See, this -- this! -- is why one should not listen to Beth-Annie.
I am mortified. I am a casualty of Beth-Annie's confidence. Irrationally believing Sixpence's website, I spent five-sixths of my lunch hour today investigating four different stores (Best Buy, Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, and some Lemstone-esque1 CBS with a name I cannot remember) for a copy of the band's "Breathe Your Name"/"Northern Lights" single that was -- of course, no doubt, must be, can’t even consider alternate possibilities -- released today. I know this because that is the day it was scheduled to be released. Fortunately, I found the single in all four stores, and I am now playing it on my computer's CD-ROM, on the CD player in my bedroom, in my stereo next to the television downstairs, and in my DVD player.
Ha! That is just a bit of humor to obscure the disillusionment that was going ought-for-four earlier today. So, post-lunch, what do I do next? I go online to a number of stores (Amazon, B&N, Circuit City, Buy.com, Deep Discount CD, etc.), and what do they tell me? "Yes, Matthew, we will ship it today? " No. At each store, the CD was either (a) backordered or (b) "will take one to two weeks for delivery." That, that is a dire, dire sign.
Story time: This is not the first time I have had trouble finding a Sixpence CD. Before the ubiquitousness of "Kiss Me" and the more-annoying ubiquitousness of "There She Goes," I spent four evenings in a row my junior year in college doing little else but look for Sixpence's (then) brand-new self-titled album, checking the same stores four times in four straight days to see if any stock had come in. (It's easy to forget just how obscure they used to be.) On the third day, I took the 75-minute one-way drive to Paducah, Kentucky to check a couple stores for the album. Nope. One the fourth day, I took the 75-minute one-way drive to Carbondale, Illinois (with my friend Melissa, who inexplicably wanted to come along for the ride) to check a couple stores for the album. The second store had two copies. I bought them both.2
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1 Hi. I would like to take this opportunity to post the mission statement of Beth-Annie's mother's employer, written in the same lowercase as on Lemstone's website: "welcome to the lemstone books in ames, ia. the store is located at the south end of north grand mall by sears and is owned by steve and char vankerckvoorde. 'upon entering the store you can expect to receive friendly, courteous service from any of the staff members. our passion is to exceed customers's [sic] expectations and match them with products that will meet their needs.'" I dunno. That just reads curious to me, especially with the atypical lack of capitalization. Annie, tell your mother to make them use larger letters at the beginning of words that begin sentences or are proper nouns. Thank you.
2 Okay, fine: I only bought one. But doesn't the story end better the other way?
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
