We Survived

I have to admit I'm surprised to have made it to work this morning. With over seven thousand Starbucks closing last night for a training event lasting a few hours, I fully expected all vital services to shut down, a feeble attempt at martial law to be tossed out there and abandoned, and then the complete and total breakdown of our society from the national infrastructure to remembering to tip. Those with access to Starbucks at grocery stores and airports would live in glorious domed cities of productivity and cooperation, while those of us outside would spend the rest of our brief lives fighting off wave after wave of the staggering decaffeinated damned, hungry for the residual coffee lining our livers.

I figured three hours without 7100 Starbucks could do that, no problem.

We made coffee at home and nailed plywood over the windows in the house. I know, now that the coffee zombie threat seems to have moved down from Threat Level: Mocha to Threat Level: Latte, we should take down the plywood. But isn't there a hurricane season coming up? I should leave it in place.

And I'll never truly feel safe until we all live in a culture of freedom and equality and Threat Level: Vanilla Bean No-Whip Frappuccino.

Side note/Social commentary: My spell check recognized "frappuccino". That's not a word! Why does my spell check think its a word?! Does anyone think it is a word?

I briefly scanned some of the intarwebz this morning, looking for reports of rioting and looting. There were a couple of people interviewed who seemed annoyed or surprised that Starbucks was closed. Apparently having all the major news outlets plus Fox News report on the store closings every 15 minutes and in constantly updated web articles for days in advance was unable to pull people away from whatever the hell Lindsay Lohan is doing and these people were still caught off-guard.

These people should be eaten by coffee zombies, for the good of our species as a whole.

But did it happen? According to published reports, no.

Hang on a sec while I adjust my tinfoil hat. Most people don't construct one to cover the ears, but covering the ears is vital in tinfoil hat technology.

Sure, last night seemed pretty quiet to most of us. But I know without Starbucks everyone in our house blacked out around 7pm CST. We made it a very respectable 90 minutes, though I haven't determined if that is an official record.

I was asleep for over eleven hours, and my alarm clock failed to wake me until the cellphone in the other room hit its highest alarm volume setting. Material Girl ramps up in volume until I get up to turn it off or one of the cats tries to kill me for it. There is no better song to prompt a person out of bed than Material Girl, yet it still almost failed.

What about those people who are still asleep in their homes?

I'd imagine that there is some kind of emergency response plan in place where government espresso trucks go door-to-door pulling people out of hibernation, but I think the people of New Orleans imagined that the Government knew what to do there if it rained a lot.

So my advice is this: Call everyone in your cellphone contacts directory to make sure they are up and moving around. You should offer to meet them for coffee, as the possibility will get them moving around well enough. Whether or not you actually show up to meet them for coffee is your call to make, but I think your good deed is done either way. Unless you are thirsty.

So very thirsty.

So very unbelievably thirsty.