Slam-Dunkin’ Donuts

As you may have heard by now, a doctor in North Carolina has figured out how to add caffeine to baked goods without any discernable taste. Already Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme and other major retailers are lining up to ensure that they can get these products into their stores.

I imagine that a buzzed bagel or dazed donut would be a boon for some. The cop who gets a sudden call or a trucker on the move wouldn’t have to deal with juggling a hot beverage and a donut. The student running late and jonesing for a Starbucks fix wouldn’t have to make two stops to also get a bagel. The harried commuter wouldn’t spill hot java in his or her lap, ending all those frivolous lawsuits. I myself have driven to work with a coffee in one hand and biscotti in another, and for the grace of living in the sticks, I stayed on the road and the only damage I caused was a few crumbs in my lap.

But does the world really need another caffeine delivery system? Caffeinated candies and gums have been around for decades, but now we have caffeinated water and those electrified Red Bulls not to mention a Starbucks on every corner, and now, it can be mixed into anything you can stick in an oven. What’s next? Toothpaste? Breakfast cereals? Why not just make a hypodermic you can jab into your arm before you even get out of bed?

Oh, but you would kind of lose the appeal of the chocolate syrup and whipped cream in a hypodermic solution, wouldn’t you?

I, for one, miss regular coffee. (back when I could drink coffee, that is) Just a plain old well-roasted, well-brewed cup of joe, black please, no sugar. No Sweet N’ Low, no NutraSweet, no honey, no raw sugar, no nothin’. No pumpkin spice, vanilla chai, gingersnap, peppermint. (Although hazelnut is not too bad, and of course I like that touch of Amaretto at Christmastime)

But why do people have to go screwing with everything? Donuts and bagels sell pretty well already. Coffee is a perfect companion, and the baked good makes it so that you have something to put in your stomach to absorb all that caffeine.

Now we’ll have people zooming around on all eight and then some. I smell a conspiracy here. It’s a well-known fact that caffeine makes you work faster. (this is why at my former job we’d often joke about the president front-loading the water coolers with caffeine) Someone in the government looked at flagging production figures and slipped the word out calling for more ways to get caffeine into Americans’ lives.

Hell, we’re already doing it to China. You’ve got a country of billions of people suddenly finding themselves in the throes of an industrial revolution, with demand so great their infrastructure can’t keep up. So they’ve got tea. But that’s not good enough to pump out all those underpriced goods! Send in Starbucks, planning on opening 2500 stores in the Sleeping Tiger, and get them hooked on double espressos! That’ll get those factories and transportation systems built!

Imagine if we’d had Starbucks and caffeinated baked goods during our own Industrial Revolution. (I mean, after those darned unions put the kibosh on women and kids working twelve-hour days and stuff) We would have dispensed with fossil-fuel burning cars by the Truman administration. General Eisenhower would have had a cell phone and a BlackBerry in the field. We could have peppered Germany with smart bombs and had that war over with faster than you could say “Luftwaffe.”

Just go pour yourself a cup of your baked good of choice and enjoy the fact that living in America gives you choices you can’t get in the rest of the world…like…like the right to privacy and the right to a government that represents the will of the people and…oh, never mind. If only they could infuse the donuts with some sort of agent that would induce amnesia.

Don’t think someone in some secret undisclosed location isn’t working on it. And he’s jazzed on Boston Cremes.