Trader Joe's and bad summaries
Sep. 11th, 2003 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserFor those who don't live near a Trader Joe's (which will likely be most of you), they can very, very loosely be called a grocery store. In the past I've always called them a "hippie store"; you can't buy hippies there, but you can get (almost) everything you need to be one! They sell only organic food, vegan stuff, stuff for your "soul", all that "good for the Earth" stuff. In the past, I've had *no* use for them at all.
After living in California for three years, I decided I should check one of their stores out, just because everyone talked about them. So warily I entered and skittered around, darting from shadow to shadow and hoping not to be spotted by anyone I knew. Since I needed milk, I picked some up, even though I was worried it might be "strange milk". ("It is cow's milk, right? And the farmer didn't, like, sing love songs to his herd, right? It's just *normal* milk? Promise?") The guy who rang up my milk could have been a homeless man -- dirty looking, full shaggy ugly beard, and old looking clothing. I left the store and vowed never to return.
However, now, a year later, things have changed. So today at lunchtime I ventured back in. There was still odd as heck stuff, but there was also stuff that'd work for me. On the LJ vegetarian group, they talked about some meatless chicken nuggets and said how much they tasted and felt like real chicken. I picked up a box of that. Also a box of ... I'm going to misspell this. Perogis? Looked like those Chinese dumplings/potstickers, but filled with potato and cheese. My sister used to eat those all the time and loved them, so I'm going to check them out. They had lots of other things as well, but my 'Oh my god! Too much new stuff at once! Run! Run! Run now!' alarms started going off, so I went to check out.
I picked up some things on a whim, including a bunch of cheap Ghirardelli chocolate. (Ghirardelli is a company up in San Francisco, they make the best chocolate around.) I got like a pound or two of it for three dollars. Can't beat that. And also, some chocolate covered cherries. Mmm.
So that was my adventure for the afternoon, now I'm back at work. These darned ChapterOwls keep piling up in my mailbox, so I went through them today.
I find the fewest in of these in Schnoogle. I like to think that this is because longer stories tend to be higher quality, and maybe that's true, but I also think it's because there are fewer of them and instead I see the same summaries over and over.
The Astronomy Tower I get a couple from, and about half of the Mary Sues.
The Dark Arts. Ah. This is where the majority of the "good" stuff comes from, and the rest of the Mary Sues, too.
Riddikulus I tend not to take summaries from; they sort of have the okay to be silly, though if they're really bad/good I'll still add them in.
-----
Let's start with a quiz! How many things can you spot wrong with this one?
* Draco Malfoy is on a mission. He's going to be a spy, but only as a butler. Everything is going well until he realizes something. He is going to serve one of the Weasleys! Now, if only that Weasley can figure out who he really is.
* Long, hot dreams make Ginny sleep longer, wanting to see what happens next, making Fred and George aware that she was dreaming about Malfoy.
* Emiliana is the heiress of Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff...and she's the perfect family pet!
* The love story, if you will, between Sirius A and Sirius B.
* Draco has a chat with his Aunt, and, well, things get romantic.
* Then, due to the inconvenient appearance of the Scottish Weather, our Wonder Boy inadvertently falls for his great arch-nemesis
* Harry meets Seraphine, she's a reckless vegetarian who thrives on speed anyway she can get it. Seraphine is the last person he would except to understand his grief, but she's always there to help him, in more ways than even he realizes. Harry starts to fall for this yoga enlightened rocker chick
* Harry slips further and further into despair-- until he finds comfort from a most unlikely source. What the living can't understand, the dead sometimes do, or at least that turns out to be true of Myrtle. But when they both crave the love that's forbidden between ghosts and humans...
* Severus Snape comes across his well worn, well loved teddy bear, Cuddles.
* Plus, Draco receives a weapon from a sacred Cusacothian god from thirty-thousand years back. How will he use the weapon to vanquish evil? And what is he doing shirtless in a classroom full of Gryffindors?!?! O well. Better off than on.
* You must read this parody, especially if you like seafood!
* A thousand years ago there was a murder. Now, it may happen again.
* Minerva McGonagall is going for a walk around the grounds of Hogwarts the summer after Harry's sixth year when a young woman literally falls out of the clear blue sky. Who is she? Where did she come from? How does she know so much about the Potterverse
* And what exactly IS Albus Dumbledore?
After living in California for three years, I decided I should check one of their stores out, just because everyone talked about them. So warily I entered and skittered around, darting from shadow to shadow and hoping not to be spotted by anyone I knew. Since I needed milk, I picked some up, even though I was worried it might be "strange milk". ("It is cow's milk, right? And the farmer didn't, like, sing love songs to his herd, right? It's just *normal* milk? Promise?") The guy who rang up my milk could have been a homeless man -- dirty looking, full shaggy ugly beard, and old looking clothing. I left the store and vowed never to return.
However, now, a year later, things have changed. So today at lunchtime I ventured back in. There was still odd as heck stuff, but there was also stuff that'd work for me. On the LJ vegetarian group, they talked about some meatless chicken nuggets and said how much they tasted and felt like real chicken. I picked up a box of that. Also a box of ... I'm going to misspell this. Perogis? Looked like those Chinese dumplings/potstickers, but filled with potato and cheese. My sister used to eat those all the time and loved them, so I'm going to check them out. They had lots of other things as well, but my 'Oh my god! Too much new stuff at once! Run! Run! Run now!' alarms started going off, so I went to check out.
I picked up some things on a whim, including a bunch of cheap Ghirardelli chocolate. (Ghirardelli is a company up in San Francisco, they make the best chocolate around.) I got like a pound or two of it for three dollars. Can't beat that. And also, some chocolate covered cherries. Mmm.
So that was my adventure for the afternoon, now I'm back at work. These darned ChapterOwls keep piling up in my mailbox, so I went through them today.
I find the fewest in of these in Schnoogle. I like to think that this is because longer stories tend to be higher quality, and maybe that's true, but I also think it's because there are fewer of them and instead I see the same summaries over and over.
The Astronomy Tower I get a couple from, and about half of the Mary Sues.
The Dark Arts. Ah. This is where the majority of the "good" stuff comes from, and the rest of the Mary Sues, too.
Riddikulus I tend not to take summaries from; they sort of have the okay to be silly, though if they're really bad/good I'll still add them in.
-----
Let's start with a quiz! How many things can you spot wrong with this one?
* Draco Malfoy is on a mission. He's going to be a spy, but only as a butler. Everything is going well until he realizes something. He is going to serve one of the Weasleys! Now, if only that Weasley can figure out who he really is.
* Long, hot dreams make Ginny sleep longer, wanting to see what happens next, making Fred and George aware that she was dreaming about Malfoy.
* Emiliana is the heiress of Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff...and she's the perfect family pet!
* The love story, if you will, between Sirius A and Sirius B.
* Draco has a chat with his Aunt, and, well, things get romantic.
* Then, due to the inconvenient appearance of the Scottish Weather, our Wonder Boy inadvertently falls for his great arch-nemesis
* Harry meets Seraphine, she's a reckless vegetarian who thrives on speed anyway she can get it. Seraphine is the last person he would except to understand his grief, but she's always there to help him, in more ways than even he realizes. Harry starts to fall for this yoga enlightened rocker chick
* Harry slips further and further into despair-- until he finds comfort from a most unlikely source. What the living can't understand, the dead sometimes do, or at least that turns out to be true of Myrtle. But when they both crave the love that's forbidden between ghosts and humans...
* Severus Snape comes across his well worn, well loved teddy bear, Cuddles.
* Plus, Draco receives a weapon from a sacred Cusacothian god from thirty-thousand years back. How will he use the weapon to vanquish evil? And what is he doing shirtless in a classroom full of Gryffindors?!?! O well. Better off than on.
* You must read this parody, especially if you like seafood!
* A thousand years ago there was a murder. Now, it may happen again.
* Minerva McGonagall is going for a walk around the grounds of Hogwarts the summer after Harry's sixth year when a young woman literally falls out of the clear blue sky. Who is she? Where did she come from? How does she know so much about the Potterverse
* And what exactly IS Albus Dumbledore?
