Saturday, July 24, 2010

Rumor Has it.

I like reevaluations.
Evaluation is all well and good, but if your math skills are on par with mine, a reevaluation will improve your situation. (Thusly, dear Mother, you have explained my grades in Math lo' these many years, no time to reevaluate during tests).

We're watching the Monarch Chrysalid quite closely. It's a pearlescent geometric nugget of nature.

For those unfamiliar with the process by which a milkweed caterpillar becomes a butterfly,
the body of the larva is nothing but an well-spun shawl that keeps all vital chewing gears and pooping parts safe from the elements. As the caterpillar eats and expels his way to the end of the vine, the shawl stretches to keep all the soft parts soft.
Then, after seven days or so of using all its energy to eat and expel, our little miracle might drag itself to a sturdy (albeit inverted) promontory, weave a little silken pad and make a place to hang out for the next two weeks.
Once it is well-seated, it begins to rip the shawl, and a glistening glob settles into a shape that will become a most fashionable bag that will take a prehistoric powder and sprinkle it into a goop that stews into a butterfly with scaly (sometimes membranous) wings. Then, nature rips that bag away, an alien emerges, pumps life-force into its flappable appendages and goes off in search of sex. Perhaps the use of procreational drugs is involved, sometimes called pheromones.


I sent off some mail last week, an opportunity I relished and exploited to sketch a bee on an envelope. Well, I remember getting a ton of mail in camp, and brother, those stacks of letters remind you of home in their own special way. So Chere Cousine S.C. in North Carolina, relish and exploit every moment made available to you. The friendships you weave in arts and farts and crafts, short and long; above all the sunrises.

Also, nobody wants to be the dead girl in the SLEEPAWAY CAMP MOVIE!!

Summer is past its peak and while it is hot, the days are growing shorter. We use these days to reflect the high points of the year behind.

I happened upon Mythology's old friend Thomas Bulfinch this week. He's a delight, and a choice in pure denial, because I also need to review something new that is not the New Yorker, and I have about three write-ups for September. This is of no use, the next month is clearly August.
By Golly, the store is out of good galleys.

So I have fostered the following paperbacks:

Sick City by Tony O'Neill. It struts the stage like Eddie Murphy [following clip most definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK] Delirious. And the humor is not quite as approachable, or incongruous, or even worthwhile. I think I got over the glorification of track marks and selfish junkies a few years ago. O'Neill's short stories are pretty tolerable, though.

In a similar vein of satire, Albert Cossery, The Jokers. The introduction itself incites scoffing, thank you James Buchan.

As the French are the wittiest race in Europe, so are the Egyptians in Africa. Cossery's comedy derives from contraposition of exquisite French and an exceptionally squalid setting.

Translated rather skillfully from the French by Anna Moschovakis, The Jokers does not sit well before bed. I recommend sitting upright for this bad boy.


Coming in first, Gary Shteyngart. (Not that cute in real life, I'm told)

His writing found its way into my eyeballs when the New Yorker published 20 under 40, and the excerpt from Super Sad True Love Story had me with its bashful honesty and brutal satire. Perhaps I have a thing for bespectacled writers, estranged from the Russian Jewry.
And it's not just that he has an event at the store. No, it was my LOLing on the subway that told myself how much I enjoy the book. I said to myself, "Self! You are really enjoying this novel written in nouveau epistolary fashion, you are laughing out so loud!"

And really, dear readers, what other test does a book need to pass, if it is not causing you to miss your stop on the train, or LOL?

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Look out honey, I'm using technology

I love having Tuesdays to myself.
I don't have to worry about finding space for the exciting New Releases, although I do get pumped about new titles, and seeing what is being regularly replenished.
I finished Fun Home this morning, enjoyed perusing
the shelves here in Zero-Dome, and have been impelled to use the fleeting hours to read/write El Gran Novela americana.

But whom shall I use as inspiration?
Use this fun (and questionable) algorithm to find out whose writing you emulate!


According to the past five blog entries I have here at Moving Prepositions, I, like, write like :::

David Foster Wallace (haven't read him yet),
Cory Doctorow (ditto),
Nabakov,
and the oh-so-horrid Lovecraft (also never touched, save the copies of a Lovecraft tribute that I counted, packed up and returned)

I have yet to decide whether this is:
1. all that credible (what with the simplicity of web-programming these days)
2. an obstacle I steer to avoid in shaping my own words
3. none of the above
4. all of the above

The store has acquired a pet. Last Thursday, I noticed a fat little inch and a half of Monarch larva feeding his way through the wilting of our weekly floral arrangement. By Friday, our florist had made accommodations for the tiny pest with plenty of milkweed and oregano (whose floral buds are remedial!). When I opened the shop on Saturday morning, the creature had fattened up to about 2 inches, and flung his poop all over the new David Mitchell title and the remaining copies of the third Stieg Larsson. He continued to munch and as Attenborough says, deeeeficate until yesterday, at around 4:30 pm, when he crawled to the underside of a faded sunflower to pull one of these.


Enjoy the linkage today! I had fun throwing it in. Too bad the "IWRITELIKEATRON" can't take my hypertext into account.

Incidentally, is anyone out there interested in/familiar with Storyspace?
From the site, you'd think people who place a high-value on word-structure would hire a decent web-designer, but I'm more interested in the software.

Oh and this entry?
I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Monday, July 19, 2010

Adventures in Kitty-sitting

I'm cat-sitting for some teacher friends who live near the bookstore.

Zero is a former tom who sheds fine white hairs on a sparsely decorated, but very nice two bedroom overlooking Fulton Street. Zero has a tabby-vest and apparently, his poop smells terrible, but so far, we've been quietly enjoying company. This is Day 1.

I am still reeling from the physical demand of last week.

The bookstore had a huge party for David Mitchell, whose latest Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (a Dutch colonialist, so I infer it is pronounced "dazoot") enjoyed a rave on the cover of the New York Times Book Review (by Dave Eggers, no less). We scrambled to make the store perfect, and plenty of folks noticed--the perfect part, not the scrambling.

I've been a fan of cold pasta these past few weeks, they're a nice alternative to cooking in a kitchen that is too narrow not to conjure hell when we broil chicken, boil eggs and melt cheese. I threw tri-color rotini, 1/2 a jalapeno, 2 pepperoncini, celery, fresh basil from the roof, pine nuts and turkey bacon together. Lunch for a week, bam.

Also, MayaBee started getting stuffy so I pretty much consumed two heads of garlic. No vampire bites for me!

I also wanted to share the notion of a watermelon salad that I tried at the FOJBBQ.

Long-lost-Long-Island's mother hollowed out a watermelon, sliced some plum tomatoes and red onions; poured 1 part balsamic (maybe red-wine), 1 part olive oil; and sprinkled fresh black pepper, good salt, and feta cheese. Suh-nap, that was tasty.

Any other delicious cold salads I should be trying?

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Martha kept talking about a Heat Wave

I've let this blog get mighty slack.

It's been months, and while there may not have seemed to be much to tell, I get the urge to cram a whole story in this space. Fear not, gentle reader, I will spare you the digest of the changing seasons.

We are only just in the thick of summer, and while last week kept citizens' hopes up in the high seventies, the Fourth of July forward has been pure misery. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but 100 degrees Fahrenheit melts all sense of hyperbole.

The weekend itself was lovely. Thanks to Uncle James' graduation celebration, I've connected with long-lost cousins in Brooklyn. I wish I had a better handle on this whole extended relation business, because the way I see it, family is family. Perhaps one day, my grandchildren will try to figure how they are related to my first cousins' grandchildren.
Anyways, this particular bloodline grew up in Long Island, and her own first cousins throw quite the an annual Let Freedom Ring-er.
I brought a Napa Cabbage Slaw, but when I heard the guest-list topped 200, it hardly seemed worth mentioning. I love visiting folks without pretense. Rather than sitting in the shade of the Beach house, I got along with the other side of my new cousin's line (matrilocal, wassup.) There was plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to do.
It's been so long since I've been to the beach (I hardly think a spring day with Coney Island amusements counts).

We danced long into the night, but at around 11, the Brooklynite/Twentysomethings felt it was time to turn in. (I had to close shop on Monday). We said goodbye to the folks holding down the beach house and found some comfy couches to crash into at one Aunt's homebase. Falling alseep was easier said than done.
One of the long-lost cousins (who shares my hometown!) felt that everyone getting ready for bed signaled intense desire to crowd around a laptop and watch a movie! In addition, there were the adorably little yappy house dogs that reminded the guests who was boss. I reached at sleep, while I stretched out in the air-conditioning, finally nodding off around 24:00.
Around 2:30, the hosts finally stumbled home. The dogs announced this, as well as kitchen lights and it was all I could do not to eavesdrop to hear how the party had ended.
This particular 4th had been special because it also celebrated the hosts' daughter's High School Graduation (woo, teenagers!) Apparently, things were starting to get out of hand so Mama Host made a judgment call and kicked the inebriated teenagers out of her house and onto the beach of Long Island Sound. Drinking, smoking, getting loud, I'm sure we're all familiar with the circumstances upon which memorable parties usually end.
So then, things get dark again, and I drift into dreams once more.
At 3:00am, the proud graduate comes and wakes up Long-lost-Long-Island-Cousin, and asks her to come back out to the beach house. Did they decide to have a nightcap?

No gentle readers, apparently some other responsible adults had forgotten their daughter's flip-flops at the beach house and driven back to retrieve them (they were facing a 10 hour drive back to Buffalo, I guess the flip-flops were important).
When these responsible adults had left the beach house, it had been locked up and dark. When they returned, the lights were on, the door was bust open and the music was blaring. Luckily, one of the responsible adults is an officer of the law, and he must have made it very clear to the young hedonists that B&E is illegal and seeing as how the culprits were all at least 18 years of age, they would be tried as adults (and I'm not sure he had to explain much further). Then, they phoned our hosts, which explained the 3 am wake-up.

The next morning, we all lounged and got to know each other over bagels and schmear, and then I caught a ride to the LIRR and rode into the sweltering city and my very busy job.

The week has been swell. The bookstore is doing fine in the summer, especially since we've installed 2 new A/C units that help keep things cool while browsers crowd the shelves. I rang up a special celebrity yesterday, but in the interest of preserving his privacy, I'll only mention he had good taste and spent a nice chunk of change.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go shower for the third time today.