the hypothetical wren

I love Target. I like The New Yorker (I’ve been subscribing for about ten years now). Nevertheless, I received my copy of the all-Target-ads issue in the mail yesterday, and it’s actually pretty creepy. The ads don’t really seem like ads, and the red bullseye gets a little wearisome after a while, and they all sort of distract from the text. I can usually ignore magazine ads, but these say Look At Me far too much. The linked article, however, has some interesting information on Target corporate history.

Flying Star muffuleta sandwiches (today’s special): okay, but not as spicy as the best muffuletas (muffuletae?) I’ve had (in New Orleans, of course). Still, a decent lunch. The coffee that they switched to sometime this summer is excellent, though. Far better than Satellite coffee, I have to say.

Much of my time this week has been spent cleaning crap out of my apartment. I’ve lived in it a year now, meaning that there’s been a year of accumulated goods in it. It’s small enough that having too much stuff in it makes it seem even smaller, which makes me feel tense. So, I’ve been moving things around and getting rid of other things. I took a bag of CDs down to Natural Sound today and traded them for some new ones (thus beginning next summer’s crap-cleanout spectacular). I also put a bunch of other CDs and a few DVDs up for sale on Amazon. I listed all of my Simpsons DVD box sets the other evening (I’ve watched each of them a total of once), and they all sold within twenty minutes. Nice, especially considering that I sold them for more than I paid for them.

School starts Monday. I have a whole slew of meetings tomorrow. Am I looking forward to the new semester? Not entirely.

Current reading: Tim Gallagher’s The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. A last burst of leisure reading before next week.

I apologize for the lack of content in here as of late. I’ve been pretty busy, and I feel sort of burnt out from all the work I did this summer, so I’m sort of taking a (originally unplanned) break from writing and/or thinking for a while, at least until school starts.

An entertaining weekend diversion: the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest results. Entrants attempt to write the worst opening line to a novel possible.

This is one of my favorites:

After months of pent-up emotions like a caffeine-addict trying to kick the habit, Cathy finally let the tears come, at first dripping sporadically like an old clogged percolator, then increasing slowly like a 10-cup coffeemaker with an automatic drip, and eventually pouring out and noisily wailing like a cappuccino maker complete with slurping froth

Also:

Captain Burton stood at the bow of his massive sailing ship, his weathered face resembling improperly cured leather that wouldn’t even be used to make a coat or something.

In my own life, I am in Grand Junction for a few days. I’ve spent most of my time watching TV, napping, and shopping for new clothes. I recommend it. Next week, I head back to ABQ, and then the week after the week after that, school starts again, and that’s just going to be grim. Napping and television seem like a good a strategic plan for the moment.