Below are the 3 most recent journal entries recorded in esme_glass' LiveJournal:

Saturday, February 18th, 2006
5:20 pm	homeland security, cackalacky-style A few quick things as the library threatens to close: William's response to my Starbucks conundrum, that he is a house coffee drinker, brought back fond memories of trying to order a black coffee in New York. My first experience with "regulah" coffee was at a convenience store near Museum Mile; imagine my surprise when my first sip yielded an almost sickening sweetness: it came with milk and sugar. This, evidently, is de rigeur in NY. This was reinforced when I stayed in Brooklyn and had coffee each morning at the Dunkin' Donuts. "Coffee, please," I requested, and the clerk picked up a cup and reached for a spoonful of sugar. Sugar at the ready, she asked, "Cream and sugar?" No, no, I replied, just black. Just black? she queried. Yes, yes. No cream or sugar? No - just black! Pleasetogod just black! This scene repeated itself *four times* over the course of my stay, each time with the incredulous clerk standing at the ready with a spoonful of sugar. Topic two: on my way to Durham yesterday to enjoy the spring-like 70-degree weather at Duke Gardens, I stopped in Mebane, a hole-in-the-wall midway that sells unusually cheap gas (and apparently, everyone else knows it, too, as there were lines at the pump that evoked the 1970s fuel crisis). After filling up, I went into the convenience store for bad gas station coffee, which has acquired a certain nostalgic charm after years of painfully long drives between Kansas and Colorado. As I walked in, I noticed the sign pasted above the entrance: "Terror Alert Level Today: YELLOW. See cashier for details." Huh. I had no idea that the Department of Homeland Security had contracted with the clerks at the Flying J convenience store in Mebane, NC to keep folks safe and informed. I feel better already. Incidentally, you could also purchase a Freedom Flashlight, which looked suspiciously like a regular flashlight...not sure that it would be much use in a terror attack, but you never know. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
7:42 pm	tongue tied It was a dire caffeine crisis that landed me at a Starbucks in the seventh circle of Suburban Hell this afternoon. Nothing around for miles that could clear up the fatigued fuzziness of my vision (and most necessary: had a gig in thirty minutes that required sight reading...) so I braved the terror and entered the Realm of Nonexperience. Every Starbucks is identical, as everyone is well aware: the same pseudo-boho decor, the same mellow mix of meaningless, inoffensive music (though this afternoon they had grossly misappropriated some Coltrane for their evil intent), the same clientele of well-heeled, Gap-shopping high school children and colorless, neutral-looking suburban adults. Somewhere in the nether regions of my mind lurks a suspicion that Starbucks could actually serve as a dimension-hopping portal: step into one in Portland, Oregon, and emerge in Portland, Maine. But it would scarcely matter, because you would still be ensconced in an enormous bosom of globalized commercialism, homogeneous and comforting in the way that your morning bowl of cornflakes is not tasty, but *there* every morning for thirty-some-odd years. I am three deep in the line when the barista shouts at me, above the cacophony of the espresso machine, "Can I start something for you?" Puzzled, I looked about to ascertain just whom he was addressing. I am third in line, sir, I wanted to reply, and you can just wait on that until I am within comfortable ear shot and do not have to shout indecorously my order. (aside: I also have laryngitis and cringed at the thought of croaking out an order). "Coffee," I mouthed, desperate. I was finally herded up to the cash register and had to repeat my order. My coffee and change were simultaneously shoved at me, and before I could deliver the obligatory thanks, they were already serving the woman behind me. "Tallskinnysinglepumpmocha," she commanded, robotically - obviously her regular drink, but guaranteed the ever-changing, anonymous klatch of employees would never know that - Starbucks is too regular to have regulars. But here's what got me - "single pump." What the fuck is that? Single pump of what, pray tell? I am not the first to point out the absurdity of StarbucksSpeak, but this is over the top. Just order a damn mocha and enjoy it how it comes. Sadly, I had a similar experience in my beloved San Francisco, which I had hoped would prove to be immune to such stupidity. I walk into Tully's in the Castro with my aunt - Tully's is already a questionable establishment, with limited seating; and they tend to automatically put everything in a paper "to go" cup. Except in the cases of a dire emergency, I do not believe that coffee is a "to go" beverage. Part of it is the experience of sitting down, of seeking refuge from the quotidian grind. The beverage itself is, for the most part, irrelevant; I would settle for shoe polish and lemonade if its consumption promised a respite from the workaholic workaday world. So we go into Tully's and my aunt preemptively demands glass mugs. I splurge on a cappuccino, and the barista asks, "Do you want that wet or dry?" Say what? Wet or dry. My twenty-four years' experience has yielded but one version of cappuccino, which is neither wet nor dry, to my knowledge. Had I missed out on something? We asked, somewhat sarcastically, what that meant, and she mumbled something about variable amounts of foam. I think we have reached a social nadir when the amount of foam on our cappuccino is so critical that they are inventing language for it. I was still dumbfounded, and my aunt, with her characteristic wisdom and groundedness, told the barista to make it however you normally make it, and that's good enough. But here is the attendant question: what is the veracity of Shaw's observation: The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. I consider myself reasonable; therefore, I resist using StarbucksSpeak - half-caf, half-foam, skinny single pump, wetdry frappacrappayuppiccino. I'll have none of it. However my cappuccino comes, that's how I'll take it, and I will enjoy the difference between the one at Caffe Trieste in North Beach and the faithful Tate St. Coffee House here in Greensboro. I do not want the same experience each time; in fact, I actively seek difference and newness. I enjoy adapting. Not so our self-centred consumer culture, which has grown so privileged, so spoiled that it specifies its expectations down to a microcosmic level. So unreasonable - expecting all our needs/demands/desires/whims to be indulged. But the consequence is paradoxical; and I offer as illustration: (brace yourselves for a rhetorical leap): from thence comes the Project for the New American Century, authored by Cheney and Wolfowitz, et al.: the world will do it our way, or else we'll bomb the shit out of you until you do. They want McDemocracy served up worldwide, and everyone wolfing it down in lockstep. America's good for you! and we have the overwhelming military capacity and blood lust to prove it! America and the wingnuts who've hijacked it (more aptly, whom we have allowed to hijack it) are the Unreasonable Man, the one who wants his latte just so, the one who wants his global economy just so, his political climate just so. And that underpins so many government endeavours: propping up Saddam, helping bin Laden against the Russians, invading Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Nothing more than trying to force the world to adapt to our vision, to satisfy the fickle tastes of a few. Because it is the only vision, dammit. And we'll dump out our beaujolais and eat Freedom Fries to prove it. Progress? I think not. Fortunately, Shaw's unreasonable man is doomed to failure, if not by his own hand, then by the hands of the oppressed others, or by Mother Nature herself. Who knew that a skinny mocha would be a harbinger of our demise? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 10th, 2006
3:28 pm	Next generation diarist Does anyone else recall a time when a journal, a diary, was an intensely private possession? When it was intended for the author's eyes only, a unique space in which one could pin down on paper a flutter of abstract thoughts like so many captured butterflies? A time when it would have seemed anathema to offer for public consumption the product of what amounts to a mental bloodletting? And the diary itself - as a young girl, naturally, I had one, with a feeble lock and attendant, miniature key. The lock itself was easily disabled; it was the *appearance* of the necessity of security that made its presence vital - it fomented the vainglorious notion that the contents were manifestly important, too much so to offer to everyone, and further more, that another party would care deeply about those contents. And now, in the year twenty-ot-six, there is livejournal, an invitation to bare oneself (and yet remain lightly veiled) on the most public of all forums. Has this supplanted (or at least exceeded) the intimate conversation? Are we so conceited that we believe all the world has a vested interest in our musings? (apparently, I do) Whence comes this need to communicate, but not connect? To type a confession is one thing; to look a man in the eye and fashion the words with your lips and breath, is entirely another. I could never journal for one reason: I had/have an egotistical eye to posterity. Even in youth, I entertained an elaborate fantasy about my journals and letters being discovered some years hence, after my celebrated life has come to an untimely end (so the papers would report). Scholars would pour enthusiastically over my scribblings, establishing chronology, annotating, analyzing, compiling for presentation. And how would I wish to be remembered? And so, my first attempts at keeping a diary were blackened by redactions, whole lines inked out in the name of image preservation/creation. I edited and re-edited, fighting for the right word, struggling for the proper turn of phrase. It could never be my innermost thoughts, exactly; it was the innermost thoughts I hoped the rest of the world would imagine I possessed. So it became a work of fiction, and thereby was useless. Incidentally, on the plane home from San Francisco, a furtive glance to my right-hand seatmate revealed the woman to be carefully detailing in a diary the events of her recent SF adventure, but in a most prosaic way. "Drove to X. Mr. Z enjoyed his espresso. Met couple Y." Just so, completely artless (no complete sentences!), a catalogue of what I considered largely impertinent and uninteresting events. What, pray tell, did this accounting serve? Have I missed something? Sixty years hence, in my dotage, will all the critical details of my young life be lost to the slow erosion of age, simply because I did not keep record? Is it even useful to imprison memories in print? I recall countless times rereading my journal and laughing at my folly, at my deep (and wrong-headed) conviction at that moment that I had penned something profound. And likely, in a week, I will look back on this and regret it. Better to keep quiet and be presumed an idiot than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. And now for something completely different: I picked up a fabulous turn of phrase from a professor: "Play as though you are It on a stick." No idea where that originated geographically/culturally, but damn, I like it. (Comment on this)