Starbucks

So I got a coffee in Starbucks the other day. Or ThreeBucks as they should call it, well ThreeBucksTwenty is what my coffee cost. Not the same ring to it though I suppose. It's not that I made a huge conscious decision to avoid it before but the thing is I pass it every week. Early in the morning on a Saturday. And I need a coffee but I don't go there as it's ten minutes walk to where I'm going. And I'm usually carrying a computer (why don't laptops weigh as much as lapdogs? In fact spidery little legs for self locomotion and fur would make nice additions to laptop design. They could sort of purr maybe during use. Anyway.) so I don't bother. But, there is no coffee shop between College Green, past the copshop on Pearce Street, down past Westland Row to the far end of Pearce St. Chef shops, kitchen gear, yeast retailers, fundaligionist creeepy fucked up fambly friendly young earth creationist Christian Worship Centres yes. But no coffee shops. I think to myself is this some kind of 21st century version of Joyce's game 'can you get from a to b in Dublin (in his mind, in Zurich or Trieste) without passing a pub (and no doubt a bracing restorative imaginary glass of wine)' except now it's a coffee shop. And you'd be doing it on google earth / maps.

Does absolutely everything have to have a web 2.0 interface now?

Needless to say we had the 'hilarious' I'm too stupid to talk to them thing. 'Large black coffee to take away please'. Fool! 'What kind?', 'oh you know, normal, black, americano, whatever you call it', 'normal or Americano?''Americano''With milk?' 'no black' 'large whateveryadadyadaddaa no room to go'. And there was no room in this giant litre vat they served me. So I spilt a bunch on the way to where I was going, soaking my hand in scalding coffee and soaking the cardboard sleeve that should keep your hand from getting too hot when holding it and the vat, when half full, toppled over and spread an oilslick a metre square on the carpet.
I read about WalMart's gallon jars of pickles (who wans a gallon of pickles?) now I saw it in action.

I'll make my own in future. It's at least as good, costs pence, isn't a two litre tub, and won't go all over the place.