You can imagine my panic when I realized I had three pretty much identical voice mails on my work phone when I came in this morning: “Good morning, Mr. Snay. It’s Julia from the management office, at [time], and I’m going to be taking someone on a tour of your apartment.” Which is kind of shocking, because from what I know, the only time they’re supposed to be doing that is the month before you move out, and as far as I was aware, I wasn’t planning on moving.
The worst part is that I got to my desk a little before seven, and the management office doesn’t open until ten. The weird thing is, I’m pretty sure the messages were left on Saturday, which means that, while yes, I was not home during the first two visits, I would’ve been sprawled half-naked on my bed with the a/c blasting when they arrived for the third. Really, one wonders why they called my office line, instead of my cell phone. (This sort of ranks up there with the time, a week ago, when they sent me a letter dated in May, about my not having paid my April rent … I guess it got lost in the Out Box? And since they never responded or made earlier attempts to get in touch with me, I assume they realize the rent was paid.
Anyway, so why was I half naked on my bed on a Saturday afternoon?
We’re moving books at the Bookstore. It’s called a “re-organization.” Customers ask, “But why?”
(Well, one guy said, “I knew you guys were closing! And you said you weren’t! But clearly you lied to me!” And at this point he just started flapping his arms at all the empty bookshelves. I hope he’s not too sad when we don’t close.)
Because Corporate likes to keep us busy, we reply (to everyone but the “I knew you were closing!” crowd). Truthfully: we finally gained a Biography section, and we’re doing a “teen shop” on the lower level, which essentially involves wrapping Popular Fiction (Mystery/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and Romance) around Manga, Graphic Novels, and Young Adult. We’ve also compressed our music section, and lost two CD shelf fixtures. Magazines got shunted back behind the Information desk so that customers can see books when they look in through our beautiful new windows. Moving sections allows us to open up floor space for table displays at the front of store.
While I can see why Corporate might want to implement this “teen shop” design at suburban stores, it really makes no sense given our particular location: We’re in a downtown business district. There are no schools nearby. There is generally nothing in the area to bring teenagers here. Kids, in general, are very rare at our store. When we do “kids’ activity days” (mandated by corporate, of course), it is very common for no children at all to show up! Yet someone still has to wear a stupid self-made construction paper hat and have activities planned in case someone does arrive.
I was not scheduled Friday night, but I went in anyway to work on the merchandising (which is generally a catch-all phrase for ‘moving books around’). I was tasked with moving the Sci-Fi/Fantasy books from its previous location (center of the store shelves on the lower level), to it’s new location: two bays of much taller bookshelves to the left against the wall. I grabbed a library cart and proceeded with gusto. In all honesty, “building” a section is a lot of fun, especially to a book-a-phile like me. It’s not just sticking one book spine out, and the next face out. I mean, for one thing, books I’ve enjoyed (regardless of quantity on hand) got prime shelf location: face out! (That’s why, even though we have only one copy of the Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in section, it’s a face-out).
Personally, I loved it — really, there’s not that many ways to display books on a shelf. You can do spine-outs (when the spine of a book faces out from the shelf), and face-outs (when the cover faces out). I also got to do quite a number of mass market mashes*: that’s when you have a massive quantity of the same title mass market, and you lay one or two books flat on their side, and then do a combination of face-outs and spine-outs on top of those. If you take a peak at Charlaine Harris’ books in the Sci-Fi section at the Bookstore, you’ll see most of them are MMMs. Visually, it’s quite stunning (I just wish I hadn’t had to split them between bookcases).
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as moving the books onto their new shelves. Turns out, Untranslated Literature was supposed to have been moved, and wasn’t. I came in on Saturday, my day off, and spent four hours loading that section onto four library carts. Sadly, it wasn’t enough, but I was able to finish moving Sci-Fi. And it wasn’t bad: because I wasn’t scheduled, I could work with my iPod plugged solidly into my ears, and with no employee lanyard or bulky radio and headset. Actually, it was a lot of fun (although I was pretty tired by the time I left — hence the whole half naked on bed bit, plus I walked to and from, a good four-mile round trip).
It actually took until Sunday to get everything finally sorted — there was a “flow chart” (this section should flow into this section should flow into this section) which had been ignored, but Goatee and I spent two hours and moved Poetry and Shakespeare and Drama into the proper places. There was also a considerable amount of bookshelf dragging, lifting, forcing, and screwing. No, we weren’t having sex with the bookshelf — one of our units, several months ago, had been taken apart by the police while they were looking for a gun. The gun turned out to be fake, their suspect was arrested anyway, and our night crew just decided to take the whole unit down. Which wasn’t a problem until we needed the space again. (One of those shelves was used in our break room for all our advanced reader copies — they were stacked on one of the lunch tables last I saw).
*I don’t actually know if it’s called a “mass market mash”, but it should be. Depending on the height of the shelf, this can also work with QPs (over sized paperbacks).
What you’re looking at is a bookcase that serves double duty as a staircase. Or a staircase that is also a bookcase. I found this image doing a random Google search, trying to find a picture of a “mass market mash” to illustrate a post I’m working on. Instead, I changed course, and a quick Google search (first result for “stair bookcase”) turned up more information on the stair bookcase pictured above.
The 70m2 apartment was remodeled by London-based Levitate Architects, who created “a new bedroom level and increasing the floor area of the flat by approximately one third.” The staircase is both the way to access the bedroom and a perfect place to store books, movies or CDs. “With a skylight above lighting the staircase, it becomes the perfect place to stop and browse a tome,” says Levitate’s Tim Sloan, who also pointed out the unique structure of each step, allowing for anyone to comfortably sit down while picking a book.
While I’d love to have a bookstairshelf in my Dream Studio/Loft/Batcave, I’m going to have to vote “no” on the bathtub bookcase. Books and water just don’t mix.
Generally, I’m not a big fan of memes. When I’m tagged on one, I usually just ignore them.
So when Life of MB tagged me on the “keepsake blog award” last week, I just sort of put it out of mind and made a mental note to leave a “thanks, but no thanks” comment on her blog.
And then …
Well, I started thinking about keepsakes. I mean, the rule of the meme is pretty much “Post a funny or sweet keepsake that tells something about you.”
I don’t know that I actually have anything that I would describe as a keepsake that says anything about me. A collection of old movie stubs dating back to the 1990s? A bayonet my grandfather brought home from Europe?
But there was this image of a fishbowl nagging at the back of my mind: a transparent yellow little plastic fishbowl, scuffed and dirty. It might be cheating to write about it, as I haven’t seen it in years, and I’m not exactly sure how it came into my possession. Really, the only thing I can remember about it is that when I put my nose to the opening and inhaled, I could smell the scents of my 3rd grade best friend Miguel Molina’s apartment.
For first through sixth grades, I attended a private Catholic school in Montgomery County. Then my folks moved us to Columbia and I attended public school, but that’s another story. In any case, during my third grade year, a new student joined us: Miguel. His father was a Venezuelan military officer assigned to Washington, DC. Miguel and I quickly bonded over our mutual love of Lego and Star Trek: The Next Generation. We built giant spaceships out of those little bricks, and what we couldn’t model in plastic, we built with out imagination.
The time line of our friendship is not well remembered: I know he was in the States for several years, but that he wasn’t at the same school after 3rd grade. Where he went, or if he was home-schooled, or even if he moved back to Venezuela but made frequent trips back to the US to visit his father, I don’t remember. I remember goofing around in the house of Mrs. Jeanne, Miguel’s brother’s nurse, reenacting the scene in Batman where Jack Nicholson blasts Jack Palance. And I remember his little brother, who was always sick, dying.
I mean, I wasn’t there when it happened. Some problem with his respirator, a tube that came loose.
I remember the last time I saw Miguel. At the airport. We hugged, and he went through the security checkpoint. We (I think it was me and my Mom, Dad might’ve been there, but I don’t recall) must have taken the Metro down, because I can remember walking back to our car through a parking lot, with a Metro station elevated above us. I remember that a Lego spaceship I made was on the floorboard of the car.
I never saw Miguel again, and as is the case, even though we traded letters for a while, we eventually completely lost touch. Unfortunately, his name is not exactly unique, and although I have tried to find him on the vast reaches of the internet, I’ve never been able to. It hasn’t stopped me from messaging random Miguels on Facebook who have Venezuela as their group: “Are you the same Miguel who attended 3rd grade at…”
No luck – yet – but what is it that’s said about hope? It springs eternal.
I don’t even know where that fishbowl is anymore. In the space of multiple moves, it might’ve cracked, or been thrown away. For all I know, it’s buried deep in a box that itself is tucked far, far away in the depths of my parents’ basement. I just hope that, if it is still somewhere in my possession, it’s never been cleaned — via the nostrils, it’s a time capsule, and without that, it’s just a chunk of ugly cheap plastic. I wish I’d kept more care into possessing it.
Responses, via Twitter and Facebook (because my Twitter updates to my Facebook), generally came in two categories:
Men responded anywhere from “I would go to town nomming on some smoked Gouda vagina” to “If I had a penis made of crackers a cheese vagina would be sublime.”
The response of women was pretty much “That’s disgusting.”
And y’know? They’re right. Cheese gets moldy – ew! – a Skittle vagina would be sublime!
I have a blister on my right foot. While this might be news to you (I would hope so, or I’m clearly twittering about it too much), it is not so much news to me. For the most part, I tolerate it and hope for the day that it breaks or bursts and disappears or whatever blisters do when they aren’t needed anymore. Yes, I’m aware I should probably invest in a new pair of sneakers.
Last night, after a full day at the Office, and then a long night spent running around the Bookstore, the blister felt like it was trying to consume my foot. It’s located between my big toe and my index toe, and just below that little gap between them, and last night it felt like my foot was on fire. Or, y’know, the whole “consumed by blister” thing. I braved the pain Wednesday night to walk home, but there was just no way I was walking home last night. My options were: Metro, and then walk two blocks home; hobble four blocks to Franklin Square, ride the Circulator, and walk two blocks home; or limp myself up to K Street and catch the L2, which drops me off pretty much right in front of my building.
L2! For the win!
Except K Street is being ripped up for some sort of construction. So I hobbled another block east — away from the lights and the noise — to wait for my bus at 19th & K. I checked the NextBus card from my Jesus Phone and it stated that the next bus was three minutes away.
This was at 9:25.
At 10:45, I was finally boarding an L2.
Yeah, I know: I could’ve just crossed the street and caught a Circulator down to Franklin Square for the Woodley Park connection. I probably should’ve just born the pain and jumped on the Metro. But it was a beautiful night, and after waiting so long for the L2, to leave would have been an admission of defeat. It wasn’t so bad: I listened to music, read The Alienist by Caleb Carr, Twittered a bit from my phone (but the battery was low so I was loathe to use it often).
But the bus arrived, and I was happy. Home soon, I thought. But apparently I was really stupid for thinking that.
Honestly, the ride itself was pretty uneventful: but then this lady got on just when the bus turns on to 18th Street, and there was some problem with her Smartrip card, so the driver had to stop the bus and spend five minutes filling out some sort of form. I assume it was so that WMATA could send her a bill in the mail, but I was waaaay in the back and listening to the Shrek 3 soundtrack on my iPod. So after this is all over and we started moving again, she exited at Columbia Road. That’s like four blocks. Seriously, she couldn’t have just walked?
I mean, his body is. But what’s that people sometimes say about death? I forget exactly, but it’s somewhere along the lines of: “A person is not dead so long as we remember them.”
So, from that meaning, Michael Jackson is still very much alive. Friendly warning: that link is totally and completely NOT SAFE FOR WORK. However, it is quite hilariously disturbing the lengths to which people will go to memorialize the King of Pop … on their very own bodies. Here are two of my (relatively safe) favorites:
It’s like his eyes are saying “I want to touch you inappropriately”, but his shoulder is saying “Let us moonwalk!”
I think it is completely fair to suggest that the Metro System is in some way responsible for the accident which occurred two weeks ago. But what gets my blood boiling are some of these lawsuits which blame Jeanice McMillan.
Specifically:
Both lawsuits claim McMillan, the operator of the striking train, “failed to keep a proper lookout for trains lying ahead, failed to maintain an appropriate rate of speed, failed to activate the emergency brake in time to avoid the collision and failed to pay proper attention to the track.”
Bit by bit, shall we?
Part One: McMillan “failed to keep a proper lookout for trains lying ahead.”
False. As explained in great detail on Farm Fresh Meat, the tracks are not completely visible (they loop around a building and some trees). McMillan couldn’t see the other train until she was about 500 feet away, and with a speed limit of 59 miles an hour, six or seven seconds after seeing the stopped train would come the impact. Metro’s trains are rated to stop at a rate of 3.2 mph per second — in other words, it would need about 800 ft to stop.
Part Two: McMillan “failed to maintain an appropriate rate of speed.”
But if Metro itself has rated the track for 59 miles-per-hour, shouldn’t the blame lie with the Agency and not the operator of the train? Especially if Metro relies on automated sensors, and the sensor fails, and no one knows … I don’t see how this can be pinned on McMillan.
Part Three: McMillan “failed to activate the emergency brake in time to avoid the collision and failed to pay proper attention to the track.”
But again, taking a look back at what we now know, by the time McMillan saw the other train stopped, she had less then six seconds to react. And indeed, accident investigators found evidence that the emergency brake was activated. I mean, sure, it was too late to avoid the collision — but that had more to do with line of sight and where the other train was stopped. As for McMillan’s alleged failure to “pay proper attention to the track” … but if she hadn’t been playing proper attention to the track, she probably wouldn’t have even noticed the stop train until she was dead!
In terms of Metro’s responsibility, the suits claim that “by placing operator Jeanice McMillan in that specific position knowing that she had limited or insufficient prior experience as a Metro train operator, limited or insufficient prior training, and limited or insufficient prior or current supervision in that capacity, WMATA failed to exercise reasonable care.”
Bullshit. Please explain to me what a more seasoned train operator could have done differently that would have prevented the accident? Maybe he could’ve just stopped the train for no reason what-so-ever.
I find the lawsuits naming McMillan as a responsible party to this accident to be completely disrespectful to her, and ignorant of cold, hard facts. Here’s another cold hard fact I’m trying to wrap my brain around: it’s easier to blame a dead operator, because he or she cannot provide their side of the story. Goddammit, not good enough. A case can be built against the Metro System without having to stoop to defame a woman who reacted in literally a split second to activate the emergency brake to try to save her passengers. Jeanice McMillan died a hero, she deserves to be remembered as such.
The thing about getting older if you realize adults weren’t kidding when they said they just bought Playboy for the articles, because, really, the porn in it is pretty damn boring. Before I learned that lesson, however, I thought Playboy was the cat’s meow. And, indeed, there are times when I wanted a copy of the magazine: like, for instance, when Charisma Carpenter was featured. Even though I was well into my mid-twenties at that point, I did not pick up a copy myself, rather I asked an employee of the pizza shop I was managing to snag a copy on his way back from a run.
Because there are some things I’m not comfortably buying in a store, even if by store I mean “a run down little corner market staffed by some geriatric foreigner who doesn’t speak a lick of English.”
So flash forward five years (to last night), and I’m sorting some CDs at the Music Information desk at the Bookstore before I reshelve them. An attractive woman with a stack of bargain children books under one arm comes up to the desk with a “please, help me” expression on her face and I smile and ask her, “What are you looking for?” In a fairly thick Spanish accent, she says, “This, please” and hands me a yellow notepad with a title written on it.
I read the title, and immediately felt obliged to ask her, “This is the title that you want? Or did someone ask you to pick this up for them?” And I asked this because A.) I was expecting a family-friendly title, given the kids’ books she’s holding and B.) quite a long while ago, a couple guys in an office somewhere nearby decided to play a prank on one of their coworkers by asking her to stop by our store and pick up a book they’d put on hold. The book was “Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women“, and the woman they played this prank on was somewhere between a mental breakdown and an apocalyptic fit of destruction and rage when I brought the book over to the register. Really, I felt sorry for those guys.
But no, the woman at the desk last night assured me this was a title she wanted, for herself. The title? “Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women.”
First thought: Seriously? This is a book you’re willing to come in to a Bookstore and try to find? And not being able to find it, you ask for help? Honestly, I’d have to dredge every last ounce of courage just to take any of our wide and vast pornographic collection up to the register, never mind asking someone for help finding something like it. Brave, brave lady.
And, yes, we do have a “wide and vast pornographic collection”: much of it is scattered, particularly amongst our assorted Art and Photography sub-sections, which include a book of glossy photos of ladies’ underwear for fetishists, along with the art-nude books, but most of it is in our Sex section (duh). The Sex section includes a giant book with a pink cover and an illustration of a penis, titled simply, “Penises”. Can’t tell you how much I love reshelving that title (which is to say, I tend to just leave it where it is). In addition to hosting the Kama Sutra, the section also holds a wide variety of sex guides, including, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex For Women. Well, it didn’t hold it last night, because we were out. And being that we were out, I gallantly volunteered to see if any of our other stores in the area had a copy.
The guy who answered the phone at our store on Wisconsin Avenue broke out laughing when he entered the inventory number in the computer and saw the title. He put me on hold for a far too brief time period, and I suspect he couldn’t keep from laughing long enough to actually go check the shelf. I had a rather similar experience from the next two stores I called — one poor guy made it sound like the Devil would steal his soul if he ventured into their Sex section, and couldn’t find someone to check for him — but on my fourth call, I hit pay dirt.
Thank you, Alexa (made-up-name). Because I gave her the inventory number, and she pulled it up, and she was all-a-giggle, but not in a “I wouldn’t touch this book with a ten foot pole kind of way”, but a “Oh my god! That’s my favorite section!” My kind of lady. And thirty seconds later, she was back on the phone. “I’ve got it! And you owe me!”
Er, I do? Because, look: I am not the one trying to put my penis up this customer’s ass (not that I would object). As far as I’m concerned, the customer, or whomever’s penis the customer wants to put up her ass, owe Alexa for finding said book.
Well. Maybe it depends on how Alexa wants to be owed.
Sadly, the best part was the customer’s last name. Because I feel at least a bit of responsibility to keep things a little anonymous, I won’t be publishing it. Feel free to guess, however.
When I first heard of Air New Zealand’s new safety video, The Bare Essentials of Safety, I was a little surprised. After all, just four days ago, a passenger on a US Airways flight was arrested for stripping nude in front of his fellow travellers, and here are the Kiwis, encouraging flying buff.
Yes, yes, they’re naked. Naked New Zealanders. Whose bodies have been painted to resemble their flight uniforms. The video is embedded below, and while I suppose, technically, a YouTube of naked people should be classed as “not safe for work”, the simple facts are these: a.) with their body paint, it’s hard to actually notice that they’re naked. And b.) they’re very careful not to show any painted goody-goody parts. (Damn them!)
For those interested, at the end of the video, the dark-haired stewardess remarks that Air New Zealand has nothing to hide (well, nothing that can’t be hidden under body paint, anyway), then turns and walks down the aisle and you get to see her butt! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as absolutely risque as this video gets (despite the somewhat suggestive scene of the same attendant demonstrating how to manually inflate her life jacket.
Truth be told, when I found out there was a blooper video, I was sort of hoping that the reason it was a blooper video is because it showed, y’know, painted nipples and so forth. Alas, it’s about as tame as the original.
ANZ’s purported launch of this video is two-fold: one, to promote fares that they claim “having nothing to hide”, and two, to encourage passengers to actually watch the safety videos at the start of each flight. Personally, I’d more inclined to watch the video if there was a.) more actual nudity of attractive women (sorry, I’m a pig, I know), or b.) if the flight attendants on the plane were, themselves, in body paint. According to the company website, they do fly into BWI …
After a three-day vacation (and, for me? That really is a vacation!), I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I went into the Bookstore this morning. We’re in the middle of a massive store re-organization, which essentially can be described as “shifting sections.” Unfortunately, “shifting sections” means shifting books, and bookcases, and neither is something that can be done “quickly.”
(And, yes, I was looking forward to going back to work.)
This, for example, is why half of our Mystery/Thriller books have migrated to their new shelves. The rest, however, are waiting to move until we can move our Erotic section. Essentially, you go from a bunch of James Patterson font-20 triple-spaced paint-by-numbers, to some novel that’s all about boobs and penises and ridiculous orgies. Er, not that I read those.
Coming in, I was tasked to move our Study Guides/Career books downstairs. A shelving unit had already been moved opposite the south wall of our Reference section. I grabbed a library cart from the backroom and began loading it with books. Unfortunately, the cart — as most are — was pretty wobbly, and it nearly toppled over a few times as I pushed it from the elevator to the new section. As it was, I did destroy most every display in Paperchase which trying to maneuver the large, unwieldy, wobbly cart through the tight alleys of that section.
Look, it’s not like it’s a difficult assignment: take books off shelf, place on cart. Repeat until cart is full. Move cart downstairs via elevator. Take books off cart, place on shelf. Repeat until original section is empty and new section is full.
Okay, first of all: after my first trip, I grabbed another sturdier library cart. It was still pretty unwieldy (when full, it was unwieldy and heavy), but at least it wasn’t trying to topple over when loaded up with GRE and GMAT and LSAT and SAT books.
Oh — but! Oh! So I load it up, and I take it into the elevator, and the elevator goes down a floor, and the door opens, and I’m pushing it out, and — oh! It’s not moving forward. So I try to pull it back, only its not going anywhere. So I sort of slide around, and the front left wheel has fallen into the gap between the elevator and the floor. I pull up on the cart, hoping the wheel will come with it. Sadly, the cart lifted … but the wheel stayed put. So here I am, holding up the cart with one hand, tugging on the wheel with another. Fortunately, a couple coworkers saw my predicament and hurried over to help. It was pretty awkward getting the cart out of the elevator with only three wheels, but we managed to reattach the wheel and get the damn thing over to section.
By this time, however, it was pretty clear we weren’t going to have enough bookshelves. The original section consisted of two bookshelves: the first was a five-bay double-sided bookcase, with eight shelves per bay, and the second a two-bay double-sided bookcase, with the same shelves per bay. The new section was four double-sided bookcases, with twelve shelves per bay. Long story short, I was trying to fit 56 shelves worth of books onto 48 shelves.
Let’s do the math on this, shall we?
Long story short: it wasn’t going to work, and I called our merch supervisor over to explain this. His response was pretty much to tell me to “make it work.” So, I did. I dug some free-standing display stands from the detritus of bookcases and displays taking up room by the music room, and stacked them thick with various study guides. I dragged a bench over to the other side of the case, and loaded it up with more assorted study guides. And you know what? I made it work.
And then our multi-media supervisor came in, saw the section, and pulled a similarly sized bookcase from the abandoned and empty former Gardening section. After all, the master blueprints showed five (not four) bookcases, after all.
“All I know,” I told both of them, “is that I am not re-shifting those books!”
That’s fine, they told me, and I spent the rest of the day shifting our computer books. In fact, after we closed? I stayed in the store for an extra hour and a half pulling computer books off of library carts and putting them onto bookcases. As a matter of fact, I was putting them back on the exact same bookcases — as we emptied the cases, our supes were manhandling the bookcases into their new positions, bolting them together, and allowing us time to reload them.
I am, to put it simply, exhausted. My feet hurt, my legs hurt, my fingers will scream in pain if I so much as touch a book again today.
Sometime after September 11th, I was watching Saturday Night Live. I can’t recall the sketch particularly well (and I’ve never been able to find it on YouTube), but Will Ferrell was playing Neil Diamond, and broke into a singing of America, and the crowd went wild. It pretty much immediately became one of my favorite songs.
I’m sick and tired of walking into the restroom needing to vacate some bowels and find evidence of your presence splashed in little gold dots across the toilet seat. There are two urinals. If you can’t use them, at a bare minimum, lift the toilet seat in the stall.
Because, seriously, I’m a pretty low-key guy. Run over me with a car, “Hey, no big.” Punch me in the face, “Let’s be friends!” But when I’m cleaning your piss off a toilet seat, I WANT TO RIP YOUR DICK OFF AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT. But that won’t work either, because no doubt your penis is tiny and shriveled, and you’ll swallow it before you choke to death on it.
I guess I could just drown you in the toilet bowl. It’ll be particularly unpleasant for you because you don’t flush either.
