Insight

Careful, what you are about to read is very liberal

ZOË WILLIAMS
williamz@mscd.edu

Coffee is my lord and savior.

I know no experience more religious than having my first cup of the morning. I have seen the miracle of a triple shot of espresso while trying to remain in this world after three nights of paper writing. Coffee has complimented my conversations with professors, friends, enemies and loves. It has brought me closer to my fellow human beings. Not to mention that my inky and stimulating deity provides a high comparable to any drink I've ever had. Plus, it's legal and readily available.

At the recommendation of friends and medical professionals, I have tried every possible substitution; tea, chai, soda, matte and No-Doz pills alike; nothing compares to that warm ebony liquid when sipped from a wide-mouthed, aged and properly weighted, thrift-store mug. From the ochre shade of my teeth to my perpetually shaking hands, anyone can tell that I am a devout coffee drinker.

Due to this intense love for coffee, I have to turn down many offerings and temptations. After all, coffee drinking is a sort of strange spiritual tradition of the queer, the crazy, the brilliant, the lonely, and the creative. In order to honor the omnipotent coffee bean, one must uphold the integrity of its spirit. This means considering the people and the planet involved in its production as well as the culture of coffee.

That is why few things upset me more than Starbucks coffee houses, carts, machines and marketed goods. Starbucks is sacrilege to all that is holy about coffee.

Coffee, the drink that has pulled many working people from their beds and helped them survive the long day, is now farmed by impoverished South American workers; all to benefit fat cat American corporations. An American that consumes a latte a day spends $600 a year on coffee. That's more than the average coffee farmer's yearly income, according to Fair Trade advocate Global Exchange. That's right, the $4 you spend on a latte is the equivalent of a farmer's family's food budget for a day.

The magical bean once nursed with the shade of trees and the songs of birds is now stripped and nuked with pesticides, all to ensure frizzy-haired executive yuppies can have their Caramel Macchiatos

Beat poets, artists, anarchists, revolutionaries, vagrants, hobos, crazy folks and other anti-status quo beings have thrived on the coffee culture to read their writings, inspire their arts, sustain their energy and provide their medium for relation. Now, passion vampire corporations dissolve the subversion of dominant culture, but keep the image with their faux-bohemian advertising schemes.

Don't be fooled by the earth-toned coffee houses filled with bad print art serving the dual purpose of advertising while they play Bob Dylan on a loop. Starbucks is so anti-counterculture that a few years back they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to give their trademark mermaid a makeover. Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping has documented the Starbucks Corporation removing all the nipples, once marking the chest of their trademarked siren, once the company left Seattle. That's right, folks, people just might get some ideas staring at the bare chest of a computer- generated mythical creature that just don't fly with the family Starbucks image.

If you love your local coffee house, you may want to protect them from the eyes of the corporate demons. Starbucks will steal menus, themes and locations. A favored tactic of this coffee monster is to bully small businesses from their leases, but when this fails, they have a backup plan. Starbucks will scoop up that thin _and precious profit margin from tiny businesses, all-night diners and quirky cafes by planting a store next door. Journalist Naomi Klein reports in her book "No Logo" that Starbucks executives, in a moment of purely maniacal greed, made an endearing term for this business move, "cannibalizing the neighborhood."

While I am a two-pot-a-day coffee addict, I must remind myself that my desire for coffee does not justify the cruelty experienced by workers, the plundering of the earth, or the spread of corporate infection that will eventually bring the apocalypse.

This is why, when I need to take some time to worship, I head to a small business and kick in the extra ten cents as an offering to my almighty bean. I drink my coffee black; no cream, no sugar, no blood, no tears, no ghosts of endangered species, no pesticides, and no corporate filth, thank you very much.

After all, a mermaid without nipples is just creepy.