Thursday, April 21, 2011

Bucking The Stars

Bucking The Stars

In honor of Earth Day Starbucks is doing a free coffee promotion. You basically bring in your mug and they'll fill you up with a cup of Joe. Wait, that didn't sound right. But you get what I'm saying.

They'll fill you cup. Which got me thinking, what is it about Starbucks that I don't like? I mean, it's a pretty bad store to begin with, even with the promise of free coffee. I can't be the only one to think so. For some reason like my own, Starbucks drove leftists to smash their windows during the anti-globalization protest.

So could it be the well-dressed shoppers who conspicuously consume their expensive products? How about something about the way they treat their coffee growers? Or is it because they are legally permitted to sell addictive substances, to children no less, while other dealers of other such substances are behind bars?



It's as if they are selling ideology with a nice little head of foam. They basically sell what amounts to adult soft drinks for $5 a pop while swirling a nice faux-culture around the whole practice. To me their coffee tastes too burnt.

I mean, free trade? Yeah. I guess that's one of the reasons why you could dislike them. The way they treat their coffee growers and misrepresent themselves as being fair trade when 90% of their beans are not. Starbucks is one of the major buyers of coffee beans, one of the worst commodities from a human rights standpoint, and has the market power to dictate fairer or more humane trade practices but chooses to be complicit to human rights abuse despite their healthy profits makes them a target for activist.

Not to mention that they're also pretty big on union busting and run down smaller coffee shops. But perhaps the most ironic thing is this embrace of Earth Day with free coffee when their hybrid oxymoron marketed consumerism-green living unique 'culture' is universally annoying regardless on how much you love their coffee. It's much easier and cheaper to buy caffeine via a 40oz 7-11 Big Gulp than it is to get it through coffee.

It really is a bit scary to think that there's people who drink Starbucks every day who end up spending something like $2,000 a year. If not in fact more because they toss in a tip for some unknown reason to subsidize the store owner's inability to pay a fair living wage and all the snack and other pastry bullshit they sell there.



Or perhaps you could try living life without a crippling addiction to a narcotic that constantly supports the oppression of the third world by capital. And don't give me that bull about free trade coffee. As much as we try to sugar coat it, there's not much point. And while I realize that just about everything supports the oppression of the third world by capital, it doesn't justify the fact that you're pushing for the sale of more beans. Maybe I just prefer my oppression old-style and that's why I drink tea more than coffee.

But if you are so inclined to get that dark addiction every day, you can just grind your own fair trade coffee every morning and then brew it in your french press. You'll be saving a good $2000 a year.

There's plenty of really good local roasters everywhere and they are almost always better than Starbucks trash coffee. If you're already enjoying bourgie lifestyle shit such as coffee as a recreational activity, you might as well get a real cup of good coffee in a cool place that actually serves good coffee.



What kind of moron thinks that Starbucks coffee is premium? I hate to sound like a snob, but the coffee Americans drink is all just basically melted ice cream anyway since their permanent child palates can't handle plain black coffee. Or maybe just a little bit of sugar and creme.

I'll gladly admit that I have been guilty of this very same action. Upon realizing that all I'm doing is just pouring mounds and mounds of sugar and milk into my coffee I realized that it was pointless to continue to drink coffee like that and for a long time just stopped.

Even over in the retail stores you're getting fucked on this one. Those Starbucks instant coffee things are around 7 bucks for 6 packets of it. So 6 cups of instant coffee for 7 dollars.. WHAT A BARGAIN!

And then you get the real bonus of instant coffee. You know that it taste like battery acid. Then there's those flavored instant coffees. They're good as masking the awful taste, but the chemicals used to make it taste like Pumpkin or some other strange flavor will eventually kill you.

Instant iced coffee has to be the laziest possible way to enjoy coffee as a beverage. You simply mix powder with room temperature water. Or you put ice cubes into some coffee. Though I guess I can't talk shit about that because I grew up drinking the room temperature coffee that my dad left sitting on the counter all day.

You can say that Starbucks is a strong representative of the combination of the act of consumption and absolution for that selfish act in one product that is so hot in the liberals democratic landscape. But hey, I love me some generic individualist liberal paradise, awwwww



It's also a little funny to listen to whatever Corinne Baliey Ray sounding shit they're promoting every month as if they're still in any way relevant. You're not cool anymore Starbucks. Get over it. But hey, if you're some bourgeois 20 something looking for a coffee shop to hang out with some comfy couches and some sort of music with tattooed Baristas and some books that go on the honor system, you could do a lot better than to choose Starbucks.

I'm still confused on how coffee is perfectly legal for kids to purchase when alcohol needs an age of 21 to buy over the counter. Sure, you can't get shit faced with coffee, but have you ever tried staying up with the use of coffee for a mid-term paper? The few times that I had, I could have sworn that my handwriting looked like nonsense scribbles. I seriously could have written better drunk.

And in case you were wondering, it takes 7-10 days to get rid of caffeine withdrawal symptoms if you are addicted. But then again, I'm sure many of you are wondering why you would want to withdraw from caffeine, you need that to get up and go. Even though you'll get as much, if not more energy from getting one more hour of sleep.



Or you could just go the complete opposite with it and hit up your local dealer for some cocaine. It does provide a much cleaner high than caffeine, even if you're paying like five times as much. But I guess you can't get drugs at your local corner store with full sanction of private enterprise and the State. No need to have to go to anyone's house and interact without the benefit of a defined and safe interaction script to follow. Many of you value this over the quality of the high any day.

To you I have this one simple suggestion in how to make your coffee super fucking strong:

How to make coffee super fucking strong
1. Brew a pot of coffee
2. Take the coffee and put it in the water reservoir of the coffee maker
3. Run it through again
4. Success. You have double the dose of coffee power

(Optional)
Instead of water you could use 5 hour energy to brew the first batch of coffee
Sprinkle some cocaine into it instead of sugar.

Oh yeah, the point of all this? I guess you could go to Starbucks and get some free cup of coffee today. Go forth and rape their insanely huge profit margins.. or the third world

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