The saddest part to me is that when people have the rare chance to purchase good coffee beans, they do not realize the responsibility that comes therein. No one takes into account that they are, in fact, pouring gross amounts of chlorine over their coffee beans; no one considers that the temperature of the water, or the coolness of the carafe, or the thinness of the mug might have some small part to play in brewing a good cup of coffee.

So when, by some miraculous chance, the right factors combine to allow someone to make a craft brew at home (I leave out the possibility of work, because we all know that never happens), they immediately destroy it by not even tasting the black stuff solo, but by immediately covering the delicious but delicate flavor with toxins and ultra pasteurized dairy products. What happens more often in the pursuit of good coffee is that people assume that purchasing expensive or locally roasted beans are enough, then go on to mass produce this supposed high quality coffee in cheap electric coffee makers. They are the ones who would buy the angus burger at McDonalds and be surprised that they taste like McDonalds.

Is there any hope of respite from bad coffee or poor taste? Perhaps. But it’s gonna take work, and care, and patience. Taste buds are difficult beasts to retrain.

The feature, released to developers in the latest beta iOS5 download, will display suggested response for approval before sending. Eventually, the iPhone 5 will learn enough to be able to automatically generate and send a response. This response came from the availability on my calendar, and apparently my Facebook interests as marked by “pints with british chaps.”

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

As the sky turned black, U2 finally took the stage with a new song, rolling right into Even Better than the Real Thing. And it was. The stadium exploded. Straight from the Real Thing to The Fly to Mysterious Ways to Until the End of the World. The show could have ended there and I would have been infinitely happy. No, seriously, these are four of my favorite songs of all time, back to back, live, feet from the band themselves.

But the show actually goes on.

Bono is on fire by this point, and I am jumping up and down like the piston of the engine powering the whole thing. Get on Your Boots only adds to the energy so that the crowd is in a frenzy. Not the frenzy you see in concert DVDs, where the inner circle is a continuous moshpit, but a mild frenzy nonetheless.

At one point, Bono pulls a guy up from the front row and they scream into the microphone together. He’s only there for 30 seconds or so, but by the end he’s having a hard time keeping up with Bono’s dancing. Try to flail your arms like an Irishman. Hilarious.

In a city of masters, we will stay students. Will you sings with us? So began Still Haven’t Found What I’m looking For, during which Bono jibes at us: You’re a little sharp (that’s a joke).

Then, though my mind was already blown, Bono convenes a brief meeting with The Edge. Clearly, the setlist is being modified. Suddenly, Johnny Cash is on stage for two verses of The Wanderer. Forgive us, Johnny. Feel like I should take my shoes off when I’m in his company.

Zooropa, Stay (Faraway, So Close), Beautiful Day, Elevation, Pride, Miss Sarajevo, Zooropa, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo, I’ll go Crazy, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Scarlet.

The rest of the show was beautiful, with Bono and The Edge soaring to melodies never before recorded. Adam was as solid as ever, truly a rock amid all the bassists of the world. And Larry. Can’t thank you enough for making this happen.

Walk On, One, Amazing Grace, Where the Streets Have No Name; Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me; With or Without You, Moment of Surrender.

Amazing transition, per usual, from Amazing Grace to Streets. Still gives me chills to hear it.

Encore.

This is the theme of our whole show. This song is called Moment of Surrender. Thank you, Lord. While The Edge blasted the bridge, Bono raps where were you when they crucified my Lord? Where were you when they crucified my Lord?

Then, though we were begging the band for more, U2 were clearly walking off the stage when Bono turns around, has some strange conversation with a guy in the front row, and then helps him on stage. A blind guitarist. Get a guitar for this dude. You can get him my guitar… a little acoustic guitar…. Dude’s gonna play some guitar. He dedicates All I Want is You and plays with Bono singing along, and then Bono gives him his green Irish Falcon guitar. Astounding. The fans are in tears, screaming their support and amaze, and the show was over.

In denying the natural place reserved for longing and error in the human lot, the bourgeois ideology denies us the possibility of collective consolation for our fractious marriages and our unexploited ambitions, and condemns us instead to solitary feelings of shame and persecution for having stubbornly failed to become who we are.

Alan de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work