Deterioration
I’m not in a mood to be tolerant and accepting. As a matter of fact I’m in a foul savage mood; I’m in a mood to bite the heads off fluffy kittens. Have been ever since yesterday. I’m in the kind of mood where people suddenly rush off to live in the Arctic circle, or quit their jobs, or try to circumnavigate the globe on a bicycle and disappear somewhere in Nebraska. So be careful what you say to me.
So I’m not in an accepting embracing mood. I’m not ready to have secular commercial establishments shoving unrequested religious messages at me. (Like, what? I’m ready for that kind of thing when I’m in a good mood? No. Okay, but I’m even more savage about it today. Humour me.)
Coffee drinkers in the US could soon get Jesus with their morning jolt as Starbucks plans to put a religious message on its cups next spring. The cups will carry a religious quote from the Rev Rick Warren, the author of the blockbuster self-help book The Purpose-Driven Life. Mr Warren said he had had the idea after seeing a quote on one of the store’s cups on evolution by the paleontologist Louise Leakey. [sic – they mean Louis. Duh.] His quote reads: “You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny.”
Well how’s that for stupid? How’s that for a moronic, dribbling, slack-jawed, fatuous, blithering piece of dreck? Pretty good, I’d say. Scores pretty high on the dumbOmeter. Your parents may not have planned you, but Kramer did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by Kramer and for Kramer, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in Kramer do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny. That’s a lot of stuff to discover all in one place, isn’t it – our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny. Whoo-ee – that’s quite a package. Unless it’s just a string of big-sounding words thrown in arbitrarily to make it all sound Deep and Meaningful – could that be it?
While the religious inscription may be a first for Starbucks, packaging goods with a message from God has been done before. For the past 30 years Alaska Airlines has put prayer cards on food trays. The California-based fast-food chain In-N-Out Burger has long carried verses from the Bible on its wrappers.
Yeah – I got one of those wretched ‘prayer cards’ from Alaska airlines a few years ago. Boy did that piss me off. It’s not as if you can get up and leave, is it!
When the founder of the clothing chain Forever 21 and XXI saw them he included a quote from John 3:16 on his shopping bags, declaring: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The quotes were “evidence of faith”, a spokesman, Larry Meyer, told USA Today.
Well obviously. That’s where the slack-jawed bit comes in – because ‘faith’ as a euphemism for religion means believing things without evidence, and ‘faith’ in that sense is not a virtue. The quotes were ‘evidence of credulity,’ the spokesman might as well have said.
So – Oratory School please note.
Government policy on school admissions was in disarray last night in the wake of a ruling from the Education Secretary Ruth Kelly that a church school could carry on interviewing parents to select its pupils. Parents’ leaders and pressure groups claimed that the decision would open the floodgates to schools of all faiths to adopt the practice – thus paving the way for more segregation in schools…Ms Kelly’s decision gave the green light to the London Oratory School, where Tony Blair sends his three children, to carry on the practice. The school says that it uses the interviews to determine parents’ commitment to their faith, whatever it is.
Church schools interview parents to determine their commitment to their credulity – so presumably it’s only if they are (or appear) credulous enough that their children are allowed to attend. Strange criterion.
But maybe no stranger than thinking libraries should get over their stupid backward-looking interest in dreary old books.
In the debate about modernising libraries, for instance, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) advocates that the New Model Library should feature “cafés, lounge areas with sofas, and chill-out zones where young people can watch MTV, read magazines and listen to CDs on listening posts”. CABE accuses traditional libraries of being “caught in the grip of traditional notions of the book-lending centre”. Behind this anti-book approach lies a real contempt for teenagers who are cast as so shallow that they might be enticed into reading by a few gadgets and soft furnishings.
Not to mention cast as so shallow that they can’t possibly have any interest in books in the first place – that they can’t possibly go to libraries because they have an already existing interest in books and desire to read a wider range of them, and that that’s a stuffy boring ‘traditional’ (and of course elitist) interest for anyone to have. Yeah. The hell with books, secularism, rational thought, skepticism, and independent-mindedness, and up with sheeplike ‘faith,’ pious coffee cups and shopping bags, ‘faith’ schools, and libraries converted to sofa-filled tv-watching centres. Okay that’s it – Arctic Circle, I’m on my way.
Rev Rick Warren, the author of the blockbuster self-help book _The Purpose-Driven Life_ asserts: “You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose.”
Rickey, baby, my father was born in the year of the Third Reform Bill, 1884. Only when he was thirty years of age did he consider himself mature enough, and well-enough established in a career, to contemplate marriage, and to that end he became engaged.
Now, Rickey, all Humanists, and seven out of twelve Fundamentalists can add thirty to 1884 and come up with 1914, the year in which a great War erupted in Europe. My father enlisted. Somewhere in Flanders, he received what the lads who were obliged to fight the Second World War learned to call a “Dear John Letter”. And that was the most grievous wound he received in that whole affray – always ignoring the death of his youngest brother on the last day of the Battle of Mont Sorel.
But when he had returned from the war, instead of marrying in his thirties, and getting as large a family as the one from which he had sprung, one which would necessarily have excluded me, he postponed marriage until his early fifties. He then married a quite different, much younger woman, and got upon her a single child: yr humble, yr most obedient.
I am something which the First World War made possible.
My presence here on Earth is contingent upon the murder of an Archduke, and the deaths of tens of millions.
Rickey,baby, if I qua god, had determined upon the necessity of me, qua hominid, you may be bloody well certain that I should have contrived less extravagant means.
Based on the increasing evidence, I’m starting to believe most people are zombies.
Oh, and I have faith in that, and I don’t consider it virtuous.
One more reason not to patronize Starbucks. That’s why I get my morning jolt at the Godless Commie Cafe in downtown Berkeley. Only Marx quotations on the cups.
Oh, great. Now I’m in a mood to bite the heads off fluffy kittens, too.
What gets to me is that the same people spouting the “we were specially created in love for a high purpose and our lives have cosmic significance” party-line are also the same people who think atheists are arrogant and self-important.
Wow, good rebuttal, Elliott.
I know, about the ‘atheists are arrogant’ bit. Those are also the same people who say when a tsunami or hurricane or earthquake kills or mangles thousands of people all around them that God was watching out for them – thus revealing a startlingly low opinion of the neighbors.
When I was a teen, we lived in a place with no real library, but if I had seen the dedicated “teen” section nowadays, and the stuff that’s in it…it just does not smell right, even apart from the subject matter seldom having any interest; I did not need to be told like an idiot child to stay clear of drugs and so on, after seeing what they did to my parents. Anyway. One thing I do like is finding a 100-year-old book on a subject, original edition too, sitting right next to one that was printed this year. If they are going to spend all their budget on neon, uncomfortable furniture, and CDs that sound like a truckload of tin cans hitting a truckload of hogs, well, my historical comparisons may be an endangered pastime. I know libraries get space problems no matter what happens, but still. –But there’s been times I have been very glad they have public computers.
As for unwelcome religious messages, it isn’t just the Christians that are guilty. I once had a new-age type try to tell me that I had chosen to be born when and where I was…He won’t do that again.
I knew there was a reason I don’t drink coffee, and always bring my own bags to the store.
Well, you’ll certainly never catch me in a Starbucks if that’s what it says on the cups. I hope someone from their marketing reads B&W and is getting suitably nervous. Anyway, if they’re going to do something so stupid, why can’t they do it more succintly and simply write “Allahu Akbar”? Or, failing that, change the whole chain’s name to “Coffee for Christians” (so the unsuspecting will be warned in advance)? Maybe the next step will be to interview your parents to determine their credulity before accepting you as a client worthy of their Sacred Frappucino…
There’s always Peets, thank Mao. (Just kidding. I’m not a fan of Mao, either)
Karl-do me a favor. Don’t be QUITE so loud, because it’s opinions like yours, so dominant here on the Left Coast, that explain why our oh so loving, eternally good, perfect God Jehovah will be smitin’ us with an earthquake soon, don’t yah know? :)
“I hope someone from their marketing reads B&W and is getting suitably nervous.”
Starbucks knows no shame. What else should we expect from the dingleberries who gave us Collapse Into Cool and the price-gouging of the 9/11 victims?
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cool.htm
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/starbuck.htm
“Karl-do me a favor. Don’t be QUITE so loud, because…our oh so loving, eternally good, perfect God Jehovah will be smitin’ us with an earthquake soon”
Making it worse? How can it it worse? Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!
Oh yeah, Peets rocks! Better coffee, better prices, better attitudes.
The library issue is really depressing. I hear they intend to “modernize” the library in my hometown in a similar manner. Bah.
As for your planned arctic exile, may I point you to http://www.spitsbergentravel.no/? They organize boat trips from Norway. I was thinking myself of taking one when my research project is in a more finished stage. Though the place is riddled with polar bears, there are nonetheless a few towns around.
If it’s too civilized for you – well, I heard the Kerguelen archipelago, on the other side of the globe, is a nice place. Also one of the most windy and rainy places on the planet.
Can we get Starbucks under the new religious hatred bill, ’cause we’re atheists or something?
As for Libraries, it is already lost.
Learning isn’t fashionable, and what’s worse, its ELITIST!
So there.
On a happier note, I went to the opening of a newly expanded branch library in my town yesterday. I’m pleased to report that the sparkling new teen area, while not without its comfortable furniture, is very well stocked with books. There was not a skateboard in sight.
The place was jammed. It did my wizened little heart good to see a pack of excited teenagers with their arms full of books, showing off the titles to each other. Puts me in a mood to be kind to kittens.
Is this part of the marketing trend to make businesses seem as if they care about more than money? Many Christian customers would rather give their money to businesses who seem to share their values. Corporate America has learned well from the success of the Republicans who got votes the same way.
Well, Karl, what with the libraries going where they’re going, soon enough we’ll all have to resort to Starbucks coffee cups for provocative, intellectually stimulating reading material, won’t we?
“Is this part of the marketing trend to make businesses seem as if they care about more than money? Many Christian customers would rather give their money to businesses who seem to share their values. Corporate America has learned well from the success of the Republicans who got votes the same way.”
Yep. Citibank, definitely a vortex of evil if any corporate institution is, goes beyong minor annyoing coffee cup slogans-they’re attempt to be philosophical hits you right in the eys thanks to gigantic billboards everywhere. Not that their bromides about monmey not being everything are THAT offensive, but… :)
Surely you can SEE where this is leading? (cue X-Files theme)
Libraries talk this drivel about young people in chill-out spaces to -gasp- GET CUSTOMERS so they can get funded and fulfil their mission.
Churches send enthusiastic people found COFFEE SHOP ministries so they can -gasp- GET CONVERTS so they can get funded and fulfil their mission.
Is Starbucks trying to compete for the converts? Is this not a convergence of Church and Commerce? Can’t you join the dots? With libraries its the State, converging… soon its gonna be compulsory to have a Frappacino before you can borrow a book, and recite Mark 11:1 before the door opens to let you out…
“Is Starbucks trying to compete for the converts?”
No, ChrisPer, Starbucks is trying to compete for addicts. Or is caffeine no longer regarded as addictive?
(Naaa . . . can’t be. And I should know. I’ve been drinking six cups a day for forty-odd years.)
I’m dreading the day when we all turn Japanese and are force-fed cute little singing, dancing cuddly-cute cartoon characters with high, piping voices chirping inanely about the happy-happy fun-play lovey-love joyful essence of Megacorp and Moloch International, from ubiquitous, inescapable electronic billboards, TV screens, and PA systems. That’s the day I commit voluntary euthanasia. (“Can we have your liver?”)
http://www.sillymortal.com/neat/HiHoCommercials.html
If the report that this is just one in a series of quotes from all kinds of sources then that does shed rather a different light on things. Starbucks as intellectual salon is kinda funny…
That’s a kind of anodyne quote to choose, though. If they’re going to print stimulating, thought-provoking quotes they coud find something better than chickensoup balls like that to represent Christian philosophy.
As to libraries, I’d quite like it if I could go to the library and slump on the sofa with a book; when I was a teenager, with home full of screaming younger brothers and sisters, I’d have liked it even more…
Rather bizarrely Newcastle (in the UK) has taken to combining libraries with swimming pools (I don’t think you are allowed to take books into the pool….)
I think that coffee and chill- out areas are all very well as long as there is some focus on the books. What bothers me is that this is being lost in favour of computer games, DVDs and music. Even our university library loans DVDs for goodness’ sake. Books are worthwhile in themselves and we shouldn’t pander to those who think otherwise.
Oh, I’m all for combining libraries with facilities for other activities, too. I’m particularly thinking here about ashtrays, comfortable leather chairs and whiskey cabinets. But yes, these would be necessary to make the reading experience more enjoyable. Combining libraries with swimming pools, bowling halls and the like is rather desperate.
I read once somebody built a movie house with a swimming pool and got the world’s first dive-in theater.
–A couple of our local malls now have branches of the county library–good for returns and computer usage, but not much else [though the papers and mags are notably multicultural.] More customers for the neon industry though… Good point about comfortable places to hang out, though–and as for DVD’s, some of us can’t afford to buy those either, and are glad to find them in a library. Same with CD’s–as for listening posts, those are a great blessing, in the stores anyway. But it all comes down to budget. Will there be any money left for books that don’t turn out to be riddled with god-blather?
Why do we need libraries with chill-out areas when I can go to my neighborhood Barnes and Noble or Border Books? There I can take some Bertrand Russell or the Koran off the shelf, order a $5.00 foaming coffee beverage with a sandwich in the attached café, and sit for as long as I like. These bookstores have larger and less censored inventories than all but research or big city libraries. Even if these bookstores have helped destroy smaller independent sellers, they nevertheless are forced to provide a space where books are enjoyable to be around – which is more than can be said for most high schools.
Absolutely agree about the sofas. Thought about that when penning comment, thought of using ellipse to omit phrase about sofas. Sofas fine; chairs fine; places to read fine, excellent, good. It’s the contempt for books I’m fussing about.
Holborn library incident hilarious – to read about anyway, though probably not to witness.
Well, nobody was really hurt :-) It is pretty funny considering that I grew up in the country with the highest rate of violent crime in the world (South Africa, where the murder rate is higher than some countries that are actually engaged in war), but I had to go to a library in a upscale part of central London before I witnessed someone being assaulted (not counting late night drunken fighting).
I think it’s odd that when looking for a Christian quote they didn’t look at the words of, well, Jesus Christ?
Maybe he’s not vacuous enough.
“I think it’s odd that when looking for a Christian quote they didn’t look at the words of, well, Jesus Christ?”
The problem is that those words which are alleged to be JC’s very own are of dubious provnance.
Buns and Noodles is a good place to hang out, sure enough, but last time I was in there, they didn’t have the 2 books I wanted to sit down with. One cannot always count on finding enough comfy seats, nor the tables that those of us with arm problems need for support. Also, some towns may still be devoid of such sanctuaries. Like the craphole that I grew up in. I think that libraries are not “lost” until everyone involved has given up.