First Up, Granny Rambles: around six pm Tuesday night, I'm loading up a cart of books to shelve and this short old lady comes up to me. She must have been ninety, real sweet old lady, but not a pleasant sight: big gap in the front of her teeth, and PAINFULLY thin. You could see her collarbones from a satellite. Looking at her gave me some unpleasant flashbacks back to my counseling days, when we would occasionally give back-rubs to workshop participants as a "bonding experience". I always had to end up massaging the reaaallly boney people, and it was very.... odd, very disconcerting just feeling all that protuding bone (which is why I would never fuck a heroin-chic supermodel EVER). Digressions aside, she asks me to help her find some books. Nothing out of the ordinary or aggravating about that. I dig around for it, to no avail, and I figure that's all she wrote. Nope. She starts talking about her kids. And talking. And talking. And talking. TWENTY MINUTES LATER: she is showing no signs of stopping. In fact, every time the conversation seems to have finally abated, she suddenly switches gears and hops on to another tangent that adds five more minutes to my torment. To complicate matters, my boss is standing behind her, he can see my plight, and he starts giggling. This is bad, because now I'M starting to giggle, and I'm hoping that she doesn't notice that my face is straining to keep from cracking up into a huge shit-eating grin. So I have four minutes where I have this smoldering fuse of hilarity burning up inside of me; it was horrible, much in the way that someone over-tickling you can be both hilarious and deeply uncomfortable. Before the top of my head could crack open and a howl of shrieking hyena yelps could issue out from that hole, another employee wandered into Granny Rambles radius, and she got them involved in her Dickens-ian narrative. I took this as my chance to exit stage right.
Other Weirdoz And Assholez:we got a lot of spellers in the store. The spellers: people who think we retail people are so mentally handicapped that we are incapable of spelling simple names. I get people who actually do this: "my name is Jill, J-I-L-L" (I was unaware that there was a DIFFERENT way of spelling that name, you schmuck). "I'm Bob, B-O-B". Side note: anyone who can speak English and not know how to spell Bob should be immediately shipped back to the first grade. We also get people who don't know what the words "fiction" and "nonfiction" mean, so actually helping them find a book is straight-up torture. The tweakers have been on the down-low lately, although we still see the same five mildly criminal-looking dudes coming in with trashbags full of shit to sell (luckily, these bags aren't full of scorpions, unlike previous bags brought into our store). The Scientologists have been representing lately as well, because I had 3 people come in looking for Dianetics. Sadly, my dreams of shredding every Ayn Rand book, every copy of Dianetics and every abomination-of-a-book written by Ann Coulter will not come to pass, seeing as all these nutjobs are extremely profitable. *sigh*
Quick Bit About TV: I'm looking forward to the new South Park episode. Just watched the new Lost tonight... and while I can say the episode was really well-done, the writers are pissing me off. "Hey, let's kill off one of the most interesting characters in the show!" You douchebags. Why not kill Charlie? I like the character, but he hasn't done jack-shit lately. And why introduce two new characters (Paolo & Nikki) right out of the blue, like they were a part of the cast all along? Awwwkkkward. I loved the first season of Lost (creepy Locke rules!), liked the second season (confused , button-pushing Locke not so cool), and I'm on the fence with the third season. I like that they're focusing more on the Others. Here's hoping they don't do anything too stupid in the next few episodes (like killing Sawyer and/or Ben... seriously, Ben is such a great villian, they better not kill him yet). My worry is that Lost might end up like Robert Jordan's "The Wheel Of Time" books. I'm not much of a fantasy fan anymore, but when I first stumbled onto the Wheel books, I was impressed by the sheer size and scope of his story. Unfortunately, with every new book RJ releases, he keeps introducing more and more new characters and subplots without resolving ANY of the previous subplots he's introduced in past volumes. By book eight I said "fuck it" and stopped reading it. I love intricate and epic story-lines, but sometimes one CAN have too much of a good thing. Same problem with Lost: a lot of new mysteries and questions, but not nearly enough answers (and they really shouldn't bother introducing new characters at this point when you already have such a large cast of characters to flesh out). I still like Lost, but after killing
, they're officially on notice for yours truly.
My only televised regret over the last two months is that I have yet to catch a single episode of the new season of Veronica Mars. *sighs* Heroes (from what I've seen) is looking pretty good. As for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip: I liked Sports Night, didn't care for The West Wing (my suspension of disbelief was being fucked with a bit too much), and from the three episodes I've seen of Aaron Sorkin's new show, I've got to say that I'm in the "ehhh" camp. For a show about making a comedy show, it takes itself WAAAYYYY too seriously. When you have a show where a character self-righteously berates his family members for thinking that the words "skit" and "sketch" are interchangeable, in the words of Bill Hicks: "that's just a level of commitment I can't relate to, man".
Booooooks: my quixiotic quest for more knowledge continues. I finished "The Accessible Hegel", started and finished "Marxism: Philosophy And Economics" by Thomas Sowell, and I read Machiavelli's "The Prince last night (sadly, due to $$$ being tight, I decided not to get a costume and went through the glorious day of Halloween as my usual self, and I was in too of an introspective frame of mind to follow through with my original plan of watching a couple of horror DVDs to honor the spirit of the evening... so Machiavelli it was). Right now, I'm working on Herbert Marcuse's "The One Dimensional Man", and when I'm finished with that, I'll have Guy Debord's "Society Of The Spectacle" to contend with. Once "Spectacle" is done, I'll be freshout with politico-philosophoy books for awhile, so I'll probably start catching up on fiction (two of my co-workers have talked up George Saunders to me, and I'm looking to dive into some of the Italo Calvino books I have lying on my self).
And now South Park is starting, so I must bid you all a fond farewell... until the next post, naturally.
i'm a HUGE fan of marcuse. or i used to be. and the debord piece is really exceptional as well.
'ronnie mars this season is pretty good. it's not as great as seasons 1-2. some people are saying that it's because they've "dumbed down" the show to attract new viewers. but that's only a small part of the problem. after all, the show still has sexy characters in dangerous situations giving witty banter. no. the problem is that the first two seasons unfold like a single, televised novel - digging deep into the history of the characters and the nature of neptune (hence - the importance of the *high school* as a literal and metaphoric microcosm of the city). the first two seasons really work as one single story about "who killed lilly kane? (and what happened to her killer!)." BUT, you couldn't do a third season on that. 'cause it would get silly (i mean how many times can veronica get in "someone want to kill me b/c of what i know about lilly!" situations before you start to roll your eyes?). so *structurally* the show is forced to move on. but it's hard to have a hook of a mystery that is NEARLY so compelling as the first two season. and THAT'S what's hurting season 3. it's more *growing pains* than anything else.
now. lost. yea. this is what my wife said last night: "i'm done with this." in part it was the killing of the beloved character (easily my 2nd favorite, behind my true love - jack). what bugs me about the show is that clearly the writers would prefer to do a character-driven show, rather than one driven by the mythology of the island (hence - the lack of answers/the slow reveal of any information). and i can roll with that. but if you're going to do a character-driven show ... you have to do it. as in: why didn't eko and charlie confront locke for BLOWING THEM UP? or, why don't locke, charlie and eko get pissed at desmond for ALSO BLOWING THEM UP. further, what's with locke's all: "everyone come on my scouting trip! i'm not an elitist like jack!" line? this is the dude with the scary bowie knife who spent the first season in the jungle killing his sidekick and spent last season hiding in the hatch. he is *not* an inclusive kind of guy. it just came out of left field. i feel jerked around not by the story - but by piss poor characterization. (also - i liked hatch locke better than jungle locke. jungle locke feels like a comic book character to me. the guy who is made up to be cool - like snake eyes or wolverine. hatch locke is crazy and pathetic. WAY more fun to watch if you ask me.)