I will be taking the rest of August off from blogging though may post an occasional brief note if something particularly interesting presents itself. In the meantime, I would leave you with this story and some comments:
Grammar stickler: Starbucks booted me
Starbucks' strange vernacular finally drove a customer nuts.
Lynne Rosenthal, a college English professor from Manhattan, said three cops forcibly ejected her from an Upper West Side Starbucks yesterday morning after she got into a dispute with a counterperson -- make that barista -- for refusing to place her order by the coffee chain's rules.
...
Rosenthal admitted she had run into trouble before for refusing to employ the chain's stilted lexicon -- balking at ordering a "tall" or a "venti" from the menu or specifying "no whip."
Instead, she insists on making a pest of herself by ordering a "small" or "large" cup of joe.
This story is a revelation to me, for when I go to Starbucks, I, too, refuse to order "tall" or "venti"; I always order a small or medium, usually a cappuccino. I had always felt a small frisson of fear at my temerity, subliminally realizing that I risked arrest and persecution for my thought and speech crime of refusing to assault the English language, however, the revelation I experienced upon reading this story was that I might be part of a movement, small now, but growing.
When middle aged Academics and Shrinks rebel against the destruction of our language, can complete upheaval of our system be far? If the 1960's is any guide, all we need now is a protest song!
Luckily, I found one! Here is a song that can become our movement's anthem. (Note, I have carefully updated from this from the 1960's, the era of the Folk Song Army, to make it work for the 2010's.)
And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into your Congress critters office wherever you are, just walk in say "Congress critter, You can get anything you want, at Starbuck's restaurant." And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't arrest him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots* and they won't arrest either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of Starbuck's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of Starbuck's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement.
And that's what it is , the Starbuck's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement.
Here's the original, updated by the composer:
Arlo Guthrie Alice's Restaurant
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* Faggots is an archaic, non-PC word for homosexual that used to be merely obnoxious but is now illegal.
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