If anyone ever tells you that caffiene isn’t really a drug, send them to look at this ‘blog entry, because it’s 2:41 AM and I won’t sleep for another three hours.

I did something really stupid. I drank a latté right after dinner. Now I’m on full-verbal, writing a bunch of stuff. I might as well be sucking on a lollipop made of cocaine.

I got the latté at this new place down the road called Top Pot. They have a your-bookish-childhood-in-the-’50s theme. Of course, no one who grew up in the ’50s is stupid enough to fall for it, so it’s really a what-a-twenty-something-would-imagine-growing-up-in-the-’50s-as-a-bookish-young-person-might-have-been theme.

See, the walls are lined with bookshelves, and on those bookshelves are set upon set of young adult novels and serials. Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Brittanica, Jr. and World Book. Tales of adventure for young readers. This aspect of the decor is really quite astonishing. The sheer amount of effort that went into collecting this set of books, just so they would be props in a meaningless, albeit nostalgic drama of consumerism is, itself a meaningless, albeit astonishing gesture.

And it’s not a coffeehouse, it’s a themed coffeehouse disguised as a donut shop. The donuts aren’t that great. It’s like going to the bother of visiting Disneyland because you heard there are great rides, and then, once you’ve ridden them, deciding that they aren’t really worth it. That’s the experience of visiting Top Pot, an experience I hope to have no occasion to repeat.

But here’s the real tragedy: Across the street there’s a really great bakery/coffeshop called Grateful Bread. It’s been there forever, serving pastries made with real butter and bagels the size of your head, acting as the local coffee hangout and Sunday morning meeting place for Wedgewood. But then about six months ago, a new Starbucks opened a couple blocks away. And now the Top Pot, with its why-aren’t-you-enjoying-yourself? ambiance. Will the Breadheads survive? Will they be trampled under the market forces of a global coffee empire? Will they be brought down by trite childhood nostalgia? Or will the market ecology find equilibrium and mutual success? Tune in next week to find out!

Stu Jenks.

Most of the photos have associated stories on the web site, but not conveniently cross-linked, which is fine. More a journey that way.

In addition to making really cool night-time photographs, he’s obsessed with Neil Finn and Peter Gabriel, AND talks about being star-struck by Steve Roach, of all people.

Once upon a time, I was following Steve Roach‘s career very carefully, having had a Deeply Meaningful New-Age Experience(tm) while listening to his ‘Dreamtime Return’ CD.

Anyway. This image and this story.

So there’s a couple of guys who call themselves Dean Gray, and they’ve done a mashup of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot,’ which they call ‘American Edit.’

And it’s totally and completely worth finding. It’s one of those net.culture things… Search for it with the file sharing software which obviously isn’t installed on YOUR computer. No way you’d have that.

‘Dr. Who On Holiday’ is a good place to start, but ‘American Jesus’ is absolute brilliance.

Yesterday was Gray Day, because Dean Gray got a cease and desist letter from Warner Bros., and the usual suspects set up a little net.holiday where everyone was supposed to show their support by putting a gray background on their ‘blogs and whatever. Fight the power, man! Put a gray background on! THAT’LL show ‘em!

I just wrote something in a comment to FemmeDeLaCreme, and I thought I’d repost it here, so I can keep track of it.

She asks about how to identify the true gentlemen, and here’s my answer:

There’s one thing to know about men: Men are pigs. Men want to get in your panties, and they’ll lie, cheat, and steal to do it. They’ll put on airs; they’ll wear a tux and a tie, they’ll open the door for you, take you to a fancy restaurant, leave you with a peck on the cheek on the first date, treat you well, call you, tell you how wonderful you look, and complement your cooking. But he wants in your panties. He might not tell fart jokes, and he might not have dirt under his fingernails, and he might not ask you for your half of the bill, and he might not be indiscreet, but he really only wants into your panties.

There is no such thing as a gentleman. There is only integrity and kindness, and the trappings of gentlemanly ways are a distraction from this. The gentleman is a facade. It’s a story that appeals to women, like the ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ appeals to men. The gentleman is, as they say, a class act.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t any good men who are also gentlemen. It’s just that not all gentlemen are good.

The term ‘gentlemen’ comes from a rather abrupt class distinction that still exists in English society (and here in America, too, but it’s not so meaningful in our less-stratified class structure). In that meaning of the term, a gentleman is a man of the aristocracy. He’s expected to behave in a certain way, because the fate of families and fortunes, kingdoms and nations depend on it. Indiscretion or insult would mean doom. Or at least, that’s the idea. But again: This gentleman wants what’s in your panties, too. And discretion doesn’t mean an absence of freak. It just means freak in a big fancy hotel where the maitre’d gets a big huge tip to keep his mouth shut.

Semi-random free-association in relation to this post by THYRIO…

The landscape of the heart is like the English countryside, a rolling beautiful verdant velvet emerald. Subdivided, chopped, and claimed by jealous guardians who erect those waist-high stone walls to guard their little piece. It’s a patchwork of property claims, both in the larger, social scope, as well as in the personal. Over time, we lay claim to our bit of the love-pattern of our community, or elements of ourselves lay claim to our own emotional states, and before we know it, we’re locked into those patterns.

The heart wants to love. The heart is walking across that landscape, and it only wants to cross, it doesn’t want to dally or steal. It just wants to move with ease. Only there are all these little walls everywhere. So why try? Why risk the farmer’s shotgun?

Another screen-capture presented here with only the explanation that the MSNBC ad came first. So to speak. The second ad is for a movie called ‘The God Who Wasn’t There.’

Speaking of the War On Xmas: You really, REALLY want to watch Sam Seder taking apart Bob Knight from the Culture and Family Institute, on CNN.

Right here.

A screen capture presented without further comment:

A few days back, one of the local public radio stations was having a call-in about the ‘war in Christmas’ being trumpeted by reactionary assholes everywhere. In case you didn’t know, or weren’t paying attention last year when these facists decided it was *their* jackboot that should be stamping on the face of America, forever, on this issue… Many right-wingers are taking up the cause of Christmas, as if they were being oppressed whenever anyone says ‘Happy Holidays,’ and doesn’t say ‘Merry Christmas.’

This particular radio call-in show sometimes reads emails they receive, on air. So I sent them one. And here it is:

—–

The reason for the season is the tilt of the earth’s axis. We have winter because the northern hemisphere heats up or cools depending where it is in its orbit around the sun.

Different cultures have marked the passing of the solstices in different ways. Christmas as a Christian holiday came about when a Pope mapped the Jesus story onto the older pagan calendar of the rest of Europe. This is also the origin of the Easter holiday.

Christianity celebrates the birth of a new light in the universe (symbolized by a star) during the time when the sun returns. Judaism celebrates a return of the light in the form of oil that never burns out. All Northern hemisphere cultures celebrate this time, heaving a sigh of relief at the news that the sun would return again, the days would be getting longer, and the winter darkness was ebbing. Certainly something Seattlites can relate to.

Given all this, the insistence that this time of year be celebrated exclusively as the Christian holiday harkens back to the time when Rome imposed its will on the rest of Europe. This bogus issue of the ‘holiday-zation’ of Christmas is designed to be a wedge issue, and all it runs counter to the ideals of Christ by emphasizing the differences between all Americans. It creates a highly charged talking point which the self-righteous can impose on their hapless relatives at family get-togethers.

Merry Sol Invictus!

Here’s the Global Autism Project, which I haven’t really had a chance to look through very thoroughly. So far ‘global’ means ‘in Ghana,’ which is, I suppose, on the other side of the globe from the folks who built the web site…

GAP also has the feel-good factor of being connected to Paddle for Autism Awareness, where a couple of people make their way around the country ‘raising awareness,’ while giving autistic kids a chance to paddle a kayak.

Sometimes I don’t know what to think about stuff like this. Have I really become cynical enough to slam this kind of thing?