Oh lordy. [link]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Would you pay $175 for a pound of coffee beans which had passed through the backside of a furry mammal in Indonesia?

Apparently, some coffee lovers wanting to treat themselves to something special are lapping it up.

Kopi Luwak beans from Indonesia are rare and expensive, thanks to a unique taste and aroma enhanced by the digestive system of palm civets, nocturnal tree-climbing creatures about the size of a large house cat.

Later:

So far, most of the orders have been from California.

She said, "Thank you." Wasn't that a nice thing to do?

Aww.

Dave Barry did a hilarious column on either that particular coffee...erm...fetish, or one that was basically the same, but involving another animal. I'll see if I can find it.

Why do people still think kopi luwak coffee is news, I wonder? Is it just that this time of year, orders are up because it's an unusual holiday gift?

Cindy, it was probably Vietnamese Weasel Coffee.

The Barry piece: [link]

And my point is made:

This column was originally published Nov. 9, 1997.

See how there's two dates there, Jess. I think maybe Barry's column first started getting published (in that paper) in '97. The other date is a March, 2005 one, which seems to match what the Miami Herald has, here: [link]

The Daily News link took forever to load, when I tried it from this page.

No, because I remember reading that exact column in high school. It's an old one.

I know I read it a while ago, but for me a while ago = sometime between last year and my birth.

I know I still lived at home when it was first published, because that's the last time I subscribed to a paper that ran Dave Barry columns.