Category Archives: Not The Onion

Pants

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Item 1:  Advances in Medical Modesty.  During yesterday’s installment of the Further Adventures of Amy’s Scoliosis, I was offered not only the traditional hospital gown, but these attractive . . . disposable basketball shorts?   Designed to be one-size-fits-all, they were really more like capris on me, but I did appreciate the coverage.

Image: a pair of hospital-blue enormously baggy and shapeless shorts made of some sort of reinforced paper product.

Item 2:  I have identified the Worst Pants Ever, possibly the Worst Clothing Item Ever:  Goat Suede Track Pants.  You might think this comes from a Seinfeldian parody of the J. Peterman Catalog, but it is actually on offer from the good folks at Orvis for the entirely reasonable price of $395.

Image: What more do I need to say than "goat suede track pants." They are rust brown, made of goat skin, and shapelessly elasticized.

I’ll just stick with my LL Bean mom jeans, thanks.

Starbucks’s Red Cup Heresy or Not The Onion, Part the One Thousand

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My friend Carrie linked to a response to the right-wing freak-out over the fact that Starbucks — on November 8 — is serving coffee in red cups.

Response?  To WHAT?  My first thought, of course, was that it was The Onion, but that bastion of journalistic acumen just can’t keep up.  Turns out, yes, the right wing is freaking out in early November that … honestly, I don’t know what.  Since I don’t spend much time on right-wing freak-out sites, I Googled “starbucks red cup” and got this:

Image: snip from Google news that reads "In the news: Why Some Christians Are Upset at Starbucks' New Holiday Cups. TIME‎ - 7 hours ago. The new cup, which is shades of red with the Starbucks logo, showed ... Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate ... Christian evangelists claim Starbucks fanned 'war on Christmas' with minimalist holiday red coffee cups. New York Daily News‎ - 18 hours ago. Some Christians Are Extremely Unhappy About Starbucks' New Holiday Cups. Huffington Post‎ - 7 hours ago. More news for starbucks red cup."

Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?  It’s a “war on Christmas” when we are merely festive, instead of universally Christian?  When a random company celebrates with a color traditionally ASSOCIATED with Christmas, while not — six weeks before the date arbitrarily selected by early Christians to celebrate the birth of their savior — adding verbiage that highlights one holiday among the many that its customers celebrate?  Or did I miss the Rosh Hashanah cups and the Eid al Fitr cups and the Diwali cups and the Chinese New Year cups and the Flying Spaghetti Monster cups?

I’m not Christian, but it seems to me that Pastor Emily Heath gets it right:

Maybe this is the year that we can shift our priorities away from what doesn’t matter to what matters more than we know. Maybe this year we can set our sights a little higher than changing red cups, and instead try to change the world. And maybe this year we can stop yelling at others to “Keep Christ in Christmas” and instead focus on being Christlike ourselves.

So, here’s a suggestion of how to start: buy someone a coffee. In one of those red cups. Seriously, you will not go to hell for going to Starbucks this Christmas. But if you look closely enough, you just might find Jesus in the guy behind you in line. Because Christ is already at Starbucks, just as Christ is everywhere.

I don’t need his name on a paper cup to tell me that.

Hey!  It’s November 8!  Where’s my Montana Day cup?  Starbucks must hate the mountain west!  Outrage!