On Many Subjects

the best post and smile to start my day.

good one.

i kinda like starbucks... i resisted them for years until i found a gift booklet worth about $100.

i think they changed an aspect of our culture in that we no longer have to deal with clique mentality at our gnarly neighborhood throwback to the 'sixties'.
now we can remain anonymous and mind our own business nursing a cappuccino for two hours of writing and wondering. and there's one within walking distance wherever i am.

As I read your entertaining anecdote it reminds me of the surreal world these cafecaballeros seem to inhabit. I must add that I have little experience of Starbucks (did I hear some one now murmur "You are fortunate"?) because that type of social enlightenment has never reached our town. Starbucks prospers in far flung overwhelmed places, in our equivalents of Fawcett City, Gotham City and Metropolis. Starbucks missionarys have never opened up a Starbucks Chapel in our town but, like that first shore landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, it may happen one day, while our unsuspecting people are drowsing.

But now, in our local town, not far from where I live, a "caffe nero" has opened. It's something of a chore trying to read and to understand the 'essential' difference (I use that word because if "essential" does not apply then my logic tells me the list need never exist) between the various methods of making (mixing?) and serving up the coffee and describing it under various names.

I went in to this place and I asked for a coffee. Barrista looked at me and began his litany..."Do you want a frappucino, frappurati, frapparoca, fraaparista, latte, lattemenoslatti, latteconlattepoco, lattefrattupolini?"... the menu/list/description was a long one. "Do you want an americano with or americano without?" I want a black coffee please, colombian ground beans, add a dash of hot milk, in a small cup, very hot. Barrista's eyes narrowed but his grin never faltered."Do you want a small, regular, medium, large?" I began to relax. Small please. The idea of 'tiny', the image of 'miniscule, the prospect of 'vanishing proportion' never entered my mind.

Barrista turned to the robot behind him. It gleamed. It had many wheels. It had nobs and furled brass levers. It had lights that glimmered and lights that shone with a fierce red glow. Barrista hunched forward and although I craned my head in profound curiosity I could not see what he was doing but could hear a hissing and muted rumbling sound coming out of the robot.

Barrista turned and with his triumphant neverending grin presented me with.... a thimble of dark liquid and on that surface a smudge of white lingered. I am not usually slow in coming forward with comment but I admit I was taken by surprise. I paid the incredible tarrif (approx.four dollars) and sat down. In a single swallow the coffee was no more. I mused on whether or not I should go back to Barrista and reason with him, tell him my own learned estimate of what "small" means. But Barrista was exceedingly busy. His indestructible grin shone as he looked at someone else in line and asked ...."Do you want a frappucino, frappurati, frapparoca, fraaparista, latte, lattemenoslatti, latteconlattpoco, lattefrattupolini?"

isn't loku in fine form all of a sudden. hey that's quite an account of your first encounter with the new wave of coffee peddlers. no matter what we may say, people go out to these places where people congregate amiably for only one, albeit unconscious, reason. sex. or the lack of it.

now starbucks has recently innovated, even before your lovely diatribe, brother,they are now offering a normal cup of coffee for a dollar. times are hard.

i think it simply became..."can you spare a buck?".