locked out

so i went out yesterday around 3 p.m. and i did not get back into the house after that.  we've had some key issues, but with five people living under the same roof usually someone is home to let the locked-out person in.  not yesterday.  but anyway this was my day:

i got up, i got ready for the day, i watched three episodes of pretty little liars.  then i left the house.  i was meeting someone for an early dinner at 5:15, so my plan was: i was going to take a book and go to barnes and noble and just read and relax, after i picked up some vitamins from the vitamin shoppe, and then i was going to meet up for dinner, and then i was going to go home and just chill until going to sleep.

this is what happened: i forgot the book i was going to read at barnes and noble, and i couldn't find it in the fiction/lit section in the store so i perused, i picked up a few books and flipped through in the starbucks area where there are tables and chairs.  then i began to feel bad because i'd read 15 pages of one book and i wasn't intending on buying it at that point so i bought a chocolate cupcake and ate it while i read more.  then i started to enjoy the book a great deal so i decided i would buy it and i got up to put the other book i'd picked up away before i made a decision to buy that too (since really i hadn't intended on spending any money in barnes and noble that day).  but then as i passed a rack of books on sale i found this book called words that work and it's a new york times best seller and it was $8.00 and it had a section specifically on advertising and words and why we remember certain phrases and not others and i thought it would be a perfect read for me considering my interest in advertising looking ahead so... i decided to buy that as well.

and that's what i came out with.  there but for the by ali smith and words that work by dr. frank luntz.  the first is delightfully witty and unique, about a guy who locks himself into a stranger's bedroom at a dinner party and the woman who is called in to try to get him out but only knows him vaguely from a trip they met on about twenty years prior.  and it's really quite wonderful, it really is a piece of artwork, i feel.  here's a very short excerpt:

      Well, you can run and tell your mum or dad where you are and who you're with, Anna said, and come back either with your mum or your dad, or with a note addressed to me saying that it's okay and that you've got permission and that they know you're safe?
      The child put her hands on the wall, levered herself expertly into the air, let herself expertly fall.
      I can, the child said.  Though they trust me.  I am not stupid.  And your name is the same as mine.  So what I tell them is I'm going to the tunnel with Brooke and then to the Observatory to see the Shepherd Galvano-Magnetic Clock.
      Maybe, but listen, my name's not Brooke, that's you, Anna said.  I'm Anna.  Tell them I'm a friend of, of, the man who's locked himself in the room at the Lee's house.
      Yeah, but when you first came, the child said, when we were at the Lees' front door, you said you were called the same as me.       No I didn't, Anna said.
      I said, I'm Brooke, the child said, and then you said, what a coincidence, I'm Brooke too.
      No, Anna said.  The thing is, when we met on the steps, I didn't know you were saying the word Brooke, I thought you were saying the word broke.  And I'm broke.  So I said, me too.  It's a pun.
      Like, broken? the child said.
      No, I meant it in the sense of having no money, Anna said.
      What exactly is a pun therefore? the child said.
      What exactly is a pun there for? Anna said.
      No, she said when she stopped laughing.  What I want to know is, what constitutes a pun.
      Constitutes? Anna said.  Blimey.  Constitutes.  Well, um, pun.  Well, they're like if a word means differently from what you expect.  Like, take me hearing the word broke when you said the word Brooke.  That was a sort of involuntary pun.
      Involuntary, the child said.
      It means it happened without us meaning or choosing it, Anna said.
      I know it means that, the child said.  I was just saying it to see how it felt in my mouth to say it.