Starbucks #1, 4:21 p.m. - Crazy art woman and even crazier return lady

Obviously, this is from yesterday. My backup computer has now died. The power cord is faulty and I had to wait and seize the opportunity to steal another one from a spare computer at work today. SOMEONE HATES ME.

It is crazy insane busy in here. You would think it is New York up in here, at the height of tourist season, at midnight on New Year's Eve the way people are stacked up like cordwood and the line is humongous.

To top everything else off, there is a crazy artist woman replacing the art on the walls here right above my head. Why she picked right now - at the height of the afternoon rush - to be doing this - is beyond all reason and beyond me. Right now, she's trying to unscrew the box that held her business cards under her $800 photographs. She kept sighing and pouting and then I noticed that she was actually screwing the box INTO the wall.

I looked up and said "You're doing it wrong. Lefty loosey, righty tighty." She was like "Oh. I'm doing it wrong." One would think she might have noticed that after 20 minutes of screwing and not being able to get the box off the wall. Le sigh. Artistic types. Her photographs were really nice, but not for the outrageous price she was charging.

I told her to just leave it for the next artist. She told me "I paid good money for that. I'm not going to leave it. It's mine." Okay then. Go right on with your bad penny-pinching self. She took the photos, the hooks that they were hung on the shelves with and the box her business cards were in. It looks like a denuded apartment up in here.

Ladies. Let me offer some random fashion advice. If you have a size 24 behind, that's all cool. The Goddess loves everyone - all shapes, sizes, colors, etc. HOWEVER. You really, really, need to think about the possible ramifications of going out in public with roses hand-stitched over your back pockets. I realize that you might be wanting to serve as a walking billboard for Sophie's Sewing Shoppe, but all you're really doing is making a rose look like a red cabbage. And it looks like you enjoy getting your buttocks spanked in some odd sort of flower fetish foreplay. Please do not be wearing gigantic embroidery if you have loins the size of water buffaloes. Kthnxbai.

Snakeskin appears to be back in this year. There's a woman with a fire-engine-red snakeskin coat prancing impatiently waiting for her drink. And yes, I did hear her order a peppermint hot chocolate with soy. Ewwwwwwwwwwww.

There's a scary WOACA in line now. She's got on light gray slacks and a regular white tunic. The kicker? She's got on silver snakeskin shoes. All this is accessorized with a Tiffany-ish powder blue handbag. I'm not sure of what kind of looks she's going for. OH MY GOD. I think ... I think. Actually, I'm sure (ewww, she's getting a soy caramel macchiatto) that she's got a pack of cigarettes jammed up under her shirt. No. It can't be. It has to be a nicotine patch. Although I don't know why she would have that floating around down near her muffin top.

Hello. Old dude. Christmas sweaters are officially out of style on Dec. 27. You MIGHT be able to get away with it on Boxing Day, but not on January 2. Please exit the building and get thee to a Macy's, pronto.

The baristas are arguing about the schedule.

And there is some RETURN DRAMA. There's a woman with OH MY GOD - a STACK of Starbucks receipts. She's got a Christmas gift bag and she's pulling out pounds of coffee, coffee grinders, some mugs -- all sorts of shit and she's holding up the line tremendously. Worse, she's dressed in an odd black and green jogging suit combination. She's old and white - but she has one leg of the jogging suit pulled up over her knee in ghetto style while the other one is down near her ankle. She's hollering at the assistant manager on duty about return a pound of ground coffee that she apparently bought back in early December but she claims tasted bad. Uh. Uh. Uh. I see a potential scam here.

Buy the $16 a pound coffee, fill the bag with Folgers and return. Wash rinse repeat.

They're still arguing. The girl at the register is holding up one finger to the customers getting increasingly impatient behind her - "One moment. One moment." And she points at the black sweatsuit woman. If this woman keeps this up - denying these poor people their triple mocha latte fix, there might me a venti-sized riot up in here.

Finally, she'd done. THEY ARE GIVING HER MONEY BACK FOR ALL THOSE POUNDS OF COFFEE. Damn. I need to get up on this.

Ok. We're going to depart with one bit of fashion advice that we should all take to heart. Ladies - and gentlemen - when you bleach your hair in order to go fashionably blonde - YOU NEED TO PUT SOME CONDITIONER UP IN THAT MESS. Otherwise, it do be looking like straw up on your head. And I will clown you ferociously.