A meme? Moi?

Hey, look, Sylvia posted a meme a couple of days ago that actually got me curious enough to do it (that Sylvia is pretty inspiring this week). Rules: Search Amazon for your own name and pick your favorite cover.

Del Pantano brought back a lot of hits, mostly comprising Spanish-language horror novels (swamp monsters, wouldn't you know). But I liked the design of this one best:

Searching on my real first name brought up mostly genre romance, but I thought this was pretty:

I know what a search on my full name would return - I share my name with the title character of a series of Nancy Drew-like mysteries published in the 1940s and '50s, now mostly out of print. I like this, because it makes me reasonably Google-proof. I've never read any of them, but they're on the list for as soon as I find a library that shelves them.

The Only Thing More Boring than the Last Two Days...

...would be a book about the last two days. I've hit upon a title for my first novel: The Killer Mosquitoes of Findlay, Ohio. I don't know what it will be about yet, but stay tuned.

Since talking about coffee shops is almost like talking about books, kudos to the folks at Coffee Amici for making a trying business trip a lot more bearable. They make one mean iced latte. Seriously, I was really impressed.

Also, on the long drive to and from this trip, I got in my first big chunk of audiobooking since starting my heavenly ten-minute commute. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell gets a lot more compelling after the first third or so. Started out too fairy-tale for my liking, but now it's good stuff.

Return to Bloggerland

I've been away for the last three months or so, busy with real life - specifically, executing my long-anticipated relocation from Selfimportantville to the environs of lovely Chicago! Been here about a month and getting all settled in and unpacked and establilshed in the new job and all that, and now I'm so eager to get back to writing! I'll be back soon to talk about this summer's reading, the urban and suburban library systems (swoon), and all things bookish.

So thrilled to be here!

World Lupus Day, 2007

I'm reading Flannery O'Connor this month (review to come shortly) in honor of tomorrow's fourth annual observance of World Lupus Day. O'Connor died of complications from Systemic Lupus in 1964 at age 39. I've found that most people have heard of lupus, but very few know anything about it. Here are a few facts:

• Lupus is an autoimmune disease that can affect literally every organ group.


• More people in the United states have lupus than have AIDS, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, sickle-cell anemia and cerebral palsy, combined.


• Most patients are diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 45, and 90% are women.


• Because symptoms are highly variable and often mimic those of other conditions, lupus diagnosis is difficult. Many patients wait 4-8 years after initial symptoms appear before receiving a diagnosis.


• The severity of lupus symptoms varies widely from patient to patient; in severe cases complications can still be fatal.


• There is currently no cure for lupus, and there have been no major treatment advances in the past 50 years.

Learn more at http://www.lupus.org/.

More Adventures in Selfimportantville, Part 3

Continued from yesterday

Eventually, I found a gas station on a street corner where I felt almost safe enough to get out of the car, so I stopped to ask for directions (like I said before, I hadn’t been around long enough to know better). I knew the area at least well enough to know that I needed to get back to Route II, a state highway which runs through CityF, past my residence, and all the way to Selfimportantville. The following dialogue ensued between myself and the dim-looking adolescent at the cash register.

Del P.: How do I get back to Route II?

Dumb kid, with tortured deliberation: Um…do you mean Route II the highway?

Del P.: (As opposed to what, Route II the theme park?) Er, yes. I need to get back to Route II, Route II eastbound, heading back toward Selfimportantville…?

Dumb kid, looking painfully perplexed, then suddenly enlightened: Oh! I thought you meant Route II the highway.

Del P.: (?????)

Dumb kid, confidently: This is Route II here (points out at city street).

Del P.: (um, no it’s not…) Hm, er, well, I haven’t seen any signs…

Dumb kid, miraculously self assured: Oh, yeah, if you go down that way you’ll see a sign in a couple of miles.

Del P.: (This isn’t Route II…Route II is a limited access divided highway…this is a city street…but it’s not like I have anything better to go on…). Um, ok, thanks.

I left and drove down Not Route II in the direction Dumb Kid had indicated. And sure enough, after a couple of miles, I saw a sign for…Route II(A). Which is not the same as Route II. Which is 1.5 lanes wide and completely lacking streetlamps. Which does eventually lead to Selfimportantville, but only after winding through approximately 50 miles of minimally inhabited Gravel Region countryside.

Fortunately, I did know how to get home via Route II(A) , and having been in Selfimportantville for less than a month at this point, I still had a large enough store of patience to do so. The whole ordeal lasted around four hours.

Epilogue: I did make it to the CityF church gathering on a later occasion, after taking the navigation into my own hands. When I arrived, I told the other people there about my previous difficulties, and they asked how I had found the place this time around. I told them, “Well, I found out the name of the person who lives here, then I looked him up in the phone book, and found the address on a map.” To which the CityF churchgoers responded, “Oh, wow! That was so smart! I never would have thought of that.”

More Adventures in Selfimportantville, Part 2

Continued from yesterday

Another church I visited is located in CityF, which was is named for early settler Mr. John F. (Besides bequeathing his name to CityF, Mr. F. is most renowned for having been abducted by Native Americans and removed to Canada, an event tenuously linked to the start of the French and Indian War, but that's another story.)

The inhabitants of CityF clearly admire Mr. F. a great deal - so much so that they decided it wasn't enough to name the city after him; they then proceeded to name everything in the city after him as well. So you cruise into town on John F. Boulevard, possibly to visit friends who live on John F. Drive, John F. Street, or John F. Road. (Not that any of them would be labeled.) From there you might choose to dine at the John F. Restaurant or shoot pool at the John F. Sports Bar. On the other hand, you might need to run some errands at John F. Plaza, perhaps stopping by the John F. Pharmacy, the John F. Barber Shop, and the John F. Gas-n-Go. Or if you're in the market for a big-ticket item, you could drop by the John F. Furniture Gallery or John F. Auto Sales. I'm still on the lookout for John F. Congregational Church.

CityF might also be the birthplace of the phrase "the wrong side of the tracks," because there is in fact a set of rails rather auspiciously located. These days, though, neither side of the tracks in CityF is particularly desirable. It's not the kind of place where you'd want to be driving around after dark with a crummy set of directions. Oh no. But we can't always get what we want, right? Right.

When I first visited the CityF church, I was invited to a gathering of young adults at a home in CityF scheduled a few weeks afterward. Not yet savvy to the ways of Selfimportantville, I accepted directions from a Selfimportantvillain. Well. Naturally the directions involved no street names, landmarks, or anything else remotely useful, and they were wrong anyhow. (The direction giving gene was bred out of Selfimportantvillains in the late 17th century.) Also, it was January, a time of year when the sun sets on Selfimportantville at around 4:00 in the afternoon.

So, it didn’t take long, driving uncertainly around CityF in the dark, to realize that I wasn’t going to get where I was going. Abort mission. Problem, though – how do I get out of CityF? I tried to retrace my path, but it had been too convoluted to follow. So I drove around for some time on the wrong side of the tracks discovering John F. namesakes.

To be continued...

More Adventures in Selfimportantville, Part 1

Recounting the story of the yeast purchase at Grocery Pit brought to mind other Selfimportantville adventures I've had over the years. The most vivid memories date from my first months here, when I was still learning my way around, and getting used to ideas like:

• The more heavily traveled a street is, and the more likely you are to need to get to it, the less likely it is to be labeled with any signs telling you what it's called.
• Just because there aren't any lines painted on the road doesn't mean it isn’t meant to legally accommodate four lanes of traffic.
• Just because a national chain drug store is located in a major metropolitan area, in the United States, in the 21st century, doesn’t mean it can’t close at 8 p.m., nor that it must stock such luxury items as Chap-Stick(tm).
• Moving house to a town two miles away is an atrocity second only to cannibalizing your own children.
• Right of way is for Philistines.

Etc. This is Selfimportantville. The learning curve is steep, and the roads are never salted (another cause for annoyance).

I met several of my early adventures during the process of looking for a church to join. I happen to adhere to a denomination that is much less common in the Gravel Region (of which Selfimportantville is the principal metropolis) than it is in other parts of the country, so getting settled in that respect took some research and effort, and I did a lot of visiting around before I was done.

On one occasion, I was searching for a church in TownC, and couldn’t find the street on which it was supposed to be located, naturally, for dearth of signage. I stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant for help finding Blubber Drive. He was apologetic. “I’m sorry, I don’t know – I’m not from this area myself.” Fine, obviously I sympathize with that. But he went on. “I grew up in VillageB.” Well, foreigner though I was, I did know that VillageB is located immediately adjacent to TownC, and that we were standing ten minutes' walk from the B/C border. I hadn’t yet encountered the widely accepted local notion that “this area” signifies “within half a city block of here.” So I was puzzled. And he continued, apparently still trying to excuse his ignorance, “I’ve only lived in TownC for eleven years.” Er…right. Let me see a map.

At the time, I wrote it off as a cultural experience in small town provinciality. After five years of hearing near-identical sentiments from most of the urbanite Selfimportantvillains I’ve encountered, the quaintness factor is pretty much gone.

To be continued...

Reason number 1764 why the Quagmire Bibliophile needs to get out of Selfimportantville - An Anecdote

A few weeks ago, I decided I wanted to make some bread, and made a note to pick up some yeast. Shortly thereafter, I happened to be in Suburb W*, so I stopped at Grocery Pit*. I don't often shop there because of the dreadful produce, but I've always found them to be fine for anything nonperishable.

Anyhow, I went inside to look for yeast. Whenever I've bought yeast in the past, it's always been shelved with the other baking supplies, somewhere near the flour, and I always thought this to be reasonable, since the ordinary person has no purpose whatever for yeast except to use it for baking bread. So I went to the baking supplies aisle. I walked up and down several times, but couldn't find any yeast. No jars, no little paper packets, no nothing.

As I was searching, I noticed that I had some company. There was an elderly gentleman hovering around the cake decorations, and a middle aged woman scanning the upper shelves. We all noticed each other, and eventually the man asked, "Do you see any maraschino cherries?" (Note: Selfimortantvillains categorically don't talk to strangers in public except on point of death. So when something like this happens, you know the situation is truly desperate.) We looked around, and told him that no, we didn't. Then the woman said, "I'm looking for evaporated milk - that should be here, shouldn't it?" We agreed that yes, it probably should, and that no, it apparently wasn't. "Yeast," I said, "do you see any yeast?" "Like for bread? It should be with the flour." "That's what I thought."

We all continued to glance about abstractly, until an unsuspecting Grocery Pit employee wandered through. Woman asked, "Excuse me, where do you keep the evaporated milk?" "Oh, Aisle 6, this end, near the coffee creamer." Well, alright, it doesn't sound terribly appetizing to me, but I guess I can see it. It had to be either that or the canned pumpkin.

Man said, "I'm looking for maraschino cherries." "Oh, they're with the ethnic foods, near the canned tomatoes, top shelf." Two questions: (1) Are we shelving foods by color now? and (2) To what ethnicity do maraschino cherries belong, exactly?

Finally, I asked, "Where do you keep the baking yeast?" "The little packets? That's in the refrigerated section. It should be near the Boca Burgers."

Boca Burgers???

And, indeed, the little packets of yeast were neatly stashed in a box, mounted between the Boca Burgers and the disposable turkey roasting pans (?).

Thus ends another episode in the Kafka-emulating Adventures in Selfimportantville.
_____________________________
*Names changed to defend Del P.'s delicate nerves against chronic paranoia.

Seasonal Confusion

O wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? - Shelley

________________________________________________________________

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Selfimportantville. Winter's last hurrah, if two weeks late. I like winter, because it's not summer. I don't like summer, because it's hot. I would enjoy spring, if only it didn't make me so paranoid by constantly hinting at summer. Though not today.

My anti-summer sentiments are rather lonely. Everyone else seems to love summer. Summer is the greatest thing that happens all year. Being surrounded by the celebration of it just makes the whole thing more depressing for me. Its like having inverse SAD.

It's only April. And it's snowing. Small graces.

Overbooked?

Odd to be blogging about a dream, but I had a bizarre and bookish one last night. Don't recall details, but I was in a cafe having lunch with Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and, incongruously, my friend Paula.

Obviously I need to cut back on the caffeine. Or the old episodes of Bookworm.

Stop the Presses!

Something unprecedented in my five-year tenure in the greater Selfimportantville area happened today. I had to drive into downtown Selfimportantville twice... to two different locations... for two completely unrelated events... intersecting both the morning and evening rush hours... and...

I was given perfect directions.

Both times.

Not a single detour.

Not even for construction.

You must understand, Selfimportantville, in addition to being populated by the worst drivers in America, is impossible to navigate. Multiple reasons for this. First of all, the original settlers delegated all the urban planning to their livestock, and never thought to reclaim the responsibility until it was too late. Also, local infrastructure has been consistently under-engineered as a matter of public policy, so on any day most of the city is affected by road repair/expansion projects, all of which will yield results sure to prove as inadequate as the original conditions.

Mostly, though, Selfimportantville is so self important that things like, say, street signs, are considered unnecessary. Why would we need a street sign? All the Selfimportantvillains know what street they're on. They know whether it's one-way or a dead end, and how many lanes it's supposed to have. Who cares about everybody else?

An entirely nonliterary occurrence, granted (unless you consider the fact that I was listening to The House of Mirth on both drives). Yet, a momentous one. I found a building in Selfimportantville on the first try? Perhaps there is hope for humanity after all.