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The rain has abated temporarily, but I have no doubt that it will return for an encore performance soon, so I'm going to sneak in an entry while the sneaking is good. Roomie stocked our larder earlier today, and since then, he's been watching ER. I never watched the show religiously, but I watched often enough to know the main characters. Romano and Weaver, the Militant Cripple Lesbian Femme Bot, still irk me to no end. So did Dr. Ross and Drs. Benton and Kovac. Come to think of it, Drs. Greene and Carter were the only ones who never made me want to track down the screenwriter and bludgeon them with their inexhaustible supply of wangst and drippy pathos. How the show has survived all these years is beyond me.
While at Borders yesterday, I heard the following:
"Twenty-eight dollars? I'd never spend that much on a book. I'd rather shop for clothes."
I looked up to see a girl of about seventeen, squatting in the YA section, book in hand. She was clad in denim shorts and a lime green midriff top, beneath which she proudly exhibited four months of pregnancy. Her nails were long and flamingo pink. In fact, they matched her lipstick, and, or so I presume, the gum she was chewing with bovine contentment.
She sniffed and put the books back before wandering off to Old Navy or some other mecca of overpriced, hideous Floridian fashion. I wandered over to see the books she had so cavalierly dismissed. They were three books, not one, of a series of which I've never heard, and they were hardback.
I'll grant you that book prices have skyrocketed in the last ten years, but three hardbacks for twenty-eight dollars is not a bad deal, and the books would have served her in better stead than a pair of capris that, a year from now, will be used to mop baby spittle. Judging by the conspicuous hump beneath her midriff, she and her clothes were hardly well-acquainted anyway. Perhaps if she'd read a few more books, she would have known that Mr. Wonkus of the Trouser People, while a delightful playmate, carries certain risks.
That was a terrible thing to type. but it was what I thought as I watched her waddle away. I don't understand why books, which last forever when they are great, are so much more highly prized by most than jeans or a shirt that will fade and be forgotten in a season. Books are eternal companions, and they won't refuse to open for you if you gain weight. They're there, and they love you, happy children that smell of glue and paper and promissory adventure.
Maybe it's because most books written for children in the past fifteen years are jejune, derivative, and gleefully crass and willfully stupid. For every Harry Potter or So You Want to Be a Wizard, there's a Captain Poopy Pants or an Everybody Poops. Had those been my first reading experiences, I might well have never read again. Fortunately, I had Richard Scary books and Encyclopedia Brown, and when I was thirteen, I found a copy of Dracula on my grandfather's bookshelf.
Enjoy those pants, you stupid child. They won't fit for long.
Oh, and because a little Vicar!Rickman never goes amiss:
Obadiah Slope
While at Borders yesterday, I heard the following:
"Twenty-eight dollars? I'd never spend that much on a book. I'd rather shop for clothes."
I looked up to see a girl of about seventeen, squatting in the YA section, book in hand. She was clad in denim shorts and a lime green midriff top, beneath which she proudly exhibited four months of pregnancy. Her nails were long and flamingo pink. In fact, they matched her lipstick, and, or so I presume, the gum she was chewing with bovine contentment.
She sniffed and put the books back before wandering off to Old Navy or some other mecca of overpriced, hideous Floridian fashion. I wandered over to see the books she had so cavalierly dismissed. They were three books, not one, of a series of which I've never heard, and they were hardback.
I'll grant you that book prices have skyrocketed in the last ten years, but three hardbacks for twenty-eight dollars is not a bad deal, and the books would have served her in better stead than a pair of capris that, a year from now, will be used to mop baby spittle. Judging by the conspicuous hump beneath her midriff, she and her clothes were hardly well-acquainted anyway. Perhaps if she'd read a few more books, she would have known that Mr. Wonkus of the Trouser People, while a delightful playmate, carries certain risks.
That was a terrible thing to type. but it was what I thought as I watched her waddle away. I don't understand why books, which last forever when they are great, are so much more highly prized by most than jeans or a shirt that will fade and be forgotten in a season. Books are eternal companions, and they won't refuse to open for you if you gain weight. They're there, and they love you, happy children that smell of glue and paper and promissory adventure.
Maybe it's because most books written for children in the past fifteen years are jejune, derivative, and gleefully crass and willfully stupid. For every Harry Potter or So You Want to Be a Wizard, there's a Captain Poopy Pants or an Everybody Poops. Had those been my first reading experiences, I might well have never read again. Fortunately, I had Richard Scary books and Encyclopedia Brown, and when I was thirteen, I found a copy of Dracula on my grandfather's bookshelf.
Enjoy those pants, you stupid child. They won't fit for long.
Oh, and because a little Vicar!Rickman never goes amiss:
Obadiah Slope
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