Not long ago I spent a few days in Cairns for a short personal holiday. I’ve been up there a few times now, mostly for work - I teach there for a few Mondays usually in late September or early October, and have been up a few other times of the year for other work; but this time I went for me, simply.

Among a number of activities I spent a day in Kuranda, taking the Skyrail up and back down. The Skyrail was a nice trip through, and over, the forest canopy stopping a couple of places on the way to dig a little deeper.

At the top was the little village of Kuranda nestled in the Tablelands. I can only guess that the village started out as a pleasant get-away for the people in and around Cairns as a short respite from the humidity of the coast, it must have had quaint shops, artisans, boutiques stores, etc... Unfortunately, there is very little of that left. There is some, so it is worth finding them, but by and large it is over run with tourism kitsch - it’s worth a day visit, but I couldn’t handle more of that and I feel for those who work and live there pining for the “better” days of the past glory that surely was.

Nevertheless, there is one particularly unpleasant story worth relating. I was in need of a coffee, and had recently started having a “long black” with just a little milk. I really don’t like all of the milk in specialty coffees so it was suggested I have that - a good suggestion I might add. Up until then this moment my regular coffee place at JCU was more than happy to serve a long black with a little bit of milk to me; however, that was not the case at the Kuranda Coffee Republic - my first port-of-call in Kuranda.

When I asked for that coffee, the server and I believe owner, simply walked away from me with nothing but disdain for my request. “Nope, I don’t do that,” he said. And I do mean walked away, not just turned to do something else, but clean walked away from me leaving a stunned customer standing there with no service.

Being the ONLY person in his shop, he could have asked my “why do you like your coffee that way?” “Might I suggest you try...” or “...if you like that you might prefer this...” As a teacher, I see times like these as teachable moments. That was an opportunity for him to politely convince me I might be mistaken with my choice, and had he done that I might be raving about his service instead of crapping on him. But nope, he just walked away as if I had asked him to kiss my ass and wipe it clean with his shirt.

Clearly he is what many, though not I, would call a food fascist, a coffee nazi or some other derogatory description. In addition to the long black, he not would not make de-caf or skinny coffee, among others but I didn’t bother continuing to read his “we don’t make” list after discovering it while standing in awe of how he treated a customer.

Which brings me to penises.

You might remember a while back I wrote about a word episode while in Tasmania, and that episode involved some people’s inability to say words like penis or vagina, which are proper anatomical words like elbow or scalp. I won’t repeat the blog, but I wanted to tell you that since writing that piece the number of people who have “found” my blog through search engines has increased, though not exactly how, or who, I had wanted.

Using my server’s webstats, I can see that there is a distinctly pornographic tinge to what some people are searching for only to find my site, ouch. Apparently, even those interested in porn still use the proper anatomical terms on occasion. A few other “searchers” are obviously interested in some type of etymological research, but they’re on the low side of the statistics. So although many people feel giddy saying penis in public, purveyors of porn must still be using it in conjunction words like prick, or worse.

And of course, using these words once again in this blog will simply garner more negative attraction from seedy people interested in porn.

Which all brings me back to the coffee guy because descriptions such as food fascist or coffee nazi are overly harsh for his kind of cafe puritanism...

...prick gets more attention.