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Albert Camus/the Plague

0 (0%)

Nick Cave/And the Ass Saw the Angel

0 (0%)

Leonard Cohen/Beautiful Losers

1 (11.1%)

Neil Gaiman/American Gods

5 (55.6%)

David Mitchell /Ghostwritten

2 (22.2%)

Chuck Palahniuk/Survivor

0 (0%)

Thomas Pynchon/Gravity's Rainbow

0 (0%)

Tom Robbins/Still Life with Woodpecker

0 (0%)

Salman Rushdie/The Satanic Verses

1 (11.1%)

Total Members Voted: 8

Voting closed: October 30, 2005, 03:53:51 pm

[Golfhaus]

This may just be the Jack talking*, but of the people I converse with on the Internet, this is the only group that I could see myself enjoying sitting down on an IRC channel and having an hours-long chatfest with. With or without liquor, but the Jack is saying "definitely with."


* and there was certainly enough Jack to start talking

[misterqueue]

Wait.. drunken IRC is bad?





Shit... you guys... man.....   kill me now.

[side_show]

I am all for drunken anything.

Also, I just got the book today, so I'm thinking, maybe we extend this a little for a time over the holidays when we may actually all be drunk and at home at the same time anyway?

[Doc]

IRC book club would be very cool methinks, apart from anything else a real time conversation with people from this board would be the Business. I'd like to see how the standard of witty reparte fairs without several hours to agonise over comma placement. My prediction: Reasonably well.

Any chance if this happens it could be a weekend though? I'm on the other side of the world here which means I'll either be getting drunk at like noon or 2am depending on when you guys have it.

[arkabee]

got the book this weekend at a, barnes and noble?, there was a coffee counter int he middle of the store, so i thought i'd get a cup of coffee before i had to get back to the hair dresser to pick her up.

i'd heard comedians on several occassions make jokes about starbucks propensity to name their "drinks" stupidly and especially their sizes.  i've also heard for years that starbucks is shit coffee.  in the 90s my parents went to seattle to visit friends and brought me back a starbucks t-shirt.  i'd never been to a starbucks.

so i had american gods and a stephenson tome in a little bag in my hand and i waked up tot he counter of what was a starbucks in the middle of a store and i immediately thought "ha ha, they make jokes about there being starbucks everywhere, haha, this one is INNA STORE!" and i looked that motherfucker right in the eye and said "i'd like a regular coffee, please" and she looked right at me and said some words.

i didn't know what words she said, at first, because she WASN'T SPEAKING fuck*ng ENGLISH.  i believe i politely said "please?" or "huh?" and she repeated her self and used the word "size" this time.

i said "um, i'd like a regular coffee, nothing fancy".

she asked me what SIZE?

i told her i would like a small coffee, regular, nothing fancy.

she repeated some words i was not familiar with, and then my brane recognized that i needed to look up at the sign with prices and shit on it above my head in an attempt to bivouac myself into the comfort of context.

and, like a bad cliche, the heavens opened and a beacon of light shone down upon the price sign above my head and i realized that those comedians who joked about the sizing at starbucks were not joking.  THEY WERE NOT TELLING JOKES.  they were simply complaining.

because a tall is a small, and then it's a grande, i think, and then somehting else.

so i looked at this woman, straight in the eye, and i said, i said to her i said:

"so.  a tall is a small?"

and she looked me in the eye and with out an OUNCE of irony nor any impression of any familiarity of this conversation in her past she looked me in the eye and she said to me she said:

"yes"

so i told her i'd like a tall regular coffee.

it was quite possibly the worst coffee i've ever had.

to explain, i drink a lot of coffee.  i enjoy coffee. i'm addicted to coffee, and i enjoy the addiction.  however, i don't drink good coffee, i drink folger's or hills brothers and i don't believe i've ever ground coffee.  i love gas station coffee and coffee and waffle house.

i don't drink particularly good coffee.  on occassion, i drink instant,only i use creamer with it because it's not real good.

i've had good, expensive coffee before.  and i thought, hey, this is good.  and as soon as it got to gulping temperature, i drank it all.  and that's why i drink cheap coffee.

so, this small/tall cup of starbucks coffee that i payed one dollar and seventy cents plus tax for sucked.  it was burnt and it was not anything to write home about prior to it being burned alive.


so, that being said, i've been reading american gods, well, religiously since i got it, and it is gripping.  dude can write a fuck*ng sentence, that's for damn sure.  i feel connected with the characters, i feel sympathy for the characters.  the plot is pulling me along.

i really liked good omens, it made me feel cheerful.  i'd assumed it was the pratchett i was liking.  apparently the gaimon was just as good.

after finishing this book, i plan to read his other books.  i have even decided that it is not an impossibility that i might read his sandman books, provided i can kick a goth kid after finishing each issue.

[side_show]

interesting.

The starbucks staff must be specifically trained to enforce the starbucks sizing lingo, because I ran into the same thing the only time I ever got a coffee there.  I'm opposed to starbucks on so many levels that I only enter the place when forced to, and even then usually only get a cup of water, also I refuse to give that place a big "s".  but I've been physically in one on a few occasions, and every single time I see the staff enforcing their weird sizing names.  Also, I'm sure I've heard a comedian do a bit about the same issue, so it sounds like it's a global issue.  Even when I repetedly asked for a small, it seemed that the staff was unwilling to serve me until I said "tall" instead, and it made me feel all gross and sticky to say it.  

Thank you for complicating what should be a simple human exchange with awful branding language, starbucks.  Thank you.

[arkabee]

Thank you for complicating what should be a simple human exchange with awful branding language, starbucks.  Thank you.

the marketeers, they hold the strings.
they like to fuck with things just because they can.
the oval table of the Illuminati council is a thing to behold,
ancient woods, rare metals, an amalgamation of form and function,
of art and science.

it is, however, surrounded by highchairs.

what is the resultant difference between a mature pyromaniac who understands the consequences of his actions and yet continues on because it is love tha he feels when he watches it all burn, and a small child who has no comprehension and thinks the fire is pretty?

i must confess that i drink "fancy coffee" on occassion, i will mix half coffee and half capiccino concoction from the machine at gas stations.

yesterday, i tried english toffee.  it was divine.
don't look at the liquid, however, unless you really like the rainbow sheen you see on gasoline and other oils.

you people should be reading the book, it is excellent.

[miles]

so i looked at this woman, straight in the eye, and i said, i said to her i said:

"so.  a tall is a small?"

and she looked me in the eye and with out an OUNCE of irony nor any impression of any familiarity of this conversation in her past she looked me in the eye and she said to me she said:

"yes"

so i told her i'd like a tall regular coffee.

it was quite possibly the worst coffee i've ever had.

Don't know if you've ever worked in the service industry, but I guaran-fuck*ng-tee she gets this everyday.  She knows that it's fuck*ng stupid that a Tall is a Small, and while the first 30 times it was pointed out probably produced a chuckle or an ironic glance, she's fuck*ng sick of it by now.  She's probably polite (probably because she's required to be), though, and realizes that many people are encountering this for the first time, and so instead of rolling her eyes and grumbling, she just politely answers the question, but she's far too sick of humoring people to do anything else.  All I'm saying is that probably she's not stupid, she's just stuck in this job because they actually pay pretty well (relatively speaking anyway) and doesn't want to be there anymore than you do.

But yeah, Starbucks sucks.  I hate all the fancy naming and shit like that too, but it sucks mainly because it's so expensive.  I don't think it's the worst coffee in the world, but it's not that good.  However, I read an article a while back that claimed Starbucks coffee does contain more caffeine than your average cup of coffee, so if you use coffee simply as a drug delivery vehicle, you may not be getting ripped off at all.  I find that Vivarin works best though.

[wombat]

I have never had any problems ordering a small or large beverage at Starbucks without using their lingo.  Maybe it's the way I look at them.

[AlohaDawg]

Me either, and I've been through 3 different states and a bunch of airports ordering it.

It's no different than McDonalds - check it out - there is no small and the staff are trained to believe thet, and I quote, 'nothing is small at McDonald's'.

So a regular is what you want to call 'small', at at Starbucks, more stupidly. the small is tall.

Also, I have drunk 1-2 cups of Starbuck's coffee every workday for months now ($1.46/cup in my personal mug) and it has been good each time. Maybe you just didn't like the coffee of the day that day? Some are better than others.

[CortJstr]

My SO switched to a local coffee company and now won't to go back to Starbucks because it always tastes burned. She says that she never really noticed until she started going somewhere else and tried to go back.

As for sizes I have that problem with beverages and pizzas all the time. At least with pizza the sizes are usually consistent. My uncles owns a pizza place so I asked him why he calls the smallest pizza offered a medium. He said a medium pizza is 12" almost everywhere, so it's less confusing to start with medium than to be the one pizza place who calls 12" small.

Also, wft is up with "Great Biggie"?

[AugustWest]

I've always enjoyed Starbuck's espresso based drinks.  I can't recall if I've ever had their regular coffee.  

Generally I'm a pretty straight espresso or Cafe Americano kind of guy.  If I wanted sweet I'd go get a milkshake.

[Doc]

McDonalds doesn't have small over there? That is creepy, especially because over here at least their small is pretty small, wonder if sizes are different over there.
Movies are like that here too, in fact the biggest movie chain around here doesn't even have medium any more it's Maxi, Mega and SuperMega. To be fair the popcorn is pretty big, like bigger than my head, but still it seems a bit  much. We have words for these things and it's not like I'm going to be tricked into getting the supermega just becuase it sounds good, if anything wouldn't that put people off because it sounds just TOO big?
As far as I know the Starbucks thing stands here too, but I don't go in for coffee and when I do I just go straight expresso, I don't care for the taste much whatever syrup they pour in there so I figure I may as well feel the damn stuff.

[arkabee]

have i worked in a service industry?
...
yes.
--

the book was good.

[side_show]

Maxi, Mega and SuperMega.

Wait were you reading the options off a feminine napkin dispenser, because that's what that sounds like.  And you should let them know that the next time you are there.  I demand it.