You see that coffee lid? I hate that coffee lid. Who thought that was a good idea? Whoever invented that coffee lid can die a slow, blistering-hot death. What sense does it make to have a nice insulated styrofoam cup to protect your hand from the heat, only to have the piping hot liquid contained therein pass over an inch of thin, uninsulated, heat-conducting plastic with the tender inside of your lip exposed to it? You have to wait 10 minutes to get a decent drink, and then the coffee turns cold before you can drink it all.

It really makes for a very frustrating, often painful coffee drinking experience. And for some crazy reason, more and more gas stations are going to this style of lid. McDonald's and their premium blend or whatever the hell it's called also has this functional abortion of a lid on it.

To make matters worse, there is little room for steam to escape, which just makes everything even hotter.

Whatever happened to the good lid? ... This one:

For one, it's fun pulling that tab back and sticking it onto the button in the middle. For another, it's a sizable hole so plenty of steam escapes. Sure, the coffee won't stay as hot for as long, but coffee is typically too hot in the beginning anyway and if you can take bigger drinks and not run the risk of blistering yourself, you can drink it all before it goes cold anyway. But yes, these lids fit flush onto the rim of the cup so that your lip comes in contact with cool, insulated cup instead of plastic that's on the verge of melting.

On a related note, it's pretty infuriating when gas station clerks are too freaking lazy to keep a decent supply of straw next to the drink fountain and you inevitably end up with a straw disproportionate to the size of your cup. Either you want big drink and they just have tiny straw that will either get lost in the cup or leave you with 18 percent of your beverage unreachable at the bottom, or you get a 12-oz. cup and have a straw that is taller than half of Japan.

Back to the coffee, if the tragic tall-lid epidemic isn't bad enough, it seems more and more convenience stores bait you in with their 18 fancy-looking canisters of exotic-flavored coffees, only for you to get your cup and crank the lever or mash the giant button repeatedly in vain, as the canister is without fail empty. I think most of them have never even actually had coffee in them. They're just decorative pieces. Really, is it asking too much for somebody to brew up a batch of Arabian Summer Pecan Delight after 9:30 a.m.? I want to see what that's all about.

Anyway I'm going to shut up now before I run the risk of sounding like Denis Leary.