Steal this Idea

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A story in the San Francisco Chronicle quotes “Emily Solomon, 45, a Washington, D.C., playwright and Pennsylvania native”:

[The news media] completely downplayed the first serious female candidacy. When she won New Hampshire, it wasn’t, ‘The first woman to win New Hampshire,’ it was ‘Clinton steals New Hampshire.’ Very subtle sexism, you know. And I’m not even a rabid feminist.

Okay, I am tired of this “very subtle sexism” thing. What Solomon is saying in this remark is that the only way people could have reported Clinton’s win in New Hampshire was by specifically pointing out that she was “the first woman to win New Hampshire.” Anything else, apparently, would be “sexism,” albeit ”very subtle sexism.” If Obama had won New Hampshire and no one reported it as “The first African-American to win New Hampshire,” would that have been racist? I doubt it. (So would that difference be racist, or sexist? Honestly, I don’t care. Nobody should. There are bigger fish to fry.)

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This is What is Wrong with America

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We have immigration policies that, when enacted into law and enforced by the government, come to results that are not just absurd, but which ought to shock the conscience:

[Arthur] Mkoyan, who has a grade-point average above 4.0—extra credit for Advanced Placement classes makes that possible—is set to graduate next week from Bullard High School in Fresno, California.

Ten days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to deport him and his family to the Armenian capital city of Yerevan, the same city his family fled in fear 16 years ago.

Follow the link above to read the rest of the story. In short, it demonstrates the utter heartlessness of our laws regarding immigration.

Starbucks: Rules of Engagement

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  1. If you are in the drive-thru lane and ordering more drinks than there are people in your vehicle, then you should be inside the store. The drive-thru lane is not for people like you. It is for people who are both in a hurry and able to be served quickly. Practical considerations regarding the interior upholstery of your car and the liquid and often sugary nature of beverages from Starbucks should further dissuade you from abusing the drive-thru lane in this manner.
  2. If you are in the drive-thru lane and ordering drinks for only the people in your vehicle, but there are more than four people in your vehicle, then you should be inside the store. The drive-thru lane is not for people like you. See above. It may also be helpful to note that if there are more than four people in your vehicle, it is likely that at least one of them needs to use the restrooms inside. Why not take the opportunity?
  3. If you are inside the store and ordering more drinks than can fit in one of those stiff paper drink carriers (i.e., more than four) and it is clearly a Starbucks “rush hour” (e.g., any weekday morning between 7:00 and 9:00), then, while you think you are being nice by bringing coffee to everyone in your office, you are clearly oblivious to the presence, needs, and emotions of the people behind you in line. You need to cut back on your generosity or change your timing, or your co-workers need to be getting their own drinks at this or another Starbucks or similar coffeehouse.
  4. No matter the circumstance, you should never be ordering drinks for other people at Starbucks unless you are intimately familiar with both all of the usual options regarding the particular drinks you are ordering and all of the preferences of your absent companions regarding those options.
  5. If you find yourself at Starbucks purchasing drinks for a party not present at the point of purchase or on site, do not, under any circumstances, contact the absent party via mobile telecommunications device. Recognize that if the absent party is so picky about his or her drink that whatever you bring back will be rejected unless absolutely perfect, then that party is either so insufferable that he or she does not deserve to have a drink brought back to him or her, or that party failed in his or her duty to correctly instruct you on how to order his or her drink. The risk of an improperly constructed beverage falls to the party who failed to properly instruct his or her point-of-purchase proxy.
  6. Finally, if you are not going to Starbucks yourself, but are instead sending someone to Starbucks for your drink, so that person will soon find him- or herself in one of the scenarios described above, then your duty as a polite member of civil society is either to be intimately familiar with all of the usual options regarding your drink and to properly instruct your point-of-purchase proxy beforehand, or to recognize that you have assumed the risk of an improperly constructed beverage, or to go get your drink yourself.

Thank you. That is all.

For Once, a Post About Something Other Than Cake

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How important is presentation? I don’t mean for a job interview, or for improving quarterly sales, or whatnot. I mean on a day-to-day basis, is it important for your stuff to look good? Typically I think it doesn’t. We want nice stuff, don’t get me wrong. And certainly people buy things because they look shiny on the shelf. But it’s true that some things that look good on the shelf in the store don’t work out so well in real life. I’ve seen a lot of funny looking MP3 players that are very eye-catching in the store, shaped like cubes and trapezoids and all manner of odd geometric shapes, but in truth the iPod works as well or better than any other shape.

Yet lately I’ve been thinking that there are some times when presentation matters, and in the stupidest possible ways. For example, my fountain pens. I like writing with my fountain pens. I just do. It makes no sense. I own a digipad, a sort of electronic writing tablet that can record everything I write and later transfer it as an image to my computer so I can run handwriting recognition and get typed notes from handwritten copy. Pretty neat, eh? Well, it is pretty neat. But the thing is, I have to use their special pen (which writes like any normal ball point pen) to interface with the tablet. And even though I use my digipad because it’s so much more efficient, I sometimes feel bad because it means I’m not writing with my fountain pens.

Another example is the cups I use. I used to use my Clarion coffee mug almost exclusively. It reminds me of good times and friends I haven’t talked to in a while. The mug has good memories for me. Yet a couple of months ago I bought some nice tulip glasses, and I use them for everything except hot drinks like coffee (you really need something with a handle for those). So, I’m drinking all of my water and milk out of tulip glasses. I couldn’t even explain why, except that there’s something about a tulip glass that makes the drinks more appetizing.

I know, it makes no sense. Who thinks of milk and water as appetizing? Apparently I do, if it’s in the right glass. Truly, it is odd. But when I get a nice glass full of ice and fill it up with water, I think, “Yeah. That looks about right.” And then I drink it.