I'm an addict, but I do have standards
May. 24th, 2009 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyToday I did something I rarely do. I ventured into Barnes and Noble. I quite like shopping with them online, but going into the store [at least the one nearest me] is almost always a hassle, unless I time it just so. A holiday weekend is never just so, but I was hoping Mumsy would tell me something she wanted for her birthday so I could pick it up for Dad. Okay, and also because my trip to BAM failed to yield any of the 'new' Gossip Girl books. Which aren't new, but have new slipcovers with photos of the cast, complete with posters on the back of said flipcover. Only...
How do I put this gently? How do I justify my need for all things Leighton Meester/TV!Blair when the rational part of my brain is telling me I'm being a bit nutty? I expect better. I really do. Of the company and of myself. But mostly of the company. GG has the sort of rabid fan base that means we'll buy shit, and I'm on the more conservative end of the spectrum. But you shouldn't tout your limited edition books and then cheap the fuck out on it. It's just not right, especially since the books cost even more than they did when they first came out and it's the exact same book underneath the slipcover. Yes. The EXACT same book cover. I was hoping they'd have the cast photo printed there so I could run away with my slipcover/poster but no. Which I could live with if the damned cast photos weren't craptacular quality.
You know how you'll fall in love with a scene from an episode of your favorite show and someone will screencap it and it's not the best quality in the world, but since you'll be shrinking it and fixing things here and there, you're okay with it? But if you left it the way you found it, or you enlarged it, or just cropped it, you'd notice that everyone turned splotchy and the colors bled and why, oh why would anyone lighten a scene that was fantastically dark to begin with without correcting the aforementioned blotch/orange/bleeding issues? Because that's what happened with the cover of You Know You Love Me, and I couldn't just leave it there because Chuck/Blair. Seriously. You either fix that shit or you pick a different damn picture. And the 'posters' suffer the same issue. But again, much like my love for Holly, my love for Leighton overrode common sense. But this quality control thing? Yeah. NOT. COOL.
The sad thing is that I still want the other reissues and it kills me that I have to hunt them down in person or pray I luck out and win the damn things. G'ah.
To get to these two copies of joy [the only two they had], I had to wait for the obnoxious tween busy texting in front the first crop of Teen books to notice that she was standing in the damn way. As I'm looking for the Gossip Girl books [seriously, who knows how they shelve these things because it's not always by author name, no matter what the signs might indicate] I notice the new Melissa Marr book is out, as is the manga Wicked Lovely volume. But mostly I listen to the group having some meeting near the religious section of the store. And I think to myself, as someone says something so insane that my brain immediately shut off at the sound, "Old people. Tee hee!" As I walk past them, books in hand, later I hear a familiar voice. I turn around and nearly walk into a bookshelf because holyChristonacracker, it is a friend's mother.
And then I feel bad. But I also wonder why she's associating with this particular brand of crazy or if maybe I mis-heard the other old dude, or maybe she's debating. Issues I may have or have had with her over the years [when your friends are hurting and sometimes it's directly tied to how their parents are treating them, you see the parentals as the enemy so long as their behavior continues, okay?] I will say that she was never dull. Art, artists, crazy people [some good, some bad], and hearing the story that always began, "So, sweetheart she was, -name omited to protect the naive- never realized she was dating a warlock until..."
How do I put this gently? How do I justify my need for all things Leighton Meester/TV!Blair when the rational part of my brain is telling me I'm being a bit nutty? I expect better. I really do. Of the company and of myself. But mostly of the company. GG has the sort of rabid fan base that means we'll buy shit, and I'm on the more conservative end of the spectrum. But you shouldn't tout your limited edition books and then cheap the fuck out on it. It's just not right, especially since the books cost even more than they did when they first came out and it's the exact same book underneath the slipcover. Yes. The EXACT same book cover. I was hoping they'd have the cast photo printed there so I could run away with my slipcover/poster but no. Which I could live with if the damned cast photos weren't craptacular quality.
You know how you'll fall in love with a scene from an episode of your favorite show and someone will screencap it and it's not the best quality in the world, but since you'll be shrinking it and fixing things here and there, you're okay with it? But if you left it the way you found it, or you enlarged it, or just cropped it, you'd notice that everyone turned splotchy and the colors bled and why, oh why would anyone lighten a scene that was fantastically dark to begin with without correcting the aforementioned blotch/orange/bleeding issues? Because that's what happened with the cover of You Know You Love Me, and I couldn't just leave it there because Chuck/Blair. Seriously. You either fix that shit or you pick a different damn picture. And the 'posters' suffer the same issue. But again, much like my love for Holly, my love for Leighton overrode common sense. But this quality control thing? Yeah. NOT. COOL.
The sad thing is that I still want the other reissues and it kills me that I have to hunt them down in person or pray I luck out and win the damn things. G'ah.
To get to these two copies of joy [the only two they had], I had to wait for the obnoxious tween busy texting in front the first crop of Teen books to notice that she was standing in the damn way. As I'm looking for the Gossip Girl books [seriously, who knows how they shelve these things because it's not always by author name, no matter what the signs might indicate] I notice the new Melissa Marr book is out, as is the manga Wicked Lovely volume. But mostly I listen to the group having some meeting near the religious section of the store. And I think to myself, as someone says something so insane that my brain immediately shut off at the sound, "Old people. Tee hee!" As I walk past them, books in hand, later I hear a familiar voice. I turn around and nearly walk into a bookshelf because holyChristonacracker, it is a friend's mother.
And then I feel bad. But I also wonder why she's associating with this particular brand of crazy or if maybe I mis-heard the other old dude, or maybe she's debating. Issues I may have or have had with her over the years [when your friends are hurting and sometimes it's directly tied to how their parents are treating them, you see the parentals as the enemy so long as their behavior continues, okay?] I will say that she was never dull. Art, artists, crazy people [some good, some bad], and hearing the story that always began, "So, sweetheart she was, -name omited to protect the naive- never realized she was dating a warlock until..."
