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News of the Week In Review
Dec. 1st, 2007 09:34 amMax just forwarded me a casting notice for Beauty & the Geek that had been circulated to the Stanford chess list.
"Mom!" his subject header read. "Look! All my dreams have finally come true!"
"You must do this or I will disinherit you!" I immediately wrote back. "Buy some fake glasses. Buy some Brylcream and part your hair on the side. Drool. Whatever it takes. Get on this show!"
But I don't think he will.
Yesterday a guy bolted into the store and proceeded to have a 10 minute conversation with his cell phone about some "perps" – "Yeah, they've split up now. I've got a bead on the male –"
At one point he came up to me, put his finger to his lips miming, "Shhhh" and flashed a badge, a big silver metal star with San Jose Police Department inscribed over it. And I thought, so? You could buy that in any toy department. Get the fuck out of my store.
Finally he got off the phone and came strutting over to the front counter. "Thanks," he said. "I'm on a job. I'm a cop, undercover –"
"I figured," I said.
He looked abashed. "You did?"
"I watch a lot of Law & Order," I said.
But I'm still not convinced he wasn't some crazy guy playing an elaborate version of grown-up Dungeons and Dragons.
Elsewise, it has been a slow week that I have mostly lived in my imagination.
After Black Friday's huge boom, business has been scarily slow, January slow, and naturally I blame myself. It must be me. I am so repulsive that single-handedly I have killed all tourism in Monterey! It's like I have a radio transmitter embedded in my spine broadcasting at negative magnetic polarity wavelength: Go away. G-o a-w-a-y.
Naturally it would be better if I had never been born, but since I am here I should arrange to go away. Suicide? Not an option, it would damage Max's chances in the 2027 presidential election. Alien abduction! That's the ticket.
Etcetera.
Crazy thoughts.
I had nightmares all last night. The worst: I had entered a project in some sort of science fair but Rik Steinhardt had thrown it away and when I confronted him about it, he brushed me off irritably – Alicia was entering the science fair, her project was important so would I please just shut up?
You call that a nightmare? I thought when I woke up. Jeeze. Stephen King would be ashamed…
But it was a nightmare. All my old childhood feelings of being ignored, of being overlooked, of being neglected – Cinderella with no glass slipper in her future – came rushing back. No one's got my back, I thought at three in the morning. No one. And it's a cold impersonal universe.
However, now it's morning and the sun is peeping out from behind the clouds. Life is what it is – these incredible, heart-rending moments of beauty and a lot of filler. All you can do is soldier on between them.
"Mom!" his subject header read. "Look! All my dreams have finally come true!"
"You must do this or I will disinherit you!" I immediately wrote back. "Buy some fake glasses. Buy some Brylcream and part your hair on the side. Drool. Whatever it takes. Get on this show!"
But I don't think he will.
Yesterday a guy bolted into the store and proceeded to have a 10 minute conversation with his cell phone about some "perps" – "Yeah, they've split up now. I've got a bead on the male –"
At one point he came up to me, put his finger to his lips miming, "Shhhh" and flashed a badge, a big silver metal star with San Jose Police Department inscribed over it. And I thought, so? You could buy that in any toy department. Get the fuck out of my store.
Finally he got off the phone and came strutting over to the front counter. "Thanks," he said. "I'm on a job. I'm a cop, undercover –"
"I figured," I said.
He looked abashed. "You did?"
"I watch a lot of Law & Order," I said.
But I'm still not convinced he wasn't some crazy guy playing an elaborate version of grown-up Dungeons and Dragons.
Elsewise, it has been a slow week that I have mostly lived in my imagination.
After Black Friday's huge boom, business has been scarily slow, January slow, and naturally I blame myself. It must be me. I am so repulsive that single-handedly I have killed all tourism in Monterey! It's like I have a radio transmitter embedded in my spine broadcasting at negative magnetic polarity wavelength: Go away. G-o a-w-a-y.
Naturally it would be better if I had never been born, but since I am here I should arrange to go away. Suicide? Not an option, it would damage Max's chances in the 2027 presidential election. Alien abduction! That's the ticket.
Etcetera.
Crazy thoughts.
I had nightmares all last night. The worst: I had entered a project in some sort of science fair but Rik Steinhardt had thrown it away and when I confronted him about it, he brushed me off irritably – Alicia was entering the science fair, her project was important so would I please just shut up?
You call that a nightmare? I thought when I woke up. Jeeze. Stephen King would be ashamed…
But it was a nightmare. All my old childhood feelings of being ignored, of being overlooked, of being neglected – Cinderella with no glass slipper in her future – came rushing back. No one's got my back, I thought at three in the morning. No one. And it's a cold impersonal universe.
However, now it's morning and the sun is peeping out from behind the clouds. Life is what it is – these incredible, heart-rending moments of beauty and a lot of filler. All you can do is soldier on between them.
