the first few hours are fine, because the mid-shift worker is still there. you can chat a bit, and there is a steady but rarely overwhelming flow of customers and random tasks to pass the time. then around 6:30 or 7:30 the mid-shift goes home. then after about an hour, the customers vanish.

the onset of this remaining three or four hours of nothingness always reminds me of the scene in the lord of the rings when the fellowship enters khazad-dûm. we now have but one choice, says gandalf. we must face the long dark of moria. be on your guard. there are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. quietly now. it is a four-day journey to the other side. let us hope that our presence may go unnoticed.

i have quoted this passage to the mids, but i think the analogy is not clear to them. probably because i misquote it badly and they just want to go home by that point.

but if you think about it, it's quite clear.

good heavens, i thought to myself, you mean you finally found a current affairs book in the current affairs section? next time you're looking for your own dumb ass you should check in your pants.

then i clucked sympathetically and asked her if she had a member card.

(discussing the gilmore girls DVD box set)

customer: did you know this is $20 cheaper at best buy?

me: no, i didn't. are you going to buy it there?

customer: they don't have any left.

2.

(me trying to get a price sticker to scan at the register)

customer: if the machine can't read it, it's free!

me: actually, if the machine can't read it i get to kill you.

customer: what?

me: oh, i said, do you need a gift receipt for this?

3.

me: has anybody got dibs on the promo copy of the andrea bocelli CD?

manager: no. why, do you want it?

me: yes.

manager: i thought you didn't like it.

me: i don't. i want to smash it.

manager: why did you tell me that?

me: it's theatre. it wouldn't be satisfying if i couldn't tell anyone.

manager: you can't have it for that.

i like this job. i like my co-workers. my manager is friendly and appreciative of my efforts. nobody finds the concept of reading as leisure activity unusual. customers are customers, but i also like the challenge of having to interact with strangers without employing my usual meowmix dada of rambling counterfactuals and topic-free trivia. and even though it is somewhat clumsily applied, i have the reassurance of secret knowledge... i'm behind the counter.

secure in the nontrivial complexity of our store's operational guidelines, i can tie up my stupid thinking by going through the motions and skim all feverish imaginings cleanly off the top. it's a retail education with theraputic value. of course, the holiday season is upon us.

around midnight the other night after work i was standing in the front yard, pleasantly exhausted, enjoying the north wind and the nice crunchy sound of walking through the leaves. i couldn't help but notice my neighbor's new christmas display. bright multicolors, glowing plastic snowman, and best of all two electric topiary reindeer. simple wire frames, invisible during the day but festooned with white lights and motors that make them repeat simple, iconic reindeer motions forever into the night. i also happened to be testing my new ipod, listening to the aphex twin's selected ambient works 2. completely plugged into the cool electric christmas dream. i think this photograph captures the moment perfectly.

there were some great costumes... devo acolytes, a fully realized werewolf, two girls as a pair of dice. this being numbers, there were also a lot of goths. while i assume for most of them everyday is halloween, for at least a few halloween was probably only today.

the idea of modern halloween celebrations involving doing what you normally do except in a costume kind of troubles me (especially when we're having weather like it was the middle of june), but i'm not clear on what the proper thing to do would be anyway. and on a crowded dancefloor it is pretty neat to see a snarling wolf mask in the flash of strobe light, and people with wings. my costume? my new montreal expos t-shirt... a newly undead baseball team.

so the evening had potential, but it was not to be. after less than an hour i got quickly tired of allison disrespecting me for no reason at all, so i left. i realize this sounds a bit funny coming from me. i can take all kinds of abuse, but being abused in public by a friend who flatters me in private really fucks me off. so i did.

at home was my new copy of rollercoaster tycoon 3, which i happily lost myself in for a few hours. now i'm thinking maybe it's just been a really stressful week for everybody. the weather is rotten, the politics are rotten, the mental health is rotten.

of course the forecast for election day is a change in the weather. i like the symbolism. i finally got a job, too. starting next weekend. not a career type job, just retail, but i like having been interviewed and found myself wanted instead of wanting after all these years. a lot of curses being broken lately... let's hope for a hat trick on tuesday.

monday of course was grandma's funeral, followed by the scattering of the ashes tuesday morning. a representative from the humanist society gave what to me was a somewhat surreal eulogy with quotes from bertrand russell and musings on the small likelihood of an afterlife. surreal mainly because i have become accustomed to having a certain detachment at formal events because my personal beliefs are generally totally inapplicable in such situations. i was i think shocked to agree so completely with an appointed speaker. of course there were other things, like neil diamond being played during the moment of reflection and the crash course in the greater eccentricities of grandma i received while various family members shared fond memories.

and then to the lord darcy for drinks and fond reminiscing. and drinks.

i have extended my trip to october 5th so that i can catch the clientele in london just before returning in time for the beach house weekend. julian cope (finally!) is tonight here in oxford and i'm going to attempt james yorkston in peterborough next friday. in the meantime, i cannot decide whether i should stay here in oxford, a town which suits me very well, or try for three or four days at a B&B in tavistock so i can range the tors of dartmoor cracking pensively at my lollipop.

i wish trivia was a more widely accepted currency.

speaking of currency, the english pound is currently worth $1.79. speaking of current, in the united kingdom the current is 240 volts AC at 50hz. a physical plug adapter for an ipod charger is $4.99, or £2.88. for the next two weeks, more interesting trivia will be delivered to select audience members via postcard from greenwich mean time. in the meantime, remember to appréciez la vie, et faites les choses pour lesquelles vous normalment manquez de temps.

morning phone calls are always bad. dozing this morning i was brought around by the phone ringing. i heard my dad answer in the next room... "hello? yes. oh no." then off to the den to sit down and talk, out of earshot. i waited for the call to end before going out in the den to ask, but i knew what it was. grandma nickson, age 85 and in the hospital since late july, had died in the night.

for those of you who never met her, there are many illustrative stories to relate. walking with her into a curio shop in robin hood's bay and the shopkeeper asking her if he could help with anything. she proceeded to lecture him at length on the decline in the quality of the village since the war. apologizing to waitresses after dinner for our poor american table manners. but also the time in greece where she took offense at a fellow tourist making fun of americans and pushed him into the sea because her son-in-law (my father) was american and a wonderful man. buying a large stuffed gorilla, naming it benjy and taking it around her neighborhood in a pram.

but at a time like this what comes most immediately to mind is her accosting me in the hallway, or marching into the den some afternoon after school and turning off the television to get my undivided attention. "my youth was stolen by the war," she would tell me. "i got married and bang! your grandfather went off to fight and i didn't see him for years. he lost his business. we all lost so much. so you must enjoy yourself as much as you can, right now." in recent years she was even more insistent upon this point, as might be expected with advancing age but also because she was furious at again having had life stolen from her, this time the premature death of her daughter from MS.

given the past few years, the only real way i personally can honor her memory is with large and drastic changes to the way i have been living, or rather not living. but for those of you who never met her, please raise a glass, or elevate a pleasurable vice of your own choosing to great excess and without apology, to my formidable english grandmother olive nickson.

this is a picture of my backyard from this afternoon. if you aren't familiar with how it normally looks, it may not be immediately apparent that there's a fallen tree in it. my dad and me missed the action because we were staring out the front window discussing the unusually strong gust of wind and what was that noise?

when a tree falls in the suburbs even if there is someone there to hear it, it hardly makes any noise at all. this one didn't anyway. just a soft crack and a kind of a fssssshting that didn't even wake up the cats. although not as exciting as it would have been had it fallen on the house, it was still an emotional moment. i take after my father in landscape preferences and we both enjoy coming across a fallen tree in the forest, but it's sad when trees fall down.

later the neighbor came over and apologized. sorry about the tree. i like to think an apology in this situation is something an artificial intelligence would have a lot of difficulty grasping, and so i was pleased to be alive and able to intuitively comprehend. and to not be smashed by a tree.

in other news, i went to danseparc tonight and had a nice time. although my stomach hurt because i poured too much alcohol in it and then tried to tamp it down by eating french fries during the drive home. that didn't work. a girl on the dancefloor told me she liked my hairstyle. i told her i didn't think i had one. i think until you pay more than $20 for it, it's just a haircut. i walked her to her car later and there was a guy passed out in it. i said be careful, you can get arrested for that.

apologies for fallen trees are easier to accept graciously than complements.

my plans for the evening involve drinking perrier with a twist of lemon (or possibly lime, i haven't decided yet) and reading 4B goes wild. this is a children's book. here's an excerpt:

"OK, you guys," Mr. Star explained, "there are four kinds of prey in this game: scrapers, lights, rattlers and roses. As soon as one rattler finds another rattler, one rose another rose, and so forth, both are safe." Mr. Star went on. "When you've found another creature like you, move close to a wall and sit down out of everybody's way. You are the prey." That was me- a rattler.

"OK, but four of you out there are wearing black T-shirts. You are the predators, out for your evening meal. One of you eats only the rose creatures, and so forth. When you predators meet one of your prey, tap him- or her- on the shoulder, say Zap! in his ear-"

"Or hers," Molly said. "And you've made your kill."

"Exactly."

In the total dark and almost total silence, we mixed ourselves up in the room, like shuffled cards. Some kids, you could tell, were holding on to each other, cheating.

"Predators, I hope you're ready," Mr. Star announced from over near the door. "Your prey are about to start roaming through the night woods. I'm going to give you sixty seconds in the dark." He turned a penlight on his wristwatch. "Ready, set, go!"

We whirled around, sniffing, shaking, scraping and blinking. I caught onto somebody who rattled at me. It was Marshall, and we collapsed near the fireplace, glad not to be eaten.

this is essentially my view of love and romance. of course i never went to camp myself.

a simple two-color decoration that recently appeared in the vacant lot at the end of my street. it interested me for two reasons. first, it has aesthetics. you rarely see anything besides little tags in my neighborhood. second, i like how it brings out the background surface it was painted on. driving past (which i do almost daily) it looks much more complicated than it actually is, then you get up close and realize the nice contrast is the old fence and the brick wall, not the paint. the old fence and the brick wall have been there for years, but were previously invisible. across the beltway from here is a hulking wreck of a mall that with recent closure has completed its long, slow dissolve into similar invisibility.