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 I just went
to adbusters.org
and saw some of the various spoofs. A buy-nothing day: what a super idea.
I buy a snack from the convenience store downstairs a few times a week
and at least once a week I buy my lunch because I'm lazy or cravenous
(I just love my own words). And two separate lunch-time expeditions to
Ross last week. I know buying any convenience food--snacks or lunch--is
bad because of packaging, but anything that adds to my consumption is
bad. What would happen if for one Saturday, no one bought anything?
It would mean people on commission wouldn't be able to pay their bills
that week. I wonder how much it would mean to boards of directors.
Friday night we went to CostCo for groceries and health stuff; Saturday I went to the Botanic Gardens and had a quick browse through Cherry Creek North but bought nothing; Saturday we went to Alfalfa's for other groceries. Shop shop shop, consume consume consume.
We shop at the regular supermarket much less now. From CostCo we buy
household stuff and vitamins and bulk staples and pre-packaged foods--Nutragrains
mostly; from Alfalfa's, now that we can afford it, we buy organic produce,
fish, crunchy stuff.
My grandfather's
moving into assisted living today. I have to get the address from BJWL
so I can send him stuff. Perhaps only because it assuages my conscience,
I believe that a person's medical treatment is much affected by his social
standing and that communication from the outside world raises social status.
He can only stay where he's going only as long as he's ambulant and continent.
He is still the former but not quite the latter, sometimes simultaneously.
Also DEW might go into such a place for a month or so, "to rest" said
my mother's voicemail, but I doubt she'll be permitted to leave--either
by physicians or my mother. Her poor cat, her poor self.
RDC made
grouper last night and I could think of no literary allusion.
Julian Barnes
is making me laugh at loud, at work no less. RDC claims Woody Allen will
write a whole scene to set up one perfect line, and I wonder if Barnes
does the same thing. The line I'm thinking of isn't witty, though, but
so vulgar and unexpected so I was startled into laughter. Or perhaps the
word "puffin" is just funny on its own.
Puffins remind me of Susanna Kaysen's Far
Afield and how the Faroese go out and harvest the babies. They're
born full of oily blubber and are soon tossed out of the nest, whereupon
they float on the sea until they skin down enough to hunt for themselves.
Or until a Faroese comes by with a butterfly net.
So someone saying "Fuck the puffins!" just kind of struck me as funny.
A fortnight
ago reading "Beckett" also at lunch I laughed out loud. Henry
II sees his two sons playing in a corner, asks them which is the elder,
then asks the elder his name. The boy replies, "Henry III," whereupon
Henry II accuses him of treason since he won't be III until his father
is dead--the lad couldn't have been more than 13 at the time, since Beckett
was killed in 1170 and Richard I, the younger, was born in 1157. The idea
of a father, even Henry II, even Henry II played by Anthony Quinn (on
stage) or Peter O'Toole (on screen), neither recognizing his offspring
nor remembering their names, cracked me up. (The would-be Henry III died
in 1183, six years before his father; and in "The Lion in Winter" (wherein
Henry II was again played by Peter O'Toole), Henry II remembers this son
fondly. Probably because he was dead and therefore no longer troublesome.)
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