BEHIND EVERY GOOD CUP OF COFFEE THERE IS A BARISTA AND A GOOD STORY

Blog number 162                                               April 30, 2008

My nephew, Mark, suggested, in reference to the topic sentence above, that he thinks the sentence means, "Look across (behind) the cup of coffee.  There you will find a barista with a good story - like a bartender."

English is a hard language to conquer.  Or is it difficult?

IS THAT A BACKHANDED DIG YOU JUST GAVE ME?

Blog number 161                                               April 25, 2008

Sitting in my favorite chair in my favorite Starbucks in Casa Grande Arizona, looking up from my reading, I can see a poster of coffee cups with hands holding some of them surrounding a text that says, "Behind every good cup of coffee there is a barista and a good story."

I have read that sentence many times, and I read it every time I sit in that chair. I read it again this morning. What does it say? It says if there is not a good story behind my cup of coffee, my coffee is not good, or if there IS a good story but I am not a barista, my coffee is again, not good.  The ONLY way my coffee can be considered to be a good cup, is if I am a barista and I have a good story.  Since I am not a barista, whomever made this comment is telling me that if I want a good cup of coffee, I must pay $1.74 for it in any coffee house.  Otherwise, forget it.

Somehow it just doesn't seem fair.

I cry everytime I see that poster.

P.S. This morning I read in the Casa Grande newspaper that a woman was arrested for stealing religious paintings and objects from a church to show God that there are still good people so that He wouldn't destroy the world.  Think about that one for awhile.

AH, THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Blog number 160                                               April 24, 2008

A Sunday in mid - April 1935 dawned quiet, windless, and bright. In the afternoon the sky went purple - as if it were sick - then the temperature plunged.  People looked northwest and saw ragged-topped formation on the move, covering the horizon.  The air crackled with electricity.  Snap.  Snap.  Snap.  Birds screeched and dashed for cover.  As the black wall approached, car radios clicked off, overwhelmed by the static.  Ignitions shorted out.  Waves of sand, like ocean water rising over a ship's prow, swept over roads.  Cars went into ditches.  A train derailed.

The storm carried twice as much dirt as was dug out of the earth to create the Panama Canal.  The canal took seven years to dig; the storm lasted a single afternoon.  More than 300,000 tons of Great Plains topsoil was airborne that day.

When the dust fell, it penetrated everything; hair, nose throat, kitchen, bedroom, well.  A scoop shovel was needed just to clean the house in the morning.  The eeriest thing was the darkness.  People tied themselves to ropes before going to the barn just a few hundred feet away, like a walk in space, tethered to the life support center.  Chickens roosted in midafternoon.

Cattle went blind and suffocated.  When the farmers cut them open they found stomachs stuffed with fine sand.  In desperation, some families gave away their children.  The instinctive act of hugging a loved one or shaking someone's hand could knock two people down, for the static electricity from the dusters was so strong.

On the skin the dust was like a nail file, a grit strong enough to hurt.  People rubbed Vaseline in their nostrils as a filter.

FUN WITH BABIES

Blog number 159                                               April 22, 2008

Nothing much happening.  Doldrums. Had a neat experience with a newly six year old girl, but you had to be there.  She was SO cute! 

She was outside with her mom and older sister and I teased her as Teresa and I passed, going into Starbucks and she kept stealing glances at me through the window.  I could read her mind - "What's with that old man anyhow?"

Her older sister is going to work at Starbucks, so I should see her again.  I hope so.  I gave her some toys. 

HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS BACK TO BEING UNEXPLAINABLE AND UNREASONABLE

Blog number 158                                               April 11, 2008

Was watching Bill Maher and one of his guests was Jason Alexander and they got to talking about the airline problems and Jason said that his brother is a pilot and he has to go through security and he wears glasses, so he has this little screwdriver to fix his glasses when need be and they took it away from him and he says, "Look.  I'm the pilot. If I wanted to take down the airplane, I wouldn't need a little screwdriver.  Besides, you do know that there is an axe in the cockpit, don't you?"

HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS EXPLAINABLE AND REASONABLE

Blog number 157                                               April 07, 2008
I wrote the following to Daryl AKA Kavi ;

I was watching a commercial and these people were standing around talking in the background and it reminded me of how the people in a ballet "talked" in the background and I remember you saying that you pretended to talk in a ballet production and I got to wondering if you ever really said something - just to mess with their heads, like, "How's your feet?" or "Wanna buy a rabbit?"
 
If you did, do you remember any that would be interesting or funny?

He answered with this:

WE WOULD USUALLY GOSSIP ABOUT OTHER BALLET DANCERS WE DIDNT LIKE OR ONE TIME SOMEONE PUT PORNO PICS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GOBLETS FOR THE PARTY SCENE IN NUTCRACKER    WE ALSO USED TO GO BEHIND THE BACKDROP AND GRAB GIRLS FROM BEHIND WHILE THEY WERE ONSTAGE AND THEY COULDNT REACT....

HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS UNEXPLAINABLE AND UNREASONABLE

Blog number 156                                               April 07, 2008

I've got two kinda funny things and one weird one.

1. I was listening to Dolly Parton explaining why she wrote a song called, "Backwoods Barbie" and she told about a woman in her hometown that wore tight clothes, red lipstick and bleached hair.  Dolly thought she was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  When she told her mother that she thought the woman very pretty, her mother said, "Oh, she's trash."

Dolly thought, "That's what I want to be when I grow up - trash."

2. I was watching The Soup on the telly and Joel had a clip of this old couple who had won 124 million dollars on the lottery.  The couple were pretty blase about the whole thing. The two, sitting in straightback chairs, were first asked by the interviewer if their life had changed any and the old man said in a very monotone voice, "I called my boss and told him I won megabucks and that I wouldn't be in to work."

The interviewer then asked what they were going to buy and the old man said his wife was going to get a Lexus and he was going to get a truck.  The old lady, in that same "nothing" look, same monotone, said, "No, I'm going to get a Mercedes."

Joel, the guy who watches these shows so that we don't have to, said, "...and a bra."  That's when I noticed that her huge tits were lying on her lap.

And 3.  When I read "The Wreck of the Medusa," it told of the people on the raft fighting each other with guns, knives, swords, and fists.  One group was trying to tear up the raft, which was made of timbers tied together, so that everyone on board would drown.

Why a person would want to kill others instead of just jumping overboard and ending it all alone is so weird, and the fact that these men that wanted to kill everyone actually formed into groups and planned and plotted to carry out their dastardly deed is beyond what fiction could come up with.

Several of the men would also switch sides, so one could never be sure of one's loyalties.

The book also described other incidences of such behavior in human history.

I am now reading "Dunkirk," the mass evacuation of English and French troops at the start of WW2 when the Germans so quickly overran the Allies front due to bad leadership, bad equipment, bad logistics and poor moral among the French troops.

Waiting to be rescued by the English fleet at Dunkirk amidst artillery, bombings and tanks, which created havoc and unspeakable sights, there were many reports of groups of French soldiers firing at other soldiers who were waiting to be rescued, which sounded a lot like what happened on the raft of the Medusa.

That doesn't sound very much like "survival of the fittest," does it?  Isn't that odd, that when things get really rough with large groups of people, some of them try to kill others even though they are all in the same boat?