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So you know that thing of Graydon's I've got quoted back there a bit?
Bob Oldendorf, who I do not know, remarked after it showed up at Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog Making Light, that if Graydon wrote a shopping list, Bob would want to read it.
I am not the only one who itched to write one in response. But
A shopping list
for Bob Oldendorf, and Graydon
There are four stores and a parking lot
to visit today.
At the first store, you can get vegetables and fruit,
though today, when it is possible to get them at the parking lot,
here we will only get that produce which our producers do not produce.
But it's the only place to get cinnamon and cumin
and one of two places at which it is acceptable to get eggs and cheese.
I will want to buy meat there but he will want to get it at the second store.
At the second store, he will want to buy meat, though I
will say we should have gotten it at the first store.
It's the only place to buy breakfast cereal and masa harina,
though tortillas can be had at the first store and pasilla chiles
can be gotten at either of these. It's also the best store to get
special food for dogs and cats, unless we consider the fifth and sixth stores,
which we will not do today
because we are going to four stores and a parking lot
and that's enough.
At the third store, it's acceptable to get eggs and cheese
but meat is too expensive and breakfast cereal is too strange.
But it's the best place to get wine and beer except for the seventh store
to which we hardly ever go any more, and I don't know why:
the seventh store was once upon a time the only store to which we went.
This third store is more distracting than most
because it puts cookies on a shelf above the frozen fish.
It has surfboards at the registers and the wharf on the wall
but it's not really a local store: it's a chain, like the second store.
We don't care, much.
The fourth store is dangerous. Everything they sell comes in threes
or in packages almost too big for the back seat of the car. Still,
he wants to get coffee there, because he drinks so much of it, and
he will want to get meat there, which I will agree to,
having vetoed the meat from the second store:
but it will mean a half hour dividing it into smaller packages and freezing it.
We will buy muffins
and wish we hadn't.
And now -- it is almost dark, and the farmers are packing up their tables,
but there's enough time to get strawberries, and artichokes,
and bright red chard. But not enough time to get peas. There's never
enough time to get everything.
(edited in the morning because it wasn't true the way it stood)
Bob Oldendorf, who I do not know, remarked after it showed up at Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog Making Light, that if Graydon wrote a shopping list, Bob would want to read it.
I am not the only one who itched to write one in response. But
A shopping list
for Bob Oldendorf, and Graydon
There are four stores and a parking lot
to visit today.
At the first store, you can get vegetables and fruit,
though today, when it is possible to get them at the parking lot,
here we will only get that produce which our producers do not produce.
But it's the only place to get cinnamon and cumin
and one of two places at which it is acceptable to get eggs and cheese.
I will want to buy meat there but he will want to get it at the second store.
At the second store, he will want to buy meat, though I
will say we should have gotten it at the first store.
It's the only place to buy breakfast cereal and masa harina,
though tortillas can be had at the first store and pasilla chiles
can be gotten at either of these. It's also the best store to get
special food for dogs and cats, unless we consider the fifth and sixth stores,
which we will not do today
because we are going to four stores and a parking lot
and that's enough.
At the third store, it's acceptable to get eggs and cheese
but meat is too expensive and breakfast cereal is too strange.
But it's the best place to get wine and beer except for the seventh store
to which we hardly ever go any more, and I don't know why:
the seventh store was once upon a time the only store to which we went.
This third store is more distracting than most
because it puts cookies on a shelf above the frozen fish.
It has surfboards at the registers and the wharf on the wall
but it's not really a local store: it's a chain, like the second store.
We don't care, much.
The fourth store is dangerous. Everything they sell comes in threes
or in packages almost too big for the back seat of the car. Still,
he wants to get coffee there, because he drinks so much of it, and
he will want to get meat there, which I will agree to,
having vetoed the meat from the second store:
but it will mean a half hour dividing it into smaller packages and freezing it.
We will buy muffins
and wish we hadn't.
And now -- it is almost dark, and the farmers are packing up their tables,
but there's enough time to get strawberries, and artichokes,
and bright red chard. But not enough time to get peas. There's never
enough time to get everything.
(edited in the morning because it wasn't true the way it stood)
thanks
I'm honored. Thank you.
(It's pretty good, too.)
- Bob Oldendorf