Monthly Archives: October 2009

Now I’m really going to blow your fucking mind.

QUESTION:

If a Starbucks has nothing but coffee, and it falls over in a forest, is it really a Starbucks?

I don’t know.  But what I do know is that I have to be at work at 7 every morning this week.  It’s brutal enough due to the fact that it’s a week before the time changes, so getting up at 5am is  like getting up at 2am: just as dark and only a little less stupid.  And I know that it bothers me that the only espresso fill-up station on, near, or around my commute is an awful Starbucks in a grocery store next to the train (which is so weird to begin with: it’s like the train platform has a grocery tumor, and the fruits & vegetables section in the grocery store has a coffee shop tumor…some kind of creepy transportation/fresh food/greedy coffee chain fusion.  People sit in the loungey area with their laptops out, messing with their iPhones and trying really hard not to look like they’re in a filthy chain grocery store coffee chain shit bin.).  So anyway, the only point in going into one of these places is to get a fancy espresso drink.  If I wanted a damn $3 cup of coffee I can brew at home for a hundredth of the price, I’d be an idiot and someone should hit me in the face.  I want a Venti Somethingorother, dammit.  I’m tired and I need a shock to my brain stem.  So it’s really stupid when you walk up to the counter and give them your order and it takes a whole twenty minutes to say it (I believe I’ve mentioned that I’m an asshole), then they say “Our steamer’s broken.  So only coffee and tea.”

I’d like to know how Starbucks is a Starbucks without steaming capabilities.  I don’t see what now separates the grocery store Starbucks from a giant coffee-shitting anus.  I’ll get my shit coffee at home, thank you.

Cupcake Masterpiece Theater

So yeah.  I did a little search for “starbucks cupcakes” because I was going to point out that Starbucks really messed up when they stopped making the Vanilla Bean and Triple Chocolate cupcakes.  After they knocked that one out of the park, they decided to roll it back a little bit and start making these awful red velvet cupcakes, and I guess part of making them is leaving them out on the counter overnight, and also adding giant spoonfuls of baking powder and not mixing it in properly.  Those things are like biting into a rock that bleeds.  A far cry from the cuppycakes of old:

Upon my search, I found the first cupcake, other images of which you can find at the blog whose credit I have left on the stolen Starbucks cupcake picture.  If you can’t tell, I am not going to mention any names because I am about to make fun of her/him/it:

“As for the Starbuck cups, i did a google search to see what the Starbuck’s logo looked like since i never really studied it before. So after finding some great pictures, i begain the painstaking effort of slowly painting on the logos onto the cups.. which trust me is one of the toughest things I’ve ever done due to how tiny i had to make the Starbucks cup in order to fit it onto the cupcake. Trust me, painting on the logo onto a cup that is smaller than my thumb is not the easiest thing to do. I could feel my hand shaking with each stroke of my brush and i had to hold my breath every time i lay brush to cup. Whew!!”

Painstaking effort! It’s not easy!   Trust me!  TRUST ME!!!

Jesus Christ.  “…lay brush to cup”???  Was that a cupcake blog or a Hallmark family drama?  Oh, anyway, thank God Tammy got that Starbucks logo painted on all right.  I bet she was so tired after, she had to sit down on the sofa and have herself a whole glass of 79 cent grape soda from the dollar store.

Then you’re outta luck, PAL.

At work, I am sometimes forced to get coffee at this place in the basement cafeteria called “Java City!”  They’ve got this big round sign with a bunch of tall brown buildings on an orange background, I think that’s supposed to represent Java City With Exclamation Point.  I don’t know about you, but just the logo for Java City! makes me feel kind of like I might throw up from caffeine overdose.  Every time I walk by, I swear every fiber in my being gets really excited and then screams “OH NO” simultaneously, and hell, I’m surprised I haven’t suffered a seizure and collapsed on the floor in front of the Java City! kiosk simply because of their marketing.

There’s a Starbucks across campus (people around here say “across campus” to mean “in another building”…any building.  It could be the building next door.  It could be the adjoining building…which, in this case, it IS).  So I went there for a quad shot.  What do you know?  Their milk steamer was working just fine, they were all using it to blow steam up each other’s asses in their downtime.  They had a lot of downtime because the espresso machine was broken.  So yeah, I had to walk my ass (which is fast taking the shape of my desk chair) ALL THE WAY BACK ACROSS CAMPUS and hit up Java City!

Back at the Java City!, they keep their workers imprisoned in a 2×2 pen, which is equipped with everything in the world you’d need to make anyone sick.  The Java City! employees are not happy to see you because it means they have to take all their fingernails off so they can pull a shot.  They announce your drink order, get it wrong, then when you correct them they scream THAT’S WHAT I SAID over the sound of the steamer.  Then there’s that giant fake city looming over your head like it’s about to collapse on you.

So, another question: if everything you need to make floofy flavored coffee drinks can fit in a tiny booth, why the hell do we have Starbucks, hmmmmm?

Anyway.  I think Java City! would be the city you’d go to if you planned to die from a stress-related heart ailment.  Java City! would do it to you, for sure.

And if you sit in the Starbucks in the grocery store in the train station, sipping your latte, and you say into your iPhone “Yeah, I’m at the ‘Bucks…” then I hope you go find yourself clutching your chest in a Java City! sewer someday, pal.