3400 Turkeys (two kinds) and dust covers

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Bad decisions make good stories.

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Want to find stuff on eBay or other auction sites that no one else is likely to bid on? Misspell the search terms. Looking for tassels? Search for "tassles" or "tastels". The seller will be desperate because no one is bidding on their items. I found a beautiful "sweeter" with sparkly "sequence" on the front.

I'm serious.

Sequence.

Well, at least they tried spell-check, I guess.

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I got a notice of a new Meetup group, "...for whoever are annoyed by incorrect grammar, for whoever are annoyed by illogical arguments, for (etc.)...."

I sent a note to the organizer, that his "whoever" should be "whomever", and "whoever/whomever" is singular, so it should be "...for whomever is annoyed by incorrect grammar." (A better fix is "...for those who are annoyed by....")

I got a response from him. He argued with me. Sigh. I did not respond. But I don't think I'll be joining that group.

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The contemplative closer on Sunday Morning is usually some idyllic natural scene. This past Sunday it was wild turkeys strutting along the edge of the woods.

Now, Jasper never watches TV. He has never shown any interest whatsoever no matter what's on the screen. (Well there was that one time we were watching the "mare cam" on the laptop, a real-time camera trained on a horse in a stall. For some reason that did fascinate him. But nothing before or since, and never anything on TV.)

Anyway, a turkey on the TV gobbled, and Jasper's head shot up from a sound nap. Instant attention. He jumped off the chair and rapidly stalked the sixteen feet to the TV, belly to the ground, tail twitching, ears up, focused on the turkey on the screen.

The segment ended before he caught one.

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You know how hardcover books (except textbooks, reference books, and professional tomes) come with dust covers? The original purpose was to protect the hard covers from dust, dirt, and oily handprints. Then they became a vehicle for lurid eye-attracting graphics. (Are you old enough to remember when the dust cover and the hard cover underneath had exactly the same pictures and/or imprinting? When did the hard covers become so plain and cheap-looking?)

Eventually, in the used book market, a book with an intact dust jacket became worth more than another of the same condition without the jacket.

Then something weird started happening. People took the dust covers off to protect them! They'd put the dust cover back on, over the fingerprints and coffee stains, when they finished reading the book. And that book became worth more than a pristine book with a slightly worn dust cover.

I don't understand.

Of course soon and for a while this may be moot. Books are going out of fashion. The resale market is shrinking. But mark my words - just like vinyl records are coming back as collectors' items, in twenty or thirty years books will become eagerly sought-after treasures. I doubt that the condition of the dust jacket will matter.
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Confess. Do you do protect the dust cover at the expense of the book cover?
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