Vomit and Target (You Say It "Tar-zhay")

2002-08-14 || 10:40 p.m.

I had wanted to so a lot of reading this summer. Then I took classes. The reading didn't happen. So, I'm still culturally illiterate. But I am in the process of reading a book that Toyoda-chan gave me called Pages of Pain. I know it sounds like something a very young coffee-swilling Jack Kerouac wannabe would write about how terribly mistreated he was during his teen years, but it's quite different. It's almost like a legend, or a piece of mythology in terms of its content, but it's written in a more modern style. It's very engaging, and the author (Troy Denning) has a fab grasp of the art ofdescription. Perhaps too fab a grasp. Let's get this straight: He describes thingsin such vivid detail that you do feel like you're there. Which is bad when the main characters are sitting under an enormous pile of rotting corpses with an equally enornous cloud of flies above it, and the hero is trying to keep himself from vomiting.

Whoo, that smell! Can't ya smell that smell! Whoo, that smell! The smell that's around you!

The fascination with the music of Björk continues. If nothing else, she's different. That's the appeal to me. Her lyrics are such a riot.

In other news... I came to an important place of appreciation of what my friends who work at Target, Miss Lisa and Zuleike, have to endure. I was at Target today, and there was this woman who had some kind of gift certificate, or school voucher of some kind, and had to buy things in $60 increments. She thought she was short, and while she was unloading this mountain of clothes at the cashier station, the checker told her she was $10 short. She had the cashier void the order, and left her stuff there while she went back to get a couple of extra things, and told me to go ahead in front of her. I was cool with it. I could understand, but thought maybe there was a better solution. The assistant manager on duty, who appeared to be 17-19, was ripping his hair out. The cashier was very nice, but clearly struggling to find a balance between being nice to this customer, and being fair to the rest of us. At least she didn't have old guys hitting on her.