When I was in college I had this class (shut up Nathan), and in it we watched a lot of TV. Well, we were supposed to. At the moment watching TV became homework, I started playing in Photoshop. Two great things came out of this: 1) I became a designer, 2) by listening to the discussions in class, I got to hear from a teacher something that I had known for years. That there was a formula to television programming.

I was shocked. Shocked! To learn that TV does the same thing every book, story and 7,000 year old epic narrative poem has done. TV, it turns out, saves the best stuff for last. Those cheeky bastards make us wait to find out all of the sensational sordid details. These captains of the entertainment industry withhold the good stuff until we’ve plowed through the slag.

Well, I know you’re only here for the pics, so enjoy these.

There isn’t much to write about the Sagrada Familia cathedral that you can’t learn from a simple Google Search. Did you know that there are even photos of Sagrada on this magical Google search? It’s true. I’ve seen them.

This post is just part of the story arc.

Part 1 had some neat photos of a very triumphant, albeit full of itself, arch, and a shot of a woman in a red dress (whom I maintain I was not stalking). Part 3 has the really good stuff. Drunkenness, fights, Egyptian sand burial, wild parties, and the occasional Asian CS major. But this isn’t part 3.

This is Part 2. I’m just here wasting your time, and mine if we’re honest, with these lovely pictures of a building that is as much a testament to procrastination as it is to great art. Seriously Gaudi, how are you going to make it in this deadline driven, goal oriented business of design if you can’t finish one building within a reasonable time frame. I hope for your sake you’re billing by the hour. Though, knowing some of the clients I’ve had, the asked you to do this little project to make sure that you were really qualified and that you didn’t just BS your whole portfolio.

If that’s the case G, I suggest you start padding the materials costs and maybe hire on a few friends to help you with the final development. That’ll teach them.

Well, if you’re still reading this far into it, I guess I owe you some sort of something. So, I’ll leave you with an observation.

The coffee you get in Europe is really good. A latte here is a cafe con leche in Spain. The look the same. They smell pretty much the same, but the taste is very very different. I might convince myself that a mediocre meal is better than it is simply because of the company I’m with or the place I’m having it at, or even the price I’m paying for it. But coffee is coffee. I don’t have any glorious self generated ideas about coffee around the world. I drink it so that the gods of caffeination  won’t punish me with a head ache.

Now, the coffee I get at work isn’t bad. It might be better if the girl making it didn’t pour every ounce of hatred, malice and rat poison she has for me into each and every pot, but that’s just wild speculation on my part. I can’t prove any of that. The tasting better part I mean. I can prove the poisoning.

Any way, the coffee that I get pretty much anywhere in Europe, even France, is by far much better that what I can get at most local places here in the U.S. Starbucks makes a really good cup, but, aside from that, the place down on Howell Mill that serves the fair trade fresh roasted Colombian isn’t much different or better than what I get at Panera Bread. Sorry hippies, your BS marketing only carries me so far.

The coffee really is better Europe. It’s stronger, but in a good way. We tend to measure strong coffee by how much like road tar it can taste. All I can say is give up on that, the Turks have it in the bag. I really like the coffee I get over there, and I suspect that even if you get the same beans that they use, you’d never be able to reproduce the taste. It’s like a good whiskey. You can use the same process in Mississippi as they do in Kentucky, but the bottom line is, Kentucky water is iron free and rich in lime, and the Mississippi water isn’t.

Same with coffee in the EU vs the US. Different water, different metals, different equipment. All of those variables affect the flavor of the coffee. It’s the same reason Grandma’s skillet makes better cornbread than the one you picked up at Ikea ever will.

And that’s why I drink tea.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 8:27 pm. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.