America needs ice

I like ice. I like it in ice water, coffee, a tasty Margarita, green tea and even the occasional soda. It’s a comforting experience when I encounter the right kind of ice in a restaurant beverage. I guess I’ve always thought of myself as an ice connoisseur, fully capable of ascertaining the quality of ice via my intuition and knowledge of the many types of ice I’ve encountered in my life. It does help that there are so many competing types of ice: The big chunk, never cared for it, tiny barreled ice, little crunchy asteroid-like ice, that’s my favorite. You’ve got smooth, rough, holes thru the axis, honey comb like hotel ice, shattered cubed ice, cloudy ice, clear ice, shaved ice and an assortment of others.

Ice, to me, is one of the hallmarks of our empire. The more of it around, the more powerful and self assured a civilization can feel. If around every corner there’s someone churning out ice to clink in glasses of Coca-Cola or Cosmopolitans, you get the feeling that the world loves you and wants you to relax and quench that parched thirst. In old movies, when people would arrive at their apartments, they’d head straight to the bar for a drink and the first thing they’d do was reach for the ice bucket and a couple of healthy cubes. When you’re slowly shattering that cube between your teeth and pondering the complexities of mass transportation, you know you’ve arrived to a confident, modern experience.  America needs ice.