the anatomy of a latte

from poorlydrawnlines.com. 

I'm of that school-of-thought "less is more" when it comes to coffee. I've always preferred smaller amounts of coffee to larger ones, opting for straight espresso or espresso "on the rocks" (as I've heard it said) over copious amounts of coffee, often diluted with milk and syrup (though I do enjoy cappuccinos and lattes, minus the syrup). Those who go to Starbucks for the first time could have a mess on their hands: instead of Small, Medium, and Large they have Tall, Grande, and Venti (and Trenta now, depending on your location); and the Tall is the Small. When I worked at Starbucks, we'd always have people messing up their orders by ordering small drinks instead of large ones, as they intended. And of course we'd be frustrated, because we had to remake the drink; but at the same time, Starbucks' attempt to be hip with a different classification system for drinks altogether breeds such confusion. Starbucks brings it on itself. And how is this at all relevant? Only to point out that while they've got an entirely different classification system for their drinks than anywhere else, that wasn't always the case. When they first opened, they had two sizes: the small and the large, or the short and the tall. The Tall--twelve ounces--was the largest size offered, back when Starbucks was pour-over bar only and more focused on quality than quantity; but Americans are greedy, and just as we couldn't be content with Italian-style coffee during World War 2 (leading to the americanos, espresso diluted in hot water), so we couldn't be content with a mere 12 ounces of coffee. The Grande, Venti, and Trenta were created to accommodate the customers demanding more. This is an interesting story, and that's about all it is.

"Why a post on coffee?" The honest reason goes like this: I saw this picture on facebook, shared from some website, and I thought it was funny and wanted to post it for my six readers to see. So I threw together the post and found that without text, there was no space between the photograph and the comments section. It looked awfully off-kilter. Like someone trying to straighten a crooked picture on the wall, and failing miserably, so I couldn't figure out how to add a single damned space between the two, even when tinkering with the HTML. My failure is largely dependent on the fact that I literally know nothing about HTML. Knowing that a line of text would enable me to add a space between the post and the comments, I decided to write a quick little anecdote about coffee. More "filler" than anything (quite literally). And this is what happened.

Post-Script: Also, the first time I made this post public, I forgot to add the space. Classic.