the starbuckian world

Katie Couric finally asked the question: why not small, medium or large?

why tall, grande, venti?

k.......here´s how it went down:

tall instead of small: a brilliant opportunity to not insult a guy when you say - "hey, you have a tall penis". This was obviously thought up by a guy with a small penis.

grande: pronouced "gran-day" not grande as in la grande nation. Although there are some freaks out there who actually go in to Starbucks and order a "grande" (think french accent here) latte. Although I think that danger only exists in Europe where people actually speak more than one language. Hence the urge to impress with a fake french accent. We all know everything sounds sexier en francais. Hey, there is a whole facebook group devoted to that topic so it must be true.

Um, well, reason for gran-day instead of medium: nobody wants to be medium. As in not small, not large, not old, not young. In the middle. Nothing duller than being mediocre, ordinary. Whereas a "gran-day" just makes you feel like you are some awesome person who knows that actually, the gran-day - at least in the Starbuckian world - gets you the best deal for the money. And one is forking out some serious cash for the pleasure of a cup of coffee. Besides, if you are ordinary, you are grande ordinary.

venti: this is a tough one. And Starbucks really needed the think tank steaming long and hard on how to make a really fat person feel better when ordering 20 oz of frappucino. And also justifying 5$+ worth of coffee. Needed to sound light and airy, posh, important.

I mean, really, you have to admit "venti" sounds a whole lot better than "large" or "jumbo size". And most Americans won´t get the connection that venti/20 oz is the amount they are drinking.

Lets go to the linguistic roots of "venti": the root of the word "vent" means wind in french. So here we have the air factor ie light, breezy. Of course, you could turn that theory upside down by figuring out that not even 100 mile-an-hour winds will be able to knock you over if you are a constant champion of venti drinks.

Now, the word "venti" actually means 20 in Italian. And yes, we have already established the fact that there are 20 ozs in a venti. So when ordering a venti you are actually drinking 20 times the amount of caffeine the average Italian consumes. In one go. The positive spin: Italians are wimps. Buying American: you buy big and you can hold your coffee. Sure theres a connection in there somewhere with some pharmaceutical corporation. You know, after lying awake night after night cause you constantly drink venti cappucinos, frappucinos and lattes, you need to get a tranquilizer gun to finally get some sleep. Oh, and get some diet pills while you´re there. You´ve gotten fat after consuming 500 calories on one drink alone.

Voila. Thats what you call cross- corporation assistance. Starbucks is indeed socially conscious.