[I’m really glad there’s a grasp to grab]

Working at Dillard’s is actually not bad at all. So far. It involves a lot of walking slowly through the aisles and around the racks of clothes, picking up after careless adults and greedy children. I catch myself saying ridiculous things I’ve never said before, like, “Y’all just holler if you need me!” and “This little [as in tiny, Britney Spears-inspired] skirt [for a 4-year old] is precious!” I’m pretty much a colossal sell-out, which bothers me quite a bit, but not quite enough to quit and go jobless until I can find a job that suits my tree-hugging neo-socialist ways. I wince every time I ring up a Tommy Hilfiger garment, since Hilfiger raised branding to an art form. His company doesn’t even manufacture their own clothes; they subcontract out to other companies, buy the clothing, then slap Tommy labels on them and jack up the prices. If you want to know who else has ushered in the age of the superbrand and the omnipresent logo, you should read No Logo. Fascinating. Anyway, I prefer working alone (surprise, surprise). That way I don’t have to share my sales and I don’t have to make annoying smalltalk about the weather and how much time I have left before lunch.

Sidelines won a pretty big award at the SPJ conference the other day — either second or third best college paper in the country. That’s an awesome affirmation of the paper’s worth, even if naysayers are constantly dogging it. Congratulations to staffers past and present. The campus truly has no idea how good they’ve got it. Please don’t try to diagram that last sentence, because your head might explode.

I got a big, fat care package in the mail yesterday, and I need to call Pamber and thank them for it, but I’m at the library “studying.” It included a Manowar T-shirt for Billy (the check will be in the mail soon!), some rad Ikea mirrors to hang up in whatever pattern I deem irrevocably stylish, a German architecture/design magazine, the newspaper from Garmisch, some New England real estate guides (good lord, those yanks are rich!), some real German chocolate, and a mixed CD. Shouldn’t I be sending the care package to the people who moved, and not the other way around? I suck! But thanks so much. The chocolate’s pretty much all gone and the mirrors are going up tonight. I laughed a lot at the German design mags and newspaper, because German words are hilarious! Deutschland bildet mich lachen härter als nippel ihr mutter! Copy and paste that sentence in to this translator for optimum funny.

Phil bought the Futurama Vol. 4 DVD box set, which has provided us with much distraction from the fact that we still don’t have cable and have watched the other box sets about 50 times in the past month. I heard that Matt Groening said new episodes are a possibility. I would love to have one final hurrah, since the fourth season didn’t get to have a true ender.