So there’s this bum hangout right around the corner from the Synthesis office. It’s like this shelter for young adults who want to sit around all day smoking cigarettes and hanging on the couch in the air conditioning with their pit bull mix instead of, well, anything else. Today on my way to get coffee, Dain and I walked by this young derelict who asks, almost as an afterthought, if he could bum a cigarette. It might have been a cold move, but this was my response:

I think singing one bar of the The Silhouettes’ “Get a Job” got my point across.

Being a dick is awesome.

One of my favorite over-priced vices is Starbucks coffee which I properly designated as “FourBucks” because my wallet is feeling a little light lately. Their stock is currently being hammered.. badly. Competition from other more accessible outlets like McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts is creating quite a predicament for the corporate money hounds. Locations with a low profit margin are being retrained to be familiar with Starbuck’s “new image” to overcome the competitiveness in the coffee-fix industry. This is to promote students and working class communities like myself shaking in our boots to order a tongue-twisting drink like a Venti Iced Latte, light ice, extra espresso shot, 2 and ½ shots of syrup, with room.

So Starbucks is following the trend of “going green” and getting personal with their customers. I already think it’s creepy when you walk in and they greet you with your name but hey, that’s good customer service. A little too good. The new “Green” campaign includes giving away used coffee grounds for garden compost use, recycled packaging, continuing the “Fair Trade Movement” and encouraging customers to drink out of ceramic mugs if dining in.

An online community for coffee drinkers was the best idea I’ve heard in awhile. A bunch of jacked-up, opinionated and caffeine-filled customers voicing their opions through “My Starbucks Idea”: an interactive site. So get your ten-worded order in your hand and your laptop in the other. Drink your coffee as you chat about coffee with other customers. Brilliant or just plain over-the-top?

Here’s a link to a super uplifting post on io9.com called 12 Ways To Prepare For The Next Great Depression. I’m going to start stockpiling coffee and dried meats.

Get out of your mortgage before the housing market collapses any further. As this site says, if you paid $300,000 for your house and it sells for $200,000, you could end up not owning your house and owing the bank $100,000.

Buy some cheap land in a rural area. Build a house, or just get a used RV. Either way, make sure you own your home free and clear, so you can live rent-free and mortgage-free for as long as you need to.

Go off the grid. Get your own power generator — or, better yet, some of those solar helium balloons. Or some wind turbines. Don’t be dependent on the power company to keep all your necessities running.

Cultivate some skills that will always be in demand. Become a decent electrician, handy-person, carpenter or cook. There may not be much need for someone who understands content management systems during a total economic shutdown, but someone who can build a house will always have a place to crash.

Go read the rest and start saving that canned food.

OMG DROP what you’re doing and head on over to…..hahaha, sorry, I can’t do it. I support our locally-owned coffee shops on a daily (sometimes twice-daily) basis. I realize that this doesn’t make me better than anyone who frequents Starbucks, a company who apparently has a conscience and mixes in good with the bad (I hear their employees get great benefits, and with record stores dying I’m glad there are still places to buy a limited selection the next of overly-hyped artist-of-the-minute). I just like supporting my own local tax structure. So therefore, it’s really hard for me to say it. So I’ll just let the Starbucks Home page say it for me:

“On April 8, 2008, Starbucks is introducing Pike Place Roast with coast-to-coast tasting events…”

From Palm Beach post:

The event is more than just free coffee — it’s a coffee tasting, according to Starbucks. Customers will be instructed to smell, then slurp (”by slurping,” the guide for store managers says, “you aerate the coffee by spraying it across your palate, which enables the subtle flavors to reach your nose”), taste, then describe. Describing is like “poetry” and involves aroma, acidity, body and flavor, the guide says.

The event is the latest in the company’s attempt to connect with customers, become less corporate and be more about the coffee.

So on my way to the Naked Lounge or The Upper Crust or Has Beans, I will still stop by the Starbucks and pick up a free 8 oz cup of their new Pike Place Roast, because to not get free coffee is MORE of a crime.

According to the Take part blog, you can also go into Starbucks and request (and then buy) a cup of Fair Trade coffee instead. YEAH, that’s right, stick it to the man…

I say just bring your own jar.

In a study conducted by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation, researchers discovered that “a vital barrier between the brain and the main blood supply of rabbits fed a fat-rich diet was protected in those given a caffeine supplement.”

“Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilise the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders,” says Dr. Jonathan Geiger of the University of North Dakota.

Awesome!

Now I definitely don’t feel so bad about going out for thirds or fourths of coffee during the day. Thanks BBC News!

Besides just turning you into a complete douche, cocaine it turns out, is also very eco-unfriendly:

A panel of scientists meeting at the Natural History Museum in London last week detailed how the production of the drug and its trafficking affect biodiversity and contribute to climate change. The production of a gram of cocaine means the destruction of four square metres of Colombian forest, they said, raising the question of which supermodels, popstars and city types should be lined up with hummer drivers and big game hunters in the environmental most-wanted stakes. Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the planet, and also the biggest cocaine producer. Bad combination.

Cocaine production is a threat to environment is all its stages, said Liliana Davalos, lecturer in Molecular Ecology at the Open University, UK. The first step of the cycle is the destruction of forest to plant coca. Every year, 100 thousand hectares of Colombian forest is destroyed for this end. The plantations also use tons of herbicides that are forbidden in many other countries. Since the UK is one of the world’s largest consumption markets for cocaine, it makes concerns about organic tomatoes and pesticides seem futile.

The more eco-friendly stimluant choice, said the scientists is coffee:

Coffee from shade trees cultivation farms, where the bushes are grown in the shadow of native taller trees, is a much more eco-friendly option. “Biodiversity in these plantations is almost as high as in primary forests,” said botanist Sandy Knapp from the Natural History Museum.

Besides, research has shown that coffee and cocaine act on your body in basically the same way. Guess you just have to drink a lot more of it.