A skinny latte and a fat pipe, Webista

(Upstart) Conspiracy theorists, rejoice. Things are looking up.

After a long period in which the economic landscape looked less like the inexorable march of monolithic capitalism than like the clown parade in the Bozo Circus , the pieces of the grand corporate plan for world domination are beginning—slowly, glacially—to come together.

Microsoft is teaming up with Starbuck’s.

Yep, sometime this spring the frappacino generation will be able to order up an americano , boot up a wireless laptop and log onto MSN, Microsoft’s now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t ISP—piling addiction upon addiction.

MobileStar, a Texas provider that so far has brought wireless access to airport lounges and hotels, will install T1 lines and transmitters in about 2100 of Starbuck’s 3000 stores in the next two years.

For those who see corporate connivance in every dark corner, this match-up ranks with the Hitler-Stalin handshake: the Scarlet Woman of Redmond, Wash., entering into an unholy brew with the chain that has become the gold standard for neighborhood yuppification and put the word “chai” out into the world to boot.

Of course, the real devilment is in the kind of Web access Starbucks’ customers will get: pure, undiluted MSN, Microsoft’s house-blend ISP that’s running a weak third to AOL and EarthLink. Put that in your French press and squeeze it, OpenNet Coalition.

My own reaction is pure self-interest. I just want a cup of mud and a place to drink it, and the Microsoft deal makes it less likely I’ll find either one easily.

The plan is to set up stores so that 25 people can access the Web at any one time. According to Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, the deal is intended to bring new customers into the stores, and to get the ones who already come to stay longer.

Is this really necessary? I already run into plenty of dayparts when my local Starbucks looks like an oil painting. If it’s not the poets/playwrights/bartenders nursing a latte while they polish a nasty sonnet about their ex-girlfriend, it’s a gaggle of med students apparently taking the MCATs. Not to mention the guy in the corner who’s been reading “The Fountainhead” for so long without turning a page that the barrista’s job description includes holding a mirror under his nose to make sure he’s alive.

Believe me, give these guys a Web uplink and dynamite won’t blast them out of their seats. And I can’t blame them. Combining lattes and laptops won’t be cheap; customers will have to bring their own computers equipped with a wireless modem, and buy an access card ($79 to $199) and a monthly subscription ($16 to $60 per month) from MobileStar.

At those prices, I’d want to run my dot-com business from the corner nearest the biscotti. I’ll adapt and survive, I suppose—maybe even cut back on my caffeine intake and get a few hours of REM sleep. After all, it’s not like Microsoft is hooking up with McDonald’s.

Forget I said that.

A prodigious coffee habit lets Editor-in-Chief Brian Quinton fight crime as Java Man, vibrating his molecules fast enough to walk through walls. E-mail him at brian_quinton@intertec.com.