Thrills and Spills

Here's a funny character.

Today I got up and spent some time with my e-mail program. Then, I visited many of the sites I like, the ones to the right. The morning, as you can expect, was grueling.

It was bright out, but cool, and I spent the next hour talking myself out of doing any of the things I needed to do. I wanted to escape the house, get away from everything, so began thinking of shopping. One thing I'd planned on was taking a dead cartridge toner up to Office Depot, where I could exchange it for a ream of recycled paper. The thing is, their replacement cartridges cost nearly a hundred bucks, so I looked for cheaper ones on the Web before deciding to do nothing.

I've been thinking of buying a tea kettle. My main experience with tea was with my grandmother years and years ago, and I've never been a big fan of it, perhaps for that reason. A grandmother is hardly a role model, and I never aspired to be much like her. She used to get dressed in nylons and a dress to weed the lawn.

But another friend drinks tea and I do boil water each day for my coffee. Also, in an attempt to generate some commonality with people who *do* drink tea, as well as for boiling water for hot chocolate, I thought it would be right to have a dedicated vessel for heating water. In the old days (pre 2003) this was never an issue: I wanted something, felt I had to have it, and it was mine.

I have troble justifying buying a container to heat water in. I've been using a pan (Caphalon, but a pan nonetheless) for years and have had no trouble with it. But "the right tool for the job" resonates in my soul. I looked on the Internet and found some tea kettles, but they're quite expensive, considering. The cheap ones look. well, cheap.

I thought I'd ride into town and look. There are some cheap stores there, ones I felt might have tea kettles. Also, there's a store where I could buy some chocolate and also, maybe, some long sleeved T-shirts. No, I don't have money for any of these things, but I want them nonetheless. I've never been responsible.

I needed to get away and felt bad because I could not, in fact, joyfully spend money shopping. I rode up to town and was saved any decisions when I went to a drug store which did not have any tea kettles or T-shirts. So far, so good. The next door did, though, and I spent much longer than one would think looking at a thirty dollar tea kettle. It was the perfect size, about a liter, and had a pleasing, round shape that I thought would be acceptible to leave on the stove top. Of course, it would hardly demonstrate my financial condition, this wasting money on a luxury, and in the end I didn't buy it.

Then I wandered over and looked at some shirts. There were tons of T-shirts but only twenty or so long sleeved ones. Of those, about a dozen had Nike logos. I may be many things, but I'm not a billboard or corporate whore, and I pretty much refuse to buy anything emblazoned with corporate logos. Of the remaining shirts, all but two carried some other brand name, one I didn't know, but they're also unacceptable for me. I just want a goddamn shirt.

They had two, but by that time I was depressed. Too depressed, in fact, to take advantage of the other stores, which I just walked through in a cloud of funk. More teapots, but I had no interest in them. More shirts, but all with corporate or sports logos, and I ended up riding home and not spending a cent.

I guess I should be glad about that, but it put me in a chastised mood for the rest of the day.

So, to sum up, a guy goes out shopping, but can't spend any money. He looks at some stuff, and doesn't buy it. He comes home.


On HBO tonight there was a movie, I guess it's a new Stephen King story "Secret Window." I like the Stephen King book on writing but don't think I've read any of his books. I've seen several of the movies, but I've decided that, while suspensful, the endings always leave me feeling a little flat.

This one featured another writer as main character, something I detest. I take points off any writer who writes about a writer. First, there are very few writers in the world, so you're not picking anything remotely familiar to anyone, and secondly, it's cheap.

This writer, though, was played by Johnny Depp, whom I kinda like. He's stalked by someone accusing him of plagirism, something I'm sure most of the audience can relate to, and spends the whole day much like I do: not writing.

I'd like the freedom King has, the ability to make a living writing, but lack the talent and perserverance. So, I'm at best a hack.