library trip

I felt good about this library trip, not nearly as nervous as I usually am when I kick off the year. It's been enough years, and maybe I am finally used to it, despite the long summer breaks.

I was concerned about what books would be available, especially now that I have a fully developed system in place for picking books. However, I decided that I would stick to my system, and that I would simply add one more constraint: whether the library has my selection? If it does not have the book I want, than I go down my list of randomly selected books.

When I looked at my first choice, I thought my fears were confirmed. According to the online catalog for the library, they should have had the Orwell biography "A Wintry Conscience", but they did not have it, and I feared this whole enterprise was going to be a bust, that the library would rarely have what I want.

But then I noticed that they actually had an interesting selection of books on Orwell. Although they only had about a half-dozen books, there were a few very interesting ones. We are talking about books that are presumably out of print and probably don't even make the Amazon list, being twenty or more years old, but which are still very good books.

I got a couple of Orwell books and am now very happy about my library season, beyond the delights of my chicken fried rice. Our library may not be great, but I am not so well read that I cannot benefit from its selections.

what Russian management is

LJ rolls out another round of updates,
just tinkering around the edges of the system,
and for so little,
they end up botching the whole system, again.

I imagine
this is what Russian management is,
just whimsy, ballsy, and thorough incompetenece -
communist efficiency.

I should just do all my blogging on Dreamwidth
and accept that the LiveJournal of my golden e-years is no more,

but

my ankle is still in the grasp of the fond illusion
that old e-friends still read that blog,
and that I have also garnered a little following
of anonymous readers.

Besides,
LJ has always rebounded from these clusterfucks before,
so there's reason to hope that this, too, will be righted,
and we will be back to blogging as usual,

but
this is born of passivity rather than optimism.

There is an abiding sense that

this cannot end well.