|
|
|
shopping sprees
Sunday, June 6 1999
I had it in my mind to go on a shopping spree today. I'd actually planned the whole thing yesterday and, knowing she'd try to figure some way to subvert my plans, had made Kim agree beforehand. Kim's participation was essential because I either needed her to drive me in her car or else I needed her acquiescence in my actually going shopping unescorted; for an independent guy like me, she's kind of... uh, protective might understate the situation.
The only kind of shopping that I really enjoy is for small gadgets and music. Every other kind of shopping is a complete bore, an evil necessitated by my having run low on supplies. So we headed up to PC Club, which is a rather small store with cheap prices in a low-rent part of Northern San Diego. I didn't find the obscure laptop memory I was seeking, but since it was a shopping spree, it didn't matter. I could buy things impulsively. So I plunked down plastic dinero on a 128 Meg DIMM (that shit is cheap these days) and a PS/2 mouse. The only downside of the shopping spree was Kim standing at my elbow in her jacked-up snow white shoes asking me several times what exactly I was looking for. She couldn't imagine walking into a place like this without any idea about what was to be purchased. "It looks like a hardware store," she yawned. You'd think of all people she'd understand what I was up to.
I had a little bit of a scare when I was screwing around with my laptop. I'd thought I'd shut the thing off, but when I went to insert the memory it turned out it was still on. That's a definite no-no, and I hurried to see if I'd blown anything up. At first the prognosis wasn't good; it had gone from ten megs down to 512K. But with a little anxious, desperate wiggling of pieces everything started working again as it should, and I didn't have to blame Kim for distracting me. By the way, I now have Slackware LINUX running on that laptop. You see, I'm gradually trying to migrate away from dependence on commercial software for my day-to-day computer usage.
Kim, Steph and I headed to the beach together and hung out on and off with the other members of the Cape May Beach community. Today I learned something from Scott (of Scott and Justin fame) that I was evidently supposed to have learned when I was a little kid, that when you have a sun burn and press on your skin, you get a momentary light spot. When I began to burn, I headed home. I've already learned all the lessons I need to learn about that hot San Diego sun.
Later, with Steph, Kim and I went on another shopping spree on Newport Street in Ocean Beach, this time at a CD store. I was all psyched to do some serious CD purchases, but then Kim said "Don't buy anything dumb," as if she was trying to humiliate me. Music is recorded emotion, and I'm sensitive about my music purchases. Her saying that had the effect of destroying my consumerist impulses. I told her "fuck you" and went down to the beach to watch the bums and the waves.
One of the many drug dealers accidentally dropped a big bag of seedy Mexican pot right in front of me. I could have scooped it up, but it looked so shitty I just smiled, giving him enough time to realize his loss and retrieve it. Meanwhile, the cops were arresting an older bum for drinking beer against the seawall; had he been five feet away he would have been legal.
By the time Kim and Steph returned, so had my consumerist urges. In "The Cow" record store, I bought a bunch of CDs: Sugar, Superchunk, my second copy of Sonic Youth's Dirty, and Joy Division's Permanent. This was all to counterbalance Kim's purchase of Paul Simon's Graceland (though I admit Graceland seems a little less like a multi-cultural contrivance every time I hear it).
In the evening, Kim, Steph and I watched Heaven or Las Vegas on videotape. I found it a somewhat charming though flawed flick. At times it had real Harold and Maud quirkiness to it, especially in the infantile Sara Poironesque antics and fairytale fantasies of its chief female protagonist. But, as Kim and Steph were quick to point out, the relationship between the hero and heroine "wasn't developing" as late as three-fourths of the way into the film. Then of course, there was the ending, which was formulaic in the extreme. When the credits finally rolled, I felt like I'd just seen yet another big Hollywood blockbuster. (I'm getting better at writing these terse little movie reviews.)
In other news, Sophie seems to be getting better. She's stopped puking and resumed shitting, so what else could anyone ask for?
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?990606 feedback
previous | next |
