I’m Baaaaaack (Well, for about Ten More Minutes)

Ugh. Little Sassy Schmoozer dragged me off to San Diego for a conference, and she didn’t let me go anywhere. I was able to fit in a few moments with Fluff in the Gaslamp Quarter, but that was it. What an exhausting trip. Successful, from LSS’s point of view, but exhausting for poor me.

My connector flight from Denver was delayed by over three hours, two of them spent on the plane. Originally, we were told that it was due to a mechanical problem, and we were grateful that the airline wouldn't send us hurtling through space in a broken tin can. Later, however, it came out that we were parked at the gate for hours because an unoccupied seat in first class was a bit “dirty.” Our pilot decided to pull a publicity stunt by delaying the flight until corporate headquarters cleaned it up. He handed out fliers and encouraged passengers to contact the media. If he’d handed one to me, I would have delivered this story, Don’t Fly United Airlines: They Suck. Thanks to a dirty seat, I was stuck next to a chatty real estate agent for nearly six hours. Fuck the dirty seat, I wanted to go home.

What that flight delay means for you is that you will have to wait for the few Fluff photos and the story of my brief fling with McNeighborBoy. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a rerun, the story of my freakshow Thanksgiving.

Off to New Hampshire, for a quiet (I hope) holiday. Happy Turkey, or as I call it, Happy Vegetable Pigout Day! Back soon.

GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This sucks! I moved out of Smalltownland in order to get my life back. No sooner do I move here, I fucking tore a fucking muscle, resulting in my basically having to spend every fucking night at home for fucking weeks. My leg’s still not better, but this past week, I have been walking well enough that I made tons of plans. With the exception of a very fun Grey’s evening with Carissa and another new friend, every single fucking plan fell through. Here’s my week:

Casual date with McI Tuesday—Cancelled on account of illness. Poor guy is still sick.
Dinner with friend—Double booked.
Drinks with another friend Friday night—Sister had her baby.
Saturday night/Sunday with out-of-town friend—Forgot she had made other plans.
Backup plan to go to art museum with sister today—Poor girl got a nasty allergy attack.

Result—Wind up in Casey’s last night chit-chatting with the middle-aged ladies and gently fending off the advance of a late-middle-aged guy and some other poor soul who couldn’t pronounce the title of the book I was reading while claiming to be really interested in the subject. I love Casey’s. It’s a great bar. Wonderfully close by, casual, comfortable, chock full of some of the most amazing characters. It’s a people watching extravaganza. They have good pizza, and they give you free popcorn. It’s a genuine townie bar—an endangered species these days. But it isn’t where I want to be on a Friday night.

Today I’ve done my best to amuse myself. I hung out at a café, had a late breakfast in a fantastic diner, went to a used bookshop and a couple of vintage clothing stores, and read. I’ll probably wind up going to some foreign film tonight.

I’m OK with doing things by myself. I enjoy it a lot of the time. But right now I’m so fucking frustrated that I feel like collapsing into a puddle of tears.

Oh, did I mention that it’s freezing cold and raining and it has been since Wednesday?

Or that Carissa, my dear co-worker and fellow Grey's addict, is leaving me for the Promised Land of Seattle?

GAH!!!!!!!!!

Hypocrites Much? Thoughts on the US Attorneys Scandal

Republicans. I can’t believe them. After getting caught firing eight US attorneys for exclusively political reasons so that they could use the misguided USA Patriot Act to replace the attorneys with ones more amenable to the Bush & Co. line, the Administration is acting like the Democrats are playing nothing but politics. Bush refuses to allow his people to testify under oath, charging that to do anything else would be a partisan “fishing expedition.”

I’m sorry, but what the hell? This is coming from the head of a party that impeached a president over a BLOW JOB. The sex life of the president had no bearing on his ability to effectively govern (and if you disagree with that statement, you’d best reevaluate your judgment of most US presidents), and yet the country was bogged down by Republican viciousness for years. But asking the White House to testify under oath about something that has a significant impact on the running of the country is pandering to politics?

I don’t think that the firing of these attorneys is the worst thing Gonzales has done. That said, he still needs to answer for it. Rove needs to address his role as well. And once that’s done, Congress needs to repeal the Patriot Act.

George W. Bush needs to shut up about partisanship already. He’s the worst offender of them all.

Soulless Starbucks

Yesterday morning, as I was struggling to wake up, I heard a story on NPR’s Morning Edition about Starbucks. Apparently founder Howard Shultz fears that his megacorporation is losing its soul. The story featured two ardent defenders of Starbucks, including a minister who compared the sameness of Starbucks to taking the Eucharist—one can take it anywhere. Needless to say, I woke up pissed off.

This story reminded me of everything that is wrong with America. While I’m glad that the founder of Starbucks has realized that the sterile sameness he has foisted on the world is indeed soulless, I am not convinced that Starbucks ever had a soul. And minister guy, with that logic, you should just go to McDonald’s—apparently their coffee (Newman’s Own) was ranked higher in taste tests than Starbucks coffee. You could have a Big Mac and a large coffee and call it communion.

I hate Starbucks. I hate their coffee; I hate the “atmosphere.” I hate their paper cups. I hate what they’ve done to music and to literature. I hate that people think that hanging out in a Starbucks is an authentic coffee shop experience. Starbuck would be pissed to see his good name so misused.

My hatred of Starbucks goes back to when the company took over Boston’s Coffee Connection in the mid-nineties. Coffee Connection was a local roaster with a number of small coffee shops in Boston. Dark and delicious, Coffee Connection coffee came in real mugs if you had your coffee in the shop. All was wonderful in Beantown until Starbucks came along and took over my beloved Coffee Connection. Bastards.

You can’t see the Coffee Connection label anymore,
but this is a Coffee Connection travel mug

When I got into organic and Fair Trade, my hatred of Starbucks intensified. Although the company has made strides in recent years to incorporate organic and fairly traded coffee into their line (though I’ve never seen organic brewed coffee offered at a store), Starbucks dragged its feet on the issue for a long, long time. When a Starbucks opened up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (a town with its own coffee roaster, Breaking New Grounds), a bunch of us teamed up with the Organic Consumer Association and handed out leaflets to the tourists going into Starbucks.

The thing was that while we wanted Starbucks to start carrying Fair Trade organic coffee, we also wanted the store out of our community. To this day, no self-respecting local sets foot in the place. Why have coffee in a place virally replicated throughout the world when you can experience a place unique in all the world (and that has better coffee)?

For the love of God, if you want a real coffee experience—one with soul—go and find your local coffee shop. Try Caffé Sicilia in Gloucester, Massachusetts, if you’re ever on the North Shore. Try 1369 in Cambridge. Go to Breaking New Grounds in Portsmouth. Find your shop and support it. That’s how you put soul into your cup.