How To Drink Coffee Without Being a Prick  

You stumble out of bed, struggling toward consciousness, in urgent need of caffeine. You drag yourself into the kitchen. And there, ready and waiting, are 10 cups of coffee, brewed automatically, just five minutes earlier, as a consequence of a few simple steps and some alarm clock-style programming the night before.

Shots fired at the coffee-geek crowd. Frank Bruni extols the virtues of the Mr. Coffee drip coffeemaker, flying in the face of fellow gourmands who prefer the ever-growing crop of complex technologies and strict methodologies for what Bruni describes as "first and foremost a caffeine delivery system...It was medicine, just as food, stripped of its pretensions, is fuel. Expeditiousness matter[s]."

I'm with Bruni, the former restaurant critic of the Times and author of the recent memoir "Born Round". I do make my coffee with the French press, but I would love to have it ready when I get out of bed in the morning. And also I'm intimidated by the more esoteric strictures of the coffee-brewing crowd (swirl the pour. stir every x minutes. etc.)

Check the article for more good times. But no Mr. Coffees in my stocking, thanks.