Hell froze over. Pigs flew. The end is coming. I'm becoming... one of them. I always thought i could resist, that I was immune to their charms and advertisements. I never thought that it would simply take a single encounter with a girl to get me started. I... drink coffee.
Seriously what the hell? Lol if anyone knows me, this would be the last thing that i ever thought would happen. I never really cared much for the taste of coffee, bitter and unflavored. It's always had this slight... sense to it that never really appealed to me. Besides an occasional once-every-3-years pick-me-up that I'd need, I just basically strayed away from the stuff. my dad drinks espressos like no other. He probably goes through about 6 double shots of espresso a day, including right before he goes to sleep. I've actually seen the effects it has on him. he starts to get slightly crankier and more easily annoyed should the espresso maker break. After years of hanging around that, you'd think I'd learn to stay away from the stuff. And for the most part, I did pretty well... until Dorothy.
I met up with Dorothy on the 4th, just a night to go out and grab some coffee. She wasn't doing anything, I happened to "be in the neighborhood" so I picked her up at 7:30 and out we went. Just went to the local Starbucks around the UCI campus. once inside, we quickly found an empty table and after laying down various coats and accessories, up to the counter we went to view the looming menu that beckoned to us. Now it should once again be said that I don't drink coffee and that the only reason why we agreed to coffee was simply because it was a casual encounter that was cheap and still a place to hang out while we talked. No having to worry about dinner, tips, waiters, etc... It didn't matter that I didn't drink coffee because I figured if coffee was what it was going to take to get a night to go out with Dorothy, then coffee I would endure. Little did I know however that she didn't drink coffee either. She actually ordered some sort of tea instead, leaving me there alone to quickly climb up the stairs to the attic of my memories to try and pull up some sort of starbucks-sounding concoction that I thought I had heard Angie order once. "Can I get a mocha with light whipped cream and caramel sauce?" And of course the guy stares at me, which freaked me out a little because I didn't know what the hell I just ordered. "... a mocha... frappacino?" What the hell is a frappacino? Who the hell names such things and why did they name it so? "Um... the hot one." Way to be smooth i know. He rolled his eyes a bit and realized I had meant to say a Cafe Mocha. Once we received our respective orders, i quickly went over the condiments counter to see if i could find anything that could possibly make this horrible vat of acid endurable and sprinkled in as much chocolate powder as I could without wanting to taste nothing but dust. Even took one of those wooden sticks of theirs to swirl it all in.
As I took my first sip, I silently prayed that I wouldn't suddenly just start having a coughing fit due to its horrid taste or that I wouldn't just spew out hot coffee unto Dorothy, like something out of a comedy. Much to my surprise... the damn thing actually didn't taste that bad. In fact, it even borderlined on tasting... good. Delicious. Dorothy and I just basically sat there for the rest of the night until they kicked us out at 11:30 and throughout the night, i couldn't help but keep taking a sip of this hot liquid nirvana after every sentence. In fact, we kept talking so much and I kept taking so many sips, that it wans't until the 4th vente cafe mocha that I realized that i was drinking coffee at such an alarming rate. My pulse wasn't even thumping like a herd of rhinos across the concrete but rather calm and level. Turns out that coffee doesn't do too much to me, except maybe even calm me down. i guess I'm more like my dad than I initially thought... aw hell. -.-x
"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no
decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy
one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat,
non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or
who on earth they are, can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of
coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall! Decaf!
Cappuccino!" ~ Joe Fox, You've Got Mail
Another great purpose of starbucks besides having the option to make daily life-altering decisions is simply to sit around and do whatever the hell you want. From a logistical standpoint, Starbucks was really ingenious when they decided not to be such a hard ass about the rules. A person could bring in food of their own choice should they care to such as a croissant, jelly pastry or even... pizza and Starbucks wouldn't care the least, so long as you were buying their own products of some sort of coffee. On a practical level, so long as you continue to buy their coffee then they'll even encourage you to continue to eat your pizza or pastry because they know that eventually, you'll want to get another coffee while you're eating. Eating or drinking at starbucks is really like renting an apartment. You're paying to rent out a chair or table so that you could lug around that huge heavy laptop of yours. You bring your laptop to Starbucks so that you would find some other atmosphere or environment that wasn't your own home, filled with distractions such as the internet, tv or roommates. or maybe you go to Starbucks because you love how close in proximity you are to your single source of life-elixer. Or maybe you just like Starbucks to go check out the opposite sex. Whatever the case is, Starbucks is really the place to be if you're a student. You're almost guaranteed to be able to find someone within your age group to connect with because Starbucks is now considered the not-so-secret place to meet to study or to hang out at. Gone are the days of a grease-table McDonalds or junk-filled bedrooms. In comes the defining place to be a pretentious intellectual coffee whore. Or so we strive to be.
According to a recent interview given by a Starbucks representive in the Apple Keynote address regarding the launch of the new ipods, Starbucks has some staggering statistics. It is the first franchise establishment to win a grammy award. The average consumer of Starbucks comes in every .8 days. That means more than twice a day. -.-x Starbucks opens an overwhelming SIX new locations per DAY. They really weren't kidding when they said that Starbucks was going to take over the world, one industry at a time. They now know that they have the market as far as an intellectual social gathering was concerned, now it was time to muscle their way into the music industry. And so now with their current partnership with Apple, any iphone or itouch user could directly download whatever current song Starbucks is currently playing in their overhead speakers and download it directly into their device. How easy. Simple. Talk about instant gratification.
What's next, a Starbucks PC cafe, to which each station had their own coffee dispensing chasis? Starbucks bobble heads that are given with every Happy meal purchase. Starbucks trading cards, keeping statistics of your favorite beverage on the back of its picture. Trade you a 1st edition cafe mocha half and half with light whipped for your 1st edition upside down caramel machiato, extra sauce. ^_~
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