punked

given this weekend's fun, i never got around to doing laundry till this fine evening. i apologize cause yer all gonna have to visulize how this shook down.

laundry in laundry out. wheelin the cart of soaking clothes around i spy a bank of 6 driers. 3 upper and 3 lower. so i take a wide berth and begin to load the upper right.

seems that a 7 year old has an eye on the same bank. doesn't she approach left, and swing doors on 4 of the 6. better, she starts loading the upper drier off my left shoulder, leaving her the fast track on the other 3 available which i was kinda planning on using. with a smile, after loading, she then hopped up and sat on the folding table in front of the bank, thereby further icing me out.

checkmate.

too funny. gettin schooled on the shark tank ethics of the neighborhood laundromat by a 7 year old.

which immediately reminded me of another encounter. couple years ago had just finished loading a drier and threw a pair of underwear, or who knows what, into another drier right next to it. this fella looks at me indignantly and says "hey, i was going to use that."

what in the world are ya gonna rerspond to that?

upside is i was able to continue reading "Saturday." McEwan has got some funky stuff goin on. seems the game is one of perspective. given world context, how does that context then lead to interpretation? 9/11 is securely in the background. and he's playin playing around with how livin post 9/11 necessarily impacts the very personal interpretation of immediate events.

minor example and slight of hand trix: narrator witnesses a couple arguing in a park below a window of his flat in london. immediate assumption of the reader is that they are innocent young lovers quarreling (at least that was my assumption given the set up.) as McEwan begins to draw focus, though, he spins it sharp. ultimately, from narrator's perspective, she's a junkie, pissed cause her boy hasn't come back with a fix. even that, though, is left ambiguous. why trust a narrator, anyway? reader expectations squashed; its more complex and a whole lot darker than ya initially thought.

And of course: more significantly, what are the consequences of a world that begins to interpret through post 9/11 eyes, when these expectations are just plain off kilter. or are they?

topsy turvey shit.

did i mention ya gotta check the novel out?

tigers win again!