Daniel Coffeen

Daniel is an independent writer, reader, teacher, and philosopher. Follow him on Twitter here.

My Fetish Jealousy

I have the same jealousy of fetishists. They know exactly what they want, exactly what will sate them. Me, I am overwhelmed by the choices, the vast selection. I see women on the street and I can imagine myself, more or less, with all of them. And this stymies me, leaves me immobilized and wanting. Meanwhile, the guy who digs smoking chicks with tiny boobs knows just what his night will entail.

Tequila, My Love, My Lifeline, My Teacher

For the spirit I sing of is a life giver, a life affirmer. Unlike all other booze, tequila is a natural upper: it makes you high, not sloppy down. With tequila, you don’t feel drunk; you feel, yes, high. Really. So be careful. A long time bourbon drinker, I began to find the weight of whisky too much for my increasingly fatigued frame. And so I reached for a lighter elixir and found it in the strange, heady brew of the agave…

A Less Bloody Ethics: On ‘True Blood’

The ads for True Blood play on this: “Thou shalt not crave they neighbor.” But of course we do crave each other –– for love, sex, money, nurturing, healing, playing. The dictum of the ad is ambivalent, a supersession of the known moral code. Yes, it tells us, there is an ethics. But they are not certain or fixed because human relations are contractual and complicated.

Television on ‘The Wire’: Extension, Expansion, Proliferation

The Wire performs what television can formally be, what it formally wants to be, how it wants to go. Television is not suited for the climax and dénouement that Hollywood loves so much. We watch television after work, in our pajamas, in our most intimate settings; it is intertwined with our lives. Television is not up there; it’s right here, in our living rooms.

Rethinking Environmentalism

The problem is not with how we treat the Earth. It’s with how we treat ourselves. We work 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. And thanks to microcomputing, we work all the time. All the time. There is no leisure, there is no pleasure.

The Horror of Whole Foods, or The Obama Effect

Listen, I am attracted to Obama just as I’m attracted to the fine produce of Whole Foods. But I am not so insane as to believe that voting for that guy or shopping at some goofy supermarket changes anything.