Dear Lord.

I am struggling to find anything that could come remotely close to match Starbucks in quality and content. Why did I write about something so amazing, when I knew really that whatever I wrote next would pale in comparison?

I R RAGE FACE

STARBUCKS

Coffeecoffeecoffee

I am a coffee-holic.
Nearly to the extent that an alcoholic is an alcoholic, I must be a coffee-holic. Could not imagine a day without it. Well, I guess that it could happen, but it would be most unpleasant for everyone else involved. I can't even face me on a morning before my first coffee, so god help anyone else who dares get in my way. Over the past year my average consumption has crept up from an average of one or two cups a day, to 4 cups being the usual and over 8 if it's a hangover day. Even more if it's a bad hangover. However, recently I have cut down on Starbucks and Caffe Nero and Costa and all those other chains of coffees, and I guess they must have two or three cups' worth of coffee in a medium/large one of their's, right?

Damn you. Overpriced urgh-ness.

It's quite sad that one of the worst things I consider about being poor is that I can't afford overpriced coffee. I mean, it is what it says on the tin, overpriced. Starbucks is my vice. I must have been keeping their stocks afloatsingle-handedly, the amount of times I used to go into that place. I'm sure that it was at least once a day, and I couldn't get to work without popping into the Starbucks on the way there. At the rate that I was spending, back in the glory days I like to call them, I'd be well on to paying that place a grand a year, if not more. Good job I stopped then?

What I loved about Starbucks, why I was willing to part with so much money on a daily basis, was the staff. Like any good salespeople, they were lovely and valued you as a regular customer, and made you feel like it was actually worth paying more than I would pay for a lunch meal deal for a cup of coffee. They even gave me a small discount for working on the same road as their shop, which made me really justify going in there on a regular basis. I think I stopped because I realised that I couldn't keep up such an expensive habit.

Red cups now did you know?
Do you care?

However, I did go in to Starbucks today. I guess it was something to do with their alluring promise of 2 for 1 hot drinks between the hours of 2 and 5, and I just couldn't resist and longer. Having had a craving at the back of my mind, niggling at me for Starbucks for the past couple of weeks or so, I can well and truly say now that that craving is satisfied. However, one little detail plagues my mind. I know that I haven't visited my local Starbucks for the past couple of months due to financial being poor-ness, but why did they have to go and change pretty much all of my members of staff there?!?! The manager had trained them well so that they were polite and friendly and very nice, so I have no complaints against them. Except it's just not the same without your favourite familiar faces.

However, all hope was not gone. I practically downed two grande cups of coffee, one a toffee nut latte and the other a praline mocha (toffee nut is better by miles, I must say,)got to work and was very productive. For two whole hours. I was still buzzing when I came out of the place. It turns out that Starbucks is a very magical place where my work gets done...

Oh God, that's the first step on the slippery slope isn't it? Soon enough I'll be carting my laptop bag into town every day, enjoying the finest bucks of Star at all expense, crippling my bank balance as well as my back, in the process.

DAMN YOU STARBUCKS D:

Attack of the Trip Advisors.

Go suck a dick.

I have watched far far far too much television this week I tell you. So much that I watched this interesting programme about "Trip Advisor", the online site that advises you where to go for a trip basically. Except instead of it all being glossed over by some PR rep, it's actually written by paying customers themselves! Wow, what a great idea! People can advise their friends on where to go and have a good time and their friends could know what to expect when they got there... sounds good!

However, it's not all good, as this TV show enlightened me. It turns out that some people are really really really sad and have nothing better to do on their mini-breaks than scrutinise somebody's B&B, write an awful review on Trip Advisor and bring down the poor B&B owner's credibility, reputation and effectively business. The fact that they seem to get a kick out of it is bloody unbelievable! The "Trip Advisors" who came on this show spent one night in a bed and breakfast that had received numerous bad reviews from the people on this website, whereas they had been perfectly fine and passed all health and safety and basic hygiene standard requirements that were... well, required.

Some of these weird, pedantic fellows who came to stay inspected toilet brushes, marked sheets on beds with a biro to double check whether they were being changed regularly, took a couple of sachets of tea and coffee from the mini bar awaiting replacement, complained about a blue light, complained about the food and generally made a terrible fuss. But of course, not to the B&B owners' faces, they had to read about it on trip advisor later. What sort of person would smile at the host, yet write something terrible about them behind their back? Wouldn't it be more constructive if they told the host there and then, and the host would do their best to amend to situation? No, apparently not. It's either too much of a kick on that website, or they're just scared. Both? Perhaps. However, most of these people seemed to have been bullied earlier on in life, so maybe this is them going full circle? Who knows, there are a helluva lot of questions to be answered judging by those question marks.

Let's take one couple. I can't remember their names, but let's call them John and Lisa. John and Lisa used to run a pub, but one day they saw a lovely building that they wanted to set up into a B&B, and it was for sale as well (the fates were certainly with them that day!). SO they ended up selling their pub and buying the dilapidated old B&B and then spent two years fixing it up whilst living in a caravan out the back.They let out their own good bedrooms to tenents so that they could make enough money to refurbish their building and live their dream of owning a little B&B in the country, and after two years of hard working and scrimping and saving, they realised their dream at last and opened their B&B. John also worked as a cook as well, and manned the kitchens throughout the day, cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner, and they even specialised in seafood. Things were going well, up until these trip advisors came along some years later. Of course at times the place felt like Fawlty Towers, with the waitress being Spanish and barely speaking a word of English, but times were made harder by the fact that whenever they logged onto their computer and onto this site advertising their little business to the world, someone would have something bad to say about the stay at their B&B.

Of course, if you've poured your heart and soul into something your whole life and are then told that it's a piece of rubbish, years down the line, by a complete stranger is somewhat disheartening. But what is worse is that they were absolutely lovely people as well! John had a great sense of humour and Lisa was great at front of house etc, so what if the food wasn't top notch? This is a B&B, not the Hilton! People cook food here as opposed to highly enhanced cooking machines. I don't see why everyone expects luxury treatment, hotel-style treatment from B&Bs as well. They're letting you into their home so be grateful, stop being grumpy. What? It's not the Ritz? Well don't expect it, seeing as you haven't bloody paid for the Ritz. And don't expect someone to wash your sheets every 20 seconds, there isn't enough time to hang them out to dry even when new guests come round, no need to wash them if you're staying in the same bed for two nights, is there?

Anyway, back to our dear couple John and Lisa... In order to make amends to the person who posted a bad review about their B&B, they invited her back to have a free lunch with her husband and her auntie or friend or whichever relative that came with her originally, to discuss a consideration of withdrawal of the post. What a lovely gesture! Saying: "I'm so sorry that you had a shit time when you stayed at mine. I would've done something about it if you said something to my face, but you didn't, you bitched about it on the internet, dragging my business's reputation down and knocking my confidence. Please accept this meal where we can have a chat over the whole affair like civilised human beings and try and convince you to take that post down." Wow. I'd write bad reviews if that gave me free food like that. Actually, I couldn't... I've seen the pain they've been through.

So Mrs X the bitch, Mr Y and Ms Z all came along for luncheon, and Lisa and John speculate as to which one of their customers left the remark. Obviously, seeing as it's all done anonymously on this site, they weren't sure exactly as to which one it was, yet they had their bets on "an annoying whingey woman who is too up her own ass all the time" who would obviously be difficult to impress. Ah well, the swearing was left in the kitchen and it was all smiles as Lisa greeted the miserable trio of X,Y and Z. She even did her bloody best to clear the air throughout lunchtime and just be smiley and all nice and ... you know how good hostesses are meant to be. Then after dessert, John came out from the kitchen to convince the lot of them to change their opinion, seeing as after the free meal, they hadn't really budged. Lisa asked them again, and no change still, Mrs X with lips tightly sealed. John then tells them the whole story of how their B&B came to be, the caravan years, the saving and scrimping, and how he'd recently had a heart attack due to the extra stress levels these independent reviews put the family under. After this, Mr Y said that this wasn't really relevant, that all of these things should be based on standards, and attempted to leave. Mrs X and Z were happy to come too, leaving Lisa and John's efforts in tatters.

Really, is there no common decency in this day and age? Is it all about money and cleanliness and all that crap that doesn't really have any real standing in society? It's all these "I am my own island" types that are going into B&Bs, whereas the owners come from a time when you actually knew your next door neighbour. Go away city types, go back to the Hilton. Leave the quaint little B&Bs alone to those who will always enjoy them.

There are 7 BILLION of us now?!!?!

Do I believe my eyes and ears? 7 billion humans on this earth? Oh dear Lord, I do pity every other creature on the planet, from the poor little piggies bred for slaughter, to the single cell amoebas who are probably not very aware of this, though I'm sure that if they were capable of it they would be pretty pissed off anyway. Seeing as we are doing our best to divide and multiply these days anyway. But yes, 7 billion, is there really any need? More to the point, is there any room? And resources? We're pretty crap at using the ones we've got anyway.

You do know why this is though, don't you. The answer's pretty obvious. The old are getting older and there are more babies being born that are living. Don't get me wrong. This is all very miraculous at all, and I do quite like to stop for a little while to wonder at the feat of modern science. But sometimes don't you think that there is a reason that people are meant to die, to have a life expectancy? Years ago babies probably had less than a one in ten chance of surviving childbirth, yet these days, to have a still-born or something go horribly wrong such as cot-death is becoming increasingly rare. Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?

Mr Bright Spark

Modern Science, that's what it is. The people with brains are now helping out the people without brawn. Yes, babies can't fend for themselves. But back in the day, it was "fend for yourself or get out", and many of them did! Probably didn't think that earth and the human race was right for them (and you do get some people these days who feel the same way, maybe they would've been happier going to someplace else instead of here?). Yet now, these beings that haven't had a chance to get to grips with our complex communication system, are stuck on this one-way track to "Earth-dom" and can get lost in the mundane existence of  participating in the human race, possibly against their will. True, true, it can be very tough on the mother. However, these days mothers sound like they're softening up, with all these different things that can help deal with the psychological trauma of a still birth at $100 an hour. You didn't get that even 100 years ago, did you? So why should we now? Obviously never having experienced this myself, I realise that this is quite a sensitive topic to touch upon. Regardless of all these incubators and baby close monitoring units, can't people see when it's not meant to be?

The Earth doesn't really need more people anyway. Since our lovely population boom since the Industrial Revolution, nature just hasn't been its usual self since. We're chopping away acres and miles and football pitches worth of lush forest, essential to the earth's balance (I sound a bit hippy-dippy mumbo jumbo here but it's pretty true) to housing estates, cattle ranches and all sorts of other things that are a bit crap compared to trees. You know what? We also need trees for oxygen. If you cut them down and dump some cattle on them, we're not going to be getting as much oxygen from them as we used to, right? Trees also love CO2, they need it for photosynthesis, but if you take all the trees away, who's going to eat up all this carbon dioxide? It is quite harmful you know. Cows will also be producing more methane as well, and that's especially no good for our atmosphere.... So why do we think this is sustainable?! Soon enough there will be no more trees to cut down, nowhere to plant more cows and cook them for McDonalds and nowhere else to build houses. Not to mention no more coal to burn for fuel, no more oil to do fun things with... we're running out guys, we're running out! We don't need more people to come in and add to the problem!

If you have a baby, it will take you a couple of lifetime's worth of recycling to make up for that kid's carbon footprint throughout its lifetime. Kids are messy. Fact.

And now we stop worrying about the end of the world and turn to old people. Really, they're just decomposing people anyway, past their prime. Nature wouldn't want them to live that long, that's why they start to fall apart once they get past 45. It's a special way of saying "It's time to go now".

All in all, I just don't really think that I could cope with 7 billion people on this earth knowing that the majority of them are people that I wouldn't like because they're arseholes. And also I don't like people. Meh.