My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency presents: Best and Worst Commercials, 2006 Holiday Edition.

Worst: Started airing a few years ago, but I'd happilly forgotten it until now: A series a of beautiful people, in beautiful places, with beautiful wind making their beautiful clothing whip around all their shapeliness look into the camera and send you a deep message for the holidays: It's not your clothes, it's not your music, it's not where you live and it's not how you dress that tells the most about who you really are.

It's your watch.

This christmas season, Seiko wants you to cast off your old concepts of vanity and self-importance...and adopt some newer, more expensive ones. This commercial, sadly, isn't online, but you can get a pretty good overview of what I'm taking about with their website's flash presentation.

Casey's reaction tends to make me think that I'm possibly the only person in the world who finds it so damn amusing, but hey, there it is.



Best: As much as I haven't always loved the Mad TV Cast's Sierra Mist commercials, I must say that I found this year's Commercial for Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash, featuring the Holiday Hawk, to be quite unexpectedly enjoyable. Check it out here.

On that note, YouTube is, one of these days, gonna go ahead and make my commercial-describing skills completely obsolete. How will I keep my place, gently embedded in the hearts of minds of my beloved readers?

Why bringing you news of ingenious internet advertising campaigns, like this one for the Philips Bodygroom, first! Don't miss the music video, or the description of "Where to Shave", both located in the main menu.


And since it seems the internet has made my job a great deal easier this year, I will sign off for now, wishing you a Merry Christmas, and reminding you, this Holiday season, to keep the spirit of joy in your heart, to give freely to others, to love, and to give every person, rich and poor alike, the same treatment, no matter their manner or apparel.

Unless they're not wearing a watch.


On with it.

I check my mail today and find the current e-mail in my inbox:

To: Suedecaramel@gmail.com
From: 66anonymous66@hotmail.com
Date: Saturday, December 9, 2006 8:55 PM
Subject: Hey Operation Suporvisor

The shit is about to hit the fan

Consider yourself warned

This seriously freaks me out. I have no idea what this could possibly be about, or who it could be from. It obviously has something to do with work, because "Operation Suporvisor" (sic) is my title. But I sat here for an hour trying to think of any thing that I've done wrong that could possibly "hit the fan", and I can't come up with a single goddamned thing. I've been working my ass off. I love my bosses and they like me, I think. And I love that store. I want nothing more than to see it's success, and I feel like I've made that clear. I've been nice to everybody, which is easy-- Iike almost everyone there. I am wracking my brain for anything I've said that could be considered offensive, and just can't come up with anything. I honestly have nothing to worry about.

But I'm really worried. I love this job.

I hope this figures itself out sooner than later.



On with it.

I finish my book today, close it, and find myself still at work three and a half hours after I should have left. It is a rare thing for me to finish a book, though I probably read more than the average person. Most of the novels I endeavor to start reading just don't make it across my finish line, the most recent being Dave Barry's Tricky Business and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. There is no pattern here.

I am wandering around the store, half looking for a replacement for the force that has just come and filled my life then left me standing in a void, half simply having no reason to go home. Bill, who I am drawn to, is rearranging the iPod accessories section. I strike up a conversation which, since it is not directly about work, makes me instantly self-conscious about what I have to say. When I was in elementary school, this kind of discomfort might have caused me to lash out, picking a fight with the object of my interest. I am an adult now, though, so instead, I just pick a fight with an object.

"These organic yoga mats annoy me." I say in his general direction, and he cocks his head. I pick one out of it's display and examin it's grainy brown color, a condescending hue if I ever saw one. "Was there really a need for this? Were we clear-cutting a forest of yoga mat trees?" I am miserably aware of the fact that there was a much more suave and intelligent way to say this, and I try to ignore that, only to find myself hoping that he doesn't pick up on the larger flaw, which is, of course, that if yoga mats were really made from yoga mat trees, than they'd already be organic. When he's still said nothing in reply, I tell him, more quietly, "Sometimes, I go on rants. You'll find that out about me."

"Okay. But they are a good development." He picks one up and reads the label. "These are made out of 100% Pico Plant fiber."

"Are you implying that we're running out of vinyl?"

"No, but these will decompose in a landfill." He says earnestly. Bill is one of those people that is so nice, it's impossible; so non-judgemental, you end up judging yourself in his presence just to make up for the deficit. "They create less waste."

"Thank god," I say, sarcastically. "I always say, the biggest challenge our environment faces right now is all the unrecycled yoga mats that pollute our air and water." In truth, I simply hadn't thought about it from this angle. But I wasn't to give up my armor of cynicism.

"Well, it's a start." He says, pleasantly, and goes back to his work. I turn my back to him and straighten a few books, wanting to rant on about how there might be more global good accomplished if people learned to be fiscally responsible with, say, the thirty dollar difference between the price of the organic yoga mat and it's cheaper synthetic cousin, or even sent that money off to Greenpeace, if that floats their boat. I wanted to point out that they could use that money to buy organic snacks for a rally against the excessive burning of fossil fuels or the tiny little cages they put those bleeding heart chickens into before they become McNuggets. I wanted to ask him to be my friend.

Instead, I say, "Great. Let's give those yoga people one more thing to feel self-righteous about."

He turned to look at me again. "You are on a rant, aren't you?"



On the ride home, I wonder if my bitterness was fueled, in part, by a yoga person I know who, at that exact moment, was neglecting to get back to me about tentative plans we had made, and it strikes me that it's always the decent people who motivate me to act like an asshole. I turn on the radio to washout this thought; 94.9, in it's all-holiday-music mode, is playing "Let There be Peace on Earth" performed by some country singer with a twangy voice. I listen, and am brightened, if just for a moment, by the simple words, and that special, subtle effect Christmas can have on you, to make you enjoy something you'd despise eleven months out of the year. Then, in the next verse, the country singer's voice is replaced by the voice of a young boy. It's meant to illicit feelings of innocence and nostalgia, carefully chosen to sound immature and somewhat nasal; suddenly, all I can think of is some far more talented child who auditioned, getting passed over because some record exec. with an eye on the bottom line said, not to the boy's face, "Nah, this kid's too good. We need to a kid that sounds like a kid. A common denominator." All I can think of is that kid not getting a callback, and wondering why. Hearing the song on the radio and being bitter, knowing he's better than Nosey McCan'tSing, but secretly wondering if maybe he really isn't.

I don't think I quite fit into the target demographic, here. Clearly, I am not the common denominator, either.

I pull into my drive way, and check my cell: still no text message from the yoga girl. I think about landfills, and how dishonest they are: let's take all this trash that we can't get rid of, trash that'll never be anything but trash, and bury it. Wait for some green grass to grow back, it'll look nice. We're making our own geography here. The rolling hills of Scotland, almost. Why not just a warehouse, I wonder. And where were the yoga people when that decision was being made?

A big pile of trash covered by a thin layer of soil and grass; it's not much of a disguise, but, then, neither is picking a fight with a yoga mat. I can't help but wonder who came up with this concept, and why.


On with it.

I feel, lately, the need to be fake. Things that are going on in my head, I feel like I can't write them here, for the first time. The guy I can't allow myself to expose my continued vulnerability to, anymore. The girl who I have no let understand how badly I want to get to know her. Problems with Zack's family that are not mine to publicize.

At night, I lay in bed and these things swirl through my mind, and I feel the need to commit them to paper, or the modern day equivalent. The process I've developed to deal with my day-to-day problems involves a detailed equation, reconciled only when I've put it into words precise and rhythmic enough to be worthy of an audience, then shared. In the end, the sum of my circumstances and neuroses is humanity, the story of my character, and if it's written well enough, than people will love me for the confession, no matter how heinous the crime.


Part of the situation that I am not at liberty to publicize in this manner winded up bringing me, today, somewhere I did not comfortably fit in, a place where the reality is harsh and uncomfortable, so much that going there was not only a physical journey, but a leap forward, too, in time: most often, we age at a regular pace, maybe different for all of us, but pretty constant throughout any one life. Every so often, though, things happen that push you forward at a dizzying speed, and you stumble forward, haphazardly maturing out of nessecity. To get through these things, you understand, you have to be a little bit more of an adult than you ever planned on being.

Without giving away too much detail, I hope, I found myself waiting with Zack and his brother in St. Mary's, just outside the psych ward, just after the elevators and before the locking doors. We layed on the stairs and listened to MP3's on Ian's cell phone, and I stared up at the concrete bricks painted with that institulional paint, a beige so bland that it hardly even qualifies as a color, and suddenly I was overcome with a sense of familiarity.

"This feels like high school." I said. Zack and Ian acknowledged me, but then moved on with the conversation, leaving me to decipher the deeper implications.


I'm reading Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper right now, a recommendation from Barb, a teacher at Andover who I miss since I've stopped going. It's excellent; I don't feel qualified to give a full-blown recommendation until I finish it, but, unlike with most books, I have no doubt that I will. The book is dramatic, sad and complex, with a new tragic revelation, like a punch to your gut, ever third page or so (but not in a bullshit, unbelievable, Forged by Fire kinda way. Moreover, it's a way that feels familiar to anyone who's ever gotten the sense that life really does love to kick you when you're down.) In the midst of all this tradgedy, though, the author's wit comes through in a real way, and, in spite of it all, you find yourself wanting to laugh just as often as you want to to cry.

You should go to Border's Brunswick and pick it up. I hear they have a great selection, there.



On with it.

The problem, as I see it, is ambiguoity: for any given situation, the answer is different. There is no hard-and-fast rule whether virtue is to be found in letting go of what hurts or fighting for what doesn't. Romantic movies spout different morals to this end: The Mexican's somewhat famous morale is that, between two people who love each other, you never reach the point of "enough is enough", but you get the sense in the movie that they just might reach that point anyway. In Casablanca, she turns and leaves the man she loves for a more promising future, but you can't help but think she should have stayed. Romeo and Juliet stay together forever through all costs, but the costs are high. More and more, romantic comedies are featuring a new kind of love story: the kind where a couple loves, changes each others lives in a meaningful way, then parts amicably; these stories, The Breakup and Prime to name a couple off of the top of my head, end on a new kind of resolution, where there's a scene at the end where they see each other and smile, pleasantly, acknowledging their mutual past and bearing no ill will. It's not exactly happily ever after, but it's all some of us dare to dream of, anymore.

In California, we had a "talking circle" every day before massage class began, where we sat and shared whatever was on our mind; things of significance, things of insignificane; a lot of west-coast touchy-feely crap, really, but when in Mariposa. There was a somewhat creepy older man there, Chuck was his name, I believe, and no one really liked partnering up with him very much, touching and being touched by his leathery, backwoods skin, but in a group we managed to get along with him pretty well, poking well-meaning fun at the weird things he said, and he learned to take it in stride. One day in the circle though, he said something that didn't sit well with a lot of the people there: he began telling the story, very casually, of a woman he had loved years ago, a relationship which had ended badly, and how he'd spent every year since then, twenty or thirty or so in all, trying to get her to just talk to him. It was clear that, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what made this strange, or why she'd stopped accepting his calls. The reaction of this was something of an uproar; a lot of people had a lot of opinions. One woman, Pauline, started lecturing him in the all-knowing way she must have used on her kids about how desperately important it was for him to let go. I didn't like Pauline particularly before that, and I especially didn't like what she had to say. My anger came out, at first, in twisting hands and stifled grunts, and as the people to either side of me tried to offer their support and quiet me, I couldn't take it any longer. I got up and walked away, breaking the circle, and the unspoken rule not to walk away when someone else was speaking.

What I couldn't put into words them was not that I agreed with Chuck, in particular, that he was doing the right thing in clinging to the love of this woman, but that Pauline had no basis in which to assert he was wrong. No one in that room had the right or the knowledge to say whether what he was doing was foolish or wise, whether it would end badly; whether it would be worth it if it did. Despite the way it looked on the surface, I sided slightly with him, for my own reasons: this was during the longest fight that Jeremey and I had ever had, the one that lasted more than a year. I had gotten use to people telling me that I needed to let go of my love for him, gotten used to my own, steadfast reply: Jeremey and I, we could last through anything. Maybe he wouldn't take my calls, maybe I'd shed enough tears over him to drown an ocean. But Jeremey and I, I were sure, would be the truest kind of friends, forever.


Tonight, he was the one I called when I learned that once again I'd been lied to by the person I hate being lied to the most. I wasn't wrong in hanging on to my love for Jeremey, and it's good that I wasn't: there are friends I tend to give to and friends I tend to take from. Jeremey is one of the latter, but in a situation where I know I'm going to fall apart, I tend to choose to take from the givee's: if you're going to be humiliated by your tearful vulnerability, it's preferrable that it be with someone who's own tearful vulnerability you know well. While I was on the phone with Jeremey, the subject of our discussion beeped on the other line, and asked me to meet him for dinner.


Ambigouity is one problem, maybe even the problem, but credibility, or lack thereof, is another: when lying becomes a pattern, the truth becomes this distant...I don't know. I don't know. But the reason I don't know is because of the sheer distance of the truth. What I do know is this: those cartoons where the character in the dessert sees a mirage and begins to shovel the sand into their mouth because they believe it's water, that's credible. One might wonder why the brain lets the heart believe it's drinking. The reason of course is this: the brain knows that when survival is nearly impossible, and the priority is keeping things as painless as possible, hope is more important than water.


Standing in front of my mirage, I resolved myself to swallowing the grainy liquid he offered up, knowing that once he drove away, I'd be coughing up dust. The thing is, it's no longer even really a quesiton of whether or not he is lying to me. It's a question of whether or not I can bring myself to believe him.

Whatever the truth is, it may be too distant to matter anymore. Ambigouity is taking hold, and I don't know whether to fight for the truth or for what I want to be true, to give up entirely or to just try and believe. I know, for sure, two things: I'm tired of writing this, and I need a drink.

On with it.

"If there's no one beside you,
when your soul embarks,
Then I will follow you into the dark."

This song has been stuck in my head today. At our morning meeting at work, the question of the day was "What is your favorite song?" These questions are meant to help us get to know each other, an old work orientation cliche, but this time, with new prospects: More than ever, those I've held dearest are absent my life, spread far and wide throughout the state and country. In past, my transient group of friends, as opposed to the longer-lasting varierty, has revolved around my current job, generally taking a good six to seven months to kick in. Hearing, every day, one more tidbit of what I have in common with people helps me to draw my hypothetical social cirlces in my mind-- a drawing that I must keep in mind will be wiped clean in a couple of days when the trainers-- who I tend to get along the best with-- leave, and I'm forced to resume the more authorative stance of working above someone more than I currently work alongside them.

Whenever I ask, in my personal life, the "favorite song" question, I am disappointed to find that 98% of people's immediate response is "Oh, I have a lot of favorites, I can't pick one." This saddens me, as, being one of the few who has a definitive favorite song, I understand that there is something about having one song that is just you, and only one. The lift you feel when you hear it is maybe a little different than the more common "Oh, I love this song"; It's a moment that feels as though it's just for you, and when you are surrounded by others who let the moment pass by without stopping to feel it, then it helps remind you of yourself, your individuality. There are things that are only for you, and here, this is one of them.

Today Zac S.-- not to be confused with Zack S. (husband)-- named Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You into the Dark", one of my recent favorites, getting it stuck in my head in a solemn joy that lasted most of the morning, and came back again that night. I found myself transported into other times in which I heard it playing: Once, in an apartment, on an ironic night, hearing it once and then again. Two distinct times that sandwiched a defining moment, and perhaps a moment that defined me as something I'd prefer not to be. The first time I heard it that night, it left me feeling determined. The second, it left me feeling...immeasurably sad, a failure, someone who's actions were inevitably guided by a deep, archaic force that leaves willpower looking like a crushed can in a gutter.


More recently, I remember laying in bed with Zack, our heads on pillows, lying on our sides and looking at each other. For some reason, I had asked him to sing to me, and he did, some song he knew, something to make me smile. Somewhere in our ensuing conversation, I was reminded of the song, and the night, and I explained to him that I could no longer listen to it without crying. He asked why and I explained it, in more detail than you're entitled to here (or rather, details that he is entitled to have fairly exclusively, details that I leave out, not out of lack of esteem for you, but for attempted respect for him.). I could see, having explained the context, that he understood, but not completely, not knowing the song the way I did, and so I sang it to him, in my broken, shaky voice, with tears streaming down my face.

"Love of mine,
Someday you will die,
But I'll be close behind;
I'll follow you into the dark.
No blinding light,
Or tunnels to gates of white,
Just our hands clasped so tight,
Waiting for the hint of a spark.

If heaven and hell decide,
That they are satisfied.
Illuminate the No's,
On their vacancy signs.
If there's no one beside you,
When your soul embarks,
Then I will follow you into the dark."


It's a simple song, with a simple melody, and a simple theme: unconditional love. What I've learned about unconditional love is this: It exists, but don't get it mixed up with the kind of love that changes as your relationship with a person does, which is more common. In my experience, these things are layered: The top layer is a blanket of ambulatory love, which changes with the seasons, running thick and thin. When thick, it's fascinating and powerful; you could swear you'd do anything for a person, move mountains, walk through fire, all the standby clichés. When thin, it's maybe more comfortable; if too thin, it may not feel like love at all, maybe more like anger or disdain. Circumstances come and go, times change, and so does this vagabond devotion-- this changing tide is, more often than not, what leaves people feeling cynical about love itself.

What people don't understand, perhaps, is that under all this pulsing instability, most often, is a foundation. Hard, unmoving, steadfast and true, that rare love that truly is unconditional. So low-laying, you may not even know it's there when you've run out of the stuff up top. But, if you're lucky enough to feel it, and have it felt for you, you'll find again and again that it's the stuff that lasts, and that it can be rebuilt upon as many times as your heart can stand it. Which is a suprisingly large number.


What I believe about mine and Zack's relationship-- the husband, not the coworker-- is that we're built on a slightly thicker foundation. Maybe thing I've done, maybe things he's done, maybe things we've both done have rocked it, but the tears we've shed in our regret haven't made their way to any cracks yet, so I'll go on, unafraid to cry as I look in his eyes and sing that I will follow him into the dark.


On with it.

So I generally like to avoid the kind of "personal update" posts like the one I'm about to embark on, but firstly, I'm crazy busy lately, meaning almost no one who might regularly have some contact with me has any idea of where I am and what's happened to me, and secondly, I hate that the most recent post on the site (which I've just spent the past few months working on driving new people to) is a link to a questionable rough draft of a really creepy story I wrote in the middle of the night. I do like the story, which has as a working title of "Andrew" (no relation, honestly, to any Andrew I've ever met), but, judging from the lukewarm reception from those who have read it, I think it has a face only a mother could love.

The other story, "The Best Man", opened to much better reviews, despite the sore need for improvements which have been racing to my mind. The day after I churned it out, I was completely excited to get busy editing, but the next night, I wrote "Andrew", and soon after started in at Border's where, as we prepare to open on November 16th, my hours have been much longer than anyone could have expected.

So, some quick, and relevant updates.

• The job is good. I'm happy-ish with my pay, relieved to be working so close to home, thrilled to be working in a bookstore, and challenged by and respected for the work I do. I have an office. People suck up to me (I control their paychecks.) My boss is impressed by how quickly I'm catching on to the work, as am I: you never think you're capable of doing things until you have to, it seems. I'm considering making moving up in this company my practical career goal, settling on this for my main source of income. It's hard to tell whether or not I'd be happy for life in a place like this, having only been there about a week now, but I can see it happening, and that, well, that's a first. Plus, it would be nice to stop worrying about where I want to be in the future, and start focusing on what I want to accomplish in the future, in terms of, for instance, my impractical career goals, among other things.
• The dog got neutered on halloween and, in my opinion, his behavior has already improved. There's a post waiting to be written about the events leading up to this finally being pushed through the financial red tape (with shocking photos!) Hopefully, I get to this in the near future, being that I have some time off this weekend (Sunday's off, and only eight or nine hours tomorrow!)
• The latest few e-mails I've sent out have gone yet unanswered, which leaves me wondering about my status with the people I sent them to. I thought I'd give this a bullet, just in case it might speed up the process of finding out where I stand.
• I need to talk to my mom to find out if she can help me pay to get my hormones tested and buy a custom hypnotherapy CD. I've stopped seeing my therapist, who was supposed to be helping me with the vaginismus, for a variety of reasons-- the biggest of which involving her extremely inconvenient location, but before I did, she suggested that balancing my potential overload of estrogen might ease the pain I feel with arousal. As for the hypnosis, Border's will let me play CD's in my office (did I mention I have an office?), and I'm thinking about taking the audio from a hypnosis CD and layering it behind some musical tracks with an audio editor like nero or something, to achieve a subliminal effect. I hope to give me, and everyone who comes into my office with a direct deposit form, a better chance of getting laid in the near future. sex is good. sex is natural.

I guess the point of this post is to let you know that I haven't abandon you, whether you're a new reader who's starved and confused without your daily serving of Me (An average of 65 grams* of goodness in every post!), or someone who has the misfortune of knowing me in real life. I will emerge soon, squinting, into the light of real life.

If you need me before then, I'll be in my office.

On with it.


*Daily value not established.

Thursday, playing DDR, I started thinking about a stripper playing it, and from there, I ended up writing a 3335 word rough draft in a little under five hours. Needs editing, and I mean a lot of editing, but those of you who have read it so far have given me some pretty positive feedback.

Tonight, I was laying in bed, unable to get to sleep, I started thinking about naked lego people. And from there, I came up with this.

4,289 words of the most twisted shit that's ever come out of me, I kid you not. Less than three hours. Again, a very rough draft. Again, I haven't reread it-- would probably give me nightmares if I tried to do that now. And do not read that if you have a weak...anything.


Prolific? Maybe. Disturbed? Definitely.


On with it.

FieryGwenivere: The bush plug in your profile reminds me of divine-interventions.com
C LABRACK: this baby jesus buttplug...that's for a discriminating customer right there
FieryGwenivere: yeah, it is indeed
FieryGwenivere: gotta love that they're all silicone, that is some high-quality shit
C LABRACK: grim reaper dildo
FieryGwenivere: haha, that's what a woman really needs to overcome the pervasive sense that masturbation is wrong
FieryGwenivere: When I had my first holy communion, they gave me a glow-in-the-dark cross to hang on my bedroom wall. That's the shit they shoulda given me, right there.
FieryGwenivere: Same basic message, but a little more punch.


Recent converations with Casey, Serena, Emily and others have shown me that I, beyond a shadow of a doubt, have the most intensive knowledge of online sex toy stores of anyone I've ever met. Whether you're looking for a holy holler or just to save a dollar, I know what it's made of, how well it works, where you can get it and for how much. This is either a point of pride for me or a point of shame for my husband. To be decided later.

Another convesation with Casey, earlier tonight, had us comparing the different styles of and abilities of writers we know. When I asked him to rate me among them, he said I'd have to finish something before he could a sense of my rank. I told him I finished things all the time, just not fiction, and continued to say that I wasn't really drawn to the genre anymore, and, resting on a preference for personal essays, I doubted that I'd ever see a piece of fiction of my own published.

I suppose that planted something of a seed for me because later, as I was playing DDR for a cardio workout I sorely, I found myself writing a few lines of a story in my head. Without my really trying, these few lines fleshed themselves out into a full story, which is rare for me-- most of the stories I think about never get written, for lack of either a beginning, middle, or an end. Most times, I get a couple of good lines but can't link them to anything meaningful at all. When I realized the story had written itself, I gave myself permision to stop exercising. The energy to get up and move may be rare, but the motivation to sit down and right something is rarer.

I sat down at just after midnight. Three thousand, three hundred and fifty-five words and five hours later, I have a rough draft on my hands. I don't know if it's good; I know my neck is sore and I'm too tired to proofread. I knew if I didn't get it all out, it would become one of those unfinished things that I save to a filename I forget and never get back to. Now it's out, and I can do more with it sometime when sitting up isn't such a literal pain in the neck; in the meantime, read it if you've got some time, and some extreme understanding for the concept of a first draft. Takes a lot of trust for a writer to let someone read their first draft. Especially if they haven't so much as re-read it themselves yet.

The Best Man

On with it.

So, Playtex is getting a lot of airtime lately advertising it's pseudo-revolutionary sport tampons. I don't wear tampons or play sports, so it's difficult to be critical, but low and behold, I'm going to do it anyway: commercials and the website are tooting the three uniquely sport-friendly levels of protection (which they have dubbed, in a rare moment of prepositional confusion, "levels to protection") including a "one-of-a-kind backup layer (that won't let you down!)", "Unique 360 degree coverage", and a "Contoured Applicator with a No-Slip (trademark) Grip."

No-Slip Grip on a sport tampon applicator? Do they expect that their olympain clientelle will be inserting the tampons mid-sprint?

No goal, Playtex. No goal.


Saw Flags of our Fathers tonight. Pretty standard WWII flick, maybe a little less impressive than I was expecting: perhaps in an effort to collapse a book of 400 pages into a movie of only just over two hours (despite how long it felt), they went for a non-linear approach which made it difficult to follow, especially when considering that, throughout the whole movie, you only really got to know three characters, though you were expected to know all of them by name to make sense of it. There was the leitmotif battle scene gore, easily passed off as a nessecity to accurately potray the horrors of war but, in reality, just as much an attempt to drive in the younger male audiences, and the old men suffering from flashbacks to drive the cautionary morale of the story: war is bad. Also, an interesting storyline involving the hardships a Native American soldier encounters as he fights for the nation that has so mistreated his people. But, overall, I felt little watching this movie, as I do watching any historical movie that lacks a central romantic relationship. Perhaps it's my own disinterest in history; perhaps, it's a generational thing. Either way, what I did find fascinating was this: the moment the very first credit hit the screen, myself and the ten other patrons under fifty stood up immediately, and made a bee-line for the door, exasperated by the thirty minutes of slow-moving epilogue and wrap-up. I heard a forty-year-old man make a cynical comment to his son about the length as I left, but looked at those who were still seated: the majority of the few seats that had been sold for the Tuesday afternoon showing were occupied by elderly patrons, all of which who were still staring up at the screen, thoughtful or teary-eyed, their hands held up to their faces.

Guess I just wasn't part of the target audience.


After the movie, with time to kill, I went shopping. Among other places, I visited Bookland, currently Brunswick's only large bookstore, once part of a small chain. Emily and I were particularly fond of the one that graced the Tontine mall in Lewiston, eventually bought out by Mr. Paperback, and, more recently, shrunk to a third of it's previous size. In it's hayday, however, I went every chance I got: It was there that Emily and I met and obsessed over Randy, the only boy she ever dated who turned out to be just as gay as her. I discovered Charles Bukowski there, sitting in a chair adjacent to the poetry section and leafing through "Love is a Dog from Hell" for an hour or so each time I went, before I could finally afford to buy it. I discovered recently, when I started looking to buy the very same book as a Christmas present for my Father-in-law that the Mr. Paperback serving in it's place has a terribly inadequate poetry section, which is more than can be said of Waldenbooks in the Auburn Mall or Books, etc. in Falmouth, both of which seem to have gotten rid of their poetry sections altogether. Not unlike myself, these business have evolved past the overly emotional medium; still, it seems more my perogative to do this than theirs.

I eventually found the book, gratefully, at Border's in Portland. I've always loved Borders for the same reasons I love Bookland and Barnes and Noble and even the evil and fictional Foxbooks from You've Got Mail: a mix, I suppose, of literary fascination and raw materialism, with just a hint of starry-eyed ambition to be among the names that line the shelves. Overwhelmed with these two distinct kinds of greed and surrounded both by cultured, intelligent people and all the materials I could need to rise to their ranks, I am happy in my wanting, unable to grow bored. It was because of this feeling that I was particularly excited about an application I submitted months ago to the Border's which is opening in Brunswick, and particularly discouraged when it seemed as though they would never call back. They did, eventually, and last week, I got word that I was hired as a supervisor, to begin training this friday for the store opening in mid-November. I'm happy about this turn of events: retail, in my experience, is infinitely preferrable to the food industry, and starting as a supervisor at the store's opening presumedly means I'll be in a fine position for promotion to management in the store's first years. Still, something the interviewer, who was downright angry for a human resources employee, said was bothering me: she mentioned how angry and threatened the owner of Bookland had been rather bitterly, saying that there was more than enough business for everyone, if they can simply compete. It didn't occur to me quite then that it's not so realistic to expect that it can: an independent business, the Brunswick bookland is one of only two remaining, and it seems tradtionally naive to bank upon the loyalty of their current customer base: hell, for ten dollars an hour, I'll be working for the enemy.

The guilt of this gave me pause before I went into Bookland tonight. I sat down with a Dover Thrift Edition and read a short story by Sherwood Anderson, thinking of how I used to by these books back when they were all a dollar or two, because they were all I could afford, but never read more than a few pages of any of them. I strolled through the kid's section, at the same corner of the store as the one in Lewiston had been, and realized that I couldn't remember the exact layout, any longer, of the place I once frequented. I don't know why Bookland in Lewiston had to sell, though it certainly wasn't for competition; presumedly, it must have been because the majority of the Lewiston population can't read. But when Bookland in Brunswick, always sweet with the smell of books and baked goods, closes, we'll all know why.


Like a gold-medalist passing the torch with one hand and flinging her soaking Playtex into the audience with the other, this, I suppose, is progress.