When you're an endlessly fidgety talkaholic like me, working in a bookstore can be your own private hell. And by private, I mean public. With lots of people shuffling around, peering at overpriced cat-themed ephemera, ocasionally taking time out of their busy schedule of disrupting any sense of alphabetical order to hit on you, or make a tsking sound when they find out no you are not a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, just a film-school grad loser cashier.
Of the sundry of human tics and tacs, what gets me most is the silence, the shuffling, and the hushed tones of independent, academia-drenched bookstores. As if raising your voice, laughing, or breathing through your nose instead of your mouth were an affront to the impenetrable tomes lining these walls, just waiting to be scooped up by someone better and above the habits of emoting and courtesy best left to the lower class.
There are few things that keep me sane in my daily drone of waiting for the customer to squirm up to the register. A favorite is wiki by free-association, usually beginning with a general review of the James McAvoy page (too sparse, in my opinion) as Wiki Prime. But since ogling the pride of the Scottish highlands probably wouldn't go over to well whilst ringing up mass quantities of Garrison Keillor, I turned to an old high school computer class standby: googling song lyrics.
Not just any song lyrics, mind. Those of Bruce Springsteen. And "miasma" sticks to Brucey like mashups to Soulja Boy.
It means an "unwholesome, poisonous, or toxic atmosphere." And when applied to Bruce, a wholly accurate description of his haunting, high-octane music. Check this random review I didn't write:
On Magic, he's outdone himself, with every song summing up the prevailing apocalyptic miasma sucking the soul out of a fractured nation, thanks to this Voldemortian White House.
And, for my next favorite phrase...
Voldemortian White House.
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