Summary: I am becoming the sort of person who doesn't handle shopping in stores very well. At least some stores. I wonder if it is just me?
Summary: I am becoming the sort of person who doesn't handle shopping in stores very well. At least some stores. I wonder if it is just me?
BLOT: (02 Feb 2013 - 07:19:55 PM)
Bought Area11's
I was going to jokingly tweet about how shopping in a movie store was like streaming movies online except there was 1/100 the selection at twice the price, all the best ones were used and beat up, and annoying people kept shoving in the way as I forced to rely on blurb text to try and make a selection. Then I didn't tweet it, because it was far too long, and it sounded whiny, but, in retrospect, simply has too much of the truth.
I did pick up
With Zoe's out due to the social signal-to-noise ratio being horrible, we hit up China House for a couple of tofu dishes and got our spirits back. Only a couple of tables taken up besides ours, one by the staff that was relaxing post-lunch, and we thought maybe the day was turning better, but afterwards at Bridgestreet, it went back to the annoying.
Even on a murky, rainy day, the stores were packed with the sort of people who consider spending money to be a sign of wellbeing, and nearly every store required forethought and luck just to move around without having to wade through crowds. I had neither today, and was especially unlucky in finding any of the books that I wanted—including David Wong's
Back at home, just listening to music and writing a couple of more poems (accidentally skipped yesterday) and talking to my friend Niko about setting design has helped. Now Sarah and I might watch some Godzilla or some
PS: At least the mildly wasted Barnes & Noble outing did allow me to overhear the genesis of this tweet:
PPS: I think it is more complicated than agoraphobia (I work in a fairly patron-facing library position with lots of crowded interactions) or cheapness (I am actually ok with paying more for the digital assuming I get a complete product). At its core, I think this is issue has to do with the information exchange portion of the purchase. I like to be able to dip toes into webs of info and description, to dilly dally and act unsure, to alternate between rapid decisions and slow meanderings, moving toward a goal of finding things I truly enjoy in the sea of things I might find merely worth some of my time. Most movie purchases for me (or "purchases" if you prefer, since I am talking about leasing the right to watch a digital stream of a movie forever or five years, whichever comes first), for example, only come after visiting IMDB and Amazon and Wikipedia and talking to friends and Googling past movies from the director and looking up books that the movie references and so forth. Movies, books, and CDs, to me, are more like gateways to information intersections. For stores, especially the corporate franchise sorts, they just don't seem to cater to people like me. I take too long and ask weird questions. C'est la vie.
OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: February 2013
Written by Doug Bolden
For those wishing to get in touch, you can contact me in a number of ways
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The longer, fuller version of this text can be found on my FAQ: "Can I Use Something I Found on the Site?".
"The hidden is greater than the seen."