Long way to anywhere.

Long way to anywhere.
Originally uploaded by Helmer, J.

Just so when I say; "The middle of damn-nowhere." you understand I'm not exaggerating.

Testing for photo add.

Litha is cute.
Originally uploaded by Helmer, J.

Look it's a cute kitten. Awww... As you were.

I am pleased to report that both of my missions for yesterday were successfully completed. Merlin checked out great, aside from the obvious scabby tail thing, he is stout and healthy at twelve years old. He hates my guts right now (Casual observers might not be able to tell a difference...) because I was the one who took him over there. He's quite skittish enough the way it is, add a trip to the vet and we are talking full on feline-misanthropy. Actually, the hardest part of all of it was the drive over and back. Poor guy yowled till his voice cracked, was like to break my heart.

And yes, I was able to locate "The Aristocrats" way down here on the prairie. The story is almost as funny as anything else...kay so; there is no Target in this town. Our retail options are Shopko, Big-K, Wal-Mart (Mordor) and a Dollar Tree. Now the last thing I was expecting was Wal-Mart carrying this movie. It's unrated for a VERY good reason, it is also funny-as hell and fascinating --but we are talking about Wal-Mart. The house that Sam built, for pity’s sake! The people who were so traumatized by John Stewart's "America: The Book" they had to pull it from stores. I walked in, looked around, located my video and made my purchase no questions asked. In fact, thanks to the self-checkout lane, I was able to do the whole thing without ever actually speaking to a blue-vest.

Now I'm old enough to buy this movie. I walked in there for the very specific purpose of buying said movie; I knew what I was letting myself in for. I could have been ANYBODY. I desperately want to find a twelve year old and have them go in and try to buy this DVD. I bet there would be no red flags raised at all. You won't carry "The Daily Show's" book, all of the CD's you sell have to be edited, and I just bought a copy of "The Aristocrats" without anyone even noticing. Yeah, I don't even know how to respond to that.

I am so utterly done with this week. If you work (or ever have worked) at a college bookstore, the words 'rush week' doubtlessly fill you with your own personal horror. If not, let me try to explain it to you...

First of all, there's the general crazy. It's there like background noise. It is the first couple weeks of classes everybody is back from whatever they did for break and attempting to get back into the swing of things. Rushing about with new schedules and demands and yadda-di-dadda-di-da. It is crowded. The bookstore is full of a bunch of other people all trying to do the same basic thing you are doing. You are all there at the same time because with one thing and another most of the classes start/end around the same time. Neato.

Some of the things that we tell ourselves/each other in the course of our day-to-day lives are necessary falsehoods. If we all went about being utterly honest with each other things would get ugly out there real quick. An example of this would be the idea that when you come to me with your attitude, and you misplaced sense of entitlement, and your flat-out wrong ideas about the way the college textbook racket works; I'm going to give half a hump about helping you. I'm neither altruistic nor masochist enough to be that guy. Simple cause and effect, you come into my life and piss on my foot; I'm going to be less inclined to go out of my way to help you. Which is not to say that I won't help you, I will--treat me as badly as you like and I will guide you through your transaction safely. I'm still getting paid to do a job, after all, and I'm far too selfish about my own morality to waste my bad karma on the likes of you.

Now, I know what you are thinking--"Hey, jerkhole! These textbooks are expensive! Infact the whole college experience is too expensive!" You would, of course, be correct. There should be a way to make higher-education less expensive for all of us. Textbooks and materials are ridiculously expensive. As Mr. Pink once said; "If you show me a piece of paper that says it shouldn't be that way, I'll sign it. Put it to a vote, I'll vote for it. But what I won't do is play ball." Here is the key thing to understand. I didn't do it. Neither did the company I work for.

The ire that you are so desperate to place with us belongs at the feet of the textbook publishers. Publishers set the prices, they put out a new edition every two or three years, they load up the book with all manner of needless pieces of ancillary material. Why? Quite simply, they do this because they are desperately trying to cling to a market that is changing. The edition hopping and the computer programs and the shrink-wrap is all just trying to put a hole in the secondary market. When you buy used textbooks, the publishers loose money. It's that simple. So here's a tip--write to the book publishers. Write to your congress-people and school governments. Talk to you professors about reusing textbooks (The sooner the bookstore knows what they need, the more used copies we can buy back from YOU.) talk to anyone who will listen. Please, for the sweet love of all that's holy, do anything BUT take you sticker-shock out on the poor bookseller. It won't help.

/rant

Ah the first post of a new year--the optimism of the fresh start comigled with the crushing reality of me being bad at this whole thing. Seriously journaling, corispondance, phone calls. I just don't. And hopefully I get somewhat better at these things as I go along, I would like to have a record.

So, what's news?

Hmmm...well I fell down the stairs on Friday morning. Actually less fell and more 'bounced down' on my arse. Kinda whanged my head, and some parts of my back as well. I am dismayed to discover that everything in my body is INFACT attached to everything else. When I woke up on Saturday morning things hurt that didn't have any business hurting. I should also mention that, if you are looking to be resuced by your pet, you should probably not own cats. They didn't actually cause the fall (Odd in itself, since Litha has been trying to kill us with the stairs for days.) but they didn't lift a fuzzy-paw to help me either. Although they did come to see what the enormous KWA-THOOOOMP noise was--just stood there lookin' at me like; "Silly bi-ped, he can't even walk a short flight of stairs."

So, for those of you keeping track at home--cats are good for many things; being EMTs is not among them. They also don't understand irony, again confusing, you would think if any animal needed a genetic pre-disposition towards irony it would be yer kitty. My theory is that they are so busy pretending not to understand human speech that most ironic statements just walk right by them. To my knowledge the only animal that does get irony is the platypus.