I'll have a tall cuppa Pretension with Whip.

[stellie]

...

I don't know what I was thinking. Everyone has always said how they like Starbucks. I needed a wake-me-up this morning and, after a boring lecture in Art History, I went after one.

Feeling silly (as I always do when faced with decision making of the food-purchasing varieties), I explained to the lady that I've never actually had a Starbuck's coffee before. She suggested the White Chocolate Mocha as 'something sweet' ... okay, sure. I'll try anything twice, right?

Not quite $4. So I'm really going by what the chick was saying -- it's supposedly one of the top selling drinks. Everyone likes it. It's 'sweet' so it should taste good.

I waited for it to cool down a bit. Wandered around the bookstore. Found the cutest little Hallmark card (a flock of Horned Dorsets in sepia, one of which is wearing a black and red bow tie -- "Making matters worse: No one likes my sense of humor." Inside: "What is WRONG with these people?!") which I bought after fighting the urge to tell myself that I didn't need it. I wanted it and, what's more, I wanted it to send to mum. So I got it.

Went over to the sculpture department. The cup had cooled, so I took a sip. Eh, what's this taste? Do I like it? Another sip. What is that?

So I head back out towards home, still sipping lightly trying to figure out if I liked the stuff. I couldn't quite put my finger on what I was tasting...

I didn't want to admit it, but I hated it. I hated that $4 cup of white filth. I threw my money away in the nearest street corner trash bin.

Half-way home I figured out what it was.

Pretension.

If pretension tasted like anything, that would be it. Subtle with undertones of something it's not. Ingrained in the mind that it's so very good and should be placed upon a pedestal of taste buds before swallowing. And it nearly had me. It nearly had me forcing myself to say "Oh, this is good!" for the sake of not making me have purchased something I didn't like and then promptly throwing away the money I'd spent on it.

I'll never make that mistake again. If I ever want to try another flavor of pretension, I'll have someone else buy it for me :\

Lesson today: ...if I wanted the taste of scalded Half-n-Half, I would have gone over to Ukrops and picked up a half-gallon of the stuff for the same price and burnt it myself. At least then it might have had a better flavor that I could have pin-pointed as 'crap' and I wouldn't have felt bad for throwing it out the second it touched my tongue and my brain registered it as nasty.

Comments

[vandegraaff.livejournal.com]

I think they effed up your coffee. I've had that coffee before, and it was pretty good. It also sounds like they put that steamed milk crap on your coffee instead of whipped cream.

I am a pretty big fan of coffee. However, I don't generally like coffee outside of my own coffee pot. Most places/people don't know how to make a good cup (or at least the way I like it ;). This particularly holds true with chain stores that tend to hire flunkies off the street who probably don't even DRINK coffee let alone know how to make a good cup.

If given the choice between Starbucks and a local coffee shop, I'm gonna go to the local one...which is pretty pretentious in itself, but that can't really be helped. ;P At least I'm supporting a local business instead of padding the pockets of yet another corporate devil. I've also never had a bad cup of coffee from a local coffee shop. =D

[stellie.livejournal.com]

See... that's the thing. I don't know what I'm getting, anyway.

And I don't know of any 'local' coffee shops. As I posted about what the school president said during open house February 7th 2004:

During the morning lecture, the president of the school kept going on and on~ about the basketball game tonight and the ranking of the different departments in the nation and the fact that they had Starbucks just around the street corner...

...then he started talking about how every student there was required to have a laptop. Said that VCU was a very wired school X) I leaned over to mum and said it was because of the coffee~

There are literally Starbuckses everywhere. You can't fall out of one block without passing by one. I think the Village Cafe serves coffee... but they're always so very packed. Jumping is more like it. So stopping for coffee there is like going into Wal*Mart for one thing. It's not gonna happen, you'll end up spending all day and getting more than you needed.

[vandegraaff.livejournal.com]

You probably don't have a local coffee house BECAUSE there is a Starbucks. =(

I'm thankful that there is no Starbucks here! We do have a local coffee shop that has been in business for years and I know full well that if a Starbucks opened up in Danville, then the Main Street Coffee Emporium would be no more. =(

I also feel bad about the fact that I haven't been to the coffee shop since they changed owners a couple of years ago. =( Time, and occasionally money, keep me from going. Not to mention that parking on Main Street SUCKS!!! There is only parallel parking, which is usually full, and the only "parking lots" off the street are owned by businesses so they aren't for people other than *their* patrons. Oh, and this is great: There's an abandoned hotel on main street that has a parking *garage*. Is it being used for public parking? Nope. It's roped off with no tresspassing signs.

Of course, it would make too much sense to actually USE the parking garage instead of letting it go to rot...