"Are you trying to rub against my breasts?" she asks.

"Who me?" I answer, "of course not."

"Then why are you walking into me like that?" she continues. "You're even walking weirder than usual."

We've just come from The Continental. Great show with a bunch of bands I never heard of. I'm walking back home with Hirooko.

Despite the appeal of her pert inverted teacups, that's not why I'm walking funny.

"I gotta to take this fierce piss," I tell her.

"I don't think I can make it home."

"Why don't you stop there?" she asks. "Just go in and use the bathroom."

"That's STARBUCKS!" I say, "the global coffee cockroach. I'd never go in there."

"It's the only place you can piss between here and your apartment. Besides, you don't have to buy anything. You won't be contributing to their worldwide conquest plans."

"Okay," I tell her. "This is an emergency."

I enter Starbucks.

*********

SHIFT. CHANGE. I'm not a lawyer. The way things are going, anything is illegal. They can sue you for picking dingleberries out of your ass. So from this point on, what follows is fiction. It's told about a fictional character who never existed. Get it?

FICTION. Not true. Made up. Just a story. Never happened. Okay?

Of course, I don't advocate any illegal activity nor would I encourage the imitation of the hero of this little vignette. Okay Mr. FBI man and Mayor Mussolini? It's just a story.

**********************

M. walks into Starbucks, glances around to make sure no one he knows is in there. Then he scouts the mensroom, in the back on the right, and heads toward it. Entering, he finds a young man in a white shirt and tie at one of the two urinals. The guy's obviously a smarmy slummer, down on St. Marks Place to gawk at the freaks and enjoy his Star-fuckin'- bucks espresso. M. would let his bladder explode before deigning to piss next to someone like that.

Instead, he heads for a stall.

After lifting the lid and the seat, M. unzips and reaches inside. Grabbing what he needs, he fumbles a bit and pulls it out. Aiming carefully, a second passes as the fluid works it's way from M.'s bladder up through the urethra to the tip. During that second, M. thinks.

"Now, I'm in Starbucks, a place I hate, taking a piss. What can I do to combine the ecstasy of release with the hatred of the environment?"

Quickly, M. lowers the seat and pisses on it.

Not only does he train that yellow stream on the seat, but turns back and forth, making sure the floor and back of the toilet get a good wash.

Squeezing out the last few drops onto of the closed toilet lid, M. leaves the bathroom and goes outside.

H., a female friend of his, waits for him in front.

"You've got a big smile on your face," she says. "It must've been a pretty good piss."

"The best," says M. They continue the walk to his place.

After a wild night of Oriental nookie, M. goes off to his day job-- teaching Japanese businessmen how da tawk like Nu Yawkahs. When he comes back home that evening, he turns on the computer and checks his email. There's a message from P., a former pal who's recently been pissing M. off. P. has suggested the government cannot regulate discrimination in private business. M. explains the Civil Rights Act.

Rather than admit he's wrong, P. answers with jokes about M.'s thinning hair. Tonight, it's a bit different.

"You're such a whiner," writes P. "Why don't you ever do something? Why don't you take some action, make some real changes, instead of complaining all the time?"

"Fuck you," writes back M., not at the peak of articulateness, "I've helped change more than you could do in two lifetimes. Like what?

Well, for one, I helped end the Vietnam War.

That was a long time ago. Still, if it weren't for me and thousands of others, Vietnam would be a parking lot today.

Want another? How about that no punk today will claim to be "straight," without apologizing.

Bisexuality is now the norm. Maybe homos can get away with it. But straight? Punks don't easily admit to that in the twenty first century. I claim at least six inches of responsibility." [Five and a quarter. --Ed]"

As he presses the SEND key, M. begins thinking.

"What I said is right," he thinks, "but what have I done LATELY. Not much except pissing on the toilet at Starbucks..."

If we could peer into M's alcohol-enriched braincells, we'd see them start to fire. We'd hear those neurons buzz. See those sparks leaping synapse to synapse, like a match touched to the end of a row of firecrackers.

"YES," thinks M. "That's it. Something to live for. A goal. Something positive to do with my life.

A soldier-- no a general-- in the war against global conformity. A spitball in the face of every McDonalds, Burger King, Staples, and Gap. The world needs salvation; one small step at a time."

At this moment, Target Starbucks is born.

Starbucks is the perfect target. Poor people don't go there. It's expensive, aiming at the hoity toidy.

It rapidly and immediately destroys neighborhoods.

It puts small coffee houses out of business. It replaces intimacy with conformity. It destroys the character of neighborhoods and replaces them with shopping mallism. It's global, but not Coca Cola or McDonalds. It's achievable, but how? There's only so much pissing one man can do. Of course there are other, more severe answers.

FLASHBACK: The Gap opens on St. Marks place.

POW! The next morning, they've boarded over the window. The brick flung through, makes its way to the local precinct. By the afternoon, there is a new window. The next morning, another brick. Soon the windows are replaced. Some kind of fiberglass.

Bricks just bounce off.

In the old days, people used bombs, not bricks.

It didn't work. Worse than not work, it made people feel sorry for the "victim" of the bombing.

Sometimes people got hurt. M. doesn't want to break human eggs to fry his omelet. Besides, it's easy to get caught with a bomb-- or even a brick but not with... with...what?

Momentarily stumped, M. goes to the refrigerator for a mental stimulant. He opens the door and pulls a Schlitz from its fellows in the plastic rings.

Something scurries across the sink to the wall.

M. shifts his attention. It's a roach, a big one.

One the natives like to call waterbugs because it somehow sounds less disgusting than "huge cockroach." This is a big brown one. As big a his thumb with saw-tooth legs. The kind that crunch if you step on 'em.

"Yes! That's it!" thinks M., cupping his hand to trap the insect beneath it. He feels it squirm, pushing this way and that against the soft skin of his palm.

Keeping one hand on the snared insect, M.

stretches his other hand toward the sink. With the tips of his fingers, he reaches a plastic container.

The remains of yesterday's sesame noodles still stick to the bottom.

Almost losing his balance, M. replaces his cupped hand with the plastic container. He then slides the container along the wall until he's near enough to get the lid. Sliding the lid under the cup, the capture is complete. It's only the first.

It's 2AM. M. is dreaming. He's naked and walking through a field of flowers. Instead of flowers with petals, at the end of each stalk is a tiny coffee cup. Yellow, blue, red, coffee cup after coffee cup, each on the end of a green stalk. Then comes the bee. Large, with a ferocious buzz. Hungry, attacking. M. awakens and reaches to shut off the alarm.

It takes a second or two before he remembers the plan. He reaches for the empty glass on the night table next to the bed. Without turning on the light, M. picks his way through the floor rubbish toward the kitchen. Holding the glass ready in his right hand, he flips the lightswitch with his left.

Pop!

The walls are alive with scurrying cockroaches.

Big ones, small ones, running helter skelter trying to hide from the light. But there's nowhere to run.

Nowhere to hide. M. scoops them up with the glass and shakes them to the bottom. At least two dozen, now held with his hand tightly over the top of the glass.

Carefully, he empties the glassful of roaches into the plastic container with the giant roach. Now he's ready.

The next day is Saturday. Perfect for a little excursion. M. takes his plastic container, crawling with vermin, and tucks it inside his pants. Balling up rewritten letters to Congressman, and discarded pages from Inches magazine, M. stuffs them into the bottom of his combat boots, adding another two inches to his diminutive height.

Then he puts on a short-sleeve button down blue shirt. Something left over from his days as a teacher in Japan. Adding to this, M. wears a black suit jacket, until then reserved for weddings and Rosh Hashona services. Looking the complete dork, M.

heads out to Starbucks.

First, a quick visit to a mensroom stall, the same one he relieved himself in, just a couple days earlier. It's disgustingly spick and span-- but not for long.

M. releases a few small roaches. Then he scoops the remainder from the plastic container and transfers them to a small film canister. The large brown one barely fits inside.

M. leaves the stall and the mensroom heading back to the large main coffee area. There, M. buys a cup of coffee for a dollar and a half and sits at a table. Nursing that coffee, he scopes out the people at the other tables. Ah, there's a likely hit. A young woman, dressed in a blue womansuit, she looks like that dorky DA who lost the OJ Simpson case.

Her Niked feet cross at the ankle and tuck underneath her chair. On the table in front of her is half a frapachino and a piece of something white and sugary. She's reading a hard-cover book.

M. can't see the book's title. It looks like a textbook. He continues to watch her as he nurses the bad coffee. In a few minutes, she starts to fidget, pressing her knees together and shifting side to side. That's a good sign. A few minutes later, she looks over her shoulder as if she's trying to find something. Then she takes a napkin, puts it in the book to mark her place, and stands and heads for the ladies room.

M. makes his move.

Under the table, he uncovers the film canister with the roaches in it, and re-covers it with the cheek of his palm. Casually. he strolls over to the absent girl's table. Focusing his attention toward the window, as if looking at something, M. silently lets the contents of the canister fall into the frapachino. A quick glance insures that the large brown roach, nearly expired from lack of oxygen, breathes its last in the service of a good cause.

Gingerly, he puts the canister in his pocket and heads for the door. It's not until he's outside the door that he hears the scream from inside.

*********************************

M. has fired the first salvo of Target Starbucks. A new obsession. A new purpose. A new reason to live.

For twenty years, M.'s goal was to live in Mongolia. His life focused on that seemingly impossible task. It was, he thought, why he could never die. Why he had to hang onto life with every cell of his aging body. But then he went. He lived in Mongolia. The great experience left a vacuum in M.'s life. What was there to live for? Now, that vacuum has been filled. There is a new goal. A new reason to live: The death of Starbucks.

Of course there are other enemies. Bigger and smaller targets, weapons of globalism, censorship, or pruditry. But the fight has to be waged one huge battle at a time. Forces need to concentrate.

Approaches need to be fixed. Even if it takes more than a lifetime to get to first base, it's a lifetime well-spent.

So now it's Target Starbucks, no stopping until there is only one left. The original, in Seattle, that's ok. But everyone else, closed. Dead.

M.'s life has meaning. A great, not-quite impossible goal. Destroy a real threat, and symbolically hit at world standardization. Not only spread the vermin, but spread the word. Recruit an army. Let it go over the internet, through zines (M.

is a writer for a zine called The Punk Bible.), through word of mouth, through deeds.

Starbucks' motto is 2000 by Year 2000. M.'s motto is One by Year 2001.

It's a simple yet deadly plan of attack. Spread the word. Use the internet. Write. There is enough hatred to fire thousands into action. It's easy action. Anyone can do it.

What can the enemy do? How can they fight back?

There's no one to buy off. Target Starbucks is unorganized, independent. It's an army where everyone is the general. How can they stop it? Frisk people when they enter? Will the yuppies and their secretaries put up with that? Have TV cameras in the bathrooms? How long before word gets out on that one. Besides the last thing they want is publicity on this. ... Though it's too late. Their customers have never seen a roach before, and when one ends up in their coffee. Yippie!

Since this is oh so fictional, I can use a writer's time machine to project us into the future.

To move us ahead. To watch as gradually, Starbucks dies.

The branch near The Continental closes a week after the newspaper report listed a "warning" rating from the health department. In Kansas City, a lawsuit from a woman who sat on a dead mouse, closes the downtown branch. Others soon follow. One-by- one, Starbucks shut their doors. One by one, small coffee shops, little stores take their place. A thousand flowers bloom from the green and white carcasses. The Wall Street Journal does a feature on the "Rise and Fall of a Coffee Dream." Finally, it happens. There is only one left, the original, standing meekly on a street in Seattle.

The year is 2004. Missing his target date, but reaching his goal. M and a few friends gather in the one remaining Starbucks. They're celebrating a victory. Only a battle, but a big one in the war against international mediocrity and culturecide.

They drink a ceremonial cup of coffee and then head outside. Suddenly a scream pierces the air.

It's coming from someplace down the street. The group sees a highschool girl screaming like the one at the end of the Blair Witch Project. She's running out the door of a local Barnes & Nobles.

"A rat!" she screams. "I saw a dead rat. Right there, by the Power of Crystal books. It's a dead rat."

M. looks at his friends. They smile and continue walking down the street.

ENDNOTES: [Thanks to your protests, sit-ins, marches and church burnings, there are no longer length restrictions at MRR. All power to the people! Yeah!

Still, visitors to my website:

www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/index.html, or subscribers (email to: MykelB@ix.netcom.com) will receive a few extra endnotes. My computer needs a lot more cleaning out.]

--> By the time you read this, I (hopefully) will have set up a TARGET STARBUCKS web-info exchange board. You can find it though my website listed above. That will be a central point for the exchange of information about Starbucks evils and for stories (all fictional of course) about attacks against the evil bean sellers.

--> Jim Munroe, My Canadian pal, who put me up, read with me, and suffered through... er... interesting roommates tells me his book Flyboy Action Figure Gasmask Included is not only available through Rupert Murdock, but through Jim directly. You can get it (and you should) for $15 (includes postage) from 10 Trellanock Ave, Toronto ON MIC 5B5 CANADA.

-->Website of the month is COPSWATCH:

http://www.specmind.com/copswatch.htm.  That one takes the awful TV series COPS and uses it as an instruction manual on how cops routinely violate individual rights. It also tells you what you can do about it.

One simple tip you should have learned from Nancy Reagan. Just say no! If a cop asks you for permission to search you or your car-- say no. Be polite, but say no. If they do it anyway, you will have legal grounds to have it thrown out of court.

-->Found it dept: I found the letter from the Belgian metal homo God who sent me a Tribe 8 t- shirt!! His name is Steve Wackenier. He collects Metal t-shirts! So if you've got an extra, please send it to him. He's at (Serpent St 26A, 9000 Gent, Belgium). I wonder how much work it took for a metal-guy to find a house on Serpent Street.

-->Funny mail dept: I got a copy of something weird from BB in NY. He sent me the first draft of a paper he wrote for his journalism class-- eight years ago.

He had to do an "artist profile," and Michael (sic) Board was the subject. Sample:

Age: 41

Weight: 128

Height: I wish

Favorite color: black

Favorite fruit: David Cassidy

Favorite animal: Joan Jett

--> Other ways to fight back dept: My pal Irwin sent me a news item about a businessman who was clubbed to death with a beer bottle. His crime? He refused to stop using his mobile phone in a German beer garden. He managed to escape from his attacker but staggered a few yards from the beer garden entrance before collapsing. He was dead by the time an ambulance arrived. Detectives investigating the Hamburg incident said the attacker turned himself in a few hours later. They have not yet charged him with a crime. The German press is already claiming it is the first example in Germany of "mobile phone rage."

Let's hope it's not the last.

--> Passing it along dept: The relentless Mike Edison asked me to pass the word along. That's what I'm doing.

THE NEW YORK SHEIKS ARE LOOKING FOR A SINGER.

We live somewhere between Howlin Wolf and John Lee Hooker... a dose of Beefheart, a cum shot of Stones... field hollers, spirituals... Let's just say it's got less to do with a garage and more to do with a tar paper shack. Know anyone? We're serious and ready to take over. This is the Resurrection of the Blues and the Second Coming of the Big Beat!!!!

Anyone who thinks they can handle the massive responsibility and awesome power that comes with being a Sheik should E mail edison@hightimes.com or call 212 477 7359

Word passed.

--> Secret Graffiti department: A group called THIRD VOICE, has figured out a way to let the average Jane say things about corporations-- or anyone else on the web. It's e-graffiti. You download the program at www.thirdvoice.com. Then you can post comments ON TOP OF other websites. Anyone with the program can read them. You can deface anything. Go wild. Finally get at those corporate monsters. It won't be long before they figure a way to defeat this. But right now... do it!

-->The following is taken from the web. True or not, it proves a point about the stupidity of defining "mental illness."

Richard P. Bentall in the June 1992 issue of Journal of Medical Ethics.

"Happiness is a Psychiatric Disorder"

Happiness meets all reasonable criteria for a psychiatric disorder. It is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, there is at least some evidence that is reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system, and it is associated with various cognitive abnormalities; in particular a lack of contact with reality.

Acceptance of these arguments leads to the obvious conclusion that happiness should be included in future taxonomies of mental illness, probably as a form of affective (mood) disorder. This would place it on Axis I of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual".

With this prospect in mind, I humbly suggest the following:

Major affective disorder, pleasant type Once the debilitating consequences of happiness become widely recognized, it is likely that psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental heath professionals will begin to devise treatments for the condition. We can expect the emergence of happiness clinics, and anti-happiness medications in the not too distant future.

-->I found this left over from 1997:

THE DARWIN AWARDS are given every year to bestow upon (the remembrance of) those individuals, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, have done the most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool.

Among the 1997 DARWIN NOMINEES:

Derrick L. Richards, 28, was charged in April in Minneapolis with third-degree murder in the death of his beloved cousin, Kenneth E. Richards. According to police, Derrick suggested a game of Russian roulette and put a semiautomatic pistol (instead of the more traditional revolver) to Ken's head and fired.

Phillipsburg, NJ. An unidentified 29-year-old male choked to death on a sequined pastie he had orally removed from an exotic dancer at a local establishment. "I didn't think he was going to eat it, the dancer identified only as "Ginger" said, adding "He was really drunk."

MOSCOW, Russia-A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow bank they were guarding to stab his bulletproof vest to see if it would protected him against a knife attack. It didn't. In France, Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet missed him completely and cut through the rope above him. Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and made him vomit the poison. He was dragged out of the water by a kind fisherman and was taken to a hospital, where he died of hypothermia.

--Mykel (mykelB@ix.netcom.com)

http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/index.html