I always seem to leave the news-world entirely whenever something big happens. The twin towers disaster put me off news for years. I started paying a little more attention when I took Global Trends, but then there was a presidential election and everyone was yelling and I didn't really have an informed opinion. I wasn't doing too well on news this summer, although being in Britain actually helped instead of hurting my situation because many of the people we stayed with watched televised news (which I found sadly antiquated, but kind of fun). Then I moved to Boston, lost touch with the world for a few days, and a hurricaine hit. I lost all motivation to pay attention to the news when I realized all of it was sounding the same. And people were yelling again.
I've kept CNN.com (international edition) as my homepage through most of this, with a brief switch to BBCnews under the influence of Dr. Haddad. What I really like about CNN, though, are the little stories about Kiwi lawmakers running through town naked, and exploding whales, and space missions.
I like my method of only paying attention to things that are fun, or that directly affect me, but I know it's selfish. I think I'm ready now to sacrifice my own peace of mind for the opportunity to share an enlightened opinion of events with my fellow human beings. So I bought a New York Times today, outwardly it was so Laura could read the David Brooks column (that those bastards have recently begun charging money for online) and I could do the crossword, but really it was so that, eventually, I could take over the world.
The bookstore job paid off yesterday. Oh boy, yes it did.
I was at the main info desk checking some books on the computer when one of the guys I work with comes up to me carrying a huge pile of books. I thought he was going to tell me to take them away and shelve them, but instead he told me to go upstairs and grab all the copies of Shalimar the Clown, the new Salman Rushdie book, because "He's coming in to sign them." I just looked at him, "Salman Rushdie? Here?? Now?!?" I couldn't believe it. I knew people like Neil Gaiman and Johnny Depp had a habit of frequenting Emily's bookstore, and Laura met pretty much everybody who's anybody in the cool, hip, social commentary field last weekend, but these kinds of things never happen to me.
I ran upstairs and grabbed the fifty million copies of Shalimar from the back room and ran back down--and there he was. Now you have to understand, Salman Rushdie has been a hero to me for as long as I've known who he is (escaped from Iran . . . price on his head . . . The Satanic Verses). My family has a tape of Haroun and the Sea of Stories that we still listen to every time we go on long trips. So talking to Mr. Rushdie was a crazy experience, and that didn't help my coordination when I was trying to hand him the books to sign.
We didn't exchange very many words, I was just doing my bookstore clerk job. But he sounded just like he did on the Haroun tape. It was a like a character from a favorite story deciding to show up in my life. I refused to be a gushing fan, though. Laura said, after meeting David Brooks this weekend, that he would be a great person to sit down and have dinner with. I'd like to spend an afternoon talking to Salman Rushdie. But I think just the fact that I met him will last me for awhile.
If I had gotten married I wouldn't have to buy myself things like this, but as it is I am a young, single woman, and I needed a cocktail shaker. And now I really feel off-contract.
Okay, when you work at a bookstore you pick up weird books. This past week we got in about thirty copies of this. I was first enticed by the pretty green cover and the mention of a "tiny apartment kitchen," then I read the inside-front-cover and, interested, I started reading the book over lunch one day when I didn't have any food to eat. Now I'm bordering on obsession. Not since I read Harry Potter this summer have I been so drawn into a book. Damn, I wish I could write like Julie Powell. I don't know if hers is particularily stunning prose, or if it's just appealing. She is the only person I've read who can hold my attention while talking about the whole "September 11th" thing. I also found this tonight, her blog. Yay! Lots of happy food reading to keep me happy for a long time.
I have composed a list of my top five children's stories about pirates. I know it's a little specific, but it's what I had to go on this morning when I was working in children's books and thinking about pirates.
1. Of course this has to go to "The Rebel Princess" from The Serpent Slayer by Katrin Tchana and Trina Schart Hyman.
2. Pirate Jam by Jo Brown. This one's about two pirates who get kicked out of pirate school because they prefer tea to grog. I feel for them, man.
3. The Ballad of the Pirate Queens by Jane Yolen and David Shannon. A beautiful retelling of that great pirate tale that ends with pregnancy instead of death. It's nice to be a girl sometimes. Most of the time. Yes.
4. Captain Abdul's Pirate School by Colin Mcnaughton. Convinces me that the best pirate stories are not the true-to-life ones, but the ones with all the good pirate jargon strung together and lots of great pirate names. Avast, me maties!
5. This is a tie. I haven't read Margaret Mahy's The Great Piratical Rubustification because it's too long for me to sneak in during work, but it looks like good stuff. I did get to read How I Became A Pirate by Melinda Long and David Shannon, and it had all the great piratey elements mentioned in #4. Arrrrr!
The tea shop across the street from my work had a special today: 10% off for ordering in a pirate voice. With my background in accents and dialects I had to do it. I got some great Harvard Square Earl Grey.
Here it is, a beautiful short film about the town where we live and how no one cares about it. I like to call us kindof-Boston, but I guess I just need to work on my Watertown pride. If you don't feel like watching the little movie, and I'm not sure you should, you can still check out the H2Otown blog, especially the guide to food in Watertown, and then you will envy us. Because that's what we have here in Watertown--food, and on this humid, rainy day all of the smells of it are coming in our windows.
This is the week all of the Harvard freshmen arrive so the main floor of the bookstore is decorated with these huge red banners with the Harvard crest on them. All I can think when I look at them is "Gryffindor!"
Does anyone know what the Harvard Law School crest means? What are these sheaves of grain? I had a first year law student come in this week searching desperately for the answer. He said he would be a hero to all of the first year law students if he found it. (Personally, I think he was exagerating. I know one of those students and I'm pretty sure he couldn't care less.) Speaking of Harvard Law, we also had a girl come in this week and explain how she was a law student who needed to buy her books, but she didn't know where the Law School was. Can we say Legally Blonde?
So I was thinking about that credit card commercial that shows the old granny getting a tattoo and then the voiceover comes on and says, "yeah, it didn't look right to us either." So apparently these people figure out that granny has lost her credit card because she's charging a tattoo, but what if granny has really decided to go out and get a tattoo? And then the credit card calls this wild old lady up and demands to know whether she charged a tattoo to her card. Poor girl, what an invasion of privacy. Can't an old woman go out and be a little crazy without her credit card company getting concerned?
On Tuesday the Globe ran a story called "One Nation, Under a Groove" (which, sadly, I cannot link to because their website sucks) about the iPod trend in cities like Boston. It's something that crossed my mind when I first got my iPod. I wouldn't listen to it while walking across campus because it really seemed to destroy the aura of community. But I figured once I was in a city, having community with the people around me wouldn't matter and I could listen without guilt. In Britain this summer I listened to music a few times, but usually only when the people next to me had headphones on, or when I was walking alone in the countryside. But even then I felt a little guilty. I was missing the sounds of the sheep, and also the noise of approaching cars. And now that I'm here the guilt continues. I'm cutting off the people riding the bus with me, at the bus stop, walking down the street. I thought it would be useful to fend off unwanted conversation, but that's really the easy way out, as the Globe article points out. And I'm realizing, with more and more people individualizing our shared space with their own, personal sound, it won't be long until we forget we live in a shared world, that we are all humans together. I don't like talking to people at the bus stop, but I like hearing them talk to each other, hearing about their lives and their opinions. It helps me realize that even though my community is bigger now, and I might never see some of these people more than once, I still live in a community and I need to share places and sounds. Going out at night and passing by the busker and his folksy guitar and hearing it with the people around me instead of listening to my own, musically superior sound, this somehow seems healthier.
Unsteady three-part harmony comes from the end of the house. Our milk has gone sour, but at least we have a fridge in our house, which is more than I can say for our temporary residence. We're in our apartment now, getting settled, learning to live with a dog who seems to believe that since she cannot wear panties, then she must chew them up in order to legitimate her own female-ness (bitch). I'm also learning to live without much daily routine. It's terribly hard to get up at a different time each day, get home at a different time, at least work is basically the same everyday, but retail doesn't lend itself to routine. I don't know if this is what I should do all year. Last week I got the question, "is this your primary job?" and it made me feel a little insecure. What should I be doing? Do you have a better idea? Right now the only thing I really want to do is be in grad school researching and writing papers. Damn GRE, damn applications, why must they loom ahead of me like this?
On Labor Day Mom and Dad and I went down to Plymouth and the Cape. I was dissappointed in Plymouth Rock. What I saw was a paperweight compared with what I was expecting. The Mayflower II, though, that was impressive, especially after reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle this summer. (Speaking of children's books, I tried reading Eragon last week, but it was so damn cliche I couldn't take it anymore, has anyone made it through this book?) Plymouth Plantation was great. I love re-enactors, and the houses we went in all had a smoky, musty smell. That smell will stay with me long after I forget the things I saw at the plantation. The Cape was amazing. We didn't make it down very far, just to Sandwich, but there we walked down the boardwalk through the salt marsh to the beach. There were some kids fishing for crabs over the side of the boardwalk and stopping to talk to them and help them was one of the highlights of my day. When I was little we caught crawdads in the ditch. Oh, to be a child of Cape Cod.
Sadly, piracy was not an option, but I am online and I am happy. Showers and internet. I think we're going to make it.
Internet didn't come easy, though. The cable internet man didn't have a clue what Firefox was and told me I needed Internet Explorer. I told him I didn't have it, that I deleted it (yes, it is possible), and that I didn't want it back. I was nice about it, though, the poor man was dripping sweat and looking very perplexed about my unconventional browser. Then he spent about an hour on the phone on hold before figuring out the problem. Oh frabjous day! I have precious internet without compromise (I know, I know, no need to be dramatic about it). Right now, though, my computer is attatched to the umbilical cable. Gotta get a wireless router so I can be free to blog from the bathtub (our lovely apartment bathtub, which has claws on the bottom of it).
