Just Say No

I imagine the Starbucks marketing team sitting around joking about the most improbable thing they could get on a menu. "I know," says one. "Shiitake mocha!" "How about eggplant macchiato?" adds another. The third guy says, "Let's try a pumpkin latte!"

They all look at him and say, "That's so crazy it just might work."

I have complained before about the crazy that is pumpkin in coffee. Pumpkin. In coffee. I mean, what's next? Liver-and-onion cafe con leche? And yet people rave about pumpkin spice lattes.

I thought to myself, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe it's just coffee with the spices we use in pumpkin pie. I like cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger. I like chai. I asked the guy at the counter, Does this taste like pumpkin or does it taste like the spices we use with pumpkin?

Both, he said. It tastes like pumpkin pie.

I'm going to live on the edge, I told him. I'll take a medium.

And oh, my friends, what are we doing, lining up to buy these things? YEA VERILY, the pumpkin spice latte is an abomination in the eyes of me. Have you seen the color of one of those things, people? The orangey glow?

In general I'm an open-minded person, I think. In general I try to be receptive to new ideas. But this is truth immutable, right here at Light and Momentary:

Coffee should not glow.

And the taste! Ugh! Fake chemical-ly non-pumpkin pseudo-spice! Who has perpetrated this scam upon the American people, that they are shelling out $4 a pop for these things?

I have returned from my trip to the edge to say it plain: don't go there. It's a bad edge. It's an ugly edge. I like pumpkin; I like coffee. But never the twain should meet.