Branston Pickle.

Not available in Walla Walla.

Also, bought toe socks today. Let’s really hear it for toe socks, dude. Especially toe socks on sale.

People who don’t label things properly. Just for example, see, I went looking for Willy Pogany’s illustration of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I do this every now and then, because I really love the book, and of possessions I see myself as possessing in the future, it is among them. You know, me at 75, sitting in a really good rocking chair, and I will have a really good acoustic guitar, a boat, and a copy of Pogany’s “Rime”. I know there’s a reprint floating around, but it’s nothing special, it doesn’t have the original calligraphy, nor anything like the detail he lavished on the margins and borders of the original book. That’s why the original goes for $300-$400. I keep hoping that I’ll find someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, though, who will have found this book in their basement and want to unload it for under $40. (You’d say I’d be taking advantage of their stupidity. And yes, I would. But if they’d sell it for under $40, it proves that they would have no notion of what the book is worth, but more importanly, they wouldn’t value its beauty as much as I would.) I am an extremely cheap person, and it says a lot that I want to spend that much money on a book. Usually I don’t go for a book over $10 unless it’s hardback or very rare or funky somehow (large, art book, etc.). Anyway, I was looking for the book on tomfolio (which is abebooks’ evil twin brother), and I found a copy of the book for — I don’t know, $30 or so (I should probably add here that anyone who wanted to unload the book for under $40 would not be advertising on either tomfolio or abebooks, because those are actually sites for real antiquarian booksellers, not for naive garage sellers. However, I have never ever ever seen the book on eBay, and I have limited access to real live garage sales these days. So I have to remind myself now and then that copies of the book do exist, even if they are completely beyond my means. *something piratey inside goes, “Arrrrr…”*). But the description didn’t say whether or not it was Pogany, and it didn’t say what edition it was or anything. It talked a bit about the condition of the book — good — but that was it. (I suppose if this description had been detailed enough, I could have inferred the edition.) Okay, great annoyance. But here’s the stinger: all that information can be gotten, much of the time, from the date of publication. The one I want was published in 1910. But this stupid bookseller didn’t have a date of publication. At all. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that any bookseller worth… anything… would know that you need 1) Title, 2) Author, 3) Date of Publication, and then, maybe, if it’s remotely important by that time, 4) Price. You don’t just skip these things! It’s not like you’re killing trees when you put this information on the web — the amount of space it takes to write in those two or four digits is free. Really. I miss those imagined days when a bookseller had actually read every book he sold, knew it from front to back like he knew the teaset he used every day, and kept a dark, creaky wooden sort of a bookstore where his cat Michael hunted mice and he would sit smoking his pipe and being all wise and knowledgeable. Where did those days go?

I have to also just say, I love illustrators. Just generally speaking, in terms of, I think illustration is super-cool, and there are some great illustrators out there who are greatly underappreciated and forgotten nowadays (the real heyday was at the turn of the century, I’d say), and also in terms of, I would love to do some illustration one day. Maybe that could be something I could do after I got out of college? It would be super-fun, I can most definitely waste — no, spend — hours upon hours in happily playing with ink and paper and aiming at perfection.

The whole reason I was reminded of Pogany and my endless search for his book is that I was telling someone about Master Snickup’s Cloak, which was illustrated by Brian Froud, and is frankly Really Good. In that freaky way, sort of like Se7en, where it’s good but you have to not look at it very often because otherwise you’d get really depressed and sickened. But good, anyway. I wouldn’t mind a lovely copy of that, too, if anyone feels like I’m deserving of presents, you know…

Okay, I know I’m posting for, like, the ten millionth time today, but I just have to add this poster to my personal wish list.

Here’s something weird.

Barista Goddess say: Man (or woman) who wears toesocks, must keep toenails trim. Preservation of toesocks depends most strongly on this.

Ce He Mise Le Ulaingt? / The Two Trees by William Butler Yeats + music by Loreena McKennitt

I know Yeats can be a little hokey, but he’s also pretty awesome at times. I’m currently in love with this bit:

For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.

That’s the stuff, man. Also, if I were Homer Simpson, this would be like a doughnut to me.

I figure that, since I was so complainy about there not being any good Flanders and Swann websites out there, I should now link to this site, because it’s really quite good, and I don’t know how or why I couldn’t manage to find it before. I guess my google skills still need some honing. Anyway, check it out; it has biography, lyrics, etc…

Also found, on a related search for a Really Good Flanders and Swann website (I found The Donald Swann Website, but it actually doesn’t have as much information, lyrics, etc., as one might hope), I stumbled across this semi-entertaining website.

Have to go to work now. Hooray for dishes? I think not… anyway, much love, and I will post more later. Yes, I know I still need to do a full writeup of the ivcf retreat…