11-03-2019, 04:47 PM
(11-03-2019, 02:07 PM)Ed Hurst Wrote: Back when my heart wiring could tolerate caffeine, I never would go to Starbucks unless someone else paid for it. What a horrific high price they charge! They give a free cup of Joe to veterans on Veterans Day. I imbibed in that freebie a few years ago, and ordered the dark version. It was nice and strong and there was some depth to the flavor. But it still wasn't all that good, and not worth the several dollars they normally charge for it. I got far better coffee for the equivalent of a dollar in any one of the Dutch train stations back when I was stationed in the Netherlands.
Now, just about every year for the past decade or so, as the calendar approaches Christmas, a bunch of people come crawling out of the woodwork claiming that Starbucks is trying to destroy the sanctity of the holiday by removing the traditional symbols of Christmas from their cups. Instead, so they claim, the cups come out with non-religious symbols. We are supposed to believe Starbucks does this out of spite for the Christian meaning of Christmas.
I won't bother cluttering this post with all my arguments against the notion that Christmas is specifically connected to Our Savior. It just ain't.
Each year, the claims about Starbucks get more outlandish. We've been treated to variations of photoshopped pictures with Satanic symbols on their cups, which then never show up at any Starbucks shop anywhere. Oh, wait! There it is, down there on the bottom rim of the cup! That printer's mark is a Satanic symbol! This is just about on the same level as the "Jesus Frisbee" which is supposed to be mandatory for Frisbee golf if you expect to have a valid Christian witness. Frankly, I think the Starbucks' new artwork for this year is pretty nice. I like their cups, but even if I could drink their coffee, it's just not that good. That's the real issue, if you ask me. It's an insult to my Creator to come that close to making good coffee, but then miss the target and act like it's liquid gold.
I must confess as a lifelong coffee drinker, I didn't know what a good cup of coffee was until I was in my 30's having been raised on swill like Nescafe and Maxwell House, there were three drinks growing up coffee, milk or water. A soda was a big deal. I never got into all those limp wristed lattaize etc. Black, no sugar that's the way all the men I knew drank so, I did what they did. My son brings home these ice coffees and stuff with whip cream on it, I like to pick at him a little bit sometimes and say "son, you better be careful, you can catch gay from that stuff". My wife buys whatever is on sale in dark roast for the Keurig. You right about Starbucks, I tried it once and I wasn't too impressed. There is a coffee stand in Lenoir that sells a large for $3 and it's good, I suppose it's one benefit of Google moving there. The City of Lenoir and Caldwell County offered Google a sweetheart deal in return for a promise to provide 250 jobs to locals, did the jobs materialize?, hell no but, the local politicians got reelected. Which wouldn't have mattered because both town and county are overwhelming Republican. Occasionally I'll see someone who looks really out of place amongst the mass of Rednecks, Mexicans and multiple shades of people of color and I think "ah...you're in Google purgatory...which alphabet soupee did you trigger?"