The Thin Red Line

Sunday was as expected a busy, hectic day. We are getting huge volumes of returns and have a lot of material backed up to be shelved. To make sure it was a completely sucky day, my hearing aid died at the beginning of the shift. The switch is broken and it will not turn on or off and regardless of the non-setting it constantly makes a deep pitched banging noise, which is usually the signal for a dying battery. Have to disconnect the battery to get it to be quiet. It always un-nerves me when I have to be out in public when my ear is out and I can’t hear at all.

And to top it all off, my toothache, which had been on hiatus is back tonight with a vengence, and I am out of the Vicodin my dentist gave me a couple of weeks ago. So for the first time ever on this job, I am calling in sick today and going to try to get my hearing aids fixed. Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and will hopefully get more pain meds and by Thursday will feel up to going back to work. Feh.

I finished reading Poppy Z. Brite’s Soul Kitchen. I was under-whelmed. Unlike in D*U*C*K, where she rhapsodized about the food a lot, there is little specific mention of the restaurant’s food as the protagonists are busy buying a rustic fishing camp in Shell Beach and consulting on a restaurant that is to be opened in a floating casino. Neither of these ideas much interested me, and I frequently found myself discovering that the characters are not at all as I had perceived them in the later book. (Notably I had gotten the distinct impression in D*U*C*K that Ricky and G-Man were black but in this book it is made clear they are white– that the characterizations in the later book were so poorly drawn that I could be left with such a big mis-perception is unfortunate.) I suppose sooner or later the two earlier books in this sequence will happen my way and I will probably read them, but I can’t say I enjoyed or recommend this book or this author.

I am also about half way through reading A Perfect Mess and am thoroughly enjoying it. Also about a third of the way through A Boy’s Life. Today’s illustration is of a metal advertising sign (Joel used to have a huge collection of these, including this one, which I sold off before I moved down here.) for a product which unfortunately I do not have, but it seemed topical

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Ron predicted that UW would examine Staci and send her right back home to Kathi’s and so they did. He talked to them on the phone. Clint got in okay and they will be here until Wednesday. We are planning to get together with them Tuesday, my next day off.

Work was the usual easy Sunday. I was amazed that most of the Harry Potters remained unclaimed on their cart in the back room. (I have also suffered from the temptation to go ahead and buy a copy, but new books are not in our budget so I have so far resisted, though who knows how long my resolve will last…)

I had not previously heard of Poppy Z. Brite, who apparently has written seven other novels, but I came across D*U*C*K the other day and was sufficiently intrigued to bring it home and read it. It is a very short novel (132 pages) about a gay black couple in New Orleans who are chefs and run a restaurant called Liquor, where they use booze in all the recipes. The plot centers around their experiences catering a banquet in Opelousas for an organization of duck hunters who are working to preserve the wetlands. Brite (who appears to be a petite white woman reminiscent of a porcelain doll in her jacket photo) writes with authority about New Orleans and restaurant kitchens, although at times her gay, black, male protagonists fail to ring true. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, which is in some ways an erotic love poem to New Orleans and its food. But given the extreme brevity and the $35 cover price (?!?!???!!!) I can’t recommend anyone go out and buy it.

Also, although this book is available from Pierce County Library, it is for some reason not listed in Worldcat, so there is no link to the book cover.

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