Tag: consumerism

I buy books

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading1 Comment

This week involved– this is not a joke– both having a condom thrown at me and being inadvertently punched in the balls by a student, so, having survived it, I was in serious need of some retail therapy. I went to Barnes and Noble.

Do both of us a favor and don’t add up the cost of any of this.

I purchased Ron Chernow’s doorstop-sized, thousand page, recently-released biography of Mark Twain immediately, but not from Barnes and Noble. This one was expensive enough that I actually ordered it from Amazon, while still in the store, for 2/3 of the cost. It’ll be here tomorrow.

What I’ve started doing when I’m in bookstores is buying books I wasn’t previously familiar with, rather than grabbing things that are already on my wish list. I’ve learned that if I walk into my local B&N looking for something specific I am sure to be disappointed. It will not be there. (To wit: I have the absolutely gorgeous Broken Binding edition of Joe Abercrombie’s new book, The Devils, and was looking for the standard edition as a reading copy. Couldn’t find it. Unbelievable.)

Anyway, this caught my eye, and as a standalone and a debut novel it felt like the perfect kind of bookstore buy.

Then I decided to look around for a specific book that I’d seen the last time I was in the store, The Lion Women of Tehran, by Marjan Kamali. It wasn’t there! Again, any time I’m looking for a specific book, it is never there. But her debut novel was:

So, two or three purchases depending on how you’re counting, one by an established author that I’m certain to enjoy, two debut novels that I’m rolling dice on, no series fiction. So far so good! But then this one caught my eye:

I’m not even completely sure what drew me to this, and I picked it up and put it back down a couple of times, as the plot feels a little been-there-done-that in some ways, but by this point I was in full “fuck it” mode. Speaking of:

I did not buy any Dungeon Crawler Carl books, but these hardcover editions are appealing to my inner book-collector magpie; they’re big chonky bois in bright, appealing covers and I bet they’ll look great on the shelf. I also suspect they might be terrible? I dunno. Anyone read them?

My final purchase was this one:

This was actually the first book I physically touched after entering the store, as I saw it before the Twain book. I have not heard of the author, nor have I heard of his first book, and after flipping it over I realized that I have also not heard of any of the three authors with big pull quotes on the back, nor have I heard of any of the five books of theirs that were mentioned, and the quotes are genuinely wankstrous. Shit, this was probably a literature. I put it back.

Then, while looking for the Kamali book, I went back to the new fiction section to make sure it wasn’t still there, and … well, it turns out that Kamali and Larison are right next to each other on the shelf. So I picked it up again, leafed through it a bit, and put it back again.

Then, while deciding on The Outcast Mage, I decided that even though I’d had a vague plan to pick up three standalone books, and Outcast wasn’t one of those, I could still get it if I bought another standalone in addition to it, and somehow I ended up walking out of the store with The Ancients as well, figuring that this was a pretty precise example of how sometimes the books decide I’m buying them and not the other way around. I think this is the literary equivalent of being adopted by a cat. Hopefully I enjoy it.

I almost want to make this a separate post, but it is just my Barnes & Noble that is really hitting customer service and talking about books super hard, or is that a corporation-wide thing? Because the woman at the register was practically fucking interviewing the two people in front of me, making each transaction take so long that they had to call someone else to run a register because the line was building up. I was simultaneously stressing out about the conversation– what the hell is the name of the book I’m reading? Who is the author again?– and quietly scorning some of her choices, because I swear by God and sunny Jesus that if I walk up to you with a handful of fantasy books and you do what she did to the guy in front of me and ask if I’ve heard of Brandon fucking Sanderson, I may not be able to keep the look of disdain off of my face. She pivoted from “have you heard of the single most famous author in this genre in a generation” straight to recommending the Licanius trilogy by James Islington, making the second time in a row that I have been at that Barnes and Noble and someone has recommended those books, and I had the same reaction both times, which is that I usually don’t believe people when they tell me they’ve read them.

Also, there are like fifteen steps in fantasy book-reading between Brandon Sanderson and James Islington. It’s like finding out someone enjoys Goosebumps and recommending Lovecraft to them.

Anyway, the new register person ended up helping me, and did so without any unnecessary questions, which is good, because there was no way I was getting out of that conversation without some form of idiotic faux pas.

The end.

In which I’m in trouble

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

Allow me, if you will, to show you a picture from a few weeks ago of one of my bookshelves:

Direct your attention to the upper left of that picture. Now look at this:

I’ve made this distinction before: my wife reads a lot too, right? Not as much as I do, but more than most people. My wife and I are both readers, but I have a second hobby, which is that I collect books. My wife distinctly and definitely does not collect books. We would be in desperate trouble if she did. She buys perhaps a couple a year and most of the time exists off of rereads and reading books I’ve bought.

I feel like I’ve crossed a line lately.

I’ve never really liked the covers to the Red Rising books, particularly the specific ones I own. If you look really closely at the dust jackets in the top cover you’ll notice a couple of small tears in Golden Son and a rub mark in the bottom of Iron Gold, both signs that I got the books from Amazon, because I wouldn’t have bought them from a physical store with flaws in them. Those awesome covers are not new books– I actually special-ordered custom dust jackets from Juniper Books to replace the original dust jackets on my hardcovers. Which I’m keeping, of course, although I’m not entirely sure why.

I’ve found myself really tempted by special editions of books I already own lately, too, especially if their original covers annoyed me in some way. For example, I think whoever is responsible for this abomination should be literally pilloried:

…and, as it turns out, there’s site called the Broken Binding that offers these fucking beautiful bastards, at the low low cost of $150 for four books I already own:

And, Goddammit, I’m tempted. Sorely tempted. I just kicked ass at work and I feel like I can justify rewarding myself, but shit, that’s a lot of money, for something just to look better on a shelf, which … feels unreasonable, even to me?

I dunno. My birthday’s July 5?

(I also keep almost ordering this hat, not because I think it would look good on me but because the model in the picture is rocking it, and I feel like maybe ordering clothing I can’t wear because it makes a different human look good is maybe a sign that having a small amount of discretionary money is starting to get to me. Can I just shift into Saves Money Guy for a few years, please? Enough for a decent emergency fund, or at least to pay for the new fucking computer I’m probably going to need soon without putting it on a card?)

(We won’t talk about how much of my money Lego is currently trying, and failing, to take from me.)

Sigh.

Speaking of doing things wrong

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Project Buy All The Things continues apace; this one was practically an accident, as we weren’t in the market for a new refrigerator until Lowe’s decided to put them on an absolutely ludicrous sale– this particular fridge was $800 off. This is the second new fridge we bought this week as the first one was too Goddamned big to be brought into the kitchen; they have a “will this fit?” tool on their website to avoid specifically that problem that I didn’t notice until after a very nice and patient delivery man, clearly expecting to get his ass chewed out, apologetically informed me that there was no way that they were going to get the damned thing into my kitchen. Various fuckery ensued and long story short an only slightly inferior refrigerator is now in our kitchen, although there were some scary moments getting this one in as well– I actually had to pull some trim from a doorway last night to ensure we had enough room, and even then it was about literally as tight as it could possibly be; you can see where the missing trim is in the doorway behind the fridge. I’ll put it back tomorrow. We’ll have to repaint a bit but we needed to do that anyway.

Those of you who are either particularly eagle-eyed or have a good memory will note that there is a nook that appears to be for a refrigerator on the left side of the picture there, and yet the New Hotness is rather oddly perched against a wall in the middle of the damn kitchen. The problem is that any fridge that fits into that space has to be smaller than we want it to be and we’re going to reno the kitchen eventually anyway, as soon as we get done paying off the bathroom we did last year. We just decided to jump on the fridge early. Yeah, it’s awkward, fuck it.

Tomorrow, I review a pillow. For at least the second time.

In which I count down the days

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Screen Shot 2017-03-31 at 3.16.04 PM.png…because next Thursday this puppy here shows up in my house, adjustable foundation and all, and I am so fucking excited, guys.  After ten years of our current mattress, it’s starting to sport some serious hills and valleys– it wasn’t at the point where it was awful yet, but it could certainly use a refresh, and it turns out that one of the little silver linings to having spent half the year unemployed was I was overpaying my taxes for the other half, so our tax refund was pretty healthy this year.  So: new mattress!  And then my wife was all “Hmmm, do we want an ergo foundation?” and I was all like hell yeah we want an ergo foundation, I wasn’t even gonna mention that, and now we’ve got one.

Or at least we will, once it gets delivered.  Which is happening next Thursday.  Only six days from now.  And then I will spend 24 hours without getting out of bed because this bed is that comfy.

Wheeeee!

My roommate from Denver has still not returned to work, which I find vaguely horrifying.  We’ll see if he’s in tomorrow.  That means that whatever he picked up out there knocked him on his ass for a solid week, in a job where there are no sick days and if you aren’t there you aren’t making any money.  I’m more than a little surprised I’m not worse off; this implies that whatever was wrong with him, it wasn’t related to the altitude, and I’m generally weak to anything even vaguely contagious.

In other news, and speaking of counting down the days, Missy can get around to releasing that new album any damn time now:

 

In which gimme gimme gimme

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek11 Comments

101985502-Screen_Shot_2014-09-09_at_2.20.27_PM.530x298No one is more surprised than me– mostly because no one but me cares– to discover that Apple’s big nerd prom today has probably sold me a Pebble Steel.  I love my Pebble– it is, hands down, my favorite piece of technology since my first cell phone– but I was fully expecting to trade it in for Apple’s smart watch when they finally got around to introducing one, mostly on account of I’m wearing what looks like a piece of cheap plastic on my wrist.  I didn’t want an iWatch because of the functionality; I wanted one because it would look more like a watch a grown-up should be wearing.

Reactions are unsurprisingly mixed, but I love the look of the thing, and I love the word “fluoroelastomer,” but I don’t love the fact that they didn’t mention battery life other than, apparently, claiming that you’d charge it “every night.”  I have gotten used to wearing a watch to bed because my watch is also my alarm clock.  I don’t ever want to be awakened by a sound again, folks; that’s how much better a wrist vibration is as an alarm clock.  It’s wonderful.  And if the Apple Watch doesn’t have at a minimum four or five days in between charges (which is about what I get with the Pebble) I don’t want it.  I won’t spend $350 (minimum!) on a watch that I can’t use as an alarm clock.  That’s half the reason I have a smart watch.

Now, the iPhone 6, on the other hand, is an auto-buy.  My phone is reaching the end of its useful life (I’m having to have to have a charging cord with me at all times) and plus I’ve long since accepted the fact that I’m the guy who gets a new phone almost every year anyway.  So there is no if dimension to the upgrade, only when.  And I could go into the details of the when except I’m pretty sure this post is already nerdy enough.  Needless to say it involves deciding whether I’m less pissed at Sprint for having shitty service or Verizon for generically being assholes.  I’m tilting toward going back to Verizon except that involves porting my number over in time to still preorder the phone, which is, uh, kinda complicated, blah blah blah nerdwank nerdwank.

What did normal people think about today?

Is that a plank in my eye?

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, Parenting, Politics3 Comments

20131129-104132.jpgSo here’s a novel way to have Thanksgiving: don’t have any turkey, because your oven betrays you again and the turkey doesn’t even come out of the goddamn oven until everything else is on the table and cooling, and then you find out (because you didn’t make the turkey, and you’ve never made a turkey, and you didn’t know this) that a turkey has to “rest” for half a goddamn hour after coming out of the oven and therefore everything else is going to be well and truly goddamned eaten before the turkey is even ready.

S’fun. You should do it. We call it Side Dish Thanksgiving. My mother did some sort of corn casserole thing that was basically just corn and sautéed onions and bloody cream cheese, of all things. It was delicious. We did Thug Kitchen’s stuffing recipe (needed a teensy bit more liquid, but otherwise great) and Albert Burneko’s mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, because we can’t cook a meal around here anymore without referencing either Thug Kitchen or Foodspin and really why would you even want to cook without using recipes from one of the two anyway. And green bean casserole and crescent rolls and a multitude of pies (which is the proper collective for pie) and two different kinds of deviled eggs, because have you ever made deviled eggs with sriracha? Holy God.

I am not going to be shopping today.

I’m getting more conflicted about holidays as I get older. I boycotted Christmas entirely last year; I made it clear to everyone that I wasn’t buying any presents for anyone and they were not to buy anything for me either; I really want to raise the boy in a way that he grows up substantially less materialistic than I am and one of the main ways to do that, I think, is to cut the emphasis on getting stuff around holidays.

Sounds great, right? All principled and shit, until I get to the part where I tell you that I ordered a PS3 (not a typo; 3) from Amazon yesterday so that I didn’t have to go stand in line at Gamestop at midnight to fight for one of the eight exactly-identically-ridiculous PS3 packages that they have in-store. A 250 GB PS3, which can’t be had for $199 by itself, plus two games, one of which is the entire reason I want a PS3, for $199, plus Saturday shipping for less than tax would have been. It’ll show up tomorrow sometime.

Which is as far as my “no materialism/no shopping on Thanksgiving/no shopping on Black Friday” thing gets me: I spent $200 on an electronic doohickey that I don’t actually need, on Thanksgiving, so that a low-wage Amazon employee can package it and mail it on Black Friday so that somebody else can scramble to get it to me on a Saturday by 8:00. Which should be about when I’m getting home from work. So, yeah, I’m all big and bad and principled and won’t go shopping on Black Friday… because I ordered my shit online on Thanksgiving.

Maybe I work on my own materialism before I try reprogramming the boy.

It begins

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

The good news:  It is 9:34 AM on Thanksgiving morning, and I am awake, dressed, showered, breakfasted, and ready to regulate.  One of my oldest friends is already here and we have six more people coming over later today.

The bad news:  my lovely wife, who is lovely and I love dearly, has only just now discovered that our roasting pan is insufficient for our turkey-roasting needs.  So I have to go get one.  And salt.

We somehow do not have salt.

I had the idea at one point that I was going to try to not spend money this weekend; I may as well go wait in line and buy a PS4 tonight.  Because this will not be the only thing.

Enjoy your holiday, y’all.  🙂