A Battle for All the Bulges

    The Summer Games ended a few days ago, and I barely watched any of it.  With the time difference, I already knew the results for most of the biggest events before I could watch, especially with me in a position where I couldn't really watch them live.  Still, I could talk about the athletic competition, the human interest stories, or even the controversies, some of which are still going on.  No, I will be discussing a certain meme-worthy moment.  Not the Australian breakdancer, nor the Turkish sharp-shooter, although I almost changed my mind about him when I found out he might be a rabbit lover.  No, I am going to talk about a certain French pole-vaulter, the one who failed to qualify for the medal round when his "third leg" bumped the bar.  A very noticeable "leg."  If you look at the entire footage, and not just that one prominent photograph, you will see that one of his actual legs hit the bar causing it to dislodge.  Now, I was never an athlete in school, but even I know enough that one needs extra support sometimes, just so that one's "participles" aren't "dangling" too much.  Yes, that is a grammar joke.  I have to justify having an English degree every now and then to prove I have one.  In fact, many of the male athletes seemed to be flaunting their bulges.  Not so much the US team, as most of the males seemed to have been able to keep their "packages, " well, packaged properly.  This brought back a memory from high school, when one of my jock friends related an incident that happened to them. (Yes, most of my closest male friends were athletes, on at least one team.  Some of the on two or more.  I was just so weird that I had almost circled back around just enough to be able to hang near the cool kids.  Didn't do that much with it, but I liked it.  I always considered myself just a little bit cooler than the other non-athlete guys, although that could just be opinion and not fact.) Anyway, he was on the baseball team.  While waiting for his turn, he managed to get a "pop up" in his uniform. Now, this normally happens randomly to teenage boys.  It is perfectly normal, if embarrassing.  Sometimes it lasts well into adulthood, where it can cause even more problems than pure embarrassment.  He wasn't wearing a cup or jock of any kind, so it was still fairly noticeable when he got to the plate.  So noticeable in fact, that the announcer gave him a nickname based on his "bat." I believe he struck out, or at least I hope he did, because running to first would have been hard, difficult and uncomfortable to run while in that condition. (And to think that baseball would have been the only sport offered at my school that I had half a shot at making the team.) 

    I had heard about the pole-vault incident a bit, but I didn't actually try to read about it, or see it until an article from a comic book/pop culture website I follow featured it on Facebook.  They used a giant croissant to cover the athlete's manhood on the thumbnail, but left it off for the main article.  I was actually going to use a croissant as the main pun in the title for this post, but no one might have gotten the reference.  Some of the alternate titles included "Why Yes, That Is a Croissant in My Unitard," "Would You Like to Share My Croissant," and "You Will Always Give Me a Croissant."  That last one is a very deep dive into the mid-90s MTV comedy show The State.  A man was singing about his girlfriend breaking up with him, but the thought of her would always put him into the same state as my high school friend, using the same five-letter word starting with "b" that the announcer used for my friend.  Strangely enough, one of the few sketches I remember from the show involved bulges.  It was from a spring break special.  The cast was trying to have a high-brow Shakespearean performance, in tights.  The first man out had a noticeable bulge, but the next one out had a larger one.  As each "member" came out, they were sporting more prominent, ridiculously placed bulges, until the end.  The cast's lone female member came on stage sporting the absolute largest, most meandering bulge imaginable.  Fairly funny, but I felt a little guilty watching it.  Anyway, after checking out a few more news stories about the "bulge," more news stories about athletes started to appear in my feed.  Mostly bodybuilding tips and giants fortunately, and very few bulges.  I'm hoping that the algorithm will return to normal now that the games are over with.  Otherwise, I might have to overload on cute bunny videos just to balance things out, not that I already see quite a bit of bunnies, but still.

Signed, Sealed, But Not Yet Delivered

    Years ago, one of the first authors Booknotes ever had over for a book signing put us on the mailing list for a newsletter.  At first, I thought it was all a mistake, since we never paid for the subscription, but later my mother informed me of this much later.  Perhaps a year later.  Anyway, last Monday, July 29, the latest copy arrived in the mail.  Since it was rather late in the day and I was busy, I didn't look at it immediately.  To be honest, I barely give it more than a casual one-over as it really isn't the type of thing I like reading.  The next day, Tuesday, July 30, a postcard arrived at the store.  It was from an author who wanted to see if he could appear at the store early in the day before his book signing (at a location he didn't mention) that afternoon.  I first thought the day he mentioned was the twenty-seventh, which had been the past Saturday.  However, the "7" was actually a "2" and his event had been on June 22 not July 27.  The postcard had arrived well after a month from the original event.  Furthermore, when I finally got a chance to look at the newsletter, I discovered that it too had been delivered well after its intended date.  The newsletter featured upcoming events from mid-June to early July, and it was dated for June 14 as well.  Even if there had been printing or distribution problems, the store would have received it well before late July or the issue would have been edited to reflect the delay.  While the postcard could have theoretically been lost or otherwise misplaced with larger mail, I cannot think of a good excuse for why something as large as the newsletter was delivered so late.  The only on that even makes halfway sense would be the USPS and the latest move for greater efficiency. Decades ago, when the store first opened, a letter carrier would hand-deliver the mail to each unit at the shopping center, six days a way.  Some days, they were the only person who would come into the store.  A few years later, that changed, and the mail would be delivered to letter boxes in one of two clusters at the center instead.  The occasional piece of mail would be sent to the wrong box, but the was mostly fixable, although I still have the haunting feeling that sometimes someone would just throw the mail away instead of checking in with the right address.  Sure, this also meant later delivery times many days, sometimes after 4:30 pm.  A few years ago, in an effort to become for efficient with the mail, the USPS decided to close some of the smaller distribution centers, and reroute mail to larger ones.  This resulted in the Pikeville center being closed, with all of its mail now coming out from Charleston, WV.  While this didn't really effect most of the mail coming from outside of Kentucky, it added a day or two to all of the mail coming from inside the state, as the mail had to travel hundreds of miles extra to reach its intended destination.  This year, there was another round of consolidations.  Mail that used to be sent out from Charleston was now going to a place in Pennsylvania instead.  This could actually cut the travel time for mail from New England or the Mid-Atlantic by at least a day.  Unfortunately, most of our mail comes from the South or Midwest.  This is an automatic extra day for those locations.  What is worse is for the Kentucky-based mail.  All the extra travel time will add at least an extra day, if not two, to the already delayed mail from in-state.  So, any mail from say Frankfort, which used to take a day or two to reach the store, will now take at least four days to make the circuitous trip.  How is this more efficient?  We actually had to have one of the store's accounts switched to email billing when a bill got lost in the mail.  And this was just within Pikeville, when such mail doesn't have to be sent out to be sorted.  In the immortal words of Muffin Cupcake Heeler, "THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!" Now, I have heard about some of the 'real' reasons about all of the moves towards 'efficiency,' but not all of them have had confirmation, so I won't go into them.  However, I will say that it looks like it is more of a move towards saving money rather than time.  It might be time to look into changing the way mail is handled, including privatizing.

Reading on the Edge

    As a bookstore owner, I have been noticing the latest trends in the marketing of books.  One of the more unusual ones is the practice of dying the edges of the pages on the first printings of many book, primarily in the Young Adult and Young Adult adjacent genres.  These limited editions have the edges, on all three sides, dyed in either a solid color or a design.  The practice is even starting to spread into trade paperbacks. Now, I think this could increase the collectability of the book, up to a point, as only the first printings of the first edition of the book get this treatment.  Further printings would not have this feature. On the other hand, certain outlets are apparently getting their own exclusive designs. Just last week, I noticed that the Walmart edition of Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi had its design in shades of blue, Walmart's signature color, instead of the golds and browns of the regular limited edition.  First off, the blues don't really fit well with the color palette of the cover and the setting of the book, which mimics the cultures of East Africa.  Blue really isn't that big of a color in the series.  Second, Walmart is known to order lots of books.  There could actually be more of their exclusive edition compared to the regular version. Not too likely, but possible, unless other outlets have their own exclusive versions as well. I don't think the collectors will be that impressed with a Walmart edition compared to others.  I mean, many book collectors are snobs.  They would look down at such a pedestrian choice.  Finally, what about the remainder market?  When many books in an order aren't sold, the unsold portions go into the secondary market.  Think these high discount resellers.  While I doubt such books would go directly there, because of their distinctive color scheme, they will have to go somewhere.  I just hope that they don't get destroyed, just because they were so distinctive that there was do other option for them to be sold. Hopefully, I think Walmart didn't order that many of their exclusive edition for this dire event to occur, but it is a possibility. I've seen other Walmart exclusives, but they had been mostly things such as inserts.  Bonus materials that the regular versions don't have, but otherwise don't make the books noticeably different.  I'm just hoping that this doesn't spread into regular adult fiction, or worse.  If this happens, thenI know my store wouldn't be able to compete, at least if people want their books as soon as possible.

    [As an aside, I should say that I had already read the above book by the time I noticed that Walmart had an exclusive edition.  While I had enjoyed the first two books in the series, I felt that this last one underwhelmed me.  It feels shorter than the previous two, even though it included two whole new cultures, neither of which get a thorough discussion.  A long time character finally gets POV chapters.  While enjoyable, it begs why they didn't get such treatment in the first two books.  The story rushes along too fast, as if portions were removed to maintain such a speed.  A prominent character from the previous book is mentioned, but their fate is never revealed.  In fact, much of what happens is left to the reader to decide, as the aftermath of the climax barely gets a two page epilogue to tie the story together.  While the ending is hopeful, there are still major differences to be worked out, not just within the main setting, but with the two new locations added here.  In fact, hints of a much larger world are laid out without any secondary meaning behind them, either suggesting the possibility of returned to this world later on or as a point of adding an extra detail to show just how uninformed the protagonists are.  Some lingering questions from the first two books are answered, such as why none of the magic-users had control of a certain aspect.  Apparently, this sort of magic was being held back for one of the new additions for this book.  Overall, I liked it, but I feel that something was taken out, preventing the book to being more than what it is.]

They Do Not Compute, But I Still Can for Now

    There has been a lot of craziness over the last ten days or so, and I feel I should at least acknowledge one of those events.  The one I feel is the least objectionable.  So, there was a huge computer outage last Friday when a security firm did an automatic update of their software over the cloud.  While the update had been tested, it somehow didn't interact quite right with a tiny bit a code.  This glitch prevented many computers from automatically restarting after the update.  Strangely enough, it was only systems using Windows that seemed to be affected, not those running other operating systems such as Linux or MacOS. From what  I've seen on a few Facebook groups that I occasionally lurk, not all Windows systems were affected equally. Whether these systems either didn't update automatically or used a version that wasn't affected, I don't know.  Anyway, the computers had to be restarted manually.  Each individual one in the network.  I don't know what I am more afraid of--that so many huge corporations and government agencies still use old versions of Windows for their networks or that so many important networks use Windows as their foundation. As a longtime Apple enthusiast, I don't see how Windows, a weak but simple knock-off of the original Mac operating systems, became so dominant?  I am not even sure why such a system is being used for such large networks.  From what I can remember, it wasn't the best fit for such things, but I could be wrong after such a long time from hearing about it years ago.  Now, I am the first to admit that Apple can have some problems too.  I believe I mentioned here about how I lost the functionally of my Apple internet browser app Safari during an update back in April.  For some reason, the app wouldn't launch and no one I talked to at Apple support or locally could figure out what to do.  Other apps that used the internet still worked fine, such as the App Store, Apple News, my games, Mail, and even the Dictionary.  Functions that used Safari directly, such as Help and Siri, didn't work either.  Fortunately, I had installed Firefox for grad school, as the online courses apps didn't really work well with Safari, so I could still search the web.  I had to wait about another month for the next update to come out to see if that could fix it.  Well, it did, mostly.  Safari can take a little longer to launch than it used to.  Most of the time, it won't close in a timely manner, taking a minute or more.  I frequently have to force it to quit, especially when I am in a hurry and can't wait for it to close on its own. So, I know about glitches from updates.  Most systems were back up and running fairly swiftly, especially after the security system came up with a correction that directly fixed the original problem.  That is a main reason why I hate computers.  Used to, software would be fully functional for almost everyone when it came out with almost no interaction problems or bugs.  Now, software is only about 95% finished when it is released, if you're lucky.  People now expect problems, and fixes coming out later. A layer of laziness in both the designers and customers has set in.  So few make a truly finished product any more that no one expects it.  They settle for almost good enough, willing to pay for extra content when it should have been there from day one.  Now, security software is an exception, as extra safety concerns demand an update.  But the feeling that "good enough" is good enough should never be acceptable in the first place. 

That's Toby, Without the E

    One of the newest songs on the Hot 100 chart is "Tobey" by Eminem with Big Sean and Baby Tron.  It was originally just a song by the latter two, but when Eminem heard, he wanted to be a part of it as well and it became a single on his latest album.  It is basically a dis track, using the allusion to Tobey Maguire's role of Spider-Man in the original movies.  While 'Tobey' developed super powers after being bitten by a spider, they must have been bitten by a 'goat', and acronym for 'greatest of all time,' because they are so talented.  The song then goes on to show just how talented they are to lessor rappers.  At first, I kind of liked having my name featured as the title for a hit single. Except for that spelling with the superfluous "e." I have hated that spelling ever since Maguire became famous.  Don't get me wrong; I don't hate the actor.  It is only that spelling of his name that irks me.  The song isn't too bad either.  While I would never buy an entire rap album, I have bought individual songs back in the days of cassettes and CD singles.  I was fortunate enough to be able to hear the entire song during the waning days of my Sirius XM free trial last week.  I felt that the song was fairly good, although there was quite a bit of swearing in it, although not that much for a rap song.  Yes, it was on Eminem's own channel.  And, yes, my mother was unfortunately in the car with me while I was listening to it.  Fortunately, her hearing aids weren't on a high setting, I think.  She never complained, although I always feel funny whenever a song I like comes on and it is the unedited album cut.  At least I got to hear "Tobey" in its original form, as my regular top 40 radio station rarely plays rap.  It even plays the non-rap version of singles that feature rap most of the time.  In fact, it can take weeks for them to even play current hits.  Instead, that station can play random songs from over twenty years ago.  Or else it has new songs from artists who are no longer quite as relevant to the chart tastes as they used to be.  For example, they are playing the new single by Katy Perry that just debuted last week, the one that my critics and fans aren't liking.  They are not playing former number one "Please Please Please" by Sabrina Carpenter, possibly due to the lyrics in it, although other local stations are playing one of the 'Clean/Radio' edits of the song.  Instead of the "mother-trucker" sub I heard on Sirius, they were playing "little sucker," which is kind of worse in my opinion.  Even if a censored version of "Tobey" becomes available, as did for previous single "Houdini," I doubt my favorite station will ever play it.  It's actually the better song. 

The Satellite Radio of Love

    For the past three months, I have been enjoying a free trial of Sirius XM satellite radio as a reward after getting an oil change at the local dealership.  Not the one where I bought my car, because I would rather drive five minutes from my store rather than an hour from home for such things.  This happens about twice per year, give or take, and it can run concurrently with the quarterly free trials that Sirius normally has.  While the free trial is mostly for the car radio, it technically includes all formats, but I didn't explore those opportunities this time.  I have tried to use the app on a previous free trial, but I can never seem to activate it.  I only realized a day or so ago that I could have also been listening online, since I could have used my Mac's music player separately from being on the actual website all the time.  It just didn't come up until it was too late to fully enjoy such things, especially since the interference on my favorite radio station at work has been truly horrible these last few weeks.  (I've mentioned this problem in many posts before, so I won't go into it again this post.)  The signal is usually so much clearer and steadier than some local stations, especially this time of year when vegetation can cause interference.  There are a few dead zones where the reception is blocked along my regular route from home to work, with the longest one being over a minute, although I managed to keep the signal once along that stretch.  Maybe the satellite was in the proper position.  I am supposed to get about 250 channels, based upon my model.  However, not only are some station call numbers not used, but some channels were left out for some reason.  These are mostly in the 100s, as the lower numbers seem to be all used and I rarely check on the really high ones as they are used for targeted sports play-by-play.  About halfway through this trial, there was a shake up of some of the stations, aside from the switching out of limited run channels, including Taylor Swift and Billie Ellish when their new albums were coming out.  The primary change was Chris Stapleton getting his own channel at the end of the Country lineup, forcing one of the Gospel channels to drop into the 100s music categories, just before Latin and Canadian but after the ad-supported ones.  Like many of the artist-driven curated channels, the majority of the songs are influences and favorites, and not just Stapleton's hits.  I guess he just doesn't have a deep enough repertoire for that yet, unlike some of the other artists who have their own channels.  Also, he isn't just having his name tagged onto a channel to draw attention to a particular genre of music.  Pitbull is a good example of this, as his channel is more of a general global pop station than a showcase for his own music.  Generally, even with dozens of music channels, I usually just listen to a few seconds of a song, and move onto the next station in the lineup if I don't like it.  I rarely stay on any one station beyond Hits 1 and DMB Radio for long.  I usually skip a few of the rock and country stations, and I don't even try to listen to anything past 74.  Not a fan of Elvis, blues, or symphony orchestra for the most part.  So, just two out of dozens of music channels.  Barely touch anything else.  Sports, comedy, news, et cetera.  I will miss it when the trial ends this week.  I won't miss all of the notifications I get.  See, I had to set up the radio to notify me when certain artists and/or songs pop up for when my mom is with me.  In particular, "September" by Earth, Wind, & Fire, or however they were spelling it at the time.  One can only hear this song a certain amount of times before one starts hating the 21st day of that month.

Give Me Library or Give Me, Well, a Library

    Yesterday, I finally finished reading a book that took me almost two weeks to read.  It was Light Bringer by Pierce Brown.  The most recent book in the "Red Rising" sci-fi series was published last year, and the trade paperback edition came out in late April.  I somehow missed it when going over the monthly listing originally, but I picked it up as the earliest available tine after I found out.  Normally, it wouldn't take me so long to read a book, but I kept it at the store as it was a book for the store.  As such, it had to work around to find time to read it between all the other tasks I have.  Yes, I have read the books I intend to sell at my store.  I didn't want to damage the book by transporting it too much.  Furthermore, I was reading a second book part of that time at home, Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries. Note that it was not written by an 'Emily Wilde,' but by Heather Fawcett.  This book I checked out of the Floyd County library, as it was less likely to be sold from my store.  It originally came out in hardcover in 2022 and has not been released as a paperback, to the best of my knowledge.  If it had been, I would have ordered it through my store instead of waiting over a month for it to be returned to the library. The follow-up to that book was released last year.  Unfortunately, the library didn't get a physical copy of that book, and it is only available as a digital copy, which I won't read.  It is not because I am a book snob, although I am sort of one due to me owning a book store.  No, it is because I get eye strain problems from reading material online for long periods of time.  Visual clips and games don't strain me as much as reading.  I don't know why that happens, only that I have to limit my reading times to about twenty minutes.  Any longer than that and problems can happen.  One of these problems can be retinal migraines.  I've had such events for much of my life when looking at bright lights the wrong way, or if I look too deeply into a mirror for too long.  When this happens, colorful aurae can flicker in my vision for a few minutes.  Once, at Christmas a few years ago, I was staring at some blinking car lights in the rain, and the effects lasted almost twenty minutes, more so in my left eye than the right.  This was the longest time such an instance of this had happened. It was also when I finally contacted an eye doctor and found out what was happening to me.  Reading on screen acerbate such conditions, so I try to limit them.  It was only when I got my first computer for grad school that such incidents became more frequent.  For a few years now, I have been missing out on many books I have been wanting to read all because the libraries don't get the books in, or they only get such digital copies. I can't order everything through my store, only those books I feel I can sell or those that I really want and can't seem to get in any other way, like the paperback edition of Light Bringer.  Neither local library systems ordered physical copies of the book, although both got the other books in the series.  The Floyd County system is the worst in this regard, as it has shifted so much away from physical copies. I noticed this trend years ago when they only got the large print version of the last "Dexter" novel, which I still haven't checked out to read on a matter of principle.  There are so many books I've wanted, only to have the books never coming in, or they are always checked out.  How hard can it be just to have one copy of a very popular book in a series?  Instead, there is a large selection of large print romances and mysteries.  I had the final book in a young adult fantasy series that I have been waiting for a few years for come out last week, but neither system has gotten it yet.  In two weeks, I have another new book coming out, but this one might have a slightly better chance at being available.  I would order many of these through my store, but I wait too long and the books are not as available as they would have been if I had tried sooner.  It is also hard to justify getting a book that I feel only has a slight chance to be sold.  Still, my list of books to read is getting quite long, and something needs to be done about it.