AshesFromStars

US coffee chain Starbucks has come under fire for a new logo that critics say is offensive and overly graphic.

The Resistance, a US-based Christian group, has called for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.

It says the chain’s new logo has a naked woman on it with her legs “spread like a prostitute… The company might as well call themselves Slutbucks”.

Starbucks says the image - based on a 16th century Norse design of a mermaid with two-tails - is not inappropriate.

Rather, the image is a more conservative version of the original Starbucks design, which hung above the chain’s first store when it opened in Seattle’s Pike Place Market in 1971.

‘Rubenesque’

It says the image - the longstanding logo for Pike Place bags of coffee - is appearing on some of its cups as part of a promotion, and will remain “for several weeks”.

Howard Schultz, who bought Starbucks in 1982, described the emblem in his memoirs as “bare-breasted and Rubenesque; [it] was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself”.

Although its share price has plunged in recent years, Starbucks has 16,000 coffee shops in 44 countries worldwide, employing more than 170,000 staff.

The chain has just opened its first outlet in Argentina.

Based in San Diego, the Resistance claims to have more than 3,000 members across the US and has gained a reputation for espousing diverse conspiracy theories

Source

Sorry, but what?! How on earth is that slutty? As far as I’m aware, this was the original Starbucks logo which is being used again. It was originally used between 1971-1987. It was only in 1992 that the Starbucks lady lost her body to become the familiar logo we see today.

At the moment, the boy is driving (that’s a lie, his grandfather is driving) to Edinburgh to pick up the pool table I bought him for his 24th birthday. You have no idea how excited I am, I’ve wanted to buy him a pool table for so long, and in a few hours it’ll be all set up in his garage.

It took a long time to find one to buy, we ended up going with one off eBay that was slightly damaged. There’s nothing wrong with the actual playing surface, just the little window at the side where you see the potted balls is missing, which is easy to fix. We got it for 10% of the retail price, which is £3,100. There’s one other problem, the cloth is lilac but I’ve been reading up on recovering / refelting pool tables and actually it doesn’t look that hard. Plus our friend’s dad is an absolute pool shark and should be able to give us a hand doing it as he’s done it before.

At this moment the boy plus the 5 students we’ve bought it off of will be carrying the slate bed down 2 flights of stairs, don’t envy them one bit! Funnily enough they failed to mention that they lived in a flat when we bid for it.

Anyways, I’m going to read my new book that I got in the RBL last night for 50p, Number 10 by Sue Townsend. Looks excellent, so I’m going to sit for a while with a huge cup of coffee and an Easter egg (yes, we still have Easter eggs left!) reading it.

Oh, random.. The Fratelli’s new song is excellent. Just heard it on E4 music. New album soon please, boys.

With everything that’s has been happening regarding work I’ve not had a chance to jump online in a wee while. But, for once in my life I actually have things to blog about.

Last Friday the boy and I went out to play some pool in his local pub, usually where we can be found on a Friday night. There were two guys playing pool on the table next to us and we started talking to them, I knew one of them as he’s a local driving instructor and knows the boy’s mum. Anyway, they were laughing at the fact I’m useless at playing pool and decided to teach me properly. Well, I’ve never had such a laugh. They ended up moving every ball over the pockets so that no matter what the shot, I potted a ball - it was excellent!

I absent mindedly asked ‘are you this good at getting people through their driving tests?’ and ended up getting myself a driving instructer. Who, has it happens is pretty damn good!

I had my first, double, lesson with him the other day and it’s amazing, I can actually drive. We did the usual cockpit drill, starting off etc and then I got let free on dual carriageways where I was told to ‘put your foot down til you hit 70 to see what it’s like’, which was scary as hell but so good as I was really scared of going fast, and I’ve mastered hill starts and crawling up/down hills at 5mph, as well as feeling a lot better at going around roundabouts.

I’ve got an other lesson on Thursday evening and I’m really looking forward to it, should be good. Now that I’ve got a good teacher I should be through my test in no time, my confidence is soaring when I get behind the wheel these days!

I am utterly ashamed to call myself a Rangers fan after the chaos in Manchester on Wednesday. A handful of drunk, coke-fuelled idiots have made a laughing stock of my city and my football team. It looked like Manchester city Police didn’t have the situation under control half the time, there really shouldn’t have been a situation to control in the first place. Yes, it was a big game but fans should have been there to have a good time, not attack police officers and make the atmosphere feel like Basra.

For any readers from Manchester, I’m so sorry that these hooligans caused mayhem in your city - believe me, we’re not all like that. I can’t believe that no action is to be taken against Ranger’s Football Club, fans were invited to Manchester to watch the game, not stab a rival fan and treat the city like a dumping ground for empty alcohol bottles and urine.

Seriously, I am ashamed to call myself a Rangers fan.

(all images copyright to BBC News Website.)

I’m having the nightmare of all nightmares. It all began yesterday…

My area manager came into the shop and wanted to talk to me. I thought he was going to pull me up for being 10 minutes later the other day, but he was in fact telling me that in 5 weeks time I’m moving to an other store as a supervisor (ie my current job within the company). The way it goes is that I’m leaving the shop that I’m in (and love), and I don’t have a choice in the matter. Apparantly the manager, other supervisor and I have ‘too close a working relationship’ and are too clique-y. Uh, what? Surely getting on with your work mates is a good thing, and we are a bloody good team! Also there’s the small fact that an other supervisor HAS to be moved from the store that he’s in and the only one he can come to is mine, and that means one of us goes - ME!

The shop that they’re proposing that I move to is hard for me to get to because I don’t drive - it’s 8 miles away and the bus stop is one mile away from the store, and I’d need to walk through an industrial estate at 10pm to get to said bus stop. I’m not putting my life in danger to get to work in a shop I don’t want to go to, even though that’s exactly what seems to be happening. I admit that this new shop is a lovely, lovely shop if it was tidy and that I need experience in as many different shops as possible before I get offered a manager’s position but the fact that I’m being pushed into it isn’t sitting well with me at all.

I can say no, as I have a joker up my sleeve - my contract which states that I do not have to move to another shop unless it is within a certain distance of the current shop that I’m working in. I’m still waiting to hear back from the second time that I said no to the area manager earlier this morning. But, he’s also said that ‘to think about what I’m saying no to’ which confuses me a bit.

Needless to say, I’m not a happy bunny at the moment - I’m stressed and worried and downright pissed off that I’m leaving the shop that I love and my friends. But, saying that…everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it?

I’ll keep you updated!!

Single bloggers unite - there’s now a dating site for you!

The lovely Rhys at gospelrhys.co.uk has set up ShagABlogger.com, a dating/meeting site for bloggers.

It’s brilliant, but I don’t have a use for it…but maybe some of you do? Check it out.

This video freaks the life out of me for two reasons. Madonna, who is 49, looks younger than I am. She’s 27 years older than me for goodness sakes! The second is the weird kissing scene, seriously why would you want to show people kissing with no skin?

Plus I hate the song, really hate it. But I listen to it all the time because it’s bloody catchy. I blame this on Timbaland. I’ve become obsessed with him recently.

Twitter has just made me spend £9.38 on something that I don’t need, but completly wanted. It all started when I opened up Twitter and found out about Twitter Local, which I went to for Glasgow and read all the Tweets from Glasgow.

That got me onto the wonderful website Asking For Trouble, a web shop for some seriously cute things by a local Glasgow designer.

Well, one I saw this gorgeous, unique notebook I just had to buy it! Had to, it was calling out my name to me. And so is most of the other items on the site - I’m just glad that I only have £10 in my PayPal account or I’d had bought more than the notebook.

I’ve been updating my reading library now that I’ve installed the plugin that I used to use to control it and came to the conclusion that I read a hell of a lot of books and autobiographies.

I’ve currently added around 50 books and that’s just the ones that I can see on my shelf from where I’m sitting or ones that I’ve read in the past month and they’re still fresh in my head.

I think that I’ll have about 250 books in my collection before I’m finished updating it, and even then I’ll have missed books out.

Check out the library and recommend some books for me to read, please!

A few hours ago I opened up my GoogleReader and began reading through the 100+ feeds that I’ve managed to neglect over the course of the past 4 days. I was quite content reading away until I came across an entry from Nettuts.com about creating a layout. I loved the end result of the tutorial and ended up creating my own theme from the tutorial. It’s very similar to the tutorial, but at the same time, it’s not really. Uh, whatever. I love it and it’s staying for the long run (i.e. about 2 weeks).

I’ve got a couple of things still to add, my Reading Library to chane back to running off a plugin rather than a script from another site, and I’m not too sure about the text at the top…too much like a menu, maybe? I don’t know. I’ll see if it grows on me by the morning.

It’s a miracle that I’m still awake, I woke up pretty early this morning because the sun was blaring through my curtains. I’m impressed that the sun was shining on a Bank Holiday to be honest, such a shame that I had to go to work though - I spent half the night staring out the front door wishing I was sitting in a park, eating a picnic and listening to music with my mates! And after the chaos trying to get to work I really wasn’t in the mood to be working at all. I’m off til 4pm on Wednesday and I plan to fill those hours with as much as possible rather than my usual of sitting watching TV or reading a book.

I want to do all my laundry and take old clothes to a charity shop since I’ve got clothes everywhere which I hardly ever wear. And I really need to plant all the bulbs that I bought a few weeks ago in the front garden so that when summer finally arrives the garden will be nice and colourful rather than just grass and a few roses. I like having something pretty to look at when I’m sitting outside reading.

Other than that, I don’t know how I’m going to fill the next two days - I have no spare cash so anything that I can do must be free. If it’s nice again tomorrow I’ll probably take the dog down to the local country park for a while, I’m sure she’ll enjoy it and I could do with the fresh air.

A while ago I began doing Stumblin’ Sunday posts. Well, that’s a lie. I did one post about the best site’s that I’d come across using StumbleUpon that week. Well, the good news is that now that I have constant computer and internest access I can start posting again, wooh! Aren’t you so very happy?!

Improve Page,Alexa and Technorati Ranks at ImBloggingThat.com is a great guide to how to increase your PageRank, Alexa Rank and Technorati Authority and Ranks. A great read if you’re obsessed with your site’s numerous ranks.

Humerous Bathroom Signs from around the world - the last two are the best and most imaginative I’ve ever seen.

TeeVsTee.com is a simple voting site where you pick your favourite out of two tshirt designs. Since I’m a sucker for cool tshirts, I love this site and there’s a good few shirts that I now must have after voting for around 5 minutes. Simple, silly and addictive.

Naked Tickle Me Elmo and more…the robots beneath the fur. Sounds weird, but it’s a pretty cool look at what exactly makes Tickle Me Elmo laugh and Barney dance.

Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve come to the conclusion that I am absolutely terribly bad at designing websites. Which is a problem, because it’s one of my great loves. I spend a great deal of time reading about great web design and think ‘Oh, that’s so obvious. What an easy way to do that’. I am full of ideas but when it comes to mocking them in PhotoShop I fall dead.

I’m not artistic. I’m creative, yes. But arty in anyway? I failed S1 art and design for goodness sakes! I can see in my head exactly how I want a layout (I’m old skool, layout is better than theme) to end up but I just cant turn that thought into graphics.

What I can do however, is code. I can code my heart out for hours on end and my limits are valid XHTML, CSS and basic WordPress template tags. I don’t do other languages, I’ve never learned. Which seems silly now, I’d love to be able to write plugins and things for WordPress but I’ll admit that PHP goes over my head a bit.

So, in a round about way - I know this theme sucks. But I’m working on it.