Eight feet of DNA in every cell!

I like that. Sounds like a DNA advert, doesn't it? Or an ad for cells, anyway: "Over eight feet of DNA in our cells, compared to our competitor's six!" Okay, so that doesn't sound like an advert at all, but whatever. There's a reason I don't work retail. Actually, funny story about working retail. Well, not so funny....

My first job-job (as in, something other than babysitting or cleaning the houses of relatives) was working as a cashier at Sears. Actually, the official name was "CAC," which stood for "Central Aisle Cashier" but which was, of course, corrupted from "CAC" into "cock" within fifteen minutes by the guys I worked with.

Anyway, I was a sixteen-year-old cock at Sears, working mainly in the tool department. The sex jokes pretty much stopped there, but my friends found it massively amusing that I worked around tools, let me tell you. I also crushed on a few of my coworkers, including one guy I went to high school with who worked in Lawn & Garden and ended up being Gay™ a few years later. I remember getting on the loudspeaker a few times, especially when I was alone at the register with no floor people in sight and an old man would come up and ask me something about god-knows-what kind of wrench. Well, Sears is a joyous corporation determined to preserve its glorious heritage among its minimum-wage employees, and my (paid) training included several days learning about the history of the Sears corporation but no actual useful knowledge regarding, say, how to distinguish a wrench from a hacksaw. So, more often than not, I would send myself onto the store's loudspeaker: "Matt. Chris. Eric. Anyone. Please help, before I fuck something up and sell this old guy a pair of penny loafers instead of a sledgehammer." Hell, the old guy probably never knew any better, either.

The fucked-up part, the reason I never want to work corporation retail again, was the Sears card. Of each and every customer, I was supposed to ask "Would you like to put this on your Sears card?" If they said no, I was then supposed to ask "Do you have a Sears card with us?" If they said no again, then came the "Would you like to apply for one? It only takes about three minutes." I was supposed to ask, mind, but I never actually did unless the head cock was standing around (which she almost never did; she was a relatively cool girl in her mid-twenties, and I got the feeling she didn't like it either). The irritating parts for me were twofold - first, when I had to ask, I very nearly always got turned down, and I don't do well with rejection. Second, the people who said "yes" were also invariably the people who had rifled through their wallets or purses for twenty minutes, searching for the one card they hadn't maxed out, then asked me to swipe it, remembering just in time that they'd actually handed me an expired Fry's VIP card. Plus, the interest rate was sky-high. I worked there for about five months and I think I signed up about a dozen people for Sears cards. May the gods have mercy on my already tattered soul.

Jesus, these posts are like riding in the car with my brother. See, he believes that driving should take your breath away ... and, if possible, your life, just to let you know that you've really been enjoying yourself. Somewhere in the past six years, Driver's Education has apparently amended its curriculum so that green no longer means "go" and red means "stop." Instead, green now means "go" and red means "go HARDER. Horns? What horns? They're just cheering you on!" Bumpers are designed to touch, brakes are suggestions, and screamo is God's gift to the world of music. ... Eventually, he does get me (and himself, I guess) home safely, so let's move right along.

Books. They're great. Read them. Don't know what to pick up? Lucky you, I'm here to help.

First off, Alas, Babylon. What if the Cold War had been warmer and more of a war? Specifically, what if the Soviet Union had nuked all the US coastal cities and most of Europe to radioactive hell and back, and then been counter-wiped out itself? It's an interesting proposition, but what I really liked about it is that it didn't jump for the blockbuster ideology of "a group of determined and ethnically-sensitive (but still mostly white) survivors claw their way through the ruins of Great City X." Instead, the main characters are all from a small town in Florida, and the only time they leave is when the main visits his brother before the bombings happen. If you've read The Road, I'd compare it to that, and not necessarily in terms of related subject matter, either. Rather, while you get apocalyptic cataclysms in both books, they're more about the emotions of survival and recovery and what-have-you. And shit blows up, so give it a shot.

A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet. Generally, I'm not a big fan of memoirs, but Beverly Cleary occupies a very special place in my heart. And if one more person asks me who Beverly Cleary is, I'm going to clobber them. Henry Huggins and Ribsy? Ramona and Beezus Quimby? Leigh Botts of Dear Mr. Henshaw? The Mouse and the Motorcycle? If you can honestly tell me none of those ring any sort of bell, then I say right now that you had an incomplete childhood. Go out, right now, and get one Beverly Cleary book, and then read her memoirs.

What I found so interesting about Beverly Cleary's life, especially her college years, is that I could read some parts and say, hey, yeah, this totally happened to me, too! Then, other parts seemed less like she'd grown up in a different time and more like she'd grown up on a different planet. (She was through college before World War II began.) If nothing else, they're absolutely worth the descriptions of her young adult life. But, really, she's a great writer (probably one of the best of the century, if not ever), so check 'em out.

Boy Culture. When I saw this book at the library, I just read the dust jacket - gay male prostitute spills his life - and that was enough to make me put it in my bag. Later, I wasn't so sure; it seemed a bit too much like an edgy gay sitcom: Gay prostitute has wacky gay roommates who get into lots of rowdy adventures! Some of it does come across as a little trite, like the "my roommate's gay, NO REALLY, and I have a crush on him so let's get him out of the closet" (and maybe that's just because I've lived it, natch). On the whole, though, it's a lot like Shortbus (which is awesome. See it.) in that, yeah, the characters are gay, and they're more, ahem, sexually liberated than you're likely to see in the latest Dan Brown or Nora Roberts, but that doesn't mean the book sacrifices any humanity in the telling.

No excuses now, kids. Your library's there for a reason, and it's free. Use it. Go.