This is the first time all week that I feel like I have time to post anything, and I have absolutely nothing to say.

He then continued for several paragraphs.

In terms of corporate culture, if the company I work for had the phrase “Our Lady Of” in its name, that is the only way it could be more Catholic than it already is. Catholicism seeped into the groundwater of this town long ago, and my company’s roots reach far below the local soil to drink deep, so it’s only natural. I find it strange, therefore, that our department’s monthly “Food Friday” reward has a March Madness theme that is being expressed through an all-you-can-eat hot dog bar on the first week of Lent. I feel like a woodland creature that just walked into a clearing and found an almost irresistibly baited trap, like everyone who grabs a wiener is going to get fired.

Although I guess that’s almost always true.

Maybe this is just their way of revealing what we all already suspected about hot dogs.

At the St. Louis Bread Company (what’s a “Panera”? wasn’t that the name of a metal band?) they sell a drink called the I.C. Mocha. (”I.C.” stands for “‘Icy,’ Cutesified.”) It can be sold as a coffee in the same way that a Snickers bar is sold as “really satisfying”; if there’s more than half a coffee bean in there, it struggles for air beneath an avalanche of chocolate milk and whipped cream, hoping against hope that some Saint Bernard smells it below the ice. (The ice, by the way, is the other thing that separates it from real coffee. Real coffee does not give you a throbbing brain freeze every time it touches your lips.) I cannot stand coffee, but the I.C. Mocha is my secret, forbidden love.

Today, the office network has been like Lucy, luring the Charlie Brown that is me with the promise of being able to do my job, only to yank the football out from under my foot just as it looks like I’m going to be productive. Out of frustration with its taunting (I’m up! No, down! Log in! No, really Psyche!) I took an early lunch and walked to a nearby Borders. (Apostrophe there or no? If not– if there is no Thaddeus Q. Border, Proprietor– I’m not quite sure what they’re going for with the name. “These are the bookstores that confine you, beyond which you dare not venture.”) While I was there, finally locating the elusive Penny Arcade collection, I strolled over to their little in-store café and saw a sign picturing a large, chocolaty mug full of whipped cream and entreating, “Try our new mocha!”

Because my universe and its laws are entirely self-contained and my thoughts are rare and fleeting, seeing this sign prompted no further consideration than, “‘Mocha’! I know that word! That’s like the word that makes them give me chocolate milkshakes at the Bread Company! I’ll say the milkshake word to the Borders lady, and she’ll give milkshakes. This is a good place.” So I got a Borders mocha (also known by some as an “actual” mocha) and had three quick gulps in me before realizing that a Borders mocha, rather than being a coffee-kissed candy confection, is actually thin, bitter molten poison. After choking for a moment on both the coffee and my rage, I collected myself enough to decide that no amount of intense dislike for coffee (the Germans would make it one word, Kaffehassen) would cause me to throw out something that cost $4 just seconds earlier. Nor was I about to return to the counter and ask for a new beverage, telling the barista, “I’m sorry; you need to take this back. Nowhere on the sign did it warn me that coffee was a hot drink made of coffee.” No, if I spent $4 on a mocha, then I would be drinking a mocha, nose held or not.

I am one of those people who says “Caffeine has no effect on me,” though it might be more accurate to say “Caffeine has no effect on me that I care about.” I think this mental blind spot is part of being human, or at least of being American. Every person I know thinks he has a good sense of humor and is often funny; everyone thinks that they are good drivers surrounded by homicidal sociopaths; and everyone believes that the universal laws governing the workings of the human body are true enough but do not affect them personally. At the very least, though, I am not normally aware of the caffeine I drink. I go to bed at about 1:00 every night, and I almost always pop open the day’s last can of soda at about 12:15, a syrupy kiss goodbye to the day. So this morning as I forced myself to finish my cup of liquid buyer’s remorse, nothing seemed unusual or concerning about the fact that I was force-chugging a large cup of full octane coffee on an empty stomach to get it over with.

I feel like a squirrel in a straightjacket. Right down to the nutty taste in my mouth. I’m pretty sure I could set someone on fire with my mind.

In addition to kicking down the doors of perception and making me wonder what it feels like to experience heart failure, my binge seems to have worsened my recent problems with mental acuity (probably caused by going to bed at 1:00 every night; human beings need at least eight hours of sleep every night, but that doesn’t apply to me) in ways that an imaginary audience watching my life would find very entertaining. When I got back from Borders, I took the iPod out of my bag, put a book in my bag, and then tried to take the iPod out of my bag. When I couldn’t find it in there, I frantically tried and failed to remember the last time I saw it (hint: four seconds earlier) and began to dump out the contents of my bag and desk to see if I could figure out where on earth it went (hint: in plain sight, six inches to the left of my bag, where I had personally put it with my hands). This went on for some time. I felt very stupid.

No one would have ever known about it if I’d just kept quiet. But I can’t make my fingers stop typing.