Starsucks

Tard fight:

Starbucks' strange vernacular finally drove a customer nuts.

Lynne Rosenthal, a college English professor from Manhattan, said three cops forcibly ejected her from an Upper West Side Starbucks yesterday morning after she got into a dispute with a counterperson -- make that barista -- for refusing to place her order by the coffee chain's rules.

Yesterday's breakfast-bagel tussle heated up when the barista told the prickly prof that he wouldn't serve her unless she specified whether she wanted a schmear of butter or cheese -- or neither.

"I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' " Rosenthal said.

"The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!'"

Isn't the linear continuity of Starbucks fascinating? The young customers (liberal arts undergraduates) become the employees when they graduate and find that all of the university's TA slots are already filled. Then they become the customers again when they finally get tenured -- which makes it particularly smirk-worthy when they hiss and spit at each other.

Proposal to muzzie terrorists: you blow up every Starbucks within five miles of a university campus and we'll start rounding up those virgins. No reason we can't work this into a "win-win" situation for both cultures.