I hate shopping. Books are one thing, clothes are the Devil, and while I had planned to deal with the Devil in carefully planned increments after Readercon, in reality I spent most of that time dealing with my health instead and since I leave for Providence on Wednesday, that left today as Hell.
Most of the day was, in fact, terrible. But I have ended it the owner of one pair of honest-to-God one-hundred-percent-cotton heavy-weight jeans with pockets I can actually get my hands into and one pair of blue-black corduroy cargo pants whose plethora of high-waisted pockets simultaneously recalls photographs of 1940's munitions workers and dorsal and caudal fins.
I got them from a store on Newbury Street called Brandy Melville which I only walked into because they had jeans in the window. I expected to receive exactly the same regretful negative I had gotten from the previous three stores I had similarly cold-queried about non-stretchy jeans, especially when I saw that the clientele appeared to consist almost strictly of teenage girls, either in groups or accompanied by mothers who looked to be my age. Everywhere else I had looked so far—an entire mall and the aforementioned three stores on Newbury Street, which might have been a more impressive number if I had had a greater quantity of cope left by that point in the day, but there had been a mall—had either offered stretchy jeans only or their hundred percent cotton had been artfully distressed in ways that made the jeans utterly useless as well as aesthetically repellent to me. When the sales clerk by the fitting room told me that most of their jeans were no-stretch, I collected an armful and prepared to be demoralized.
The first thing I tried was the cargo pants and they just fit. The second thing I tried was the pair of jeans I bought. The third, fourth, and fifth things did not fit me, but they did not fit me in different ways, which at least suggests that this chain recognizes the existence of more than one body type. I regret a little that their style in black denim had a just slightly wrong waist-to-hip ratio, since it had even better pockets and my last pair of black jeans disintegrated over fifteen years ago, but frankly I had not expected to leave the store with one pair of pants, let alone two. And they did not cost the earth. Which was not my experience of the mall or the other stores on Newbury Street, either. I keep feeling there must be a catch, especially since I have so repeatedly invoked the Devil, but both pairs seem well-constructed and neither smells of brimstone. Is this what it's like to be catered to? And it happened at an Italian store that markets to teenagers, yet.
Later in the evening I sorted old familial jewelry with my mother and came up with a pair of suitable chains so that I can wear both of the pendants by Elise Matthesen that I am bringing to NecronomiCon, the abalone-and-gold-wire "The Secret Language of Water" and the labradorite-and-silver-wire "Was Ice, Am Ocean." I have also inherited a pendant from my grandmother that my mother always thought should come to me; it is a cloudy, swirly carving of pale green jade on a green silk cord and I remember her wearing it, though less often than the pink jade or the strands of rose quartz. I do not know if I will bring it to the convention. I do not customarily wear a lot of jewelry, but I am not customarily a Poet Laureate, and I feel I should dress accordingly. I regret somewhat more not being able to locate a fancy vest, but I suspect my idea of a fancy vest went out with the nineteenth century.
I would really like about three days of nothing before I hit a convention at which I am expected to be brilliant for hours starting in the mornings, but it isn't going to happen. Have some links that accumulated recently.
1. Art Spiegelman on golden age superheroes and the context of rising fascism. Regarding the circumstances of the essay's publication: I cannot actually hear the word "apolitical" without flashing straight to Tom Lehrer.
2. I liked this piece a lot: Lucy Biederman, "An Essay into the Poetry of Mrs. Celia Dropkin." I also like the poetry of Celia Dropkin.
3. I glanced off this paper on Tumblr some time back and then could remember neither the author nor the title, which made it surprisingly but also hilariously difficult to find again: Dennis Upper, "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of 'writer's block'" (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Fall 1974).
4. Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer: Hittite memes.
5. I recommend reading all of the poems of the 1619 Project.
I am not really of the community to feel recognized and validated by AO3's Hugo win, but I still think it's pretty neat. Jeannette Ng and Likhain, I am just happy about.
Most of the day was, in fact, terrible. But I have ended it the owner of one pair of honest-to-God one-hundred-percent-cotton heavy-weight jeans with pockets I can actually get my hands into and one pair of blue-black corduroy cargo pants whose plethora of high-waisted pockets simultaneously recalls photographs of 1940's munitions workers and dorsal and caudal fins.
I got them from a store on Newbury Street called Brandy Melville which I only walked into because they had jeans in the window. I expected to receive exactly the same regretful negative I had gotten from the previous three stores I had similarly cold-queried about non-stretchy jeans, especially when I saw that the clientele appeared to consist almost strictly of teenage girls, either in groups or accompanied by mothers who looked to be my age. Everywhere else I had looked so far—an entire mall and the aforementioned three stores on Newbury Street, which might have been a more impressive number if I had had a greater quantity of cope left by that point in the day, but there had been a mall—had either offered stretchy jeans only or their hundred percent cotton had been artfully distressed in ways that made the jeans utterly useless as well as aesthetically repellent to me. When the sales clerk by the fitting room told me that most of their jeans were no-stretch, I collected an armful and prepared to be demoralized.
The first thing I tried was the cargo pants and they just fit. The second thing I tried was the pair of jeans I bought. The third, fourth, and fifth things did not fit me, but they did not fit me in different ways, which at least suggests that this chain recognizes the existence of more than one body type. I regret a little that their style in black denim had a just slightly wrong waist-to-hip ratio, since it had even better pockets and my last pair of black jeans disintegrated over fifteen years ago, but frankly I had not expected to leave the store with one pair of pants, let alone two. And they did not cost the earth. Which was not my experience of the mall or the other stores on Newbury Street, either. I keep feeling there must be a catch, especially since I have so repeatedly invoked the Devil, but both pairs seem well-constructed and neither smells of brimstone. Is this what it's like to be catered to? And it happened at an Italian store that markets to teenagers, yet.
Later in the evening I sorted old familial jewelry with my mother and came up with a pair of suitable chains so that I can wear both of the pendants by Elise Matthesen that I am bringing to NecronomiCon, the abalone-and-gold-wire "The Secret Language of Water" and the labradorite-and-silver-wire "Was Ice, Am Ocean." I have also inherited a pendant from my grandmother that my mother always thought should come to me; it is a cloudy, swirly carving of pale green jade on a green silk cord and I remember her wearing it, though less often than the pink jade or the strands of rose quartz. I do not know if I will bring it to the convention. I do not customarily wear a lot of jewelry, but I am not customarily a Poet Laureate, and I feel I should dress accordingly. I regret somewhat more not being able to locate a fancy vest, but I suspect my idea of a fancy vest went out with the nineteenth century.
I would really like about three days of nothing before I hit a convention at which I am expected to be brilliant for hours starting in the mornings, but it isn't going to happen. Have some links that accumulated recently.
1. Art Spiegelman on golden age superheroes and the context of rising fascism. Regarding the circumstances of the essay's publication: I cannot actually hear the word "apolitical" without flashing straight to Tom Lehrer.
2. I liked this piece a lot: Lucy Biederman, "An Essay into the Poetry of Mrs. Celia Dropkin." I also like the poetry of Celia Dropkin.
3. I glanced off this paper on Tumblr some time back and then could remember neither the author nor the title, which made it surprisingly but also hilariously difficult to find again: Dennis Upper, "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of 'writer's block'" (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Fall 1974).
4. Courtesy of
moon_custafer: Hittite memes.5. I recommend reading all of the poems of the 1619 Project.
I am not really of the community to feel recognized and validated by AO3's Hugo win, but I still think it's pretty neat. Jeannette Ng and Likhain, I am just happy about.
