the ineffectual elite

I was at Barnes & Noble the other day, and I had plenty of time to mill around the Starbucks coffee bar, since my friend Janice (who was in shock from having just slammed the door of my car on her finger) was alternately sipping her grande carmel frappuccino and putting her head between her knees so she wouldn't faint.

Being a good friend, I left her at the table and was going through the line buying coffee for myself and hungrily eyeing the huge oatmeal-raisin cookies, when something caused me to swing my gaze the opposite direction. And my eyes fastened on a big cardboard display of classics - Hemingway, Dickens, Poe - that had large lettering on the top that said "WHOM DO YOU WANT TO HAVE COFFEE WITH?"

I guess the idea was you buy the book and drink your coffee and feel somehow like you're having a conversation with these great authors.

But I thought, like, what the heck? If they can get the 'whom' part right, can't they at least put the 'with' in front? And if they're putting the 'with' vernacularly at the end, they should've just stuck with 'who'; it would have made the whole thing a lot easier to look at.

Sez I.