Today I went to Bloomingfoods, which is our answer to Whole Foods (except for being local, co-op, and one millionth the size.
Also Subarus instead of LandRovers in the parking lot.
No wine tasting or dessert bars. No chefs wanking about with big knives. Etc.).
I roamed about the store purchasing needfuls such as fresh local eggs, organic veggies, vegan baked goods* and soap that smells like my college dorm. Before I checked out, I decided to get breakfast and headed for the hot bar.
AND THEN: Jesus smiled upon my locavore shopping basket, and
Lo! he let there be sausage gravy [LOCAL PIGS. LOCAL MILK! LOCAL LARD!]!
And LO! He willed that there would also be-ith the biscuits! Praise ye, Jesus and all of your little baby animals that frolic ghostily round the hems of thy robe!
I was waiting my turn to scoop some delicious gravy into my takeout vat, when I realized that the woman I was behind was YELLING at the top of her lungs the following:
"WELL THIS IS RIDICULOUS! WE'RE JUST NEVER COMING HERE AGAIN! THIS IS THE WHOLE ENTIRE REASON WE COME HERE ON SUNDAY!! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO EAT?! THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO EAT HERE NOW!!"
I could not help staring at her, because: INSANE.
Also: IN A GROCERY STORE. Nothing around BUT things to eat. On the hot bar itself, in addition to the heavenly gift of sausage gravy, there were:
1. Eggs
2. Cheese grits
3. a terrifyingly grey "tofu scramble"
4. two kinds of soup, one of which is always vegan
5. lovely salad makings
6. Vegan HOT cinnamon rolls
7. More eggs
8. Some kind of casserole described as "breakfast" which had nothing that I could readily identify in it, except the words "casserole" and "breakfast"
Now, I did not point out all of the many other choices on the bar, or the food stacked to the ceiling in the rest of the store. One should avoid criticizing the Public Crazy. Sometimes it makes them even more crazy. Sometimes, they then direct all the crazy at One.
But I think that I probably did look at her, and then looked at all of the food springing forth from every crevice of the building, and then look back at her with a slightly critical expression on my face. Which, I admit, I should have had the maturity to NOT do.
But, I didn't.
And so she yelled at ME:
"THEY ARE OUT OF THE VEGAN SAUSAGE GRAVY!! I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE THIS!!! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!! ALL THEY HAVE IS THE DEAD PIG CORPSE GRAVY!!!"
Yes.
She did say "CORPSE GRAVY".
So, I did what any reasonable, part time sort of vegetarian would do.
I laughed really hard. I might have even choked out "Did you just say corpse gravy?!?!"
Whoops.
NOT the right choice.
She kept going ON and ON about how UNBELIEVABLE this was, and how "IT ISN'T FAIR THAT THEY HAVE CORPSE GRAVY WHEN THEY DON'T HAVE THE VEGAN KIND!! SO INCONSIDERATE!!"
I said, like a sane person not chanting corpse gravy repeatedly under my breath: "Well, you know, it is almost 1pm. They probably just ran out. Did you ask someone?"
"OH, THE STAFF HERE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!! THEY ACT LIKE THEY DON'T EVEN CARE! THEY DON'T CARE THAT I CAN'T POSSIBLY EAT ANYTHING IN THIS WHOLE PLACE NOW!!"
[this last, of course, was directed at the stony faced staff members behind the sandwich counter, who I would like to take this time to commend for their incredible patience, tolerance and ability not to stick this woman with sharp tined forks designed specifically for meat eating]
Then a teenage boy pushed in front of Corpsie and started to spoon gravy onto his plate. Apparently, this was her son, because now she directed her spewings at him.
"OH JUST GO AHEAD! FINE! PUT THAT DEAD PIG ON YOUR PLATE!! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! THAT IS SO DISGUSTING! I'M NOT PAYING FOR YOU TO EAT DEAD CORPSES!! THINK OF THE FACT THAT YOU ARE PUTTING GROUND UP DEAD BODIES ON YOUR PLATE AND THEN YOU ARE GOING TO EAT THEM!!! AS SOON AS WE GET HOME I'M MAKING YOU WATCH THE PETA MOVIE AGAIN!"
Seriously, this is Bloomington, and for a minute I thought "Wait. Are these people rehearsing a scene from a play or a student film or something? Maybe they're sociology majors doing research?"
But then I realized, No.
This isn't a scene from a play. Because no playwright would create a character THIS ridiculous. "CORPSE. GRAVY."
Those are not words that should ever be put together.
They should especially not be shouted in a place that sells food.
Even film students, as pretentiously horrid as they can be, have SOME standards. Usually those standards are subsonically low, but they ARE standards.
The teenager just shrugged his shoulders and said "Yeah. Okay. This looks really good. I'm eating it." And then he smiled at me as if to say "What are you going to do?"
I felt so sorry for him and also at the same moment I was so impressed by him. If I were a 15 year old boy whose mother was having a screaming public meltdown over corpse gravy, at the very least I would be rolling my eyes and pretending not to know her, or even throwing corpse bits in her face on my way out the door. But this kid was respectful to his mother even while holding out for his right to eat corpse gravy, and even though he clearly found her annoying, he wasn't mortified by her the way most teens are by their parents' very existence. So as I waited for my turn at the gravy coffin, I said "Just leave me some of that dead pig, ok?"
And he laughed really hard, which might have been bad but at that point his mother was screaming at another employee. The kid said "You know, I really do feel bad, because I like pigs, but...."
"They're just so delicious?"
Then his mother came back with more of her offspring, who were much younger, and proceeded to tell them as loudly as possible to stay away from the deadness, and to NOT use those horrible huge takeout containers like SOME PEOPLE....
like the one I was holding.
I knew then that if I did not leave ASAP that Corpsie would take her food crazy on to the next logical food nazi soap box, about how horrible and fat people who eat meat are, and so I immediately paid and left.
And I laughed, out loud, all the way to my car, and have spent the rest of the day saying corpse gravy over and over in delighted horror.
*Only because I've found that the vegan cookies tend to use more sugar to disguise the fact that they don't have much flavor
Monday, November 26, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
STOP WRITING THAT NOVEL.
I spent an hour or nine perusing the fiction shelves at Barnes and Noble this week. I might not be a practicing librarian anymore, but I still care about books. Only halfway through the fiction section I realized that there were only about 15 different plots in use. Also, I hate almost all of them.
The point of writing fiction is that YOU GET TO MAKE STUFF UP!!
Meaning, YOU CAN MAKE UP NEW STUFF! THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF!!
Or. You can just write about the Tudors and vampires and knitting groups. But, please, if you're going to do that, stop. Stop right now. Step away from the vampires. Open your mind to something besides the zombie chasing you, and create something that does not involve any of the following:
1. Zombies.
2. Vampires.
3. Vampires and zombies in the same book, especially if producing hybrid Zompire/Vambie offspring
4. Zombies and vampires in the same series, such as
Book One: Suck it, Vampire
Book Two: Eat it, Zombie!
Book Three: Suck, eat, have sex with it, and make it undead, Vambie Love Child!!
4. Zombie apocalypses where the remaining humans must fight off the brain eating hordes and save the world. Or something. I don't care. If I see one more book about zombies, I'm going to eat my own damn brain in self defense.
5. Anne. Fucking. Boleyn.
Yes. She seduced a king. He chopped her head off. How many books about this must we suffer? Why must we make them all into bestsellers? Straight people, is this really the only romance in western European history that catches your eye/groin?
Here's the plot:
Henry VIII marries brother's widow, Katherine of Aragon, who's crazy religious and does not smell nice.
Young Anne twitches around court, catching H's eye, which is wildly roaming anyway looking for someone without heavy gold crosses worn as chastity belts.
A says Put a Ring on It, Big Boy! You ain't getting up in this unless I'm queen!
H tries to shake old woman loose.
Waa, waa, mean old Pope, excommunicatey blah blah blah,
Me King! Me Also Pope!
Detaches old woman, finally.
Yay Anne! So:
Puts ring on it.
Soon, takes head OFF it.
And there you have it, or rather, if you're Anne, you don't.
6. Any sort of book that is derivative of Jane Austen, i.e.
What Mr Darcy Did Next
or
What Is In Mr Darcy's Pants?
or
What I Did With What Was In Mr Darcy's Pants
or even
Mr Darcy's Pants: A Country Ramble With Animal Husbandry Tips!
Jane Austen is dead. She will write no more.
You will not improve on her. You will not even come close to her. Unless you are Barbara Pym, who is also dead, and who, thankfully, did not write about Mr Darcy or his pants, which, in my mind puts her AHEAD of Miss Austen-- but I digress.
Reread Austen all you like, and, if you must, whack off to Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility--but hopefully, not to Mansfield Park because that would be weird. Better you do it at home, without pants, than in print, with pants, and unleash it on an innocent and unsuspecting public.
7. Anything that has zombies, vampires, AND Jane Austen.
(What Zompire and Vampie Sucked Out of Mr Darcy's Pants)
8. 50 Shades of anything. Ever. Shall not waste one extraneous word here.
9. Anything that has anything at all, ever, to do with Dr. Who. Please, Jesus. Make it stop. Television is enough--nay. It is already TOO MUCH. MAY GOD AND JESUS AND THE GREAT PUMPKIN STRIKE ME DEAD BEFORE I EVER, EVER HEAR ONE MORE DAMN WORD ABOUT DR WHO. EVER.
10. Any subject that requires you to ever even consider using the phrase "young buck" in reference to any creature that does not have four legs and antlers. Trust me here.
11. Teenage witches
(For some reason, witches are more popular in teen lit than adult lit, which I am sure is all because of that movie The Craft, which after all I totally get because Fairuza Balk was way hot in that movie)
12. Teenage vampires
13. Teenage zombies
14. Anything centered around a knitting group.
15. Anything centered around a knitting group with witches, zombies, or vampires in it. Or teenagers. Or teenage witches, zom--ok, you get the idea.
16. If your name is James Patterson, any topic that occurs to you. Ever. Full stop.
17. Anything centered around an "inn", which I have always referred to as a hotel, but then again I do not write romance novels. Or anything revolving around a restaurant. Or a yarn store. A bakery. Florist shop(pe). Or anywhere else that a bunch of random middle aged women come together, with at least one studly man, and then, someone gets cancer, and everyone rallies around except for that one woman who is all shirty and aloof who, of course, has already had cancer seven times, WHICH NO ONE KNOWS! SHE HAS A SECRET!! and has lost everyone she ever knew to cancer and so she knows the pain all too well!! and oh, actually, she IS dead, that's why she seems so nasty until that scene where all is revealed and she gives her spleen and most of her brain to the other cancer person In The Most Noble Gesture Of All and everyone is all, "Whoa, she isn't such a bitch", but of course, eventually the other cancer patient dies, and everyone learns a lot of stuff about how Life Is Short, so the plucky single gal gets it on with the one studly man and then there's redemption and pie.
18. Related to Number 17 is the always popular Child Gets Sick, teaches lots of lessons to all the people around him/her, even that old curmudgeon who hates children and owns a dusty bookshop on the corner which happens to be worth eleventy zillion dollars so he sells it to get the money for the Dying Child's treatment but tells no one for he is the character meant to show us How To Do Things For The Right Reason; also naturally the Dying Child's estranged parents come back together in sorrow and learn things in the Face of Death like, So what if you had sex with my poker buddies at the lake cabin? And, honey, it's no biggie that your are the father of my sister's child, because Love Is Eternal And It Is All We Have Because Soon We Won't Even Have Our Kid etc etc etc.
Dying Child dies, slowly and meaningfully, preferably with at least a chapter devoted to child's Last Words which are so wise and wonderful that someone should probably be transcribing them as a Guide To Life for everyone else; Oh, and it's fucking Christmas, so that there can be a doll or a teddy bear or a toy stripper pole to remind everyone of The Christmas We Would Never Forget Anyway Because It Was So Depressing That We All Converted To Judaism Just So We Would Never Have To Celebrate It Again.
19. Then, there's the always bestselling: Teenagers fall madly in love, are separated, reunite briefly many, many years later, preferably when one is on verge of death, and they both realize that those two weeks in the back of a '57 Chevy were the best ever, even after having long, fantastically successful lives packed with other loves, family, and probably a few million dollars in the ensuing six decades. Set in the summer so as to have plenty of time for sneaking off to have sex, and probably takes place in small Southern town so we can Learn Lessons About Tolerance when one of the teens has a black, brown, or maybe even just deeply tanned friend who is of course killed off by the fourth or fifth chapter, and whose death is all tragic and horrible except apparently NOT tragic enough to prevent the teen lovers from humping the springs out of the back of that Chevy. Of course, in the touching, heart rending denouement, one of our tragic duo dies, so other one can be left alone, hopefully crying until they, too, expire, not one damn second too soon.
20. Death and teens is ALWAYS a winner. Like, where the mother dies and the teenage daughter experiences the five stages of grief while being pretty and popular and also loses her virginity, which is all her dead mom's fault and now she not only doesn't have a mom, she doesn't have a hymen, but that's ok, because she gets into Yale.
21. Anything about a group of college friends growing apart, or getting closer, or planning one member's funeral. You will not improve on Mary McCarthy, even if you throw in some dying children and knitting and a zombie.
There are more. But after writing these down, I'm so sick of the printed word I can't even type.
The point of writing fiction is that YOU GET TO MAKE STUFF UP!!
Meaning, YOU CAN MAKE UP NEW STUFF! THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF!!
Or. You can just write about the Tudors and vampires and knitting groups. But, please, if you're going to do that, stop. Stop right now. Step away from the vampires. Open your mind to something besides the zombie chasing you, and create something that does not involve any of the following:
1. Zombies.
2. Vampires.
3. Vampires and zombies in the same book, especially if producing hybrid Zompire/Vambie offspring
4. Zombies and vampires in the same series, such as
Book One: Suck it, Vampire
Book Two: Eat it, Zombie!
Book Three: Suck, eat, have sex with it, and make it undead, Vambie Love Child!!
4. Zombie apocalypses where the remaining humans must fight off the brain eating hordes and save the world. Or something. I don't care. If I see one more book about zombies, I'm going to eat my own damn brain in self defense.
5. Anne. Fucking. Boleyn.
Yes. She seduced a king. He chopped her head off. How many books about this must we suffer? Why must we make them all into bestsellers? Straight people, is this really the only romance in western European history that catches your eye/groin?
Here's the plot:
Henry VIII marries brother's widow, Katherine of Aragon, who's crazy religious and does not smell nice.
Young Anne twitches around court, catching H's eye, which is wildly roaming anyway looking for someone without heavy gold crosses worn as chastity belts.
A says Put a Ring on It, Big Boy! You ain't getting up in this unless I'm queen!
H tries to shake old woman loose.
Waa, waa, mean old Pope, excommunicatey blah blah blah,
Me King! Me Also Pope!
Detaches old woman, finally.
Yay Anne! So:
Puts ring on it.
Soon, takes head OFF it.
And there you have it, or rather, if you're Anne, you don't.
6. Any sort of book that is derivative of Jane Austen, i.e.
What Mr Darcy Did Next
or
What Is In Mr Darcy's Pants?
or
What I Did With What Was In Mr Darcy's Pants
or even
Mr Darcy's Pants: A Country Ramble With Animal Husbandry Tips!
Jane Austen is dead. She will write no more.
You will not improve on her. You will not even come close to her. Unless you are Barbara Pym, who is also dead, and who, thankfully, did not write about Mr Darcy or his pants, which, in my mind puts her AHEAD of Miss Austen-- but I digress.
Reread Austen all you like, and, if you must, whack off to Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility--but hopefully, not to Mansfield Park because that would be weird. Better you do it at home, without pants, than in print, with pants, and unleash it on an innocent and unsuspecting public.
7. Anything that has zombies, vampires, AND Jane Austen.
(What Zompire and Vampie Sucked Out of Mr Darcy's Pants)
8. 50 Shades of anything. Ever. Shall not waste one extraneous word here.
9. Anything that has anything at all, ever, to do with Dr. Who. Please, Jesus. Make it stop. Television is enough--nay. It is already TOO MUCH. MAY GOD AND JESUS AND THE GREAT PUMPKIN STRIKE ME DEAD BEFORE I EVER, EVER HEAR ONE MORE DAMN WORD ABOUT DR WHO. EVER.
10. Any subject that requires you to ever even consider using the phrase "young buck" in reference to any creature that does not have four legs and antlers. Trust me here.
11. Teenage witches
(For some reason, witches are more popular in teen lit than adult lit, which I am sure is all because of that movie The Craft, which after all I totally get because Fairuza Balk was way hot in that movie)
12. Teenage vampires
13. Teenage zombies
14. Anything centered around a knitting group.
15. Anything centered around a knitting group with witches, zombies, or vampires in it. Or teenagers. Or teenage witches, zom--ok, you get the idea.
16. If your name is James Patterson, any topic that occurs to you. Ever. Full stop.
17. Anything centered around an "inn", which I have always referred to as a hotel, but then again I do not write romance novels. Or anything revolving around a restaurant. Or a yarn store. A bakery. Florist shop(pe). Or anywhere else that a bunch of random middle aged women come together, with at least one studly man, and then, someone gets cancer, and everyone rallies around except for that one woman who is all shirty and aloof who, of course, has already had cancer seven times, WHICH NO ONE KNOWS! SHE HAS A SECRET!! and has lost everyone she ever knew to cancer and so she knows the pain all too well!! and oh, actually, she IS dead, that's why she seems so nasty until that scene where all is revealed and she gives her spleen and most of her brain to the other cancer person In The Most Noble Gesture Of All and everyone is all, "Whoa, she isn't such a bitch", but of course, eventually the other cancer patient dies, and everyone learns a lot of stuff about how Life Is Short, so the plucky single gal gets it on with the one studly man and then there's redemption and pie.
18. Related to Number 17 is the always popular Child Gets Sick, teaches lots of lessons to all the people around him/her, even that old curmudgeon who hates children and owns a dusty bookshop on the corner which happens to be worth eleventy zillion dollars so he sells it to get the money for the Dying Child's treatment but tells no one for he is the character meant to show us How To Do Things For The Right Reason; also naturally the Dying Child's estranged parents come back together in sorrow and learn things in the Face of Death like, So what if you had sex with my poker buddies at the lake cabin? And, honey, it's no biggie that your are the father of my sister's child, because Love Is Eternal And It Is All We Have Because Soon We Won't Even Have Our Kid etc etc etc.
Dying Child dies, slowly and meaningfully, preferably with at least a chapter devoted to child's Last Words which are so wise and wonderful that someone should probably be transcribing them as a Guide To Life for everyone else; Oh, and it's fucking Christmas, so that there can be a doll or a teddy bear or a toy stripper pole to remind everyone of The Christmas We Would Never Forget Anyway Because It Was So Depressing That We All Converted To Judaism Just So We Would Never Have To Celebrate It Again.
19. Then, there's the always bestselling: Teenagers fall madly in love, are separated, reunite briefly many, many years later, preferably when one is on verge of death, and they both realize that those two weeks in the back of a '57 Chevy were the best ever, even after having long, fantastically successful lives packed with other loves, family, and probably a few million dollars in the ensuing six decades. Set in the summer so as to have plenty of time for sneaking off to have sex, and probably takes place in small Southern town so we can Learn Lessons About Tolerance when one of the teens has a black, brown, or maybe even just deeply tanned friend who is of course killed off by the fourth or fifth chapter, and whose death is all tragic and horrible except apparently NOT tragic enough to prevent the teen lovers from humping the springs out of the back of that Chevy. Of course, in the touching, heart rending denouement, one of our tragic duo dies, so other one can be left alone, hopefully crying until they, too, expire, not one damn second too soon.
20. Death and teens is ALWAYS a winner. Like, where the mother dies and the teenage daughter experiences the five stages of grief while being pretty and popular and also loses her virginity, which is all her dead mom's fault and now she not only doesn't have a mom, she doesn't have a hymen, but that's ok, because she gets into Yale.
21. Anything about a group of college friends growing apart, or getting closer, or planning one member's funeral. You will not improve on Mary McCarthy, even if you throw in some dying children and knitting and a zombie.
There are more. But after writing these down, I'm so sick of the printed word I can't even type.
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