|
Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue! |
Sunday, July 4, 1999 Independence Day One nice thing about having been back at the family home for Shabbos is that the family home has central air conditioning. I didn't realize how much difference that made until I stepped outside late Saturday night for my ride home, into what felt like a swamp. And then I got to my apartment, which was basically a sauna. The humidity, the heat... ergh. No wonder I'd gotten behind on this journal. Okay, this wasn't the only reason, but it was certainly a contributing factor.
So, flush with the heady excitement of having three digits to the left of the decimal point on my bank balance again, I went shopping on Sunday, going to the discount store with the great selection of tea (which, you may recall, is also where I got my phone), and picked up a fan for $8.97. It's one of those small ones that clips onto your furniture; not terribly effective unless it's blowing right at you, but I've been making sure it's been blowing right at me ever since. It works pretty well, on that basis. A few doors down from the discount store where I get my tea is its subsidiary, the evil remaindered bookstore. Now, umm, I've been good. For months, I've been avoiding the place, knowing that I simply couldn't afford to venture in there. With it right down the block, I finally broke. And went in. And spent pretty much all the cash I had left on hand, walking out with The Best American Erotica: 1996; Sex Talk: The Ultimate Collection of Ribald, Raunchy and Provocative Quotations; and It's the Thought That Counts... For Better or For Worse Fifteenth Anniversary Collection. This is probably the first time those three books have been put into one sentence. I reread the last of those right of those right off the bat. Not only is this a really good collection of one of my favorite comic strips, but it has an incredible cover that I would just love to have in poster form, showing writer/artist Lynn Johnston sitting at her drawing board, with the entire Patterson family clustered around her, offering advice. The middle of those is a quotation book. I've felt the need for more quotation books, especially as I've been trying to include quotes with these entries. This particular quotation book is not the world's greatest. It doesn't even manage to stay on its avowed subject a good percentage of the time, apparently believing that any quotation with a four-letter word qualifies, even if it has nothing to do with sex ("'Don't vote for that fucking Bush!' --Bruce Springsteen" ...umm, okay...), which presumably accounts for the preponderance of scatological references therein. Still, it's given me material for a few more .signature files for my work at CleanSheets, so that's something. I'm still only halfway through the first book on the above list. So far, so good. On the whole.
Incidentally, I know that today's color scheme looks more like a reversed Italian flag than the American one. It couldn't be helped... it's a bit amazing how many countries have red, white, and blue flags, in fact, albeit in different arrangements.
|
Contact Back Forth Archives Index |