"Dealing with the bank, he said, was 'like dealing with organized crime.' "
I was forced to work overtime yesterday on a route I haven't done in years, in a semi-skeezy neighborhood. Normally, when you're working an unfamiliar route, even if you don't know the streets, you can sort of follow the mail. Last night, though, walking down dark winding lanes I could hear the mail whispering, "You're going to die out here."Luckily, I had my iPhone, and when I did not know where the next stop was, why, I just fired up the Maps app and hey presto, there it was.
I read one of the vampire-American books, Dead Until Dark, the other day. Well, I say book, but I really downloaded it onto my phone. Pages are so millennium before last. Anyway, when I finished it, I went to buy the next one in the series, and Barnes and Noble had priced it at $19.96! For an e-book! Sort of preternaturally predatory pricing, no?
When I was in high school, I read a collection called 900 Grandmothers. There's a story about a scientist who can't remember what a particular machine in his lab does. He discovers that it is making people forget that Chicago has been destroyed. He understands then, why there is such a maudlin strain in the popular culture. Having remembered, he lets the machine take his memory away again.
I'm wondering if the sudden popularity of all things vampire is an expression of the way our government, and businesses, and health care system, and book stores, seem to be bleeding us dry.
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