest maker they’ve ever owned? (All I can figure is that they brew weak coffee in small batches.)

I absolutely hate to return items to the store. Once I buy something I feel committed to it - even if it’s a piece of sh*t. This, despite its good looks, is a piece of sh*t. For the price, it should not be leaking all over my counter and producing crunchy coffee.

T’s mother sensed the tension over the coffee maker and asked if everything was all right. Big things don’t destroy relationships, small things do. Trivial things like disagreeing over which appliance to buy. My mother and stepfather never fought, but the day one of them picked up the wrong jar of mayo, we thought they were headed for divorce court. For ten years, it remained a sticky subject to be avoided.

I must go out now and find another coffee maker. Do I go with that Cuisinart? Check back tomorrow for more of the continuing saga…

Wednesday’s episode: Find out if she takes a second mortgage on the house, and buys the Capresso!