A Summary of This Week's Events

Greetings, Gate!

Do forgive the paucity of posts this week. Now that I'm working 40 hours and engaged in a somewhat busy social life, I find frequent posting is not as easy as it once was. You'll have to make do with frequent weekly summaries such as this one.

So, I heard quite an ear full from Downstairs D., the lunchtime cook. Specifically, why he's planning to chuck the cooking gig and move on. First, he's getting college stipend and if he makes more than a certain $ amount he loses his moolah. Second, he's not happy with the current servers. Artistic G. is very sweet, but apparently rather demanding in the kitchen. Third, he's just feed up, which, if you're 20 or 21, is fairly understandable. You're impatient, you want to move on. I did hear about why Little D., my favourite server, quit. Apparently R. was getting a little too flirtatious with Little D's husband ... and sparks did fly. No wonder. And R. is not as innocent as she appears and for a 20 year old, has quite a history behind her. Well, well.

Gate, I'm going to put it down to the full moon, but honestly, this has been the Week of the Morons. Don't get me started on the idiots who call the store wanting some obtuse and unheard of item and then complain when we don't have it or can't easily order it. Just don't get me to talkin' as Sonny Boy Williamson said. And don't get me started on that trustfund hippie who wanted a carrot ginger juice, changed his mind to a plain carrot juice, then changed his mind again at the next to last minute a wanted ginger in the juice, too. I told him it wouldn't be very gingery. He not only complained that the juice wasn't gingery, he had the affrontery to say I didn't put any ginger in at all. Even for retail there are limits to what I'll take and I very nearly invited Mr Far Out for an outdoor conference on the Carrot and Ginger Situation. Just don't start me to talkin', okeh? And then there's the Unknown Moron who put a huge, I'm talking an enormous, piece of plastic sheeting in the cardboard recycling dumpster. The Unknown Moron couldn't be bothered to go ten feet over and put this Enormous Piece of Plastic Sheeting in the proper trash bin. Yeah, don't start me to talkin' about that moron. Ugh!

This week I finally finished Gustave Flaubert's curious novel Salammbo. I've only read Madame Bovary previous to this and Salammbo is very, very different. Rather than the cold, clinical analyzation of the protagonist, as in Madame Bovary, Flaubert treats us to florid, lush descriptive details and obsessed characters who have no introspection. That's not a bad thing, in fact, it's highly enjoyable. But I found the book incredibly exhausting. I could barely finish an entire chapter in one sitting before wearying under the weight of Flaubert's incredibly minute and exhaustively detailed descriptions. From clothing, armour, landscape, blood and gore to the practically loving descriptions of one character's leprosy, we're piled under a mass of details. One gets the feeling that Flaubert finally wearied of this book, too, for the last chapter abruptly wraps up the action. In my opinion, this is the first Decadent novel. The mass of descriptive details, the feverishly obsessed characters and the voluptuous setting all foreshadow Huysmans and Wilde. As to what Salammbo is about ... well, it's about Carthage and vast amounts of carnage and slaughter.