Mean People in Music

Hello.

Dare I apologize for the length of time between my posts recently? Dare I assume that my feeble excuse will suffice to excuse my lack of written record of the goings-on at Booth and Noble? Dare I feel bad about working too many long hours to post?

I dare.

On the plus side, I have been recording, for your edification and entertainment, incidents that have aroused feelings of pity for the entire future of the human race in me. I say this without hyperbole or exaggeration. The entire human race .

The past few days I have been stuck in the music department of Booth and Noble, because they are ashamed of me and want to keep me locked in the attic like a crazy aunt from a book. This has not stopped the hoi polloi from coming to visit, in waves and in masses.

A few days ago, a mumbling man arrived in our department and made a beeline for me, standing behind the counter. If any human being has come closer to looking like The Creature from Where the Wild Things Are, then I would be very surprised. This man might have had horns. His grizzled beard scratched against my eyes like a brillo on a steel sink. Fearing for my sight, I glanced down and couldn't help but be distracted by the tee shirt covering his enormous glut of a gut.

He wanders over to me and mumbles something. It sounds like rocks in a garbage disposal.

"Ghasght fasdb awef, fbts?"

"Excuse me," I reply, "Can you repeat yourself?"

"Ghasght fasdb awef, fbts?"

"I'm sorry, I can't understand you."

I imagine that not having had social contact for approximately his entire life would retard his speech development. So I start asking leading questions.

"Are you looking for something in this department?"

"Bys"

"Are you looking for a movie?"

"Hof"

Ok, this track wasn't work. I tried again.

"Can I help you find something specifically?"

Then I understood something:

"Befhanf jwekf SEASON 5 asdfb."

"Ah! You want Season 5 of a show! What show is it?"

And that's when I got everything:

"Auto Car Season 5 Soundtrack."

"Oh, you want...a soundtrack...for season five...of Auto Car. No problem, I can help you find that." Even though "that" doesn't actually exist.

"HOF! FSFNAE NEAF SEASON 5 SOUNDTRACK! AFNE! HOF!"

"I am stunned. How can the only words this person know be "soundtrack" and "season five?" I continue to press him for information, but get very little. Eventually -- and this is literally ten minutes of arguing back and forth -- do I glean that what he actually wanted was

"The soundtrack to the fifth generation of Grand Theft Auto." Which we don't have. Which I told him, only to have him abruptly turn his bulk around and leave the department.

The next day, a woman who could quite possibly be the meanest woman in the world came to the music department with an adorable little girl. The girl couldn't have been more than ten, and obviously enjoyed reading. She would run out of the music department, search for another book, and run back in to her mother:

"Can I get this one?"

The mother would look at the book, sneer, and say

"Why do you want to read that?" Because we obviously don't want to encourage literacy in our children.

The epitome of the disaster that was this woman was when the daughter came bouncing up to her holding a copy of Number the Stars and she replies, upon seeing it, "You wouldn't even understand what was going on."

Anyway, the two of them browse for about 2 hours, and barely say one word to me. I am not upset. However, the words that she does say are mean and created in me the almost irresistible urge to smack her across the face and say, "shut up and get away from the religious music, you sadistic hypocrite!" Finally, however, she does have a question for me:

"Do you have the religious song about dancing and God?"

I don't quite know what to say, so I simply revert to my standard:

"I don't know, let me look it up for you."

We spend about five minutes searching and low and behold we find something for her. During those five minutes, I can feel her hot breath on my neck, like a dragon toasting a marshmallow made not from horses hooves, but from human hearts.

She gets the CD and brings it back to the counter. And then speaks the immortal words:

"If I hadn't found that song, I'd be in a bad mood."

Because she was in such a good mood before.

Well, dearies, I must depart and actually go to Booth and Noble. Later, I will post about the Return of George, and spelling woes.