God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

yes, i know, millions of people probably posted that title on their blogs days ago, when kurt vonnegut passed. no, i didn't "steal" the idea, i'm just that sadly cliched. i remember being twelve and thinking i was brilliant because of this idea:
the statue of liberty holding an absolut bottle in her hand, instead of the torch, with the words ABSOLUT LIBERTY.
and then a friend gave me ABSOLUT BOOK as a gift, and i discovered that that's the most common unsolicited suggestion the campaign receives.
talk about feeling normal. mediocre. inartistic, inarticulate, un-extraordinary, un-uncommon, un-un-un-unusual (yes i counted the negatives, to make sure they properly canceled out).
whatever. as it is, if you want to peg me for my lack of creativity, i beat you to it. i win.

one of the local (by local, i mean in a neighboring corporate) libraries held a book sale recently. actually, it is still going on as i type. so what i REALLY mean is that i went to a book sale at a nearby town's library recently. gosh, clarity can be elusive.
here were a few of the finds:
1) bless me, ultima
2) a cd of the siete canciones of de falla, plus other stuff. obviously i purchased the cd for those 7 songs.
3) east of eden
4) the sound and the fury
5) an anthology of english renaissance literature
6) the armada
7) don quixote
8) a few bernard shaw plays
9) the man who ate everything
10) i searched for more vonnegut, but alas. in a splendid display of true human nature, when the man died his books were taken off the sales racks and placed solidly back on full-price, best-selling collections. it makes me wonder; were i to die soon, would more people suddenly read this blog?

it snowed yesterday. i was going to talk about how white and pure the snow looked, pure as an untouched virgin. but as we salt the crap out of the roads and drive all over the snow in our daily routines, i thought the analogy inappropriate unless you fancy salted, smashed virgin. instead, what we do to the snow is reminiscent of a tender, juicy chicken-fried steak, with extra gravy. unfortunately it does not comfort as chicken-fried steak does. it only depresses---and while i will admit that gorging oneself on chicken-fried steak can lead to severe regret and self-loathing after a rendezvous with the bathroom scale, snow does not even offer that grade of depression. it says, bleakly: "i will delay you 15 minutes every morning for you to scrape me off your car. i will come when you least expect it, forcing you to tromp through me in your flip-flops. i will fall just thick enough to cause trouble, but not enough to have a snow day. and i will come to kill your daffodils and tulips, and trigger your radiator so that your cats, who were deceived by good weather into sitting on the radiator to look out the window, will scald their paws and whiskers and fur and whine whine WHINE, so that you will want to kill them."
so it goes.