In Flames

I got home today, and I go out into the kitchen to make myself some of my delicious homemade spicy BBQ sauce, which consists of, well, secret yet delicious ingredients, when I came upon a most disturbing scene.

Maybe later I'll post a pic, but basically, well wait no lemme give you some background. It's better from a writer's perspective, and it's more engaging I think for the reader.

See, I'm not much of a coffee person. When I was young, my brother and I used to hate waking up to the house reeking of coffee. We had a saying, that it tasted like hot water with a brown crayon dipped in it. We were consistently nonplussed at the thought of people actually liking it.

Over time, especially since being in Japan, and having it offered to me basically every ten minutes cause without it the business world would come crashing down on itself, not that it already hasn't, I've come to accept coffee. Not like it, mind you, but accept it. Saki drinks coffee, so I keep some at home for when she's here, and for when I'm sleepier than I am drunk, and need a pick-me up.

The smell, which for me is the worst, is avoided luckily by Japan's freakish love of instant coffee. Maybe it's the fact that they ALWAYS have a pot of hot water because of the incredible amount of tea they drink, so it's convenient to use instant. Maybe it's because you can control the concentration of coffee to water, which is also convenient for people that want strong ass coffee. But who knows. For whatever reason, that's how it is, and like hell am I going to tolerate having a coffee maker in the house.

My roommate, however, being an online gamer on a level far surpassing my own, is routinely up until 5am raiding, and as such, consumes an unholy amount of instant coffee. How he does this is beyond me, but that's the reality of it. He really loves his gaming, so much so that when he got here, he went out and constructed his own gaming computer, built it to his own spec, so he could maximize his gaming experience. His old headphones just weren't cutting it, so he went and bought some of those pro-gamer ultra headphones with built in mic so he can use Vent or whatever EQ2 players use for raid voice chat. He leads raids sometimes, so, I can understand the necessity.

But you see herein lies the rub. I have a coffee chugging raid-leading professional-grade headphone wearing gamer as a roommate, and this is problematic. Why you say? Let's take a look:

What do you need to make coffee, namely of the instant variety?
1) A cup
2) Instant Coffee
3) Hot water
4) (Optional) Stirring utensil

Let's focus on number 3, since it's the only thing that requires any effort whatsoever.
How does one go about getting hot water?

Well, like I said, no hot water maker, so that leaves the microwave and the stove. My roommate uses a thermo-insulated metal plated coffee mug, so, that kinda eliminates the microwave, leaving the stove. Let's just assume the vast majority of semi-rational human beings thusly use a teakettle to heat up their water. That's what we do.

Now let's look at the teakettle. How are these things designed? Well, I think the predominant feature that sets teakettles apart from other kitchen items is its unique spout with lid, complete with little hole.

What's the purpose of that hole anyway, one wonders? Well, in order to produce that signature teakettle whistle, silly! See, the water heats up, and starts eventually to boil, this produces steam and the resulting water vapor creates pressure inside the teakettle which eventually jets out through that tiny hole in the lid at such a velocity that it whistles, and quite loudly at that. So loudly, in fact, that it's pretty damned hard to miss it.

Pretty damned hard, but not impossible. Especially when you have professional-grade headphones, and are leading a raid and can't hear a damn thing even when it's a foot away from your face.

Now that I've given you some backstory, can you guess where I'm going with this? A little more interesting, perhaps? Feel more involved? Good. Maybe now you'll understand exactly what I thought when I saw the black and white remains of our teakettle, the plastic on the lid melted, the metal fused with the spout itself. Oxides of whatever metal made up the pot caked around the bottom, now completely white. I thought, for a moment, about the fact the whole house could have been burning down and he wouldn't have realized it. I thought briefly on how long it would have taken for the kettle to reach that point. All the water had to boil completely off, and then just sat there with the flame under it for quite a while. Turns out it was over an hour. All the while, it was screaming its ass off whistling, and no one was around to turn it off, except the guy who was boiling it in the first place, who had completely forgotten and couldn't hear it at all.


Ugh. Love my life.