4 posts tagged “berkeley”
My little digital camera isn't much good for birding: to get a really good photo I'd probably have to set the timer and embed it in a block of suet in the backyard. For the most part this is all right, because my schedule and daily habits aren't much good for birding either. But occasionally unusual things happen, like the arrival of a flock of cedar waxwings in the backyard. I got up this morning and saw a few of them near the fig tree through the kitchen window, but before I'd gotten to the end of wondering if I should go get the— , they had flown off. Unsurprising. But they came back an hour later in greater numbers and I decided, even after certain people had mocked me for my series of "photos of little faraway blurry birds in Europe," to try to capture the event. And lo, in a couple of these pictures, you can even maybe see distinguishing features! (Images may also contain sparrows, towhees, and other common backyard denizens.)
I should have brought my camera to the massive UC Press sidewalk sale, to show you how a town like this responds to a clearance on academic titles. But it was early, I hadn't had my coffee, and I was chiefly concerned with my own acquisitions.
It's eclectic, as always. Emphasis on art and film reveals my growing worries about the importance of visual media in literary studies; the book at the bottom, Germany in Transit, was the best score. My housemate contented himself with three titles. He was in the minority. The staff was handing out boxes to grad students who mumbled things about poverty and staggered away with their chimeras.
At right -- Vox's formatting blew up my face to alarming size, and I couldn't take it. "Large Bad Picture." Time to upload a new avatar. We live in a mad world, I tell you, for that sentence to have any meaning.
What else? I never thought I would be so afflicted by the long, unannounced New York Review hiatus: it's not like I live or die by John Leonard's effluvium, but the table of contents always matches my state of mind so well. We are screwed— but there are books! The TLS, with its devout, snarky Tory sense of the longue durée, can't measure up.
What else else? I was going to post something gloomy, but instead, at the Berkeley Bowl, this was on sale:
Close-up of that label:
The recycling bin is threatening to take over the kitchen. Trash day is tomorrow! Time for curbside recycling! Ah, but every night homeless people with grocery carts come by and take all the bottles and cans to redeem for pocket cash. I have empathy for them, of course. But the recycling service needs the money too, and is awesome. What to do? Get up at 6:45, run the containers out to the curb, run back and go to sleep? I am now making the face that best expresses how appetizing that sounds. And what if the "poachers" take them in the morning anyway?
There are so many things wrong with this dilemma, I don't know where to start. Fuck it. I think maybe I'll make a note of when the truck comes this week, see if I can time it next week, and try to get by without Izze sodas in the meantime. When did I turn into such a yuppie?
