Mari Ness's Blog, page 31

K-Mart, Barnes and Noble, Warhammer

Various news agencies are reporting that the busy Barnes and Noble at Union Station in Washington DC is about to close, reportedly because Barnes and Noble and the landlord have been unable to agree on the rent. This news of course has brought out the usual gulp will we continue to have brick and mortar bookstores in the future articles, all of which, I can't help noticing, continue to ignore the existence of Books-A-Million, as if the options for brick and mortar stores are Barnes and Noble and independent bookstores with nothing in between. I get that Books-A-Million is nowhere near the size of Barnes and Noble, but it does operate 250 stores and offers coffee, so let's give it some respect.

Anyway, I couldn't help thinking of the contrast between the closing Barnes and Noble store, by all accounts busy, popular, clean and filled with customers, and my local K-Mart.

For those who may be unfamiliar with K-Mart, it's a large box store on the same idea as Walmart and Target, seeking to occupy a niche slightly above Walmart and slightly below Target. It certainly achieves the goal of being below Target and rarely manages to be better than Walmart. My local K-Mart has exactly one advantage: it's about five blocks away from me, making it one of the few stores I can easily reach via trike or scooter. Yes, it's on the hideous State Road 50, the bane of my existence, but, and this is key, I don't have to cross State Road 50 to get there since it's on my side of the street and I can take a little side street, complete with a little pond that sometimes has ducks or egrets, which should, in theory, make it a very convenient place for me to do my shopping for staples.

In practice a trip more usually ends up like the one I took yesterday. I needed milk, cat litter, and toilet paper, all of which can be in theory found there. The cat litter and toilet paper were there, but the unit that usually contains the milk had been emptied of everything, including shelves. Undaunted, I picked up the rest of the stuff and headed to the register, only to find out that the registers weren't working. So I left with nothing.

This is sadly typical of a visit: various items which ought to be there (including, frequently, toilet paper and aspirin) are not there. The registers don't always work. What is there often has the wrong price on it or is in the wrong place. The clothes just look cheap, and are usually either of worse quality or in worse condition than what's available at the Goodwill in the same shopping plaza. The selection of DVDs and cell phones sucks. Customer service generally sucks, with employees just looking depressed. (The Goodwill in striking contrast has excellent customer service.) Part of the problem is store policy: if the item rings up at the wrong price, Target will usually just change the price right there, or sometimes send someone to check the price and then fix the price for you; Publix after checking the price will give you the item for free. This generally takes a couple of minutes, but otherwise not a big deal. K-Mart sends you to the Customer Service Desk, which is usually unstaffed; if it is staffed, changing the price still requires about three people to check it. The store is technically clean, but always seems to feel dingy.

It's almost always empty.

And yet it survives. Perhaps – probably -- because it's on the opposite side of State Road 50 than the Publix and the Target – making it slightly easier for disabled people and bicyclists and pedestrians to reach, and it does generally have a decent selection of snacks. Or perhaps because the rent is cheap, meaning that it can stay profitable even with few sales. Or perhaps because none of its corporate overlords have noticed.

But I couldn't help thinking: if a lousy economy and few customers and a ragged dingy appearance have not managed to close this place, shouldn't that mean that Barnes and Nobles can survive? Or are their corporate overlords just choosing more expensive rental places? The local Barnes and Noble is in a far, far nicer and better looking location than the K-mart, and I assume the rents reflect that. Or are their corporate overlords demanding a higher profit margin than whatever satisfies Sears/K-Mart?

I'll keep my fingers crossed for that local Barnes and Noble anyway, even if it does have more customers than the K-Mart.

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In completely different news, this has been passed around the internet a lot already, but if you missed it, Games Workshop is claiming that writer M.C.A. Hogarth is infringing on their trademark "space marine."

I'll just let all the gamers here savor the fun that this is coming from the same people behind that model of originality and not borrowing from anyone ever: Warhammer.

mariness @ 2013-02-05T10:31:00

Unbelievably out of it today -- so out of it that although I made coffee and poured it into a mug, I forgot to drink it; no, really -- but I did want to point Little House fans to the news that Mary Ingalls did not go blind from scarlet fever after all.

From a writing point of view, I'm fascinated by the suggestion that Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the New York book editors all agreed that "vague viral or bacterial brain infection that we don't exactly have a name for" would be too confusing, and that it was better for Mary to have the literary illness of scarlet fever instead.

Particularly interesting since in literature (not reality, before people leap up to correct me) both scarlet fever and tuberculosis tended to turn children into inspirational household angels, beloved by all, probably best exemplified by Beth of Little Women. Some of this, of course, doubtless reflected the reality of mourning for lost children and a tendency to idealize their memories; some of this may have been attempts to alleviate the anger and resentment that healthier children may have felt about the need to care for their sicker siblings.

In the case of the Little House books, Mary Ingalls is initially described as a well behaved little girl with three traits that drove her little sister nuts: Mary is bossy, superior and prissy. After Mary's illness and blindness, however, she becomes the angelic center of the household: always helpful, always good, never losing her temper, the sort of person that you would want to sacrifice everything for, which the poverty-strapped Ingalls family did, having their daughter Laura work for pay starting at 13 (in the books; 11 in real life) in part to raise the money to send the talented Mary off to college and perhaps train her for a career despite her blindness.

It's a heartwarming portrait, but I've always wondered how much nostalgia and anger shaped that portrait. This study raises those questions all over again.

Ok. Hopefully I'm alert enough to go get milk and other necessities.

Richard III

Years back I was an unofficial member of a group whose research zeal focused on some of the most important issues of the day. I am talking, of course, about the various Richard III societies, dedicated to restoring the reputation of the 500 year old monarch and possible nephew-killer which we can all agree is the sort of important subject that can keep you awake over coffee. Or not.

I am not inclined to agree completely with all Richard III defenders -- for instance, I find it somewhat more likely that the disappearance of the two little nephews in the tower was thanks to the mechanizations of the Duke of Norfolk, not Henry VII. Or elves. Anyway, this is all a long meandering way of saying that the skeleton of Richard III was found beneath a Leicester car park. Naturally, Richard is tweeting about the discovery of his corpse.

Ha ha ha ha ha

As most of you know, the Superbowl is not high on my list of Things To Do, to the point where I've missed it entirely most years, but this year my Twitter feed convinced me to turn on the half time show, and then I watched a couple of commercials and made fun of them, and then I thought, well, Downton's on in about 25 minutes, so just leave it on...

...And then the Ravens apparently did something exciting (I am quoting CBS; I missed that) and then -- the power went off! Ok, half the power went off and the game stopped.

This, people, is why I should probably not be allowed to watch Superbowls. Coincidence? I think not. I mean, I was in the room with the TV.

(Actually Twitter is suggesting that it's an angry 49ers fan, which, sure, why not?)

The Roald Dahl and Georgette Heyer rereads continue

Bit late to updating this, but over at Tor.com, both of the latest reread posts are up: George's Marvelous Medicine and Envious Casca.

It is cooler today than it was for much of the second half of the unusually warm January. This means lots of warm tea and other warm drinks, as I try to find my own words today.

The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

From kate_nepveu , "...it was a miniature Canadian Cold War." Warning: contains the shocking news that some Vermont maple syrup may not actually -- wait for it -- BE FROM VERMONT. Gasp. My illusions are shattered.

In other news I woke up this morning thinking I felt great, got out of bed and promptly crashed. I'm all right but I slammed my shoulder on the way down somewhere and am all stiff and cranky. Coffee is slightly helping with the crankiness bit but not the stiffness. The moral of this is not to hit your shoulder when you fall down. Or even better, not fall down in the first place.

Needlepoint musings

My inner self conversation yesterday morning went something like this:

Me, drearily: It's a gorgeous yet not hot day! Should head outside!

Me: Bleh.

Me, slightly less drearily: It might cheer you up!

Me: Bleh.

Me: Also, I need to get a new space heater!

Me: Bleh.

Me: Or I could just stay here and stare at this not-exactly-progressing short story!

Me: Right! Where are my house keys!

Which is how I found myself at Jo-Ann's, not exactly a place renowned for selling space heaters, spinach or almonds, but known for selling little crafts. The sun had given me a touch of an idea: since various people have made the excellent suggestion that perhaps focusing on other artistic activities might help get me out of this creative dry spell, but since the little art classes run by the town have already started up (given the abysmal results of my attempts to do ceramics, perhaps not a bad thing), perhaps I should see what Jo-Ann's offers.

Jo-Ann's, in a word, offers too much. Eventually I found myself near the needlepoint/counted cross stitch, and thought, hmm. Long term readers -- well, actually, further back than that; this all happened well before I started blogging -- may remember my propensity for picking up large needlepoint kits, the ones with the nice stamped printed image on them to make them in theory the easiest crafts projects to finish, ever, a theory that died after meeting me, primarily because I inevitably managed to lose or badly entangle/destroy the yarn well before finishing the project. Since my prime reason for buying the things was to keep my fingers occupied while doing other things (television and so on), I eventually decided I could find cheaper ways to keep my fingers occupied. I did get another little one after moving here, assuming I would use it to combat boredom during doctor's appointments and the like, only to promptly lose first half the yarn and then the kit.

But, I thought optimistically, maybe I could get my hands moving again, plus, needlepoint sounds like exactly the sort of thing I should be doing during Downton Abbey. If I just stuck with a little project...

...and then my eyes caught something a bit different: counted cross stitch kits based on Ruth Sanderson images.

I have tried counted cross stitch before, with only one success, a very small Christmas ornament that anaisis yelled at me to finish, this largely because counted cross stitch involves something I am not very good at: counting. Given that, as I noted, I am pretty much invariably doing something else while doing this sort of thing, I also pretty much invariably lose count, and then mess up the project, while invariably losing the yarn.

So I resisted. Kinda. I picked up a little and considerably cheaper butterfly thing, while wishing that the Ruth Sanderson kits were also available as needlepoint. That way, when I inevitably tangled up the yarn, I might have made a little more progress first.

(I still might pick one up, but let's see if I finish the little butterfly first. It's unlikely, but you never know.)

Meanwhile, I have instruments resting around the house that need to be played. And they, at least, can't lose yarn. Strings, perhaps, but those can be replaced, letting me finish up songs.

Naturally this did not go as expected

As I may have mentioned, for Christmas the cats very kindly and thoughtfully gave me a three and half story cat tower, with scratching posts, for me to put together for them. (The "half" is a little half tunnel thing between the top and second stories that in the optimistic view of the designers can be used as a resting place for a small cat and a good place to dangle a tail from.) As I was informed, the cats had decided on this cat tower in the hopes that the top of the tower would tempt a certain small black and white cat away from from the top of the bookshelf in the living room, where he is not wanted on the grounds that when he descends from the top of the bookshelf, he lands either on the aquarium (whose cover was not exactly designed with cats in mind), the TV/TV stand, which now holds a considerably more expensive and lightweight TV that could be knocked over, or on a small grey cat who finds having a black and white cat fall on her a terrifying experience that justifies not using the litter box for a few hours. AUUUGH. Also their old little cat condo was getting quite scratched up and scruffy looking (they've had it for about ten years -- they don't get into it but they like to scratch the outside and the Grey One will sometimes sleep on the top curled up into a small ball. The cat tower would also give the Grey One new places to hide in, which if you are the Grey One is a decided advantage.

So, naturally, this morning I found the Grey One standing on top of the second story not hidden at all, and the Little One sleeping on top of the bookshelf.

I didn't take him down (although I am watching to keep him off the aquarium). I should, but he's 13, and I rather like this reminder that he's incredibly active for a 13 year old cat (far more active than the Grey One, who at 11 has decided that really, this is the time of life when cats should nap a lot, preferably in places where they can't be seen.) He still dashes around the house, still plays with his mice, and still seems to be under the impression that he's a kitten or a dog. I can take a little bookshelf excitement. And maybe he'll find the top part of the cat tower at some point.

The Twits

Over at Tor.com, it's time to chat about The Twits.

I didn't mention it in the post, but one thing I'm noticing in this Dahl reread is how some bits of his books make me feel like a little kid again (the hell in a handbasket joke in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, or the chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and some bits remind me that I am most definitely not anymore. This particular book made me distinctly feel like a grown-up. Ouch.

And now back to trying to get other stuff done. Grown-up stuff. I am sensing an uncomfortable sort of theme here.

Tigers versus snowmen

The Guardian brings us this video of tigers and snowmen.

In unrelated news, yesterday's excursion did accomplish Some Of The Things, but today I am sniffly and mildly dizzy and cranky and and rather wanting to be a tiger. Still delightfully cool out, though, the way January around here ought to be.