The Enemy of My Enemy

I was in London a couple of years ago and found myself agog at all the Starbucks emporiums there were. It seemed to me from Fleet Street to Kensington High Street to Piccadilly and back there was a Starbucks on every block and a pub on every corner, and me with so little time.

Back here at home, I live in the [urp] burbs and spend way too much time transiting to my offices in the city and back again. Consequently, the only expedient spot to pick up breakfast-to-go is the nearby Starbucks at the strip mall.

Now I've always objected to mega-corps on principle. Their penchant for voracious expansion, anti-trust behavioral disorders, pounding the consumer when not screwing the labor (or while they're screwing the labor) -- you know the drill -- usually triggers my gag reflex. The best example, and only across the divide at the strip mall is a Wal-Mart. Google those SomeBitches when you have a year. Suffice it to say I don't do Wal-Mart.

As for Starbucks, I found them objectionable the day they bought out my favorite hang-out in Harvard Square (and corresponding franchises, of course), the Coffee Connection. Moreover, I laughed hysterically one Saturday night while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. An aside by Garrison Keillor when he referrenced "It's a Starbucks, "or as I like to call it: 'Ten Bucks!'"

Be all this as it may, a piece in today's Seattle Times has thrown them in a newer light:

A national Christian women's organization is accusing the Seattle-based coffee maker of promoting a homosexual agenda because of a quote by author Armistead Maupin, whose "Tales of the City" chronicled San Francisco's homosexual community in the 1970s and 1980s.

Remind me to explore further why I consider "Conservative Christian" as an oxymoron akin to "Jumbo Shrimp." And yeeaaah -- that's now the working title of all my future rants about the Holy Rolling Bible Thumping Arse Buggerers (and how's that for irony??) -- The Jumbo Shrimp Report. Watch for it!

Meanwhile, if you crave a breakfast sandwich, Starbucks' beats McDonald's' hands-f'ing-down. At least the eggamuffin at Starbucks is toasted, eliminating the rubbery texture. Moreover, ol' Mickey D's doesn't have Eggs-Florentine McMuffin's, now do they... ??

Throw in an Iced-Vente-Americano, and your total comes to $5.73. Thanks for coming by.