03 February 2004 - 9:45 p.m.

I cannot go to Starbucks anymore. It brings out the worst in me.

I don't like Starbucks to begin with, but since it has parking and I had a gift card from two Christmases ago, I decided I wanted to go last night and try to get some work done. This work was not easily accomplished thanks to two really talentless guys singing their non-rhyming songs.

I'm sorry, but a gig on a Monday night?

The second guy was worse than the first, since he had to sing this TERRIBLE song about how his grandmother was pretty much sold into marriage. It would have been a moving song if it had a.)rhymed or b.)been the least bit surprising. As it was, he told the whole story of her life, then sang the whole story of her life. Which was basically a prose poem with a refrain.

The subordination of women hurts everyone. How many crappy songs do dudes have to sing to get this accross to people?

Ordering milk beverages (no coffee, thanks), I got really annoyed at this merchandise display. Apparently, their new thing is selling "cities of Italy" mugs, which I guess is fine in theory. Like, if you wanna buy a mug that says "Venezia," fine. But in practice, each mug has the phrase "La Dolce Vita" printed inside.

Now, Gus was quick to point out that that particular saying wasn't bron as a movie title. No, I agreed, but the movie was named ironically after a phrase that was used to describe the Roman "scene." Having "La Dolce Vita" grace a mug depicting the Florentine skyline would be kind of like printing "The Big Apple" on a group of mugs named for "Albany" and "Poughkeepsie" and the like.

I thought it would be a long time before I went back to Starbucks, but really it was more like 24 hours.

Man, this entry is sad. It's gonna make my worst party ever entry a big anti-climax.

The reason I had to go back is because we are out of tea, and also because we had to take movies back to Blockbuster. (Sex and the City and Citizen fucking Kane. It's a long story.) Since Blockbuster and Starbucks share a parking lot, I figured I might as well run into the latter for some caffeine, rather than make Gus drive me all the way to Giant Eagle. Which, if you are from Pittsburgh, you understand to be almost as insidiousness in its monopoly as Starbucks.

I don't know if it makes it more or less sad that tonight we were in a different Starbucks than we were last night. I mean, I'm glad we can't be construed as regulars. On the other hand, it's really sad that there are two of them in the same neighborhood.

Either way, tonight's Starbucks had the same "La Dolce Vita" mugs, but they were displayed differently. It was easier to read the text on the mugs, which included "Italia," "Firenze," "Venezia," and "Tuscany."

One of these things is not like the other.

Well, two. Why would you want an "Italy" mug, and then a "Venice" mug? Are they mutually exclusive all of a sudden?

But it bugged the crap out of me that the Tuscany mug wasn't "Toscana." "Toscana" isn't harder to decipher than those other city names.

The ironic thing was that neither store carried a "Roma" mug, which I would buy from even Starbucks in a minute.

This is kind of a wanky entry. I hope nobody thinks it aspires to be an entry about how cool I am. It's more about how I'm starting to freak out because I feel like I'm turing into Max von Sydow's character from Hannah and Her Sisters. And his whole thing is that he's like a million years old, and I'm only 24.

Also, I don't think I'm allowed any artistic pretensions because I don't really believe in art. But that is another entry that I will never write, because it would involve scanning this diagram made by Bordieu, and I don't have a scanner.

What I'm wearing: Red sweater, jeans

What I'm reading: _The Roots of Rock_

What I'm doing after this: Taking out my contacts