yesterday a guest expressed surprise that I could tell her about the movies we are showing. Later I heard someone ask a cashier, "what's that movie about?" and she said, "er, um, here's a paper you can read about it." and handed the guest a synopsis. We have been showing this movie for a month and the cashier stands next to that synopsis every time she works box office. You'd think just once she'd get bored enough to read it. I felt like asking her, "what would you think if you went to a restaurant and asked your waiter what a dish was like and they told you to read the menu?" but I thought that might come across as mean.

As those of you who have seen my house know, I will read anything that stands still long enough. I tend to buy nonfiction, usually on sale, because if takes me longer to read and I get library guilt. I get my mysteries and the like from the library. Of course, if really like a book, I'll buy it when it comes out in paperback. This is so that if I'm ever trapped in my house for two or three years, I'll have something to read.

I don't read much contemporary "serious" fiction, because I like something to happen in a book. If I wished to dwell on inner insecurities, I have plenty of my own. I have not read many romances, mostly because I find it easier to believe in monsters than romance. It is not because of any disdain for the genre, though.

In the absence of other reading material, I have read cereal boxes, assembly instructions, automotive catalogs, dictionaries, encyclopedias and the occasional MSDS.

I think I've drawn the line at stereo instructions.

I think I've drawn the line at stereo instructions.

Nope, I've gone down that road.

I have read cereal boxes, assembly instructions, automotive catalogs, dictionaries, encyclopedias and the occasional MSDS.

This is me.

I read instructions on tampon boxes and enemas while in other people's bathrooms.

There are magazines and books in my bathroom.

Yeah, I've read stereo instructions in a pinch. Owner's manuals if I wind up in the car (horrors!) without a book.

I think I might actually draw the line at enema instructions, though.

Assembly instructions can be rather soothing if you have no intent to actually assemble something.

Ginger is me. I get twitchy if I don't have text.

automotive catalogs

Catalogs are like a window into a totally different world! All those arcane things that apparently mean something to other people, and they come in odd variants. Whole industries for things I never suspected, it's like looking behind a door and finding the world of the gnomes or something.

I do remember finding it pretty difficult to give a shit about Aeneas after he'd left Dido in the lurch and she'd topped herself.

I get pissed at Dido, because she's so damn lovestruck that she more or less abandons her people and the construction of her city to moon after Aeneas, and instead of a) hunting him down or b) picking herself back up after he fucks off, she lies to her sister and tosses herself on top of a pyre. That is not leadership, woman! Way to give female rulers a bad name!

I, too, need to read. I've read some truly awful books just because they were the only thing in the house I was visiting.