{"id":2465,"date":"2004-12-01T19:17:41","date_gmt":"2004-12-02T00:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/12\/01\/2465.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:47:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:47:27","slug":"mind-those-ps-and-qs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/12\/01\/mind-those-ps-and-qs\/","title":{"rendered":"mind those p’s and q’s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I wasn’t going to comment on the discussion<\/a> of coffee sizes at Starbucks, inspired by a Dave Barry column<\/a> and still ongoing<\/a>, but somehow I feel I need to. Perhaps I still haven’t gotten over being told by a Starbucks barista that ordering a large black tea did not, to her, communicate that I wanted a large cup of tea without milk, but rather that I wanted some sort of iced beverage of uncertain provenance. The issue of ludicrous names for sizes never bothered me, as I viewed it as much like Denny’s insisting that one order the Rooty Tooty Fresh’n’Fruity rather than the waffle with strawberries (or whatever it was).\n

My own local coffeehouse<\/a> has posted on the counter the Doonesbury strip about this issue, culminating in Michael’s cry to Supersize his coffee. Which is exactly what’s happening, of course. I can’t recall which particular hundred-year-old commentary I was reading that mocked somebody’s penchant for tea in pint mugs, but I was amused only until I started thinking that my own mug was much more than a pint. More, even, than an English pint (25% bigger!). Actually, to be honest, I guzzle tea by the quart, although suggestions that I actually suck on the spout of the teapot are meant to be insulting (and perhaps evocative) rather than accurate.\n

Anyway, it’s clearly not good for a person to drink tea (much less coffee) in immense quantities; an eight-ounce cup is probably a good idea. Soda is worse than either, as far as I know. We use the eight-ounce ‘short cans’ here rather than the 12-ounce cans of my childhood or the now more or less ubiquitous 20-ounce plastic bottles. And am I misremembering this, or when convenience stores started selling 32-ounce soda cups, wasn’t part of the marketing the sheer ludicrousness of a 32-ounce soda? Within a year or two, the 32-ounce cup was the standard ‘large’ soda. Of course, that includes 24 ounces of ice, so it’s a bit different.\n

Anyway, I’ve wandered pretty far from the topic, if there was one. Oh, yes, silly names for drink sizes. You know, this is the third<\/I> time this week Starbucks has poked its caffeinated head into this blog? That can’t be good.\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wasn\u2019t going to comment on the discussion of coffee sizes at Starbucks, inspired by a Dave Barry column and still ongoing, but somehow I feel I need to. Perhaps I still haven\u2019t gotten over being told by a Starbucks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17220,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions\/17220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}