So without coffee, I find myself drinking having more chocolate these days. I know, chocolate has some caffeine in it too. I'm passing on caffeinated teas, pop and coffee-drinks though.

I ended up only sleeping a few hours last night and figured that some hot chocolate would go a long way to keeping me coherent and mostly lucid. There's a machine at work that was developed, I think, by the research arm of NASA about eight years ago. It has hot chocolate and a bunch of coffee beverages in it. Well, it can produce the beverages from a spout on command - I can't say for certain where they originate.

I put my money in and press the "whipped hot chocolate" button a couple times (the machine is old; I have to repeat myself). Out pops the cup and lands in the robotic clamp. The door closes, the nozzle descends, and the Jetsons sound effects begin. The performance engenders anticipation in the test subject and the expected salivation response occurs. All is going according to plan. Then the door opens. Wait a minute. It skipped the part where the hot chocolate comes out. All the lights worked, the light up display told me helpfully that "DRINK 3905 IS ON ITS WAY" but there's no hot chocolate and the show's over.

I now have a problem. There's only one other place in the building to get hot chocolate and that one has marshmallows (hence gelatin) in it. Hot chocolate was my contingency plan when I left home this morning. This was supposed to be the sweet joy that would push back the urge to end it all for just one more day (by "it all" here I mean of course watching Will and Grace until 2 o'clock on Sunday night).

When reality doesn't work out, there's only one real choice. Decide that it's really your perception of reality that's at fault. Of course what I just saw didn't really happen. Of course the wonderful machine can dispense hot chocolate. Just put fifty cents in.

So I try it again. Again the door closes, the machine discovers the cup in its robot-gripper-clamp and wisely decides that one cup is enough. Then the sound effects start, the display announces the pending arrival of that wonderful drink 3905. The nozzle descends, but this time I notice something a little different. Some hot chocolate trickling from the bottom of my metal benefactor. That's not where it's supposed to be...

So we'll say that this coffee machine is more of a Genesis than a Mars Rover.

I'll say this though, when I went back to the vending machines later and found a loose Klondike bar waiting for a little push to come free... Well lets just say we're even now, me and the machines that vend.