Andrew -- I beg to differ:

(1) I've driven / bicycled / hitchhiked all over the US and I've never found a town where you couldn't get a great cup of coffee. Note that "great cup of coffee" does not mean "triple soy chai latte", it means "great cup of coffee" -- in most towns in America, if you wanted the latte(r), you bought the coffee, went next door to the ice cream parlor, ordered a milkshake, and mixed the two together.

(2) Starbucks proliferation tripled the price of a cup of coffee in a very short time. In that sense they are the opposite of Wal-Mart -- at Starbucks, everything is a boutique item. Even a simple cup of Joe is elevated to a Venti Americano (which often tastes like over-roasted ass). However, besides the single, perfunctory blend of "shade-grown organic Mexican" that the average Starbucks offers, the majority of their beans are about as ecologically unsustainable as any other corporate cash-crop. They support a tiny number of equal exchange growers and are otherwise just another fat, irresonsible corporation, albeit with sufficient cash to hire savvy enough PR and advertising teams to dupe millions of persons like yourself to think that somehow all the grande vanilla lappucinos you buy have no measurable effect on the world.

(3) I'm not a Luddite -- at this point, frankly, it's pretty much impossible to live in the world without constantly furthering the profits of corporations and simultaneously fucking up the planet -- but what I am against are the endless touchy-feely justifications which journalists (among others) insist on trying to obfuscate the facts with. Why? So we'll all feel better? Remember that famous law of physics -- "No action without an equal and opposite reaction"? -- try and remember it every time you buy something. Not out of guilt, but simply as a way of knowing how you modify the world as you pass through it -- how your coffee and scone affect the land, air, oil, water, economies, etc. Such notions may once have been hippy bullshit, but these days they're increasingly backed by hard science.

From one writer to another: FUCK the celebrities. Ignore them, and ignore Cary Tennis. If you can't unplug from the web, buy a typewriter or a stack of notebooks. Leave town, sublet your place if you must. But write. WRITE. Asking yourself pithy questions about your vague connection to various celebrities will only further your cycle of thinking-about-writing instead of actually sitting down and writing -- i.e., waste more time. Time doesn't come back to you. So write.

Pseudo-exegeses about how current events somehow relate to to the tenets and/or headwear fashions of a given faith are just tedious, not to mention misfocused, and Salon's editors ought to know better than to publish them. Can't all you religious people just shut the fuck up for, oh, about a century? -- and fall back into your tents and temples and churches and mosques, and be happy with what you have, and let the rest of us seculars go about our living and dying, and let the world settle down for a change? Yes, I know it's far too much to ask... but can I also state that many, many, many of us are sick of hearing about antiquated religious beliefs? We're bored, we're scared, we're alive, your various dogmas offer us no comfort, and we wish you'd all just shut up.

Religion is ultimately about repping one's tribe. Morality is about trying to recognize -- and further -- goodness in the world, irregardless of all tribes. If morality really meant something to you, you would simply act on it, as a member of the human race, and not as an overt Jew/Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist/Satanist/etc. Are you a good man first, and a member of your religion second, or vice versa? It's an important distinction. BTW, I'm not against religion, I'm against secular forums being sidelined by religion -- which seems to be happening more and more frequently these days. Keep it at home, eh? If it really works, it will continue to work, in its own sphere, despite all of us heathens.

If Salon is going to continue to publish Ayelet's schmaltz, then I am calling on all Salon readers to urge her to attend some sort of hardcore anti-sentimentality seminar. Otherwise, I will cancel my Premium subscription. This is not journalism, it is poo. Syrupy poo.

...and the one thing I'll give you credit for is for being as overtly, publically insane as my own mother.

Ayelet -- please get professional help before you pen your next Salon piece. I am worried about your son.