This morning I was at Starbucks waiting for my Venti coffee and breakfast sandwich. (This will give you an immediate idea of how desperately sad my morning has been.) As I was leaning against the wall of shame, drifting off into space, a man walked up and began staring at my chest. I had my headphones on, listening to a podcast of On the Media because Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone are str8-up hustlaz who got tha inna scoop on media tomfoolery 4 realz.

Yes, this is all true, and I’m not proud. I was in Starbucks ordering a Venti coffee and listening to a freaking RECORDING … not even live radio, but a RECORDING that I had SPECIFICALLY SOUGHT OUT … of an NPR podcast on my, yes, I admit it, my IPHONE. My god. I think I’m the enemy! And yet every time I see the display of Starbucks CDs I scoff and say, “what kind of poser would buy a CD at Starbucks?” Sigh. Yuppie ain’t nothing but a number, though, right?

Anyhoo, at the Starbucks, listening to On the Media, dude walks up and stares intently at my chest. At first I thought he was maybe going to punch me, because that happens a lot, but then I realized that I was wearing this t-shirt:

Meat Is Murder

He said something that I didn’t hear because I was totally rocking out to media analysis. I slipped my headphones off and said, “What’s that?” which is what I always say, because for some reason it’s a much nicer thing to say than just, “What?”

“That’s a cool shirt,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s handy if you need to butcher a cow on the spur of the moment.”

“We’ve all been there,” he said, knowingly. And something in his eyes told me he meant it.