Starbucks on trial

An independent weekly weighs how Starbucks has affected Portland, OR and whether it's evil in general. Conclusion: it's not as bad as knee-jerk chain haters think. But it's not as great as yuppies think. My main complaint is validated: "CHARGE #5: STARBUCKS IS HOMOGENIZING AMERICA. VERDICT: GUILTY AS CHARGED."

I'm still convinced the Starbucks I interviewed at last year should be sued for age discrimination, but since one of the subjects in this article was 28 -- the same age I was when the interviewer repeatedly reminded me I'd be the oldest one on the floor -- it must not be official corporate policy. I'm kidding, yet I'm not.

Free propaganda!

Get your free, no-strings-attached, anti-Bush bumper sticker here.

Amusing tidbits about Gideon bibles, loot left in hotel rooms, and money and notes left in books.

I'm reminded of one of my former colleagues, who said he wanted to go to bookstores and place notes in copies of "Infinite Jest" at page, like, 800. The note would say, "If you actually read this far, please tell me why" and include his phone number.

Last time I took a cookbook out of the library, I found a flyer from the local grocery store strike, begging customers not to shop at Albertsons. I guess the last borrower broke a picket line to buy her ingredients.

Ever find anything interesting in a book? Or a hotel room, for that matter? Drop a comment.

Blogging: Cheaper than therapy since 1999

For the record, call me insensitve, but I'm tired of grieving. I'm tired of going on about the tragedy of my dead friend whenever I've had a couple of drinks, though at least it's been three weeks since I told someone I barely knew about it. I'm tired of the places my mind keeps wandering into, worrying about who I'm going to lose next. It's been two months --is that too much time to spend getting my brain around things, or not enough?

Anyhoo, if you like to give to nonprofits, here are some options for your next donation. Yep, this is what set me off again -- this week.

"The rich are different from you and me"**

Some tidbits from the City of Beverly Hills Recreation and Parks Department:

* The "Etiquette & Social Graces for Children" class, including "Body Language & Poise," "restaurant Mannters & Table Settings," and a graduation dinner at a steak house. "It is recommended that the course be taken more than once."
* High Tea on the Terrace at Historic Greystone Estate. "Enjoy delicious assorted teas, tea sandwiches, petite desserts and more."
* Kindermusik Village, a course to "provide a stimulating and educational approach in introducing music..." to the "newborns to 18 months" set. Or, for older tots, the Mini Masters course for four- and five-year-olds can introduce your preschooler to Beethovan, Chopin, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rodin.
* Also at Historic Greystone Estate, a production of a play in which "smart, plucky Irene Porter loses her bid for a congressional seat...she turns to the two men closest to her for comfort: her campaign manager Dan and her devoted best friend Jerry. When both men fall for her - sparks fly!" Do hijinks ensue, too? How about hilarity?

Low-Carb Diets Can Cause Bad Breath

Naturally, this article is displayed with a banner ad for the Atkins Diet on top.

One down, 49 to go

Ever the skeptic, I said I'd believe it when I saw it. And as of Friday, it seemed to be in the hands of our ever-more-conservative Supreme Court. But it's official: Massachusetts is now the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. The city of Cambridge is busily burning the midnight oil, issuing late-night marriage licenses as we speak.

Nice to see my former home state (4 years) of Massachusetts, site of the Boston Tea Party but not much radical activity since, lead the way again.

This AP story is everywhere, but it's gratifying to see it on FOXNEWS.com: The International Brotherhood of Police Officers, which endorsed Bush in 2000, is endorsing Kerry this time, referring to "three and a half years of disappointing leadership."

The firefighter's union has been for Kerry from the start.

If Bush is going to try to keep living off 9/11 (He looked really angry and concerned, so he must be a good president!) then I feel justified in pointing out, HEY, THE ORGANIZATIONS REPRESENTING THE 9/11 HEROES(tm) DON'T WANT US VOTING FOR BUSH!

More than five months to go, people. Let's not give up just yet.

"If you believed they put a man on the moon..."**

Like Rick said, we've been anticipating May 16 like little kids hoping to stay up late enough to catch a glimpse of the Tooth Fairy. But like older kids who know it's probably not real, but want to believe in magic for a little while longer, anyway.

This Sunday is 20 years to the day that Andy Kaufman died. And the story his friends are putting out, which is overwhelmingly likely to be bullshit designed to keep us guessing (but intriguing nonetheless), is that he used to talk about staging his own death and re-emerging exactly 20 years later. They're throwing an exclusive party right here in LA on Sunday, just in case. Though logic dictates that now that we're expecting it, Kaufman wouldn't show even if he was alive.

I'm not even a huge Kaufman fan, and barely knew who he was until a few years ago, but still...personally, nationally, globally, we need something this truly ridiuclous to happen to save this year. The world has gotten so stupid that we need Andy Kaufman back to lampoon it. Otherwise, we need a new Andy Kaufman -- and, persecuted though he may be, Howard Stern ain't it.

Budding conspiracy theorists can read this and this (especially the very bottom of the page) for fodder.

For once, the Boston Globe decides not to be Puritan, and look what happens: porn published as Iraqi torture photos. I'd say hardcore porno is a little worse than Doonesbury saying "son of a bitch."

On further digging, it turns out a Boston City Councilor was displaying the fake torture pics of "US soldiers raping Iraqi women." That makes it less the Globe's fault -- and more of notorious rag The Herald stating only the facts that are convenient for them, surprise surprise! -- but still funny. The Boston Phoenix says " these photos had been exposed as fakes quite a bit before Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner and local activist Sadiki Kambon unveiled them at a news conference on Tuesday." I'm only saddened that conservative cranks like Drudge, WorldNetDaily, and the Herald are the ones powering this story.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's sad that pay phones are disappearing in the age of the mobile. The New York Times describes how Mark Thomas maintains a database of the numbers and locations of pay phones. It's been used to find runaways, etc, but dramatic applications aside, information is cool and I'm glad he's doing it. His site is at payphoneproject.com. Want the number for the pay phone in the basement of the Vatican? You got it. And it turns out the Nabisco factory in my hometown has an inordinate number of pay phones. Huh.

"Payday loan" places are everywhere in LA. I wondered why I never saw them before. Now I know: they're de facto illegal in Massachusetts. Good.

What are payday loans? As Slate explains:
"Many Americans—particularly those who don't live paycheck to paycheck—are unfamiliar with the payday-loan industry, one of the nation's fastest-growing and most depressing businesses. Payday advance companies offer tiny, short-term loans — a few hundred bucks for a few weeks — while charging annual interest rates that top 500 percent."

As a way of taking advantage of the working poor, it's up there with check-cashing places and the ridiculous percentages they extract from each check. Slate joins me in partially blaming big banks and their stupid fees for all this. If you're not financially savvy, these legal scams would be easy to fall for. And, as Angela Nissel explains in the Broke Diaries, you're stuck with check-bouncing places if you bounce enough checks at real banks and wind up on their mysterious blacklist of people who can't be trusted with a bank account.

At least I've never been that poor!

Rebranding corporate America

The comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For" calls Barnes & Noble "Bunns & Noodles."

We've all heard "Starsucks," "Windoze," "Micro$oft," etc.

Beer nerds sometimes call America's most popular brew "Budwanker."

The TV series "That 70's show" once featured a chain restaurant called "Blannigans."

Why does it look like I'm the first person to run with the "Blannigans" reference and webify the not-as-good joke "TGI Franchise?" It seems so obvious.

Sticking my toe back in the cold, cold water, here is my first paid journalism (not counting beer writing) for a long, long time.

I wonder if now is the time to buy stock in Krispy Kreme.

Lately I've been disgruntled about the new music reaching my ears. I like some of it, don't get me wrong, but on the "alternative" station I listen to it seems like most of the good tracks remind me of some band or another I listened to in high school -- notably the Cure, for some reason (Is there going to be a revival of whiny men in makeup? And would this necessarily be a bad thing?)

Just today, I was listening to the Pixies and wondering when the next thing would come along that would make me say, "What is this insane sh*t?!"

Then I heard it on the car radio. It was the music from "Karma Police" (one of my favorite Radiohead songs) mixed with the vocals from "A Day In The Life" (one of my favorite Beatles songs). Even more bizarrely, I'd listened to both of those songs today. Go hear Karma In The Life for yourself. I'll be downloading the rest of the tracks on that page shortly.

For the record, the other great mash up I've heard recently is Madonna singing "Ray of Light" over the Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen." That stroke of genius is available here.

Keep them bloggies rollin'

The beer blog now has an RSS feed. It's not of interest to the general public, plus it contains more cuss words and drunkenness than this page, but there you go.

In other blog news, my quieter half has come out of hibernation. If nothing else, you should visit the link in this entry because it makes me very absurdly happy. He is also available for your syndication pleasure.

If you're not down with this RSS/syndication thing yet, why the eff not? Go to Bloglines immediately and get your news and miscellany pushed to you to by the benevolent Aggregator Gods.

Why yes, another morbid-ass Iraq post

I'm sure approximately zero of you have been waiting with baited breath for my analysis of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

Regardless.

Trust me that I'm as horrified as anyone. And for the right reasons: this isn't the world's first incident of human rights abuses, and it's not like it shattered some illusion I had about America As Good Guys At All Times. It's just bad.

What's really getting me are those pictures. The shit-eating grins on the US military, in particular. And, really, the fact that pictures exist.

Homo sapiens is not a nice species. I believe that any of us have the capacity to get pissed off enough to torture someone. Who knows what it would take to get me to that point, but I believe it's there.

What I don't think I'm capable of is being proud of it.


***

If you haven't read any excerpts from Major General Taguba's report, I suggest you do. I haven't heard of anyone getting raped with a broomstick since Glen Ridge.

It turns out Hubert Selby died last week, while I was reading Requiem For A Dream. Sad news, but on the other hand, he beat the clock by about 60 years. This and other tidbits are in this neat rumination on life and death he penned in 1999.

I'll have to read Last Exit To Brooklyn now.

I shouldn't laugh while reading about corporate acronyms, but I did.