Coffee is the liquid of life. I drink it unsweet to make a political point that I cannot now remember but that I can assure you is of world historical significance. Since the day I discovered that my body was a neon board of political signs, I have never looked back. And today, I can safely says that I have revolutionized the way revolutions are performed. Check this out. The other day, I devised a way of drinking my coffee in a way that fought world hunger. The point is that irrespective of the temper of the weather and the world, I can put in my daily quota of freedom fighting. I begin by taking an unremarkable sip of overpriced coffee while sitting in a genuinely rotten chair in a hip-pie café.  Raised to eye level so that all can see the title, I pretend to  read an old collection of Plato’s dialogue I found a year ago at the thrift store down the road. There are two reasons I am not really reading Plato. First, reading brings on a very oppressive mental lethargy that more often than not ends up in melancholy that is brought on by the realization that I love pretending to read much more than reading.  But I am also busy looking at this girl, whose face is buried in a newspaper she is holding up side down. I am hoping she is looking at my coffee shop props: a handsome pile of café classics—Art of war, Tao Te Ching, Beowulf, To The Light House, and good ole Moby.