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So-oo all day yesterday at the store I mused about economic/social models.
Rob Harris gave me a book once about the lottery as the ultimate economic model for late twentieth century America. I wish I could remember what it's called. It's lost now among the 5000 other books in wild disarray on my bookshelves or moldering in boxes in my cellar. At the other house, I had all my books neatly organized by subject matter but when we were forced to move, Ben just shoved them into boxes without rhyme or reason so they're more or less useless as references to me now.
Anyway this book explored top-down logic and its economic consequences. Example: a hundred thousand inner city kids playing basketball but ignoring school. You could argue, I suppose, that they're playing basketball for fun but actually they're playing basketball in the hopes that they'll be the next Michael Jordan. They're hedging their future on that. The book was a lot more articulate than I can be at 6:30 in the morning on one cup of coffee, and it ran the logic through a number of different situations, eventually coming to the conclusion that the traditional ethos of work hard enough and you will succeed blah blah blah had given way to a kind of magical thinking: in the end there will only be one. The Lotto model, in other words.
And I was thinking, well, of course. Much of the subliminal appeal of the lottery model is that against all odds, we've all won the most important one – or at least our DNA has: out of those 400,000,000 sperm swimming around in that proverbial teaspoon of Daddy's ejaculate, the one that made us hit the jackpot!
In other news, the Little Store had a reasonable week and seems to be having a reasonable weekend although our inventory is down, down, down and I'm not going to buy anything until the American Express card is paid off.
Customer of the Day yesterday was a Nancy Reagan clone in Sherwood Forest green instead of the former First Lady's signature red. I spent 20 minutes or so pouring her various green sauces – Mike and Diane's incomparable Tomatillo, Blair's Jalapeno death sauce, Arizona Gunslinger's Jalapeno shooter. She finally purchased Marie Sharp's green habanero with nopolas – a very careful purchase – and then spent five minutes complimenting me on my pearl earrings, my hair style (which looks like shit, by the way) and my gracious and welcoming demeanor. I couldn't help thinking how very odd it was that a woman whom under any other circumstances I would consider my natural antagonist appeared to be so taken with me. How lonely she must be, I thought.
Friday was Rainer's last day. I'll miss him. I'd grown fond of him. As a valuable parting gift, I let him have my much-prized copy of Gore Vidal's United States: essays 1952-1992. I'd loaned him the book toward the beginning of his Little Store tenure; he'd faithfully lugged into the store three times a week on the days he worked, reading between customers. He walked to work and that book must weigh 15 pounds.
"But, I mean, you'll really read it, won't you?" I asked anxiously. "Because if you don't really want it –"
"I love this book," he assured me. "I've already read a lot of it."
Still, I half expected to find the book in the Cannery Row dumpster like the chrysanthemums in John Steinbeck's short story.
Alex – one of the tagteam of wacky CSUMB students who've adopted the Little Store – comes in to take over Rainer's spot tomorrow.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. Life, she continues to lurch along.
Rob Harris gave me a book once about the lottery as the ultimate economic model for late twentieth century America. I wish I could remember what it's called. It's lost now among the 5000 other books in wild disarray on my bookshelves or moldering in boxes in my cellar. At the other house, I had all my books neatly organized by subject matter but when we were forced to move, Ben just shoved them into boxes without rhyme or reason so they're more or less useless as references to me now.
Anyway this book explored top-down logic and its economic consequences. Example: a hundred thousand inner city kids playing basketball but ignoring school. You could argue, I suppose, that they're playing basketball for fun but actually they're playing basketball in the hopes that they'll be the next Michael Jordan. They're hedging their future on that. The book was a lot more articulate than I can be at 6:30 in the morning on one cup of coffee, and it ran the logic through a number of different situations, eventually coming to the conclusion that the traditional ethos of work hard enough and you will succeed blah blah blah had given way to a kind of magical thinking: in the end there will only be one. The Lotto model, in other words.
And I was thinking, well, of course. Much of the subliminal appeal of the lottery model is that against all odds, we've all won the most important one – or at least our DNA has: out of those 400,000,000 sperm swimming around in that proverbial teaspoon of Daddy's ejaculate, the one that made us hit the jackpot!
In other news, the Little Store had a reasonable week and seems to be having a reasonable weekend although our inventory is down, down, down and I'm not going to buy anything until the American Express card is paid off.
Customer of the Day yesterday was a Nancy Reagan clone in Sherwood Forest green instead of the former First Lady's signature red. I spent 20 minutes or so pouring her various green sauces – Mike and Diane's incomparable Tomatillo, Blair's Jalapeno death sauce, Arizona Gunslinger's Jalapeno shooter. She finally purchased Marie Sharp's green habanero with nopolas – a very careful purchase – and then spent five minutes complimenting me on my pearl earrings, my hair style (which looks like shit, by the way) and my gracious and welcoming demeanor. I couldn't help thinking how very odd it was that a woman whom under any other circumstances I would consider my natural antagonist appeared to be so taken with me. How lonely she must be, I thought.
Friday was Rainer's last day. I'll miss him. I'd grown fond of him. As a valuable parting gift, I let him have my much-prized copy of Gore Vidal's United States: essays 1952-1992. I'd loaned him the book toward the beginning of his Little Store tenure; he'd faithfully lugged into the store three times a week on the days he worked, reading between customers. He walked to work and that book must weigh 15 pounds.
"But, I mean, you'll really read it, won't you?" I asked anxiously. "Because if you don't really want it –"
"I love this book," he assured me. "I've already read a lot of it."
Still, I half expected to find the book in the Cannery Row dumpster like the chrysanthemums in John Steinbeck's short story.
Alex – one of the tagteam of wacky CSUMB students who've adopted the Little Store – comes in to take over Rainer's spot tomorrow.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. Life, she continues to lurch along.
