Zeno
11-13-2004, 06:41 PM
Kerry’s Koffee Klatch Kafé
Saturday Evening, November 12, 2004.
Arrangements were made the day before for the send-off dinner for my former boss who is changing horses and riding out to Long Island to begin a financial career in Manhattan, but I drove down early to miss the most irksome part of the rush hour traffic. Having some wayward time, do to my clairvoyant diligence, I stopped at a favorite Coffee shop. No, not Starbucks – better, with a decor of slightly upscale pretensions and uber coolness. A staunch liberal hang out complete with available Ethernet, a token chessboard table, fireplace, and a newspaper rack that displays the New York Times, LA Times, The Village Voice, and a seemingly somewhat out of place Barron’s.
I sauntered in wearing my new preshrunk Levi 501’s, brown merrell mocs, purple cotton dress shirt, with retrograde slim silver tie slung neatly from my neck, and a black leather jacket purchased in Taipei. Looking dashingly handsome and urbane, as always, I charmed the female clerk with my savvy order of a coffee mocha with whipped cream. I grasped the LA Times while awaiting my order and noted that it was a mid-October issue. How could Liberals be behind the times I thought? An opinion piece on some back page blabbed some almost sane talk about a divisive book that chopped up America in terms of Retro or Metro spheres etc., written by some Democratic Party strategists. The author was taking some potshots at this outlook.
I floated across the floor to get my coffee and nabbed the Village Voice. The front cover pictured George Bush, the vampire, doing a sucking bloody neck bite on the Statue of Liberty. Certainly noteworthy items must be hidden inside I told myself. Alas, no – the same pedantic drivel that so infuses the liberal zeitgeist is all that dribbled off the pages.
A couple sat at the chessboard table next to the fireplace. He, with a soup and bread in front of him, was wearing the proper fibrous clothes that bespoke his sophisticated lifestyle. She, with a look of pleasant detachment, soothed by the comfort that no Bushites were within this cozy cave of intellectual comfort.
I sipped my coffee and studied a rather pleasant looking woman in her early twenties absorbed in staring at her laptop, stabbing at the keys with earnest. I wondered if she had ever engaged in oral sex. Perhaps, I mused, only if her college professors told her it was politically correct to do so. But maybe not - perhaps I should allow her a benefit of doubt, and give her the slack that she may actually think for herself. As troubling as that is for most people.
Returning the tabloid Village Voice to the rack, I passed on the New York Times and grabbed the Barron’s. Time was short and my priorities dictated a read of something of substance before I meet my friends. Silly charts leaped off some pages, drug companies were touted about and fondled over on others, and Intel, apparently, can’t get a grip on the cell phone component market. Thus filled with capitalist propaganda, I finished the mocha secure in the fact that I to fit in with all the costumers of Kerry’s Koffee Klatch Kafé. With an illegal simile on my face, I simmered out the door in a way that even Jeeves would approve of, off for my dinner rendezvous.
Zeno the Bushite
Saturday Evening, November 12, 2004.
Arrangements were made the day before for the send-off dinner for my former boss who is changing horses and riding out to Long Island to begin a financial career in Manhattan, but I drove down early to miss the most irksome part of the rush hour traffic. Having some wayward time, do to my clairvoyant diligence, I stopped at a favorite Coffee shop. No, not Starbucks – better, with a decor of slightly upscale pretensions and uber coolness. A staunch liberal hang out complete with available Ethernet, a token chessboard table, fireplace, and a newspaper rack that displays the New York Times, LA Times, The Village Voice, and a seemingly somewhat out of place Barron’s.
I sauntered in wearing my new preshrunk Levi 501’s, brown merrell mocs, purple cotton dress shirt, with retrograde slim silver tie slung neatly from my neck, and a black leather jacket purchased in Taipei. Looking dashingly handsome and urbane, as always, I charmed the female clerk with my savvy order of a coffee mocha with whipped cream. I grasped the LA Times while awaiting my order and noted that it was a mid-October issue. How could Liberals be behind the times I thought? An opinion piece on some back page blabbed some almost sane talk about a divisive book that chopped up America in terms of Retro or Metro spheres etc., written by some Democratic Party strategists. The author was taking some potshots at this outlook.
I floated across the floor to get my coffee and nabbed the Village Voice. The front cover pictured George Bush, the vampire, doing a sucking bloody neck bite on the Statue of Liberty. Certainly noteworthy items must be hidden inside I told myself. Alas, no – the same pedantic drivel that so infuses the liberal zeitgeist is all that dribbled off the pages.
A couple sat at the chessboard table next to the fireplace. He, with a soup and bread in front of him, was wearing the proper fibrous clothes that bespoke his sophisticated lifestyle. She, with a look of pleasant detachment, soothed by the comfort that no Bushites were within this cozy cave of intellectual comfort.
I sipped my coffee and studied a rather pleasant looking woman in her early twenties absorbed in staring at her laptop, stabbing at the keys with earnest. I wondered if she had ever engaged in oral sex. Perhaps, I mused, only if her college professors told her it was politically correct to do so. But maybe not - perhaps I should allow her a benefit of doubt, and give her the slack that she may actually think for herself. As troubling as that is for most people.
Returning the tabloid Village Voice to the rack, I passed on the New York Times and grabbed the Barron’s. Time was short and my priorities dictated a read of something of substance before I meet my friends. Silly charts leaped off some pages, drug companies were touted about and fondled over on others, and Intel, apparently, can’t get a grip on the cell phone component market. Thus filled with capitalist propaganda, I finished the mocha secure in the fact that I to fit in with all the costumers of Kerry’s Koffee Klatch Kafé. With an illegal simile on my face, I simmered out the door in a way that even Jeeves would approve of, off for my dinner rendezvous.
Zeno the Bushite