I really think the above should be a diagnosis. Can’t you just see Angie Harmon looking at the cold corps of a murder victim with no face and then looking up when the woman that looks like Oprah says, “It wasn’t blunt-force trauma to the face. Sudden-onset Nasal Implosion.”

So the other night, I went to the pub, had a few drinks, (I don’t want to hear it. I know I said I wouldn’t be back, but there are no other bars in this town, damn it!), and then came home. I was feeling fine. Well, maybe not fine.

I was hungry, majorly jonesing for a zebra cake or a box of swiss rolls. Drinking on an empty stomach: never a good idea. No one wanted to go Applebee’s for one of the chocolate things I was craving so, dejectedly, I called my only true friend left in the world: Johnny. I ordered cheese sticks and cinnamon sticks. (Just snacks. After all, I’d already HAD dinner much earlier.)

Food comes. Godfather comes on. Yay. Pizza and Pacino. Can’t go wrong there. So there I am, drinking coke, chowing down, and texting Trey about going to the mattresses. (If you have to ask, you don’t get it. Luca Bracci sleeps with the fishes.) And thn it hits.

Coughing, wheezing, unable to breathe. Sneezing. And then, more sneezing. Chest pains. Until, at last, I decide I’m going to die.

Sudden-onset Nasal Implosion. Also known as: how I catch a cold.

Some people catch a cold like they ponder new sheets. They lallygag around by the Home Decor department in JC Penney, maybe spend just an extra few minutes in Wal-mart. Finally, right before the observer would think they’d decided to spend another season with the brown and orange paisley polyblend they’ve had since their marriage, they surprise everyone and come home with all new brown and orange paisley polyblend sheets.

I’m not like that. I’m much more of an impulse shopper.

I’m walking through Target and just go, “Hey, new sheets!”

In much the same way, I get sick.

This time, it came during act two of the greatest movie ever made. Right after Sonny beats the hell out of Carlo Rizzi and right before buying it at the Jersy Pike toll booth.

Right now, I feel like I’m stuck with this as long as those other guys are stuck with their polyblend paisleys. Wish me luck. Send Vitamin C.

When I lived in Austin, Texas, I had my first exposure to Starbucks. And I must say, I was an elitist. If I couldn’t get my cup of coffee from some kid with a nose ring, I wasn’t drinking coffee.

I was the epitome of the “anti-Starbucks” movement.

To understand how difficult this is, you have to understand a little about Austin. On every corner, from Round Rock to William Cannon Drive, you’ll find three things: a convenience store, a gas station, and a Starbucks. This isn’t because people need a lot of gas and spill their Starbucks on their suit while pumping it. Instead, it is the inevitable necessity of traffic. And lots of it.

If it isn’t on your way, you don’t do it. That’s how Austin can support so many Starbucks Coffee Houses. (For the record, there are 776 listings for “Starbucks” in the Austin area.)

What surprised me was my return to Monroe. When I got back, we had two coffee houses. Mylo’s on 18th Street and Cottonport in West Monroe. And that was about it. Four years after I came back, the clouds parted, the seas went calm and the rain stopped.

The first Starbucks opened.

And the one existing coffee shop in Monroe decided they would be the Anti-Starbucks. How does one become the anti-Starbucks? Well, there are two answers.

First, you assume that all things coffee and coffee-related were Starbucks originations. And you rebel. Tall, Grande and Venti are no longer traditional coffee designations. Instead, they are the ugly face of corporate America, the sounds of your dollars flying by wire to some secretive bank vault high atop the Space Needle in Seattle. This form of the Anti-Starbucks leads, inevitably and without deviation, to the second of the Anti-Starbucks.

You argue with your customers.

That’s right. When someone orders a tall americano, you argue with them. You tell them “We don’t speak Starbucks here,” when, in point of fact, tall, grande and venti have nothing to do with Starbucks and have everything to do with a century of coffee tradition. (Grande, is after all, Italian.)

I’ve managed a non-Starbucks coffee shop. We used tall and grande and our own permutation of venti that folded in our corporate name. We used words like “macchiato” and “Frappe.” These aren’t brand names, they’re descriptions of the preparation of the type of coffee. Even if they weren’t, to *argue* with your customer about such a thing, to become angry about it, to be indignant. These are emotions that have no place in customer service.

These are exactly the types of reactions that have made Starbucks such a success in our fair Monroe — and incidentally, exactly why I simply cannot wait for the new Starbucks to open in my neighborhood.

When did the rule of “customer is always right” get replaced with “We have too much business, anyway?”

Of course, as I sit here drinking my burned Americano, fighting with their wireless internet and the incessant rumble of a pop-rock station, I understand why Starbucks came. And now, I’m glad.