Over at Alternet, Kim Fellner, a reporter for Colorlines magazine, ponders the "Starbucks Paradox" - is the coffee behemoth inherently evil just because it's a big corporation? Or, is Starbucks actually a diverse company that offers viable career opportunities for those of all races and classes?

As I went around the country, I couldn't help notice that both the employees and habitues of Starbucks seemed far more diverse by race and class than the American anti-globalization movement. I wanted to know, was big, by definition, bad? Was Starbucks' touted commitment to "values" just a cynical ploy to complement its branding and market share?

Few people argued that coffee was inherently evil like bombs or SUVs. Rather, Starbucks stood accused of: buying coffee at prices that couldn't sustain the farmers; purchasing from farms that degraded the environment; causing neighborhoods to gentrify and small cafes to wither; and representing the mega-branding that's killing small businesses and homogenizing the world.

I frankly like having Starbucks at the airport, and at strip malls in strange cities. I wouldn't mind independently-owned coffee shops instead, but Starbucks is usually what's there. Moreover, progressives have tended to romanticize small businesses; yet many sweatshops in this country have been small, family-owned enterprises, and that didn't benefit those who worked there. As a rule, racial minorities have fared better in larger institutions. Was Starbucks doing right by race? What about class and politics?

Naturally the issue is much more complex than a casual survey of who's working where and Fellner is careful to examine all the concerns and accusations levied against Starbucks over the years. It's a pretty fair, unbiased piece and, as a Starbucks consumer, I'm glad to see that although the company still has miles to go, it's made significant strides in its role as a community builder. Hell, is it even Starbucks' responsibility to think beyond the coffee it sells? Yes, as Fellner reports:

"People who go into corporate management didn't sign up to be civil servants," notes global justice organizer Liz Butler. "But increasingly, the crucial decisions are being made in board rooms, and we need them to take on that role."

The decisions are, of course, also being made by we the consumers. Every day we have choices to make. Every day someone tells me what I should or should or shouldn't eat/drink/wear/consume. While I think it's really easy to say that one shouldn't shop at Wal-Mart, wear Nikes or drink Starbucks, I think the real decision-making comes via a careful examination of a company, its policies and its overall/long-term effect on the community.

As consumers we can't be all things to all people - and neither can a corporation. I'm not being pro-corporation here, I'm only saying that there are other options besides knee-jerk boycotts and I think this Starbucks article is a thorough and provocative example of such.

Yesterday afternoon, a conversation:

David: So what kind of stuff did you do in high school? Drive around and go to Lyon's?

Me: Sometimes we went dancing, you know, at the Second Level.

David: You went dancing? See, you were cool.
.
Me: Well we didn't go dancing a lot. Sometimes we just went to parties down by the river.

David: Parties? You went to parties? You were cooler than us.

Me: Well, OK, there were two parties.

David: Still, you had parties to go to. You were cool.

Me: OK, no really ... actually I just spent most of the time alone in my room pretending to be Madonna.

Yeah, so the truth is out there. As if the rest of you ever thought any differently.

Sorry things have been so quiet around here the last few days. Motoring through my last two weeks of classes ... OK, if I'm going to be honest here, I've actually been only been scootering my way through the last two weeks, constantly torn between doing assignments and having a life.

This weekend was lovely because I got to spend time with Cory, spend time with friends, spend time with my family. I cooked, I cleaned....I slept in, took naps and was all-around lazy.

I didn't open my backpack once to examine its contents. In fact, I put the damn thing in the closet so I wouldn't have to see it.

I only have one more assignment due this semester - an essay rewrite - and naturally I'm waiting until the last possible moment to tackle it. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Anyway, the real reason I'm here right now is to deliver a public service announcement. Our good friends over at CopyBitch are looking for submissions for their next issue:

Attention all you wage slaves, all you creatives supporting your worthy habits, you eschewers of the corporate ties that bind, and, yes, you victims of the petulant economy--all you temps. The time is now: CopyBitch is currently accepting submissions for CopyBitch, Volume II Issue 1.

If you have something you'd like to write about the temp experience, we, and our readers, would like to read it. Send your submissions to submit@copybitch.com.

Deadline for submissions: Saturday 15 May 2004.

Temporarily Yours,
The EdBitch
www.copybitch.com

The zine is produced here in Sacramento and if you've yet to check it out it's smart and snarky, fun and truthful - it's everything we love in a zine. So check it out and submit. You know you want to.

On that note, I'm off from work this morning but I still have to submit to school which means I need to get out of my pajamas and into the shower. More later....

It was, despite a few minor, random glitches, a pretty damn good weekend. A summerific taste of a post-semester life.

Now I've got The Elected on repeat, stories to write and, for once, enough sleep to fuel me through the day.

I've got houses on the brain lately. This morning I took a walk through McKinley Park and enviously admired all the charming Tudor-styled houses I will never be able to afford. Am not even sure I want to afford - if only because the thought of paying how much? for a piece of property seems silly.

Cory and I are thinking a lot about houses these days. About neighborhoods. About two-bedrooms versus three-bedrooms versus wow-FOUR-bedrooms?. I've been torn between really cute but really small and larger, more practical and several notches down on the cute scale. I've been thinking about the here-and-now and the future.

I've also been writing an essay about a house that I lived in as a kid. I've been thinking about all the houses in which I grew up. The memories I keep of them, the things I can't remember, the things I wish I didn't remember.

I've been flipping through magazines such as House Beautiful and Dwell and ReadyMade, thinking of projects, thinking of possibilities. The Apartment Therapy site has a feature on painting your floors and I think...hmmm, what if....

And I wonder where we'll be a year from now.

I absolutely despise my comments system - if anyone can recommend a better one, I'd appreciate it. Then again, I'm going to probably switch this blog over to something like TypePad sometime soon ... in the meantime, if the comments number isn't corresponding with the actual number of comments, then please click the "check master comments" link beneath the text box (below the "push it" button).

Because I am absolutely sick of trying to debug the damn thing.

As soon as this semester is over....I swear...

P.S. Today, as I bought my morning coffee, I had to stand in between two Banana Republic Blondes named Whitney and Deb-Deb.

I am not kidding you. Oh how I wish that I were.

In the weekend mix:

• New Bebel Gilberto and Mirah records



• Gilmore Girls first season DVD



• Re-write essay - last assignment of the semester!



• Kings game tomorrow



• Grandmother's 80th birthday on Sunday

Happy birthday Sandra!

A new report in the Journal of Death Studies suggests that poets have a shorter life expectancy than other types of writers:

It could be because poets are tortured and prone to self-destruction, or it could be that poets become famous young, so their early deaths are noticed, said James Kaufman of the Learning Research Institute at California State University at San Bernardino.

For the report, published in the Journal of Death Studies, Kaufman studied 1,987 dead writers from various centuries from the United States, China, Turkey and Eastern Europe. He classified the writers as fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and nonfiction writers. He did not study the causes of death.

"Among American, Chinese and Turkish writers, poets died significantly younger than nonfiction writers," Kaufman wrote in the report. "Among the entire sample, poets died younger than both fiction writers and nonfiction writers." (via CNN)

OK, but what if you don't just do one type of writing? I write poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Thus, if the study finds that the average life span for the following writers are such:

Poets; 62
Playwrights :63
Novelists: 66
Nonfictionwriters: 68

If I find the combined average of the life span for poets, novelists and non-fiction writers than my life expectancy would be: 65.3 years. However, if I decide to also write a play then my life expectancy drops down to 64.75 years. Hmmm, something to keep in mind...

Cool, they're releasing a director's cut of "Donnie Darko" in the theaters - with added footage. Bobby J. introduced us to this odd little film, which we now have on DVD, and it'll be good to see it on the big screen.

Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban has a weblog - and he's got some choice words for fellow reality TV tycoon Donald Trump. (Via Gawker).

The Christian Science Monitor examines why Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is getting a cool reception in Tokyo, the city in which it is set.

But the film is under attack for cultural bias, and for maximizing its humor by depicting Japanese as robotic and cartoon-like. The question is: to what degree is the film insensitive - and to what extent is this the kind of "poking fun" that some ethnic groups now ignore?

Until now, none of these voices or questions has come from Japan. Indeed, while "Lost in Translation" opened all over the world last fall, it opened in image-conscious Tokyo only last weekend. Some sources say this is deliberate. Japanese decorum on culturally sensitive matters precludes angry protest or high-volume misgivings about images that might be considered unfair or "unpleasant," to use a local reviewer's term. But it is telling that the Academy-award-winning "valentine" can be seen here only in a small 300-seat theater in Shibuya, and critics warn that the film may hurt the feelings of ordinary Japanese.

During a recent publicity junket in Japan, one reporter asked Coppola why she set the film in Japan, asking 'aren't there lonely people everywhere?'. There are of course, but there's something to be said for setting your characters in an environment where the language - both verbal and written - is virtually undecipherable to you and where the customs and norms differ so greatly from your own country's. While I can see why some people might think Coppola's portrayal of the Japanese sometimes wandered towards satire, I don't think it was meant to be disrespectful and ultimately it's not a film about being a stranger in a strange land, but rather a study on loneliness, love and loss.

On that note, we saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on Saturday and it left me amazed in a very sad, melancholy sort of way.

Interestingly, a Salon reviewer accuses the film of cloaking itself in movie gimmickry as a way to avoid heartfelt emotion but I completely disagree with that assessment. This is one of the most emotional films I've seen in a long time. It depicts, honestly, what's it's like to suffer at the hands of memory and what it's like to realize you've lost - or are losing - something dear to you. Sure, that sounds so simple and it is, at least in part, the way that Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman tell this story that makes it provocative. But even if you stripped away all the technical tricks, you'd still have something very powerful. Indeed, I could almost see this being presented as a stage play with props that played around with the concepts of scale and artifice and what we keep locked in the recesses of our minds. Also, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are great and although have liked Winslet in almost everything I've seen her in, I rarely like Carrey - I definitely left the theater impressed with his quiet, subtle take on what it means to be confused, disappointed, lonely and sometimes hopeful. A highly recommended film and I'm planning to see it again very soon.

Of course this is why I never see as many films as I plan to - I find one film that I love and then see it repeatedly.

Oh well....anyway, I have homework to finish and I've got one of the playoff games on (with the volume muted) and outside the cars are making that nice wheels-splashing-through-rain sound so I think I'll go enjoy the quiet now.

p.s., Happy 24th Birthday, Adam...I love you, you big old techie lunkhead.

Last night = the first good night in a long time and by good night I simply mean quiet time together, a nice dinner, browsing at the book store and then two episodes from the new Freaks & Geeks DVD box set.

Tonight = dinner with a friend, the Shepard Fairy exhibit at the Toyroom Gallery and finally, finally, finally, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

And although the work and school pressures are still weighing me down, I feel up, up, up right now....good and peaceful and momentarily relaxed.

Via Slate, a slideshow essay on how the San Francisco Public Library converted a vandal's defacing of gay and lesbian-themed books into "Reversing Vandalism," an exhibit comprised of more than 200 pieces of provocative, poignant art.

Wow. This morning I am tired beyond tired. I did not think I could be this tired and still be standing. (OK, sitting actually). But here I am, eyes half-open and typing. I am just not a getting-to-bed-at-1-a.m. and getting-up-before-noon type of gal. But I am a 9-to-5-er so there you go and here I am. Typing in circles so it would seem. Only 2 more workshops to go and I am done with my fiction submissions and have one non-fiction to go (next week). I was not particularly thrilled with what I workshopped last night, it felt rushed and under-developed to me - not that I wanted to write it into the ground, mind you - I think if I'd had an extra day or so, but I didn't and there you and here I am typing in circles once again.

So, Air America has not even made it to Sac yet and it's already struggling. The fledgling liberal radio network just filed an injunction to stay on the air in Chicago and Los Angeles after those markets dropped the network for bouncing a check. (Via the Smoking Gun).

I'm listening to the much-hyped Nellie McKay double CD that everyone seems to be salivating over and I have to confess that it just irritates the beejeezus out of me. The record annoys me so much I haven't even made it to the second disc. I know why people like her so much, she's 19, cute as all hell and definitely has a voice and is very precocious. And yet somehow, for me, none of it seems to add up to anything that's interesting or resonates. I'll take some Fiona Apple, Eleni Mandell or Mary Margaret O'Hara instead, thanks.

But I'll give it another spin or two and try to listen to the other disc. You see, I want my annoyance to be well-informed.

Have I mentioned lately how much the Kings are depressing me lately? I can't even watch, it's too aggravating, too upsetting. See ya around next year. Feh. I really hope I am wrong about that and that they'll miraculously emerge from this slump to kick the Mavs' collective asses...but, well....nevermind.

Hmmm...but today has not been entirely crap (yet). Taxes are done, mailed and money will eventually be on its way. I just received an e-mail from a friend with whom I have not talked in a long while. There are no plans tonight other than trashy reality TV and going to bed early and this weekend we will actually do social things and that is good.

So I thought I was doing fine with school; I was feeling relatively Zen about the whole thing. And then BAM! it hit me, the stress I mean. Only three weeks left of proper class - a time period in which I have to workshop twice (this week and next) and when you factor in work which is keeping me pretty busy, well then there you go, I am a bit of a basket case. And tired, really tired. And trying to figure out how to balance it all in the next three weeks without going completely nuts or alienating those around me.

Oh yeah, and the Kings are depressing the hell out of me lately. Snap out of it already guys! Make Chris come in off the bench. Something.

Oh yeah and that was me in the car yesterday, screaming at the radio when George Bush said that he "grieved" for the families of September 11th, with whom he met "a lot". That wasn't the question the reporter asked, she asked if you felt responsible.

We all grieved.

Feh.

I am happy with the thought of possible rain though. Suddenly I'm wishing I had a Smiths CD for the drive down to Oakland. The Sufjan Stevens or new Eleni Mandell should suffice however.

I woke up this morning singing Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" and that really put me in a mood. But the good news is that I hear that Air America is coming to a Sacramento a.m. station later this week. Maybe now I'll wake up singing Al Franken or Janeane Garofalo sound bites.

After his little rant following yesterday's loss to the Kings, the Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal wins NBC Sports' Whine of the Week award. Only question is, why don't they just retire the award in his honor already?

Last night was drinks with friends and then dinner and then a club that shall not be named but all I will say about it is that I still hate the fake boobs/overly-tanned/Bebe outfits/knock-off Louis Vuitton bag crowd and then to cleanse our sins, Kim & I went to Old I and listened/told dirty (literally) stories with Bobby J and we laughed so hard that my cheeks and jaw hurt and I was crying/howling tears and as we left the club I felt so, so, so much better because really it is both about my insecurities (I snark on the outside because I - sniff- hurt on the inside) and also just wanting to feel at home with those who make you comfortable, those who make you laugh and those who reserve their judgements for the fake boobs/overly-tanned/Bebe outfits/knock-off Louis Vuitton bag crowd that deserves them.

Oh and last night I dreamed I was on a reality show that combined America's Next Top Model and The Apprentice and it involved flying through the air trying to get to the costume tent in time to pick out the right accessories (thanks to Bjork for pointing me in the direction of the Italian designer who in turn pointed out the white Paul Frank chopsticks to put in my hair). But then Shandi got sick on the bathroom floor and I was trying to help her out and then some rich Armani suit-wearing jerk who'd turned the Trump Tower into a posh dining hall for bigwig money guys wasn't any help when I got lost (and hey, just where was Tyra Banks during this whole mess) and so I was late to my photo shoot with Donald Trump and well you try explaining all that to him.

That's right, I'm fired and no longer in the running to become America's Next Top Model.

Bummer.

It's 12:15 and I still have to take the cat to the vet and I've yet to start on my short story that's due next Wed. and let me tell you it's going to put the "short" back in short story and I'm really tired and my allergies are killing me but Kim & I are going out tonight so I'm determined to have fun so screw all this whining. Next up: repeated listenings of the new Ambulance record.

The media hoopla around gay marriage issues seems to have died down in the last few weeks, but the battles continue. Wednesday the American Civil Liberties Union announced it had filed a lawsuit in Albany, New York, seeking marriage equality for 13 same-sex couples.

CNN reports that

The complaint states that a denial of same-sex marriage violates the New York State Constitution's guarantee of equal treatment. However, it falls short of criticizing the state for a history of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

In their brief, the plaintiffs and their lawyers applaud the numerous attempts by institutions to accommodate this emerging disparity in the implementation of the law.

"The State of New York has had a long and distinctive tradition of affording protection to gays and lesbians, a history that mandates interpreting the State's Constitution to require that same-sex couples have an ability equal to that of opposite-sex couples to marry under State law."

However, the complaint also claims that "while the goals of these policies and systems are indeed laudable, unfortunately, they fall far short of reflecting the commitment that two people who build a life together have, and they fail adequately to protect the relationships of same-sex couples".

As the traditional reading of the law stands, gay and lesbian couples are currently denied more than 700 provisions of New York State law, including property and tax laws that often affect decisions about death and dying partners, the indictment states.

And speaking of the ACLU, the organization is holding a membership conference in San Francisco, July 6-8.
The event will address:

• Gay couples' right to marry


• Religion's role in secular society


• New challenges to reproductive freedom


• Civil liberties in a hi-tech world


• The continuing struggle for racial justice


• Overreaching policies in the war against terror

P.S. I did hear The Thrills while mucking up my copies at Kinko's this morning - and that part was good.

Things that have annoyed me this morning:

E-mails with too many exclamation points. People splitting hairs. How a lack of coffee and not enough sleep turned me into a moron at Kinko's. Broken sunglasses. Some weird guy saying hi to me at the coffee shop in the smarkiest, smirkiest voice ever. (Him: "Good morning - yeah thanks. Me: Um, yeah, uh...good morning). (And no, I did not cut him off or block his car or anything like that).

And that is just the hot list of annoyances.

This is one of the most disturbing supposed-to-be cute-but-actually-creepy sites I've seen in a long time: cute baby photographed with famous people at Who is that with Jeremy?.

There are pictures of the kid with the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Clinton, Tipper Gore, Jerry Seinfeld and Billy Joel.

Billy Joel. I'm not exactly sure why, but this really freaks me out. I'm kind of hoping that it's just an evil Photoshop joke.

And Jeremy himself "says":

Daddy figured it would be fun to take pictures of me with well-known people, and it has been fun! We have met lots of interesting people and they have been very nice to me (and to my dad).

Jeremy! Toddle away while you can...(Via Metafilter).

Who knew? I am only five Friendster degrees away from America's Next Top Model judge/Jane editor Eric Nicholson! (Via Gawker).

New Stereolab album in the a.m. = perfect.
Also, comments are working but not showing up unless you actually click through to the comments box.
So, what I'm trying to say here is show me some comments love anyway. Puh-leeze.

Today I am mad at the world. But you don't want to hear about that.

So instead, a quick and boring weekend rundown.

Friday night - dinner at Celestin's with friends and then karoake at the Townhouse
Saturday night - dinner at Sammy Chu's and then work. Sammy Chu's is the new Paragary's-owned place and, despite reassurances from several friends, it is NOT vegetarian-friendly. Aside from one appetizer and a few side dishes they did not have a single vegetarian entree. Even the papaya salad was prepared with fish sauce - which, really, whether you're vegetarian or not, just sounds disgusting.

I don't quite understand how a restaurant can do that in this day and age. What we did order was good and the decor was OK but, overall, the clientele bugged me - what with all the fake boobs, overly-tanned skin, Bebe outfits and knock-off Luis Vuitton bags. I just hate that kind of scene. Cory swore the place off but I might go again - only because it is right next to the new club Empire and my guess is that it'll turn into a popular meeting-up place. I'll go, but I don't have to like it.

Saturday and Sunday during the day I wrote a 13-page short story. It amazes me what a deadline can do for my creativity.

Today I've been feeling under the weather. Fatigued, achey, flu-ish.

And mad at the world.

Will Kerry choose a Latino for his VP? More specifically, will he tap New Mexico's governor Bill Richardson Lopez? The Pacific News Service examines the possibility:

Democrats have already given Richardson a prominent position in this election cycle, as chairman of the Democratic National Convention that will nominate Kerry in Boston at the end of July. He heads Moving America Forward, a political committee aimed at registering Latinos in Arizona, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada.

Those states are precisely why Richardson is such an attractive choice for the VP spot: As the South goes increasingly Republican, Democratic strategy could shift to courting the Latino vote in the battleground states of the Southwest and even in Florida, where the non-Cuban, Latino Democratic vote is growing fast.

Richardson already has some strikes against him: his tangential role in the Los Alamos National Labratory security scandal and his support of NAFTA,. Nonetheless the presence of this three-time Nobel Peace Prize on the ticket could prove to be beneficial during a race in which Democrats really have to go beyond the hyperbole of Iraq and consider long-term goals and actions.

I don't know where Richardson stands on health care, energy, abortion or education but now's the time to find out. (Via Alternet).

You know, there's a Kings game on tonight but I'm not sure if I can bear to watch it. It's just been too painful lately and I'm so tired today - could be a bad combination. Kings + Mavericks + Me = total breakdown?

Today is wind and bad allergies and still recovering from last night's drive home from school (90 miles in 3 hours and 20 minutes ... fun) and listening to a stack of CDs (The Arlenes, Stereolab, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Sufjan Stevens) and e-mails from supposedly long-lost family members and work, work, work and a paper cut on my finger that hurts like hell and wanting Google mail and speaking of such, needing to research the new computer we're buying and needing to think about finally re-designing this blog, this site and needing, needing, needing to do so many things. And homework and writing and ideas darting about the brain, bringing on simultaneous convulsions of inspiration and dread.

But right now, today is mostly hunger...time for lunch it is.

Want a job at Google? (I knew they wouldn't disappoint today).