Hey lady, STOP STANDING IN THE DOORWAY GIVING THE STINKY, OBVIOUSLY CRAZY HOMELESS PERSON CONVERSATIONAL OPENINGS.
Some people are absolutely accomplices in their own mook-ing.
7.07.2009
True Customer Tales- bags and bags
mother and daughter, daughter buying a tall stack of Louis L'Amour westerns.
me: would you like a bag?
daughter: Yeah.
mom: why don't you just put them in your bag?
daughter, exasperated: because I want another bag to put in my bag!
I should compile an oral history of the question would you like a bag?
me: would you like a bag?
daughter: Yeah.
mom: why don't you just put them in your bag?
daughter, exasperated: because I want another bag to put in my bag!
I should compile an oral history of the question would you like a bag?
7.06.2009
Robert McNamara 1916-2009
"The architect of the Vietnam war" is a tough headline to go out on.
Seeing things as we'd like them to be instead of how they really is a lovely pile of leaves heaped over a wire snare. It'd be easy enough for someone to craft a modern Grimm's Fairy Tale from McNamara's legacy.
Although maybe Errol Morris already did.
Seeing things as we'd like them to be instead of how they really is a lovely pile of leaves heaped over a wire snare. It'd be easy enough for someone to craft a modern Grimm's Fairy Tale from McNamara's legacy.
Although maybe Errol Morris already did.
True Customer Tales- a new low
There's a guy with a room temperature IQ and poor personal hygiene who mostly preys on the sale cart. Occasional detours to the new arrivals table yield just enough sales to qualify him as a 'customer', granting him greater forbearance than I accord the usual run of demi-homeless browser.
Today he tested that tolerance by proffering a quarter with a penny welded to its surface by some unidentifiable food-like substance to cover his twenty six cent sales tax.
I gave him an "are you serious" look before totaling out and flipping it into the trash.
Today he tested that tolerance by proffering a quarter with a penny welded to its surface by some unidentifiable food-like substance to cover his twenty six cent sales tax.
I gave him an "are you serious" look before totaling out and flipping it into the trash.
7.05.2009
7.04.2009
7.02.2009
parenting
Father's Day was a little weird for me, not having had a usable one past the first few years of my life.
I watch the Fuss going about his business- staring at birds out the window, field testing the edibility of a coffee cup, waving a valuable New York World's Fair program over his head while I chase him down the hall, smiling at me from his high chair- and I wonder he could just walk through the net of those connections, leaving behind little besides the scent of cigar ash and an unbroken record of picking me up late from preschool.
Uncle Timmy once considered the stark differences between he & the wife's Dickensian upbringing with the Fiend's life of leisure, asking straight faced "is it because we weren't as beautiful as she is?" Nonsense of course. Our children are as we were.
But that is the impulse- to always blame ourselves for the failures of our parents. Because God must be perfect.
The alternative is unthinkable- or at least, unthinkable without a whole lot of therapy.
And that is the terror of parenthood.
I suppose it could cause someone to flee, or break under the pressure. Or go mad with the power.
It is a narrow trail to follow, with hazards on every side and little in the way of guidance.
But then at the end your child gets to be who they are, not what you made them.
I much prefer thinking of myself as the caretaker for this amazing being, rather than its master.
I watch the Fuss going about his business- staring at birds out the window, field testing the edibility of a coffee cup, waving a valuable New York World's Fair program over his head while I chase him down the hall, smiling at me from his high chair- and I wonder he could just walk through the net of those connections, leaving behind little besides the scent of cigar ash and an unbroken record of picking me up late from preschool.
Uncle Timmy once considered the stark differences between he & the wife's Dickensian upbringing with the Fiend's life of leisure, asking straight faced "is it because we weren't as beautiful as she is?" Nonsense of course. Our children are as we were.
But that is the impulse- to always blame ourselves for the failures of our parents. Because God must be perfect.
The alternative is unthinkable- or at least, unthinkable without a whole lot of therapy.
And that is the terror of parenthood.
I suppose it could cause someone to flee, or break under the pressure. Or go mad with the power.
It is a narrow trail to follow, with hazards on every side and little in the way of guidance.
But then at the end your child gets to be who they are, not what you made them.
I much prefer thinking of myself as the caretaker for this amazing being, rather than its master.
7.01.2009
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