Abandonment

Our poor muffin, we've abandoned you! Happy New Year, just a tad late. It's been crazy around here: blizzards, lost jobs (more, and still). Madonna sitting in a minivan in front of me at the light at Grand River and Challis. No joke. Well, yes joke. The minivan's license plate said "MADONNA," although I don't actually think it was her. What a shame: she's my "Lucky Star." How's that for the pun of the day?

In other, more political news, Starbucks sucks. In Livingston County, choosing your coffee shop of choice is a big matter. Of course, the mainstream caffeine junkies choose Starbucks, who have been brainwashing coffee drinkers since 1971 with their ridiculous high standards and uptight social stature (see also: high cost). The somewhat less mainstreamers who have a taste for medium roast quality seek out Biggby, Coffee Beanery, or Tim Horton's (my preferred choice). The extreme underground coffee drinkers of the county prefer the "mom-and-pop" type shops found downtown. But what happens when frequenters of less mainstream/underground shops find themselves in Starbucks using a gift card their mother got for Christmas (this seems only to happen to the Freaks of Suburbia)?

We'd had Starbucks before, of course (not by choice), but coffee is coffee, no matter how expensive, bitter, and stuffed-shirt-like. So we graciously accepted the gift card, and made our way to Starbucks to revel in the cold weather/warm coffee phenomenon. When we got there, we didn't even know where to place our order (the door is facing the "pick-up" area, which doesn't exist at Tim Horton's), and when we figured it out, we didn't know what to order. The barista was a very sweet lady who helped us out a ton (and also informed us that you have to pay extra to make your latte vegetarian-friendly; what is this world coming to?), but our fellow patrons were not-so-sweet. Much like a Starbucks soy mocha latte. We are used to weird stares: a scene kid and an emo kid in Livingston County is almost unheard of. But nothing compares to the exaggerated gasps of horror that we received in Starbucks. Except the ones from the lady at Great China when we went to pick up our dinner the next week.

After this whole debacle, we still had almost eight dollars left on said gift card, which meant we'd have to go back. This time, the barista was some dorky kid (dorkier than us, imagine that!) who nearly gave me a plastic cut by snatching the gift card from my hand, and the guy who made our coffees was obscenely unfriendly, even though I tried being nice to him. They even forgot the chocolate drizzle on Shelby's vanilla bean frappuccino. The whole demeanor of the place said, loudly and clearly, "We don't take kindly to your type around these parts," like in that one episode of South Park. Except more dramatic-like. Ah, the politics of coffee.