Caffeine as a revenue-generating vice -- Seattle proposes an espresso tax. An extra dime for a $3 schmancy coffee drink, to pay for day care for poor children, sounds fair to me, but not to Starbucks, apparently. What could we tax in Massachusetts -- microbrewed beer? Donuts? Lobsta? Sox tickets? How about we lower the drinking age to 16 and tax the teenage party animals 300%, to fund anti-drunk driving campaigns? Hmmmm...

UPDATES: Apparently we could tax espresso right here at the local Dunkin Donuts....the horror...

and in other Seattle news, this past weekend was Bumbershoot, the uberfestival of music that lucky Miss Amy attended, wrapping up last night with Wilco opening for R.E.M. [insert your own sigh of longing here]. Perusing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site today for a review of the show, I found this shining example of Why People Loathe Music Reviewers:

Chicago's Wilco opened with an hour of music that was formally akin to alternative country, but had a lot more depth and vision. Leader Jeff Tweedy, sharply dressed in a green shirt and jacket, writes bookish lyrics such as "rest my weary head on California stars," then sings them as if they were just ordinary honky-tonk lines. The centerpiece of their set was an extended version of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" in which Floyd Cramer-style piano licks faded into waves of psychedelia while a simple folk melody was swallowed in a hysteria of guitar feedback.

I say again, gaahhhhh -- between the tortured sentence structure, alterna-nerd namedropping, and factual errors, this hits the Jackass Music Writer Trifecta. Jeff Tweedy didn't write "California Stars," Woody Guthrie did; therefore, it is just an ordinary honkytonk line. And he quoted the line wrong anyway. That's the funny thing about liner notes, the internet, and real live Wilco fans (surely a few were there at the concert, right?) -- they can tell you lots of facts about the band you're reviewing, so you can fake it more credibly. Rrrrrrrr.