Gibson in the Seventh Dimension

I was pleased to learn that BBC7 are going to broadcast William Gibson's Pattern Recognition in the Seventh Dimension slot next week. Should be good.

Fetishised coffee?

Some people will do anything to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Witness the following, from today's Graun:

Word reaches us that the sheer glut of coffee houses in Seattle, home of Starbucks, has led to some unorthodox new sales techniques, dubbed "Sexpresso". Waitresses have been donning bikinis, lingerie or fetish outfits, while the drinks have been given "sexy" new names. Two points, really. One, is anyone really tempted to drink a coffee/white chocolate mix called a "Wet Dream"? Two, isn't the easiest way to sell more coffee just to make a better brew?

I wonder if they got the idea from Mike Judge's Idiocracy, a film set in the year 2505, where, "every commercial transaction has been sexualised: at Starbucks you can get coffee plus a handjob (or a "full body" latte)." Talk about progress: in less than a year, reality has managed to do what fiction thought would take 498 years to achieve...