Depriving Children, and Where Russians Fear to Tread

But non-Turkmen things first, I always say.

Harry Potter and the Deprived Children

So's, -r2 and I have fantasmagorical plans to meet up on the morn of July 16, and go to Barnes and Noble together to purchase our reserved copies of Harry Potter. Originally, we were going to meet in Park Slope, that most noble and beauteous of Brooklyn hoods. That was until I had the following conversation with the sales people there. What follows is practically verbatim:

Wanderlustful One: So, is it for sure now, is it 100% certain that these two books will be mine hereafter?

Sloping Sales People: Nope. Die, fiend.

Wanderlustful One: So, I could be uberly screwed? So, it's within the realm of possibility that I might be here weeping on July 16?

Sloping Sales People: Yep. Life's a crapshoot. There are more people expected for our Midnight Rush than the legal building capacity permits. You may spend July 16 alone and forlorn. So be it.


Plan B was thusly thought up. -r2 and I should meet at the uptown bookstore. And so there we ambled, and had the following reassuring conversation with their fantabulous clerk:

-r2 and Wanderlustful One: Now, what are the odds of us being bereft and weepy on July 16 as you've squandered our two reserved copies on some Johny-come-lately kids?

Fantabulous Clerk: Nill. Zippo. You will get your books, no matter what.

-r2 and Wanderlustful One: You are confirming, hereby, that our meaningful interaction with you puts us in first place when it comes to these two books, no matter what form of guilt-inducing actions the enemy makes?

Fantabulous Clerk: Yes. I just can't vouch that no kids will be forlorn and weepy.

-r2 and Wanderlustful One: Excellent!


Being as how I do not hate children, and indeed wish the opposite of forlorness and weepiness upon them all, I then proceeded to return to the original Barnes & Noble. Where I had the following conversation, verbatim:

Wanderlustful One: Hi! I'd like to un-reserve my copy of Harry Potter *swish and flick*

Sloping Clerk: Un-reserve?

Wanderlustful One: Yep. The process by which one ceases to reserve a book, thereby freeing it for the lustful readership of kinderness.

Sloping Clerk: You can't un-reserve a book.

Wanderlustful One: But what about the children??!!

Sloping Clerk: Life's a bitter lesson. Professor Snape agrees.

Wanderlustful One: Well, when you put it that way...


And in Turkmen news:

I'm reading up on Turkmen political developments since the fall of the Soviet Union. Actually, I'm already done; things don't seem to have changed much. ;-) Not true. The former, I mean.

At any rate, I came across a sentence in my book that just ... struck me. They've a very small Russian population, you see, which seemed unusual to me as the Russians were colonizing right and left (or left and left) back in the day.

And then the book continues to note that the Turkmen climate was considered inhospitable to the Russian colonizers, who did not settle the lands as they had Kazakhstan, etc.

RUSSIANS found the weather inhospitable??? Now that's an Anti-Review if I ever heard one.

Note to self: Do NOT go to Turkmenistan. NIKOGDA! (never!)

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Random shot of Turkmenistan follows:


And for laughs, here's a bus stop in Turkmenistan. Note what the bus is called. Le sigh. You've got to love linguistic diversity!