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sunshine jen: Sun Headaches
Sunshine Jen is a bit cranky and ranty this week. It’s been hot in LA, and the sun has been beating me down.
It hasn’t all been bad. On Saturday, I was out sailing, and the wind and the sails and the waves and the clear skies and the company were all good.
I was happy. I was mellow. Then, I got in my car and drove in beach traffic to Altadena. I shouldn’t have done that. I sat on the freeway as the sun burned out my eyes.
Sure the living is easy in LA, but god damn it, the fuckin’ traffic on the fuckin’ freeways with the sun reflecting off the shiny cars and bright concrete. I actually had a headache in my eyeballs if that’s even possible.
And then the gadgets. Everyone has god damn gadgets coming out of their ears. Everyone has god damn blue teeth.
Then yesterday, I was in Santa Monica and decided to stop off in a Coffee Bean for a quick cool beverage. I usually don’t stop off at the Coffee Bean. I have a local indie coffee place, but it was far away. I stepped inside the Coffee Bean, and it was like a library. Every table had a laptop on it.
Does anyone write on paper anymore? Wait, maybe I could blog about that. Wait, I am blogging about that. We don’t write anymore. We blog. How did blogging become respectable? I use to say: I don’t blog, I write personal essay for an online collective journal. Now, I have actually used the word, blog, in cover letters. What’s next? Facebook status updates as a skill?
After I obtained my cool beverage, I realized none of the laptoppers were leaving anytime soon, so I stepped outside onto the patio. The only spot in the shade was a concrete bench next to a fire pit. Well, if this was hell, might as well go all the way. I sat and observed more of my surroundings.
Not all the laptoppers were 20 or 30 something hipsters. There was a wide assortment of ages and ethnicities. Is laptopping in coffee shops no longer a niche thing?
There were different kinds of laptops. Why do Macbooks only come in white by the way? They look like they just escaped from a mental institution. Padded white cell. Padded white computer. And then there are the Ipads which have a basic black shell, but they are so small that they are so obvious. They also look like the computer that the girl uses at the drive through at In-And-Out when the line gets too long. I’m tempted to go up to Ipad users and say, double-double no onions please. Then there are the PCs in grey and black with hard corners. Yes, the PC users are doing work, lots of work, and they’re not leaving for hours.
Can’t someone just go to a coffee shop and drink a coffee? How long should one stay at a coffee shop?
My mood lightened when I read an article in this morning’s New York Times about coffee shops taking their tables out. You go, independent coffee shops, you go. There is hope for beverage drinkers after all.
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