So I took a week off from my usual posting, ranting and general internet perusal, to get some much needed brain R&R. I return to find the world in pretty much the same place it was last week: throughly screwed.
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I could write reams of Starbucks – their harmful trade practices, their butchering of coffee nomenclature (not to mention the Italian language), their over-roasted, over caffeinated coffee and the pathetic irony of my continued patronage of an establishment that I so thoroughly despise.

Today though. Wow. The above photo is a shot of the drink container that’s supposed to prevent you from getting second degree-burns and nerve damage from just-under-fusion temps that they keep their brew at.

Who the hell is responsible for unleashing this monstrosity on the world? That logo has always been creepy enough (The mermaid scares me… really, really scares me) but that pattern? In no decade this side of 1950 would that be a good idea. I can see epileptic Starbucks patrons across the country seizing if the baristas whip those things around too quickly.

See, this would be an ideal use of the threat level system that the Department for Using The Constitution as a Grease Rag for our New Fascist Machine (aka DHS) has for terrorism: “Threat level Mauve: warning, imminent threat to your sensibilities/good taste possible at ever corner in America (sometimes even on both corners). Avoid looking directly at people carrying red cups and talking very quickly on their Bluetooth headsets.

Be Afraid.

Methinks the time change has made me a bit cranky because once again I’m contemplating hippy-violence. Specifically, as a target for said violence, the individual responsible for the I-35/71 interchange. I want to punch him in the mouth in a friendly peace-loving, hippy kind of way, reserved for highway designers.

First of all, lets time travel a bit – Almost 10 years ago somebody had the bright idea that we should make this particular traffic snarl (and also a major thoroughfare to the soon to be completed airport) into a modern day intersection. Ramps, fly-overs and the like. Collectively we all did a little happy dance. Yeah, happy dance.

Then we waited. And waited. And waited as TXDOT opened new stretches of the streamlined TX71, inch-by-agonizing inch and moved the equivalent of a small moon’s worth of dirt around. Now the ramps appear to be done, and construction has moved off towards the airport.

So to the future. Or the present. Or whatever we want to call today. Today, as I travel up northbound I-35 with the intention of going westbound on 71, do I have a nice clean transition ? A well banked fly over, with a nice view of down town ? Nope. I have an unfinished dukes of hazard ramp (the earthwork but no bridges) and I actually have to go through AN ADDITIONAL TRAFFIC SIGNAL to get back on the freeway. So it now takes me longer to reach my destination.

Apparently, after a little digging, this was always the plan. After ten years of planning and six years of construction all we get is two sets of ramps ? And nowhere can I find how much this thing cost the taxpayers…

I’m taking this as proof positive of a vast right-wing-conspiracy against the progressive denizens of south Austin, to slowly and steadily drive them out of their minds by excessive exposure to traffic congestion and diesel truck exhaust.

So I survived the reorganization at work and oddly enough have now been given some additional authority over certain projects. Go me.

It’s really odd though – I’ll be in a meeting, the conversation will pause and all these director types will turn and look at me. Oh, they want my opinion.

And suddenly, to my surprise, I’m speaking. I don’t have a damn clue what I’m actually saying, although somewhere in the back of my head, the bullshit meter is off the scale. Although apparently the subjects and verbs are all agreeing, because people are nodding and responding as if I’m being coherent…which itself is pretty weird.

This is apparently what they call ‘management.’ Whoa.