A cup of Nada, and a Prank Spank

I will assume you are all listening to Pandora as you read this. I am. I ‘ve been vacillating between Patty Griffin and the Gabe Dixon Band while I drink my morning cup of – green tea. Yes, tea. Me, the person who has three different coffeemakers lined up on the kitchen counter, is drinking tea.

It's all bad for you...

Decades worth of studies have tried to pin evil on coffee, mostly to no avail. But a doctor I saw last week claims that in Europe, coffee is increasingly viewed as a carcinogen. However, as I research the subject, while slurping my tea, I can only come up with claims that coffee actually reduces the risk of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, cavities in your teeth and a rash of other nasty things, not the least of which, in my case, is morning crabbiness.

"Hey, try waking up in the morning when you're on Prozac!"

It is true that coffee can interfere with the absorption of thyroid medication, so they’ve got me there. But guess what! Thanks to the miracle that is Google, I just also found out that at least one soul out there http://www.poisonfluoride.com/pfpc/html/green_tea___.html believes that the flouride content in green tea is known to depress the activity of the thyroid gland.

So this narrows my options. I know Diet Coke is a morning savior to many, but I don’t even want to ponder how many cute little laboratory rats have died from being fed a diet of artificial sweeteners. I’m just convinced that stuff is putrid.

Maybe this is all an argument for staying in bed?

Just in case you I’ve thoroughly disillusioned you now, let me remind you that at least one aphorism out there remains true: “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow”. I was watering the plants in the Chicken Kingdom the other day and found this little volunteer:

You go!

We’re going to transplant it to a more favorable spot and see how it does.

For all the grousing, things are generally right in the world. Especially now that we’ve heard that those of us on the West Coast are NOT likely to be glowing in the dark anytime soon – no spike in radiation levels has been detected from the damaged nuclear plants in Japan. So that’s good news for us. For three hapless students on the East coast, however, it’s been a very bad, horrible, not good couple of weeks.

One of the  surer signs of spring is the time-honored tradition of the Senior Prank. But the administrators at Woodbridge High School, in Woodbridge, NJ, are apparently even crabbier than me without my morning coffee. Three of their students came up with the idea of releasing live chickens into the high school and got slapped with charges ranging from trespassing and disorderly conduct, as well as being banned from their senior prom.

Two of the three poultry purveyors

Before we go all animal cruelty crazy on this, it’s important to know that the young men reportedly provided plenty of food and water for the birds when they passed them through a school window in the middle of the night. We haven’t heard a peep from the chickens, but according to news reports they are alive and well and had something of a field trip. So in my book, that’s no harm, no fowl, right? You have it on my authority that there is really nothing funnier than a chicken, and if you doubt me, you need to watch “The Hangover” again.

Admit it. It's funny! (photo from esquire.com)

Apparently the school officials have lightened up enough to relent on the school prom ban. Hopefully they will realize that the sky is NOT falling and cut the kids a break.

"We think it's hilarious!"

That’s it for today. I think I’ll go brew a cup of coffee now…