Dear Barak

r/e your latest capitulation to the right wing, let me paraphrase Withnail:
Stuff it up your arse for free, and fuck off while you're doing it!

Good luck with your reelection campaign in 2012!
As dissatisfied as I am with your lack of integrity, honesty, backbone and respect for the Constitution and the office of the President, the unfortunate reality is that you're still a vast improvement on whichever malevolent sociopath survives the Teatard hoards in the Republican Thunderdome to claim their nomination.

However, fear of Preznit Huckabee imposing evangelical Sharia law isn't enough to secure my support.

I will continue to vote for those Democrats who advocate for core progressive principles, which California is fortunate enough to have in abundance (not you, Dianne, you suck too). But I'm finished with gutless DLC wonders who's only concern is seeking the approval of beltway gasbags, wealthy donors and people who will never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, ever support them.

sincerely,
bax

and for my Democratic friends who still believe, a musical epilogue to consider:

true customer tales

I see a guy every couple of weekend who falls into the Not Obviously Crazy Crazy Person category. He's always clean and well groomed, favors white shirts and tweed jackets and passes casual inspection as some flavor of academic.

Until he sits around for 4 hours, brings two books to the counter and you have an interaction like this.


me (ringing up a $5 and a $9.50 sale): That'll be $15.23.
guy (digging through pockets and wallet, coming up empty): Uh....uh....uh.....uh....can I just get this one then?
me (voiding sale, re-ringing $5 book): That'll be $5.36.
guy (repeating previous pantomime, with identical results): Uh, I can't get this one either.
me (voiding sale): Okay.

So he wanders out the door and I'm ringing up next customer when he comes back in.

Guy, loudly: OH CAN YOU PUT BACK THOSE BOOKS OVER THERE FOR ME? THANKS!


An odd bird.

Old Media Fail

Things periodically appear on the Roku start screen, things I mostly ignore.
UFC on pay per view! Avatar on demand!

Blah, blah, blah.
Netflix streaming and Pandora are the twin pincers Roku wields to secure its place in our hearts and it needs no others.

But the other day Hulu Plus showed up, and not knowing much about Hulu other than it's what the Burl uses to stay current with 30 Rock I thought I'd check it out. If did the Netflix thing only for teevee, that would be pretty cool.

$7.99 a month, a buck more than my bare bones Netflix account.
Selection looks pretty good, lots of current stuff and a bunch of old shows that might be worth a look.
Oh wait....they show ads?

DEALBREAKER!

It's kinda like when the music dudes thought the solution to piracy was offering lossy DRM riddled MP3s that were hobbled by all sorts of restrictions. Look guys, I use the internet to AVOID those sorts of headaches, I'm sure as hell not gonna pay you to deliver them to my living room.

The Fuss watches more teevee than I'd like him too, given an appropriately Utopian universe to inhabit. But as we're stuck in this one, I take solace in the fact that at least he doesn't get any targeted advertising hammered incessantly into his infant hindbrain. It's bad enough he can spot Spongebob merch halfway across the store, but at least that attraction has grown somewhat organically from his enjoyment of the show.

The Wife, Burl and Fiend stayed in a hotel with cable once when Fiend was about 4.
A commercial for McDonald's came on and Fiend said "Oh look mommy, a funny clown!"

Given the society we have, advertising is inescapable without a lot of draconian measures I'm unwilling to contemplate. But I draw what lines I can, and broadcast advertising in the living room is one of them.

true customer tales

teenage girl and her grandfather consider a James Dean calendar.

girl: JAMES DEAN!
gramps: Do you know how many movies he made?
girl: I WAS WHERE HE DIED!
gramps: Eh?
girl: I WAS WHERE HE DIED!
gramps: Heh heh...I drive past it every day!

retro video: Stone Roses

true customer tales

*skinny guy in bike shorts comes up with two books, The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy and The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King*

Guy: Uh hey, which of these books should I get?
Me: Depends on what you want.
Guy, puzzled: Well I'm not sure what I want.
Me, noncommittally: MMmmm.
*guy ponders, weighing a book in each hand and sighing loudly*
Guy: Well, this one's bigger (holding up The Drawing of the Three)....I guess I'll get this one!
Me: A fine choice.

true customer tales

Two nerdgirls consider our calendars.

#1: Hey they have a UFC calendar.
#2: OH MY GOD, UFC! UFC! UFC!
#1: What, do you like pictures of guys looking really really angry or something?
#2: No...but they get in funny positions and it makes me laugh!
#1: ....these guys are totally RIPPED!

Title of the Year?

OPERATION VAMPIRE KILLER 2000: American Police Action Plan for Stopping World Government Rule

Bonus!

Published By:
POLICE AGAINST THE NEW WORLD ORDER


Let's see...here's a chapter with three subheadings!

Traitors' Grand Finales
A) Race War
B) Ecological Collapse
C) Visitors from Afar?

Oh and also

COMMUNISM GONE? - DON'T TAKE ANY BETS!

It's almost like they foretold the election of the socialist monster Obama!

lame cover of the week

From an RPG supplement called The Master's Decree.


Yes, that appears to be a sleestack stealing a pie from a farmer.

Compare if you will to a classic of the genre from my youth, The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.



Now, assuming you have a chinless dice geek secreted somewhere in your heart of hearts, which dire opponent would you rather test your mettle against; reptilian pie thief or lighting vomiting dragon?

(that's a rhetorical question)

True Customer Tales

skinny, nervous guy in leather jacket at least two sizes too big almost runs up to the counter and stares at me, twitching.

Guy (growl/whispering, like Dirty Harry quizzing a hooligan): "Kinkos. Where IS it."
Me: *gives directions*
Guy, triumphantly: AHA. So......they MOVED.
Me: "Uh, yeah.....like five years ago."
Guy, desperately: IS THERE ANYWHERE CLOSER I CAN SEND A FAX FROM?
Me: Not that I know of, sorry.
Guy: Well...THANKS for the DIRECTIONS.
Me: Good luck out there!


I half expected him to bust out I'M BATMAN as his exit line.

an infrequent digression into things political

I was happy that, in this season of America's discontent, Cali maintained its sanity and failed to export any wild eyed anarchists to Washington.

Other states did not fare as well.

And the party’s advisers on health care policy say it is being discussed more seriously than ever, though they admit it may be as much a huge in-your-face to Washington as anything else.

Its tempting to laugh at such juvenile playground posturing masquerading as political philosophy. Only my certainty that Texas's Medicaid recipients need the help every bit as desperately as California's stay my guffaws.

True Customer Tales

beardy guy with faraway eyes and a couple of young girls who've drawn all over their bare legs with colored markers, tipping a cup of frozen confection at me: Is Gelato okay?

me: Sure.

guy, seemingly genuinely concerned: you're not allergic or anything?

me: Nope!

guy: Uh...I don't know how to say this....I'm looking for a version of the Bagavadghita thats, umm....easier to read?

me: *expressionlessly points way to Eastern Philosophy*

TCT: Bag Edition

A classic today.

me: can I get you a bag?

Older dressed up gal: Oh, well, hmmmm.....I guess, but only because it's raining.




punch line: it's not raining.

true customer tales

not obviously crazy lady: do you guy sell candy?

me: Nope.

NOCL: Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgh! But THEN you could yell at the kids on the street, "want some CANDY!"

Me: Oh well, another missed opportunity!

true

crazy lady eyeing the sale cart muttering to herself-

It's cause they think I'm JEWISH Jewish, they don't know I'm Celtic Jewish, which is a totally different thing. I know all the fucking shit they did!"

Spooktacular

Amazing party thrown by Neil and Patty, as always.
My highlight was boogieing down to Flashlight with the Fiend.
Best solo costume, Tippi Hedren circa The Birds, complete with a phalanx of attacking stuffed crows and movie soundtrack in the pocket of her fur.
Best group costume, the Funk boys who were all rocking the Risky Business white shirt and socks look.

Pix forthcoming.

Oh, Happy Ween!

This was Fuss' declaration earlier in the month, before he figured out the correct pronunciation. We have to archive his 'cute' statements as they happen or miss them- his language skills most swiftly to enforce verbal orthodoxy. I'm worried about a rocky transition when Halloween disappears from the cultural landscape, it's been his alpha and omega for so long. The Christmas orbital bombardment will create a distraction, but the Little Man seems to find skeletons, bats and ghouls intrinsically more fascinating than reindeer and elves.

We'll see.

In the interest of seasonal 'content' beyond baby anecdotes and overheard snippets, here are some high quality foreign horror flicks Meggsie & I culled from the Netflix streaming archives over the last few weeks. In deference to Meggsie's status as a horror lightweight, they're more creepy & suspenseful than gory & terrifying.

Tale of Two Sisters
Some cultural disconnect sows occasional confusion, but rock solid performances and quality direction make it the best straight up 'haunted house' film since The Shining.

The Orphanage
A+ movie with a twist shock ending that actually shocks, and also manages something perilously close to a happy ending.

Pulse
The pace is rather glacial and it's more of an exploration of existential enuii than a straight up thriller, but it achieves some notable scares nonetheless.

Shutter
A little rough around the edges and with a notably unappealing protagonist, still delivers the scares in abundance.

true customer tales

gal, extolling the virtues of the Norman Spinrad book she just picked up to her friend: It's SO AWESOME...it's got, like, severed heads sinking their teeth in!

friend, outraged: Severed heads don't sink in their teeth!

gal: EXACTLY! That's the whole point! It's so crazy!

The Bookseller's Reward

I caught one of those oh, look, this attic/barn/garage/shed is full of books! buys earlier, the first one in a few months.

It's the kind of thing we used to see all the time but they've been dying off as society's bipolarity about books worsens- people figure they're worthless and throw them out or else they've found an Ebay goldmine and prize them above rubies.

This buy was archetypal, a zigguraut of mouldering boxes with a 98/2 ratio of worthless, ruined junk to good stuff, arriving in the back of a beat up old pickup.

It's the sort of buy that drains your lifeforce.

You know somewhere in that mass of water damaged Reader's Digest Condensed Books, mid-70s Harlequin romances and Book Club sociology texts is one really interesting book, so you sort through each disintigrating box with care and attention, abrading precious brain cells against a seemingly endless wall of concretized mediocrity.

And of course sometimes you come up empty, a reality which births a goblin crouched in a dusty corner of your mind whispering poison.

This time, happily, I found The One.
A 1st edition of Victoria by Knut Hamsun, world famous Nobel winning Norwegian writer rendered persona non grata for enthusiastically embracing Hitler and Nazism during WWII. He's one of those authors you almost never find in the wild who has a devoted following- I automatically grab anything of his I see.

After sorting the books and arranging payment it was time to check on dear Knut and check my assumption of value. I figured a 1st in a partial DJ was a good bet for $35-50, which would justify the drudgery of a buy yielding little else in the way of salable merchandise.

To my amazement and delight there were preciselyzero copies for sale with jackets of any kind.
On the whole internet.

Over the years I must've given The Dust Jacket Speech to enough people to fill the Rose Bowl. People come in with 'valuable 1st editions' they think are worth a mint only to learn that collectible books (fiction, anyway) carry nearly their entire value in their fragile paper dust jackets. That book the internet tells you is 'worth' $500 is worth $20 without a jacket, if you're lucky.

So this was like a reverse judo kick. I'd ignored the DJ because it was in tatters, but as tricky as it can be to get an accurate value from the internet, it's really great at letting you know when something's really, really really hard to find.

And a copy of Victoria in a DJ, even a chewed up DJ, is really, really really hard to find.
=)

true customer tales

BAG EDITION


me: would you like a bag?

older lady, fussing: Um..well...is it a SMALL bag?

me: I can give you a small one.

older lady: Is it a bag I can fit in my bag?

me: sure!

older lady: okay, then.

true customer tales

beardy dude buys a book.

dude: Are you a Christan?

me: No.

dude: Oh wow man...how do you live, how do you survive?

me, puzzled: Uh, great?

dude: that's too bad!

me: * blank stare, walks away*

dude, wandering out door: well, God Bless America!



I'm used to getting this kind of non-sequiter BS from mentally ill homeless people, not seemingly normal folk who bathe regularly.

Sleigh F@$*#G Bells

...or, The Old Married Couple Goes to a 'Gig'

It was a fine anniversary get away, topped off by an orgy of rock

The poor weather proved a excellent tonic for Santa Barbara's California Beach Theme Park iconography, and last night I got my lightning storm. A bolt landed smack downtown as we were enjoying lamb vindaloo at the Taj Cafe, eliciting a chorus of genuine screams from the street and knocking power out for a few minutes. Hooray for candelit dining!

After, we wandered vaguely up the street until the telltale hipster spoor of slouched, hoodie-clad smokers and thumping bass alerted us to the hidden presence of the club.

I've never been enthusiastic about these things except in the abstract. It was easy for me to suss out the show and buy tickets and be excited when it was two months off, but premonitions of doom inevitably haunt the day of. Pure idiocy given my 100% success rate over the years. Happily, the wife cajoled me from our plush hotel womb with the paramecium decals on the wall, saving me from the tragic folly of trading a peak musical experience for an all new episode of Cake Boss.

The venue was nice, the gal found my name on her clipboard with no problem, and we secured one of the tables on the dining podium for a base camp (protip: avoid the scrum around the bar by bribing a waitresses to bring you drinks). Proving how out of the loop we are we picked up a couple of tee shirts before the show, which I then had to carry around all night. Silver lining, I was able to wave them overhead like a pirate flag once the crowd reached a fever pitch.

People kept pouring in, opening bands played, we killed time drinking and people-watching. Three gin and tonics set me back 30 bucks, the price of the crawfish stuffed blackened Filet Mignon I'd enjoyed at The Palace Sunday night. I'll take the steak ten falls out of ten, but at least the drinks were made correctly (and you can't attach a dollar value to the spectacle of the 50-something couple mauling each other like teenage first timers who just raided the folks liquor cabinet- the Wife nearly wept when they migrated beyond our field of view, presumably to strip and start humping in the middle of the street outside.

The openers were okay but missing something. The musical ground between 'awful' and 'brilliant' is broad and thickly populated by talented, hardworking bands that can't manage to make real impression. I always want them to be better and feel kinda bad about saying "they were okay", because even being the local opening act for a touring band takes a tremendous amount of work and dedication.

That might be part of my show day nerves. Watching people give something their all when their all isn't enough makes me a little depressed.

But eventually the openers wound down, the place filled up and the hopeful migration to the dance floor began.

It being 'all ages' show, we got about 10 feet away from the stage via the simple expedient of hitting the 'no drinking' side. I was (as usual) the tallest person in the room and had an excellent view of the stage and the tops of a lot of people's heads. The Wife's vantage was less salubrious, but the sonic assault was still able to massage her soul.

I'll post a pic of the shirts later, since they nicely summarize the Sleigh Bells experience (basically the uncensored title of this post writ large in white on a black tee). In the meantime, my humble prose will have to suffice.

They didn't so much take the stage as explode.
One second we're all jostling for postion while a couple of people up front try to get a "Sleigh Bells!" chant going, the next we're being blown back like a field of wheat in a tornado by Tell 'Em.
It was so ridiculously great and huge and over the top, so much better than my sniveling inner critic expected that I roared with laughter, which seemed the only way to adequately express the pure joy of the moment.

And there wasn't much let up.
They played the whole album at peak intensity, with every song hitting at least ten times harder than the recorded version. The only exception was Rill Rill, which is IMHO the best sounding tune on the record, but sort of a muddle live. No matter, everyone had a great time singing along anyway and the whole rest of the show sounded fantastic and hit like a semi truck being towed behind a jet fighter.

The climax was (as I'd hoped) Crown on the Ground.
Youtube pulled the only high quality live clip, but this one at least lets you extrapolate the energy level and volume involved.

It takes a hell of a song to push an already epic show to another level, but from the air-raid siren guitar intro through the fake-out ending the whole audience was fused into a single spasming organism, something primitive and mindlessly evolving like the paramecium from our room.

We howled for an encore, but as the nice lady pointed out when she emerged from backstage to face the ravenous crowd, "have you listened to our album? it's only 34 minutes long- we haven't got any more songs!"

A few albums down the line Crown can take its rightful place as their stadium-annihilating encore, for now it makes a final number nonpareil.
If my point has somehow proven elusive, allow me to make it explicit:
If these cats play anywhere nearby, you owe it to God to go see them and be rocked off your foundations.

Eleventh anniversary, what?!

It's that time again, and we're doing it up in style.

Off to Santa Barbara this evening for a two day respite at the pastorally named beachfront Hotel Oceana. I dropped a few extra sheckles on an ocean view, so of course now it's pouring rain. But all will be forgiven if we get a lightning storm. Our culinary schedule is open, other than a required stop at La Superica. Monday night we'll be at Soho raging with the hipsters to the sonic assault of Sleigh Bells.

True confession...the part I'm most looking forward to is sleeping in tomorrow morning, momentarily free from the tyranny of the Little Man's morning ritual of pounding on my ribs while yelling DADDY WAKE UP in one ear. Have fun with that one, Dayduh!

This will be our longest break from him in two years..we'll see who cracks first, him or the Wife.

Blurb Time

Actually more of a title/blurb combo;

No Tears for Hilda by Andrew Garve

She was born to be killed!

Fussdate

This morning he patted his rear and said "big poo-poo!" and then didn't shriek and claw like a jungle cat while I changed him.

Breakfast with Devra was punctuated by the request "Devra please more juice!"

His selection for post-breakfast show was "Hippo Toys", which is fuss speak for Backyardigans.

He's on the pig's back, charging across a velvet field.

Worst/Greatest Cover Blurb of All Time

or, The Perils And Terrors of Self Publishing.

from Super Constitution by Charles Kim, transcribed verbatim:

THE ONLY WAY TO SOLVE TODAY'S ECONOMIC PROBLEMS exists in the faster and more globalization. Accordingly, this science fiction presents the following visionary story in an epic drama as a hypothetical question.

Wow!

true customer tales

phone rings, I answer.
It's a nebbishy sounding fellow speaking in a high, whispery voice.


guy: You have bees swarming over your roof.

me: *pause* Huh...I hadn't noticed.

guy: I called the fire department this weekend. They said there hadn't been any complaints.

me: Well, I haven't noticed any bees.

guy: *long silence* Oh.

me: Is there a book question I can help you with?

guy: Uh....no?

me: Okay, goodbye then.

reading the omens.

At work: 104 degrees.

Home on the coast: 84 degrees.

So yeah, I'm taking off early today. =P

True Customer Tales

sketchy dude comes in with a box of books. I sort out the good ones and then we proceed thusly:

me: Did you want cash or trade?
him: Cash.
me: Okay, it looks like $20 in cash.
him: Mmmmmmmmmmm *ogles stack of books pretending to think*
him: Mmmmmmmm.
him: mmmmmm.
him: Uh how about $25?
me: No, twenty is about the limit for this group.
him: $24?
me: No.
him: $23?
me: I don't do the haggling thing, I offer as much as I think the books are worth from the get go.
him: $22.50?
me: No.
him: I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee without breaking the twenty!
me: Do you want the $20 or not?
him: Okay.

evolution

It used to be, when I'd get asked why I bought or rejected this or that book I'd make a genuine effort to explain my thinking. But hardly anyone is actually interested in what makes a book 'good' in a retail context, or rather they're not interested in the intricacies that genuinely determine saleability. They just want to know what you'll buy from the. I've actually had folks ask me for a list of what we'll buy. Unfortunately the business doesn't run along such a simple pathway.

After who knows how many years of buying books I just noticed I've developed a stock answer to this line of questioning-

"I think we can sell it," or "I don't think we can sell it."

Which has the advantage of being a closed loop.

Why is it good? Because I think it's salable.
Why don't I want it? Because I don't think it's salable.

how not to sell a book

center this quip inside a clip-art heart on the front cover:

your you
warms
my me

I mean, isn't there some law against that?

the transformative power of art

Why were the girls up at 7am on a Monday?
Coming off an all night drunk, of course.

Fuss heard them through the heater vent and made demands.

"Meek? Scary guy?" he commented, jabbing his index finger at the back stairs.

Scary Guy is a 6'x4' painting of Dayduh's that currently resides in Meek's hallway, a pale fetus with a distended head that exudes a sense of cannibalism floating over a blasted wasteland. It had hung previously over the marital bed of a failed relationship. Fuss' relationship with it is equally complicated but less resolved, as he fears the hallway but reacts with confusion and dismay when the painting is moved or hidden.

Bowing to the inevitable down we went, finding the ladies in the kitchen where Meek was composing a plate of the only thing I've ever seen her make, poached eggs on toast. Hers were a bit rubbery and crumbly in the middle, which didn't stop Dayduh from returning her portion to burner for potential carmelization.

"I hate them runny!"
"They're supposed to be runny."
"I DON'T CARE!"

They ate and I drank my coffee in the living room to vinyl accompaniment by George Harrison. We had a few pleasant moments to ourselves while Fuss tried to puzzle his way past the anachronistic cat door in the kitchen. The previous evening's drunken revelation that Meek's inexplicable yet ongoing not-relationship with Youngdad(tm) was like cigarettes was broached, then the comparison moved on to heroin. I too the metaphor and, as is my wont, ran with it, promoting the use of The Librarian as a kind of human methadone.

Fuss eventually lost interest in the immovable cat door and returned to jam with George on the out of tune piano. My coffee finished, work beckoned and I gathered up Fuss while Dayduh lay across Meek's lap on the couch and writhed, it had something to do with imposing the smell of a cat piss chair she'd sat in at their friend's house.

"STOP it, don't make me wash these pants!"
"If you come up and mind Fuss while I shower you can watch Hoarders on the couch."
"DONE. Although I might pass out."

And that was our morning.

best guacamole ever

A visual guide.


Step 1:




Step 2:



Step 3:



It's super simple. The keys are GREAT avocados and a molcajete- I'm not sure why grinding everything up tastes so much better than mashing it in a bowl, but it's a gift horse I prefer not to look in the mouth.

I start with a technique gleaned from a pesto recipe in Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone- transform one clove of garlic and about 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt into paste in the molcajete before adding the avocados. Garlic flavor minus the peril of biting into a chunk. It's surprising that a single clove wields such influence, but facts are facts.

After blending add the juice of 1/2 a lime (adds tang and prevents browning), taste and adjust seasoning if needed and dig in.

visual irony

Took the little man to the grocery store last night, which can be a chore as he's becoming less satisfied with driving the grocery cart racing car and wants to scramble out and scale the walls of the surrounding commercial canyonland.

While wrestling the groceries and reluctant child back to the car I spotted a Hoarder SUV parked next to us. It looks like someone had shoveled landfill through the back hatch until it was 3/4ths full then excavated a foxhole under the steering wheel.

As we passed it I read the badge on the back- it was a Ford Escape.

true customer tales

young nerd couple at the counter buying books, he has a copy of some Star Wars Cyclopeia.

guy: should I get a bag? Or just let everyone know what I am?

gal, exasperated: well, whatever- there's nerds and then there's dorks, you know?

fuss vision

In the Utopian vision of family life promulgated by most parenting guides television exists mainly as a negative, the thing you righteously shun in favor of reading out loud, gamboling across grassy fields pursuing fluttering garlands of butterflies and then settling down in the living room to assemble a wooden puzzle designed by a team of German child development PhD's. And before you have a child it all sounds wonderful, necessary and possible. "Our baby won't grow up staring at the teevee like we did!"

But as with most well meaning advice related to proper modes of childrearing, I'll paraphrase Von Clauswitz-

"No campaign plan survives first contact with the Fuss."

There are times, more frequent than I'd like, when it becomes imperative that something distract his ire/fascination/affection/mania. If one of the OldDaughters happens to be around, fantastic- I hand him off like a football and get back to making dinner, or cleaning the living room, or whatever action he was rendering impossible with the implacable tsunami of his two year old-ness.

But if they aren't....


I salve my inflamed parenting pride with the watery balm of streamed content. "He's not actually watching teevee," I reason, "he's watching SHOWS." And while it's true our trusty Roku protects him from the vile sewage of modern broadcast advertising, the genius of corporate profiteers is revealed by the brilliance of turning characters into products.

"SQUAREPANTS!" he'll suddenly shout when we're at the grocery store. I look around and there it is, Spongebob toothpaste, or juice boxes, or washclothes, or whatever.

But to some extent all of that is what it is- we live in a corporate capitalist paradise and relentless marketing and huckesterism is one of the things we have to figure out how to accommodate. Those little low coolers at Starbucks and everywhere that proffer treats at toddler eye level with no annoying doors to block their grasping hands, the stickers on the floor of the supermarket that act like toddler magnets, etc etc. To the bulk of American society your child is just a consumer with zero self control, which predictably makes their eyes light up like a slot machine paying off. I'm sure someone out there is working on Baby MasterCard for the 5 and under set, parents being the only impediment to fully leveraging this untapped demographic resource.

Anyway.

Fuss has his favorites.
He loves Kipper, who used to be "doggo" but now goes by his proper name. He's also been enjoying Futurama, which he calls "rocketship". But his current video crush is a specific episode of Shaun the Sheep (aka "Sheepy!") where the pigs play spooky pranks on the sheep. It's got everything you need to wind Fuss up into a paroxysm of joy- a ghost, a flaming pumpkin and a scarecrow. I really need to film him watching it, it's by far the most exciting thing he's ever seen. He's prone to cheering "HAPPY WEEN!" whenever confronted by the traditional iconography and I need to get it documented before he figures out the right pronunciation.

He's already abandoned our favorite Fuss-ism, EEEEEE-EYE! for the more accurate but less adorable there is is! Children travel fast, much faster than our perceptions of them.

overheard

guy handing change to a homeless dude sitting on the sidewalk:

Here you go brutha....love your life!

???

Oh That Crazy Orwell

quote from NPR news blip:

the US combat mission in Iraq may be over, but fighting continues!

Our Digital Future

I keep starting posts about our trip to England and they keep going nowhere, so I think I'll prime the pump with the kind of lightweight, off the cuff observations y'all have come to expect from the Baxblog.


A while back Bobo linked a trailer, the new flick from the guy behind The Host. We're on a bit of a Korean cinema kick at the homestead so it went on the watch list.

The other day I'm browsing Roku...and there it is! Streaming, on Netflix, for free (or rather $8.99 a month, which given our rate of consumption qualifies for that old Nuclear Power canard "too cheap to meter")!

I add it to the queue, chortling at my good fortune.

This morning as I'm opening up I notice the record shop has a copy of the DVD fronted in their window for $24.99.

Free, or $24.99...the conundrum of our digital age.

downtown crazies update

Dirty Bunny Ear Guy just wandered in with his hood a bit askew, and I notice he's sporting greasy dreadlocks to compliment all his other trademarks of filth.

He doesn't smell appreciably worse than usual, so there's that...

Fuss Weighs In

We're off to England at the end of the week to chillax with our pal Creelea and her beau Tony at an ancient country estate. I am mildly concerned with promotional comments urging tenants to beware low door-jambs and ceiling beams due to the diminutive nature of Tudor-era Englishfolk, but whateves- hopefully it won't be raining and I can hang out in the garden.

The Wife put Fuss to the question last night, and this is how it went.

Wife: Do you want to go to England?

Fuss: NO.

Wife: Do you want to visit Creelea?

Fuss: NO.

Wife: *stares for a while*

Fuss: .....Tony? (big smile)

Wife: laughs


He's a funny boy.

wonders of retail

There are five young ladies browsing stacks, all of whom speak English with a lovely lilting Irish accent and who converse with each other in a bizarre language I don't recognize, although it sounds faintly Eastern Bloc- Hungarian?

At the same time there was a large English family in the art section, and there are few things on earth more adorable than small English children chattering away.

battle of the bands

Forgiveness Rock Record > The Suburbs.


Folk have been comparing Arcade Fire to the Boss, Bruce Springsteen, which doesn't make sense on a personal level (I like them, I don't like him) but after giving Suburbs a few listens I can see a sort of philosophical resemblance in their shared earnestness and relatively straightforward composition.
Which is slightly disappointing given the grander ambitions that fueled Funeral and which initially drew me to their music.

But with three albums in the books Funeral is clearly the odd man out.

As for Broken Social Scene (who also followed up a transcendent first album with a lackluster second effort), Forgiveness Rock Record is a reiteration of the glory of their first disc rather than an improvement on the flaws of the second.

Suburbs is a fine record with several really excellent songs- Forgiveness is an excellent record with several magical songs.

true customer tales

Little boy a bit older than Fuss, calling things out as dad carries him around the store:

cyclebike!

Errplane!

Boat!

Books fall down!

Ducky!

this week's cutest thing ever

This morning Fuss hurled his peanut butter toast face-down on the floor.
That wasn't cute.
But he was loving some raisins and kept asking for more.
Each time I proffered another palm-full he would delicately scoop them up, smile at me and say

"Thanks"

in his high, tiny elf voice.

Night of the Banshee

So, we've been fairly sanguine about the prospects of the terrible twos/terrific twos/challenging twos, call them what you will. As maniacal as Fuss has been since he entered the world it was hard to credit loose talk of escalation.

Didn't he already pitch himself to the ground howling and bashing his head at the mere utterance of the word 'no'? Wasn't every single action throughout the day already a pitched battle, from the first diaper change of the morning to getting in the bath at night?

Well, then along comes a night like last night, which had me seriously considering the construction of a bed-surrounding BABYCAGE(tm)with some kind of retractable Cone of Silence ala Get Smart.

We seem to get one of these every month or so, here's hoping it wasn't the start of a new trend.

in the spirit of positivity

A book the Wife absolutely loved, although the ending wasn't as good as she wanted it to be-

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher.

I make a habit of grabbing anything that comes through with one of those 'Shortlisted for the Booker Prize' promo blurbs for her. Mostly it pays off.

Oh Julia Roberts...

in honor of the impending opening of the movie adaptation of the bestselling memoir, allow me to reiterate the Wife's one-line review of the half a chapter of the book she managed to ingest before hurling the offending volume bodily across the room:

"They should have called it Shit, Pray, Shit."

magical thinking

A gal wandered in yesterday collecting signatures for some kind of OMG GOVERNMENT IS EATING MY FORTUNE measure on the local ballot. The details were kind of a blur, something about limiting raising fees to the rate of inflation and requiring a vote for this or that...basically a small scale version of the same kind of BS that's paralyzed the whole state, and to a lesser extent the entire country.

I heard her out then issued my standard response, usually triggered by complaints about metered parking downtown- "a functioning society needs funding- raising taxes is political suicide, so of course they're going to get the money some other way."

She gaped at me long enough to sneak in my KO punch, delivered with a big grin- "What they need to do is repeal prop 13, that's the reason cities have to grub around for funds in the first place."

She backed slowly out of the store, staring at me like I'd turned into Heath Ledger in full Joker regalia.

new Arcade Fire

Early returns-
Not as transcendent as Funeral, superior to Neon Bible across the board.

It also seems like the kind of album that will grow on me.

Two thumbs up.

social networking

A thought for self-hating fatties on Facebook and other social networking sites-

Instead of contriving some tortured camera angle for your portrait (which does nothing but highlight the fact that you're fat and desperately self conscious about it), just work over a regular pic with Photoshop.

Voila, you're 40lbs lighter and none of your internet friends is any the wiser!

Headline of the Week

Radioactive Boars On The Loose In Germany

0.0

Puke Free by 2011

First night in a while with no vomit fire drills, hoooray!

He chowed down on toast & cantaloupe this morning and my back seized up hefting him into his high chair. Fortunately I'd already made coffee. I put on Kipper then lay down on a purple tennis ball to try and un-knot things. The distraction failed and I was subjected to Enhanced Toddler Interrogation Methods, a tennis ball lodged in my back while Fuss sat on my chest hitting me in the face with his new whirligig.

We're off to England shortly. I'm hoping for a puke-free flight and a minimum of baby jet lag.

Man plans, fate laughs....

true customer tales

gal on the street to her friend upon spying our window display:

Heeeey! This is the one we hadn't been to, but we thought we looked!

Sounds like something I'd say at 4am after Fuss puked in my hair.

true customer tales

Gal narrating her experience on a ride at the fair:

It was so scary! I couldn't figure out why nobody was screaming- besides me. But it was because they were used to it, and I was old. I hadn't been on anything like that since the Matterhorn back in '77!

Rough Night II: Electric Boogaloo

Is there anything in the world more awful than a puking child?

I say no.

It's like when he was tiny and woke up every hour shrieking, only with an added bonus chance for vomit. I hoisted him up at the wrong time during a coughing fit and got hosed down with a corrosive gruel of breast milk and stomach acid studded with chunks of gnawed grape and decomposing quesadilla.

I've made it this far having absorbed nothing worse than a single stream of urine during an early diaper change at the hospital, so I can't complain too loudly about the physical manifestations.

There's a vast library of stock expressions I never had to bust out before the Fuss arrived. For instance, "heart rending".
That's something that happens to you at 3:30am when your little boy is sitting in your lap crying in between spasms of retching and he wails "No, wait! Wait!" as he feels the next wave building.

What can you even do with that?

The Wife receives some immediate relief when he calls out for 'nigh-nights' afterward, and later she'll write a poem.
My options are more prosaic, patting him on the back in the moment and in the morning carrying him around on my hip and making a one-handed breakfast instead of setting him down to grasp at my pajamas and complain while I scramble the eggs & butter the toast. And I can sit on the couch with him and provide an audience for his running commentary on season two of 'Blue Doggo' instead of tending my internet garden.

"OOoooh, wassat?"
"Notebook!"
"Oooh, NOTEBOOK."

It seems a suitably practical, fatherly response, if lacking in immediate surcease of misery.

Title of the...what, decade? Century?

Oh my!

0.0

Existentialist Fight!

Camus


vs.

Sartre



I say Camus by brutal early KO.

Flashback Weekend

Fuss is two, the anniversary marked by a fun party Saturday afternoon.
After last year's anarchic bacchanal we took a more low key approach, trimming the guest list and turning catering over to our culinary genius pal Marcus, who grew up in a family restaurant in Switzerland with a dress code featuring Lederhosen and Swiss Guard uniforms. Asparagus frittata, salmon and goat cheese bruscetta plus a lovely pile of olive oil drenched crostini flanked by bowls of savory spredable delights. I kept my hand in by grilling a mountain of hot dogs for the toddler army.

My camera's battery went dead so the only documentation is video. The inverse of last year, when the video camera's battery went dead and I barely had enough juice to get the cake presentation.

Fuss was in good spirits, still not really clued in to the concept of premeditated celebration but happy to see all his favorite people in one place.

He's been sick with a cough for a week or so and last night provided a window on how far we've come from the bad old days. The human brain being how it is, we've both mostly already forgotten what it was like for the first year and change when it it took an act of God to make him sleep more than an hour at a stretch.

The cough gets worse at night, and he occasionally hacks so hard he pukes. So last night was punctuated by several coughing, howling, vomiting interludes of the sort where you end up fully awake with the light on, a distraught little man thrashing and screeching on your shoulder, wondering what the fuck you're supposed to do now.

The Wife sought refuge on the couch, but Fuss is wise to the trick and fetched her back a little before 5. I gave up on sleep and sat reading with him for a while while she dozed, before another coughing/puking bout woke her up and necessitated a hazmat cleansing of the area.

After, I parked him on the couch where he requested "baby panda!", an episode of Curious George set in a zoo and his current favorite. I put on the kettle for coffee and as I was filling up the dishwasher remembered that in the not so distant past this awful night was the rule rather than the exception. Well, except for the vomit.

And if some representative of the Sandman Guild had offered it to me in trade for any average night during Fuss' first six months, I'd have snatched the offer from their gloved hand before they came to their senses then howled over my coup in semi-hysterical triumph.

update on the crazy

So, the imputes for crazy mother in law's work call turned out to be the blessed demise of their scraggly, fleabitten one-eyed Irish Setter, a beast they'd worn around their necks for several years like the Ancient Mariner's albatross. Purchased in a fit of misguided nostalgia as a replacement for a family pet of the distant past, it failed dismally in its role as talisman uniting the shattered clan.

First, the Wife's virulent allergies to anything with fur guaranteed we would never again set foot in their house. Second, the beast itself was unwelcome anywhere outside their domain, as it proudly bore the spastic DNA of its species and was completely untrained, discounting violent fits pitched by the rage-o-holic father in law.

It never presented a tremendously appealing visage, but took a sharp turn for the worse after a bout of Valley Fever a few years back. It survived in zombie form, withered and with one eye transformed into a milky orb. It hobbled along unstoppably until unceremoniously keeling over at the foot of the stairs last week, becoming a prop for one last spasm of mawkish parental manipulation.

Overall, not a bad symbol of the family dynamic.

bloggy link

Adding my internet boxing pal Inty to the blogroll.

All of you slackers who measure update frequency in geologic terms take heed, you can be replaced!

When Crazies Collide

Dirty Bunny Ear Guy was browsing the .25 cent rack when the weird born-again dude I kicked out for trying to shoplift a few months back rolled up on him.

Evangelical Shoplifter: Hey I see you on my bus all the time!

Dirty Bunny Ear Guy: Oh yah?

Evangelical Shoplifter: Do you listen to country music?

Dirty Bunny Ear Guy: All kinds, all kinds.

(customer comes up with a book and I miss some crosstalk)

Dirty Bunny Ear Guy: Hey, why are you asking all these questions?

Evangelical Shoplifter: Uh...

Dirty Bunny Ear Guy: Are you doing police work?

Evangelical Shoplifter: No, not right now I'm not.

Dirty Bunny Ear Guy, leaving cart and entering store: Good, cause I hate cops!

today's book find

While sorting through a huge buy of mostly junky evangelical religious tracts & law books from the 70's I chanced across an amusing title: Larson's Book of Cults.

Listed under MAJOR CULTS with the subheading Pseudo-Christian Cults are Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science.
Under Occult/Mystical Cults we find astology, yoga, UFOs, Scientology, martial arts(!) and Theosophy.

In the synoses of 'minor cults' we find none other than THE FARM, home to Ina May Gaskin as well as young Ivan in his pre-futurist days. And also the Unitarians.

A gem of insight from the cover blurb:

Most important, author Bob Larson details precisely how each cult deviates from CHRISTIAN TRUTH.

When cult shopping it's important to choose the right one!

true customer tales

guy and gal pause at the sale cart.

guy, reading from promo blurb: "Ten young ex-addicts tell their tales of addiction to coke, heroin and other drugs."

gal: oh that's cool. *rummages through cart* Man, I wish they had some children's books!

buy of the day

goes to the gal who took home a volume of lesbian cowboy erotica to go with her tome of Biblical advice.

Ride 'em, Cowgal!

oh hey, FYI crazy mother in law

Don't call me at work with "important messages" for the Wife, mmk?
There's this thing called an answering machine, which we got pretty much just to spam-trap your bipolar ranting, so feel free to use it!

The only genuinely important message you could deliver is the one you never will, that you've started taking your meds and stopped your inexorable march down the rutted path that leads to pushing a shopping cart around town and yelling obscenities at the clouds.

Yeah, look, it's too bad nobody wants to talk to you and now you've apparently worn out even God's welcome at your church. I feel bad for you, honestly. I remember when you were only insane some of the time and I could see flashes of the person you could have been if your parents hadn't been hopeless alcoholics and if you hadn't married an abusive lunatic, or if you'd left him and taken your kids with you when the opportunity presented itself.

But life being how it is, we've all got to play the hands we're dealt. Like for example your kids.
They'd like a sane, loving mother, but they've got you. So you're not allowed to martyr yourself on their acts of self preservation.

If you want to have relationships deeper than harassing various clerks around town and accosting strangers on the sidewalk who aren't alert enough to avoid your dead-eyed stare or rude enough to cut you off mid-rant, you need to start taking meds. Fuck new diets, new churches, new 'alternative therapies'. Your brain doesn't work right, and until you address that fact in a constructive way I'm not putting up with another ounce of your bullshit.

games without frontiers

A while back Aunt Hen gave us this big tub full of plastic magnetic letters and numbers. We stuck a bunch on the fridge for Fuss to mess around with, but that was just siphoning off a few cups from the ocean. The bulk of them stayed in the tub behind the couch until Fuss spilled them all over the floor, where they persisted for several days.

Last night I got the bright idea to make a game of the cleanup, enlisting Fuss at minimum wage and forbidding the use of breathing masks in case curious reporters managed to breach the police cordon and snap incriminating pics.

In my mind, it would go like this: I'd demonstrate the process of putting letters and numbers back into the tub, he would follow suit, I would make with the effusive praise, then we'd lay out a picnic on the newly cleansed carpet and sing the old songs.

The reality was somewhat different.

I would dump a few handfuls into the tub, he'd grab this or that one back out with a cheerful "OOoooh, whasssat??", I'd say "it's a purple O" or "it's a red I" or whatever, he'd provide some salient counterpoint commentary; "OOoooh....BIG!" or "YELLow!", and then place it carefully back on the floor.


His patience for these things is for all practical purposes infinite. He'll periodically tire of an obsession, but the process is geologic, like watching South America drift away from Africa. Happily for Fuss my tolerance for repetition, while falling short of his, is mightier than The Wife's, who's eyes reliably begin rolling to the accompaniment of resigned sighs around the third iteration of his latest passion.

I spent most of an hour engaged in the Sisyphean task of refiling the bin and identifying the objects of his curiosity, until it was time to read books and go to sleep.

Freakday

Many competitors today, here are the two best offerings.

Sketchy quivering dude in black fatigues and a red beret:
"Uh hey, what day is it?"
"Excuse me?"
"What day is it? Is it sunday?
"Yeah, it's sunday."
"Oh, it's sunday...uh, sorry about that!"
"Mmmm."


Dumpy gal with an elaborate circa 1964 hairdo, big black glasses, yellow plaid sun dress and an empty birdcage in one hand:
"I HAVE A BOOK IN HERE," proffering her handbag.
"That's fine."
"I DIDN'T BUY IT HERE, IS THAT OKAY?"
"Yep, no problem."
"DO YOU NEED TO LOOK AT IT?"
"Nope."
"OKAY, THANK YOU."


The Wife dislikes the appellation 'freaks', but I'm a believer in accuracy & succinctness.

things they don't tell you

If you have a kid, and that kid gets sick...YOU'RE getting sick.

Barring some kind of extreme FEMA style emergency response like sending the kid to live in the Superdome for a week, or trading in your bathrobe and slippers for a hazmat suit and rebreather, there is no escape.

Fuss's favorite tactic is looking sweet and adorable and then sneezing in my mouth when I pick him up to exclaim over his beauty.

In some book I read when I was a kid when one child got stick the folks would make all their kids sleep together so everyone else would get sick and they could get it out of the way.

Suddenly I understand the logic...

Happy 4th Everybody

My abiding memory of the holiday is from a block party at mom's folks when I was five or so, long before 'safe and sane' waxed ascendant. Wandering around barefoot (nice parenting!) I stepped on an old school 'buyer beware' sparkler, the kind that were basically magnesium glued to a hunk of wire. They looked awesome, but after they burned out the wire stayed red hot for quite a while.
Ouch.


Today I'm at work in my patriotic shirt, Fuss & the crew are checking out the annual Cayucos parade and we're hitting a BBQ later for which the wife made a Neopolitan bundt cake.

In the words of my best friend from junior high, "happy birthday you adorable, messed up, ignorant country!"


i saw you in a perfect place
it's gonna happen soon but not today
so go to sleep and make the change
i'll meet you here tomorrow
independence day
independence day
independence day

Customaria

As many recurring themes as working retail weaves into the symphony of your day, there will always be unique cadences.


Today I sold a big pile of stuff to an older gentleman, probably twenty books total.
As I rang up each book and set it on the counter, he picked it up, riffled the pages and sniffed deeply.

What was he hoping (or fearing) to scent?
Why not smell them before bringing them up to the counter?


The oddest part was he's a guy who's been coming in for years without any previous outbreaks of strange behavior.


Apropos the gal from last week who took all the books back, today they reappeared, ferried to the counter by a roustabout with paint dappled hands who said "a lady" asked him to bring them in. A few new titles, but mostly the same buy.

People are funny.

strange days

this older gal in a business suit comes in with three big boxes of stuff.
I sort through it, find a decent pile we can use and make an offer.

She squeals "I think I brought in the wrong books!" and is now frantically scrabbling through the pile muttering to herself.

As of this writing she's pulled back about 9/10ths of my 'buy' pile.


Earlier a wild eyed gal with a frizzy perm sold us some good architecture and soil science books, narrating my sorting process with a running monologue of how much each book was worth online, including the worthless ones. I'm getting more background than I wanted on her disastrous foray into homebuilding. She's aghast at the relative worthlessness of most of her library on the internet.

"There's nothing wrong with these books! The information is the same, why won't people buy them!"

A question I often ask myself.


Update:
Wrong Book Lady eventually finished her rampage and was shocked to discover that she had voided my offer by pulling back most of the saleable books. In the process of re-sorting the buy I discovered that she'd sifted many books from my reject pile into the buy pile.

Do they think I'm not paying attention, or that I'm brain damaged, or what?

Adding to the day's general air of Fellini-esque mania there's a crew of Germans on the sidewalk outside having a combination photo shoot/argument. There's no language like German for arguing!

glossary

Fuss has been on a language rampage lately, I thought I'd get some down before I forget.

Whachoo! = watch out, be careful
keputch = ketchup
Ooooh-pah! = pick me up! (sometimes accompanied by a set of deep knee bends)
Doggo! = Kipper, a British kids show starring a dog
Hip-pooh = The Backyardigans
nigh-nites = nursing
Buen-eee = his blankie
Goo = baby asprin
muck = milk
joo-see = juice


names:

mama = mama
mama dada = me
meek = Meghan
dayduh = devra
Bah Bah = Daphne
Aiek = Alec
Fran = Frances


Pretty much anything he doesn't a word for becomes "THAT! THAT!" accompanied by frantic pointing.

He also has a darling habit of throwing T's into the mix.
Snowman, for example, becomes Towmant.

true customer tales

guy and son strolling past the counter.


son: gee, it smells like books in here.

guy: that's because it's a bookstore.

son: .....oh....yah that would explain it.

Pantry Pasta

Threw this together last night out of spare parts scavenged from the fridge and pantry and it turned out really good.


1 package cheese tortellini from TJs
1/4 cup olive oil
2 packs mushrooms, quartered (I only had one, 2 would've been better) I used the brown ones, any type would work.
1/2 jar kalamata olives, halved
6 cloves garlic, 4 minced or pressed.
Goat Cheese
salt & pepper to taste

Put on water for Tortellini.
Sauté mushrooms and two whole garlic cloves in 1tbs olive oil over medium heat, until the mushrooms release their juice. Add the olives toward the end. Discard garlic cloves. In another pan gently fry the minced garlic in the remaining oil until golden brown.

Combine everything in the pasta pot and mix well, season to taste.
Serve in bowls with goat cheese crumbled on top and maybe a drizzle of the good olive oil if you're feeling sassy.

Summer's Cauldron

They finished the back yard yesterday, this morning it was 80 degrees at nine am.
Coincidence? I think not.

Fuss was in fine form. He started the day off right, rolling a watermelon into the living room chanting "Bite! Bite! Bite!" and ended it with a shrieking, convulsive bedtime fit that lasted off and on until midnight.

If only the people who ask "why do you call him Fuss, he's always so well behaved!" could witness the glory. We should try and capture it on video for posterity.

He was much more sanguine about his beloved pots being filled up with soil and plants than I expected. Maybe he was just distracted by his exciting new hobby, digging holes in the bark groundcover? Time will tell.

The yard turned out almost comically well. I'll post pix later.
Facebook has been my go-to site for photos lately, more for the cost (free) than the audience (much larger than this blog). But the quality sux and FB's recent privacy antics have fouled my reservoir of good will so I may be migrating back to Flickr. Stay tuned.

I think everyone is going to the pool while I swelter at work, where even the downtown lunatic turnout has been suppressed by the heat. I'm getting by dreaming of a welcoming wall of coastal fog this evening.
We'll see if global warming cooperates.

today's venal complaint

On the day when too many people take the opportunity to fetishize the military rather than reflect soberly on the idiocy of sending troops off to die in pointless, doomed conflicts I'm here to whine about the absolutely trivial and meaningless.

As this has been the week of enumerating my least favorite customer interactions, here's a few more for the pile.

The person who comes in with NO IDEA what they want, who has no favorite authors or subjects, who can't remember what they read last, a veritable literary blank slate that you are supposed to psychically intuit desire from.

These types actually used to bother me much more before I started following the Burl's advice from her own long ago days running the Earthling- "I would just grab the nearest book from the shelf of best sellers and hand it to them".

Which makes perfect sense, they've put no energy into the interaction so why should you?

Today's other winner was the guy looking for Heinlein's Starship Troopers, who I led to the section inspiring the comment "Oh, I already looked here, where else would it be?"

Uh, nowhere, because this is where it belongs?

Maybe some bookstores have a big, secret room full of salable books they're hiding away from customers, but frankly I've never seen one.

variation on a theme

Another constant at the store are callers who want you to tell them how much you'll pay for their books. As the intricacies of the trade require a physical inspection, this isn't something we do. It's a simple concept and most people get the point, but as with folk who're sure the book doesn't belong in the section you point out some people always know better.


caller: Hi, I have these books, and I was wondering what you guys pay?

me: we're happy to look at books any day before 4, bring them in and we'll see what we can work out.

caller: Well, I just need to know how much you pay.

me: I need to see the books, we don't do phone estimates.

caller: Well, I've got the authors and everything.

me: I still need to see the books.

caller: Well, I live in Paso and that's a long drive.

me: That's unfortunate, but we don't give estimates over the phone.

caller: But they're in great shape and everything!

me: We still need to see the books so we can reach our own conclusions.

caller, snippily: well okay then, I'll just keep them!

me: okay, have a nice day.


The actual conversation went on quite a bit longer, but that's the gist of it. I get a similar call probably once a week, and they always play out in more or less the same way.

morning conversation

the wife: where are my napkins?

me: I put 'em on the table by the plates.

the wife, rummaging around fruitlessly: they're not here.

me: oh, look under the toaster, I might have put the toaster on them.

the wife: here they are...why is the toaster on the table?

me: it was in my way. *pause* I didn't want the crock pot by the edge of the counter because then the little man might pull it over on himself, blah blah blah blah blah blah.

the wife: blah, blah blah.

me: *grunts*

the wife: oh great, now I can't find my TEA.

me, looking around: Here it is, I found it.

the wife: too late, now I have to poop.

me: Well, it's on the table.

the wife: Okay!

the little man, running into the kitchen: PENCIL!

true customer tales

It's been a while!

There's a certain type of customer who's sure they know better than you where to find the book they're after. I'm not sure why they bother asking, but they do. This gal was looking for a botany book, but it could have been anything- the conversation is archetypal.

her: I'm looking for this botany book?

me: We'd file it back here in Natural History against the back wall *leads the way*

her concerned: Uh oh, this looks like GARDENING.

me: yes, any botany or horticulture books we get are filed in gardening.

her: Well, what if it was more about how plants affected PEOPLE?

me: We'd file it back here in gardening.

her: well, but what if it was more HISTORY, like how plants affected history?

me: Anything related to botany would end up here in gardening.

her: Really? But what if...

me: Anything about plants would end up here. This is where we file books on or about plants.

her: But...



*sigh*

example

Poking around for a circular saw, found this one on Amazon.

Wow, 54% off! I save $140 bucks! Awesome!

Well, except that when you hit Google you discover that *everyone* is selling it for the "sale" price, with some minor variations either way (Home Depot is asking $125, for example).

But the 'list price' is a complete fiction.

something I've noticed

while shopping online...well, and most places really.

The expanding habit of retailers making up some ridiculous number purely so they can "slash" it and promote the "sale" price, which is just what the thing costs and not any sort of sale at all.

Amazon's housewares section is particularly egregious, regularly pretending that the list price of an item is half again the actual amount so they can brag about their markdown.

Brick and mortar stores do the same thing though- before they went bankrupt Mervyn's entire store was perpetually marked down from ludicrous made up numbers they got by someone mashing their face on the keypad.

Yeah, sure, everyone loves a sale. And yeah, sure, you can mislead people into thinking they're getting a "deal" by pretending the list price is a lot higher than it actually is. But big picture, it undermines the trust of the buying public. Which isn't a bad thing- skepticism & capitalism should go hand in hand. I just don't get why a business would think misleading their customers as a matter of course would be a good idea.

bringing the funny

New Music: Sleigh Bells

This is the definition of 'epic'.

sign o' the times

Just flipped past the TV Guide channel.

They declared their creed at the start of whatever advertainment skit was about to run in the little window above the channel crawl-

EAT. SLEEP. WATCH.

The very next graphic,

sponsored by Weight Watchers.



Gotta love capitalist symbiosis.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

and a big FU to Arizona!

on sublimity

Several years ago we embarked on a tour of the Continent for our (long delayed) honeymoon. The wife being the wife, we shlepped through nearly every notable museum in Holland and Paris (save the Musée Rodin) and even took an art excursion in Düsseldorf.

After returning home the question arose- what was the most amazing thing we saw on our trip? We both named this painting by Leonardo Da Vinci:




It's about the size of a salad plate, painted on a plank of not particularly fine grained wood. Reproductions never do paintings justice but this one is particularly ill served, a 40 watt bulb playing at being the sun. 'Luminous' is one of the most gratuitously abused descriptors of the past decade, but wholly appropriate here. Her face hangs shining in space, untethered from this mortal coil by the profound insight of artistic genius.


Apropos of the above paragraphs, I give you The Fuss in repose.

depressing

It always sucks when people who clearly need money bring in shitty books I cannot in good conscience buy, then stand there staring at me in mute confusion when I turn them down.

It also sucks when some friends of a casual FB friend brag about how well behaved their children are after a lifetime of being spanked, and how upset they are by "ill behaved" children who are encouraged to act out because their parents won't hit them.

Does it not occur to them that children won't always be defenseless and dependent and are likely at some future point to hold you to account for your actions?

It's no wonder so many families are labyrinths of resentment and hatred.

Things You'd Rather Not See

High up on my list is pulling in to the park by the community center one morning to run the Little Man around the playground before his nap only to find my father in law chillaxing with all the destitute people swarming around the Food Bank truck.


He isn't destitute, and I'm tired of him leaving grocery bags full of the expired junk he scores on our porch.

Relying on the public's sense of shame may protect the Food Bank from lesser parasites, but my father in law is made of sterner stuff.

Stanley Kubrick Made Me Get A Paypal Account

I previously shunned them because one, it seems like another useless layer of internet nonsense to navigate (I have credit cards already, mmk) and two, I know people who've been scammed and received an indifferent shrug from Paypal.

But then this came along via my Facebook friendship with the Castro Theater, who periodically commission original silkscreen poster for their cinematic celebrations:



The artist only takes Paypal.

DAMN YOU, STANLEY KUBRICK!

retro video: Ry Cooder

Department of Redundancy Department

title:

Jim White's Story of Carlsbad Caverns

subtitle

...as told by Jim White

true customer tales

gal comes up with an Emily Dickinson book.

"Is there any way I can get this for less?"

I check the price, six bucks.

"It'll sell for that, so sorry."

"Well, here's my argument..." *rummages around in handbag, comes out with a Barnes & Noble remainder knock-off of the same title* "...I bought this one from Barnes & Noble for six dollars, but I'm taking it back because they took out the hyphens."

"I guess the question is whether you think hyphens are worth six bucks."


She did.

yearnin' learnin'

This morning Fuss figured out he could make mama-dada (that's me) drink from his glass.
He's been insistent about holding his own cup for a while now, but this was a new wrinkle.

The look on his face as he tipped the glass toward me for the first time was priceless, intense concentration followed by fascinated delight as I sipped the water.

Watching him puzzle out the world is one of the best things about parenthood.

descriptive fail

Nosing around Amazon for Tim Powers stuff I came across a very conflicted listing.

The condition they selected from the menu was Used- Like New, which basically means a new book that someone has read carefully. Sounds good to me, so I check their detailed description.

front dust jacket torn 2 inches
Dust Jacket Condition: very good

???

Note to seller- there's no such thing as a VG DJ with a 2" tear, mmmk?
Let alone a Like New book with such a mangled DJ.

upside of the global marketplace & devaluation of the printed word

Someone somewhere on the internet in some thread about fantasy novels mentioned that they liked Malcolm Pryce.

I nosed around Amazon and found a copy of Aberystwyth, Mon Amour for fifteen cents plus $3.99 standard shipping. So, about half the going rate for a standard American pocket book.

Here are the rates for Royal Mail Air service.

I simply don't understand why they're bothering to sell me this book.

true customer tales

A Big Lady just wandered in with some friends, spotted a big Las Vegas picture book on the display shelf, yelled

"OH SHIT!"

and nearly knocked one of her pals over diving at it.

unfortunate tattoos

I'm eying a gal in her mid 50s with a Bacardi bat trademark tattooed in the Tramp Stamp bullseye right over her bum.

Tattoos are forever* kids, choose yours wisely!




*barring expensive & painful laser removal of varying efficacy.

life with fuss

Saturday morning featured one of Fuss's increasingly uncommon 6am wakeup calls, which I resent in direct proportion to their frequency. When 6am was the norm I didn't mind. I rolled out of bed, put on the kettle & set him up with breakfast while semi-conscious. Once the coffee brewed I'd put on a show for the little man while I checked the orders, packed the books and cleaned up after last night's dinner.

In a world where he mostly rises at seven (or, joyous event, seven thirty), six becomes the anthill under the picnic table.

It seems like half his teeth are coming in at once, which puts him in a consistently dire mood. Not that I blame him and this too shall pass, etc etc. But it makes navigating the shoals of his changeable moods more challenging than usual.

I made a peanut butter & honey sandwich and was packing my bag en route to work this morning when Fuss spied it and started freaking out.
Reason was, as usual, a resounding failure.

"That's daddy's lunch".
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHG!!!"
"Do you want me to make one for you?"
"AAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRGHHHH!!"

As my frustration mounted the Wife, as is her wont, made a cogent suggestion.
"Just give him a bite."

I dug the sandwich out of its ziplock repository and proffered it.

The howling ceased as he leaned forward and took the world's daintiest mouse-bite, then smiled and made one of his ambrosial Happy Noises while patting both his thighs with delight.

I pocketed the sandwich with its serrated crescent moon reminder and slipped out the door.

outings

Aunt Helen wanted to watch the baby for a few hours yesterday, so we had a date.
In the post-Fuss era 'date' is defined as doing normal stuff you can't fully enjoy with a baby tagging along. One previous 'date' involved taking a nap together. Another time we sat in the cafe at Borders and read magazines.
Scintillating stuff!

We seized the opportunity to zip over to Morro Bay, where Wife got a massage from a reflexologist while I sniffed through the nearby thrift stores and junk shops for books. Found a real winner, increasingly rare in a world where any kook with a cell phone can do my job. I picked up a few more nicely listable items from an antique mall after the massage, then it was off to the Hofbrau for a leisurely dinner.

Had a weird moment where I saw someone who looked familiar out of the corner of my eye. It was the guy behind the counter slicing the meat for the French Dips, who I recognized from decades ago when mom would take me there. The disbelieving Wife engaged him on our way out and lo, it was the son of the founders who'd been in the game for 40-odd years.

So I can't remember names to save my life, but I can spot a guy I don't really know who I haven't seen in 30 years out of the corner of my eye...my brain is a bizarre organ.

militia group or meth dealers?

Hard to tell!

true customer tales

lady on phone fishing for pricing information:

lady: So, would you be interested in a copy of My Life by Bill Clinton?

me: No.

lady: Why not?

me: It isn't that saleable and there are copies all over the place- it's not the kind of book we need to pay for.

lady: But if you WERE going to buy it, what would you pay?

me: I wouldn't. It's a book we could get from a thrift store for a quarter, so I wouldn't pay anything for it.

lady: But suppose it was a book you wanted to buy, that cost $35, then what would you pay for it?

me, laughing: Then it would be a different book, and I'd have to take a look at it. Cover price has nothing to do with what we pay for a title, we work off what we can sell it for.

lady: So, you'd pay half the cover price for it?

me, with more laughing: No. No we wouldn't. Have a nice day!

We will, we will.....ROKU.

So, we've been entirely free of broadcast teevee since moving to the El Oh after mom died. Being a malformed Creature of the Internet I barely noticed, but television formed one layer of the Wife's psychic armor growing up and going cold turkey was tough, even with the sweet, sweet methadone of Netflix.

We had a grand total of three channels at our old place, two more than in my pre-cable childhood, but living within walking distance of The Insomniac (where, during a short stint behind the counter, The Wife accumulated a stock of True Customer Tales that make my meager offerings sound tamer than the official minutes of a Junior League conference) meant we never lacked for visual stimulation.

When the internet finally ended Bob's run we signed up with The Great Oppressor, an ethically distasteful necessity- transitioning from the cinematic oasis of The Insomniac to a cultural abattoir like Blockbuster would've been like replacing the Musée d'Orsay with a Thomas Kincaide gallery.

Like most modern retailers, Netflix substitutes shelf space for discernment- who needs taste when you can just stock one of everything? Which works fine in this context since the 'movie as object' lacks emotional weight- tapes and DVDs are naked solutions to engineering problems, not objects d'art garlanded with cultural mythology.

Which brings me, via back roads and detours, to my point:

Roku is the best thing ever.

It's like teevee without the endless, screeching advertising and scheduling problems. It's like DVDs without the moronic accusatory FBI warnings (which amuse the pirates and annoy the honest), endless boring previews and irritating, badly designed menus. In short, it's a dream, a Utopian idyll in a digital oasis where invisible, many limbed underlings attending to your every casual whim almost before you're aware they exist.

So, you ask (cynical child of Capitalism that you are), where's the catch?

The catch is the magic box which inflates this gossamer pavilion of wonderment runs $80-130, requires a network for sustenance and lives on 'instant' content from Netflix, so you want the 'unlimited streaming' account (3 DVDs out, $16.99 a month).
I picked up a basic wireless router from Netgear and was amazed and relieved by how painless the install was.

Hooked up the router, plugged in the Roku, configured my Netflix account, started watching stuff. As an unexpected bonus, it also works with Pandora, so now we can pump our favorite stations through the main stereo instead of my crummy computer speakers.

It isn't perfect, which early adopters have to expect. I usually wait on these things until they've been out for years and other poor suckers have worked out all the kinks for me.

The selection is comparatively piebald- Netflix has catalog of 100,000-ish DVDs, but only 17,000 streaming titles.

"Only" is enough to keep me busy for the next 20 years, assuming zero growth...and since streaming is THE FUTURE, at some point the big studios will adjust to reality and stop pressuring them to restrict availability. And then...what larks, Pip, what larks!

My only other complaint is the somewhat clunky selection menu.
Right now I've got 85 items in my Netflix 'instant' queue and scrolling through them in a line is somewhat tedious. I'm sure its fine for folk who use it as a supplement to their regular teevee diet and have a couple of things loaded up at any given time.
For the rest of us, some sort of a thumbnail grid system would be fantastic.


Load times are minimal, certainly less than the rigmarole imposed by current DVDs (the aforementioned ads, moral admonishments not to pirate, longwinded menues). Picture quality is excellent, which surprised me given the paucity of my internet connection. We switch to DSL from cable when we moved and it pretty much sucks, but Roku doesn't seem to mind. And I can download stuff or play games or whatever while The Wife immerses herself season 1 of LA Ink with no performance hit, so bandwidth isn't a problem.


TL;DR, it's fantastic, I have nothing bad to say about it, everyone should get one tomorrow. The limited streaming options still deliver riches beyond the dreams of avarice and the inevitable death of broadcast television means those options will only expand with time.

question of the day

"do you have an organic eco-art 70's section?"


"uh......no."

wordy rappinghood

Fuss has busted out with his first two sentences (two words counts, right?)

Yesterday while he was roaming the craft store with mama he spotted a giant stuffed ape, pointed and exclaimed

"Big Ooooh-OOoooh!"

Which is Fuss lingo for monkey.

This morning, after I responded in the affirmative to his Godfather-style message (stomping into the bedroom, shouting "MO!" and then hurling the box for his new Curious George dvd at our heads), he sat on the couch chortling happily, pointing at the teevee and exclaiming

"Eeeeeaye Oooh-ooooh!"

Eeeeeeaye is Fuss lingo for there it is.

I fully expect to be awakened by declamations of the Bard's deathless prose any morning now...

The Answer to Life's Mysteries

Teething.

At least according to the nurse lady who visits Fuss every couple of weeks.
She ascribed his recent uptick in fussiness to a conga line of approaching teeth.

Which makes sense, because he's acting exactly like he did a while back when a bunch of teeth were coming in. You think we'd notice that, but parenting the little man often has more in common with trench warfare than traditional visions of childrearing. When navigating stacked catastrophes moment by moment, perspective is a luxury. The nurse swinging by every few weeks to give us the long view has been really helpful.

This morning's disaster crept up under cover of another shocking event- Fuss sleeping in until 8:30. I'm so programmed by his schedule I usually wake up a bit before he does for my early morning bathroom break. This morning I thought I was being really crafty by eschewing a return to the bed and lying down on the couch.

What I expected to be a ten minute nap ended up stretching for several hours- I eventually woke to the sounds of Fuss chortling and cooing while he played with his train table in the bedroom. The clock read a quarter to 9, which is completely unprecedented.

I sat up and, hearing movement, Fuss came a-running, his blankie in tow (he calls it "Boowen-eee", with an almost but not quite silent W). The next 20 minutes or so spooled out like one of those slow motion nightmares where a seemingly tranquil domestic scene unravels beginning with the discovery of one incongruous minor detail. This morning it was finding several damp brown spots on Boowen-ee.

"Is that....." I sniffed suspiciously and received a snoot-full of ordure.
"OH no!"
I sprang from the couch, scooping him up and hoisting him gingerly down the hall to the changing table, which he took about as well as you'd expect.

So another side effect of teething is, ah, less than solid bowel movements. In this case I was confronted with an epic blowout resulting from comprehensive & absolute diaper failure.

With Fuss yowling and lashing out like a cat espying the approach of a soapy washtub I wrestled him out of his now-camo patterened pyjamas, sheepishly useless diaper and waded in with handfuls of disposable wipes.

Triumph, while inevitable, was far from pleasant and called loudly for a shower.

Then it was off to work, down the stairs and out into the still air in my white shirt, unlocking the car while the birds sang counterpoint.

true customer tales

older gal, to her husband standing outside:

gal: What are you doing?

guy: *mumble mumble*

gal, exasperated: How can you be done, there's a whole BOOKSTORE here!

The Unquiet Night

A period of relative truce with the Fuss ended in a shrieking, red-faced heap around 3am this morning. The usual drill is he wakes up a few times, is placated and falls back to sleep fairly quickly. For some unknowable reason this particular wakeup escalated to the realm of Opera, starring Fuss as the Caruso of hysterics.

It was a vivid flashback to the Bad Old Days, when inconsolable wailing was the norm and exhaustion our inevitable reward. Except now he's much bigger and thus louder.

We, of course, tried everything. I'd like to paint our exertions in the mature, muted tones of stoic fatalism, along the lines of Rothko's chapel paintings but the reality tended more toward Jackson Pollock working with neon poster paint.

There are many facets of parenting that are simply un-learnable, that you never get better at however many opportunities your child hands you. Like 3am screaming fits, or changing a poopy diaper while they're frantically trying to grab a handful.

You just get through it however you can and hope nobody was grading your performance.