mariness

Various news agencies are reporting that the busy Barnes and Noble at Union Station in Washington DC is about to close, reportedly because Barnes and Noble and the landlord have been unable to agree on the rent. This news of course has brought out the usual gulp will we continue to have brick and mortar bookstores in the future articles, all of which, I can't help noticing, continue to ignore the existence of Books-A-Million, as if the options for brick and mortar stores are Barnes and Noble and independent bookstores with nothing in between. I get that Books-A-Million is nowhere near the size of Barnes and Noble, but it does operate 250 stores and offers coffee, so let's give it some respect.

Anyway, I couldn't help thinking of the contrast between the closing Barnes and Noble store, by all accounts busy, popular, clean and filled with customers, and my local K-Mart.

For those who may be unfamiliar with K-Mart, it's a large box store on the same idea as Walmart and Target, seeking to occupy a niche slightly above Walmart and slightly below Target. It certainly achieves the goal of being below Target and rarely manages to be better than Walmart. My local K-Mart has exactly one advantage: it's about five blocks away from me, making it one of the few stores I can easily reach via trike or scooter. Yes, it's on the hideous State Road 50, the bane of my existence, but, and this is key, I don't have to cross State Road 50 to get there since it's on my side of the street and I can take a little side street, complete with a little pond that sometimes has ducks or egrets, which should, in theory, make it a very convenient place for me to do my shopping for staples.

In practice a trip more usually ends up like the one I took yesterday. I needed milk, cat litter, and toilet paper, all of which can be in theory found there. The cat litter and toilet paper were there, but the unit that usually contains the milk had been emptied of everything, including shelves. Undaunted, I picked up the rest of the stuff and headed to the register, only to find out that the registers weren't working. So I left with nothing.

This is sadly typical of a visit: various items which ought to be there (including, frequently, toilet paper and aspirin) are not there. The registers don't always work. What is there often has the wrong price on it or is in the wrong place. The clothes just look cheap, and are usually either of worse quality or in worse condition than what's available at the Goodwill in the same shopping plaza. The selection of DVDs and cell phones sucks. Customer service generally sucks, with employees just looking depressed. (The Goodwill in striking contrast has excellent customer service.) Part of the problem is store policy: if the item rings up at the wrong price, Target will usually just change the price right there, or sometimes send someone to check the price and then fix the price for you; Publix after checking the price will give you the item for free. This generally takes a couple of minutes, but otherwise not a big deal. K-Mart sends you to the Customer Service Desk, which is usually unstaffed; if it is staffed, changing the price still requires about three people to check it. The store is technically clean, but always seems to feel dingy.

It's almost always empty.

And yet it survives. Perhaps – probably -- because it's on the opposite side of State Road 50 than the Publix and the Target – making it slightly easier for disabled people and bicyclists and pedestrians to reach, and it does generally have a decent selection of snacks. Or perhaps because the rent is cheap, meaning that it can stay profitable even with few sales. Or perhaps because none of its corporate overlords have noticed.

But I couldn't help thinking: if a lousy economy and few customers and a ragged dingy appearance have not managed to close this place, shouldn't that mean that Barnes and Nobles can survive? Or are their corporate overlords just choosing more expensive rental places? The local Barnes and Noble is in a far, far nicer and better looking location than the K-mart, and I assume the rents reflect that. Or are their corporate overlords demanding a higher profit margin than whatever satisfies Sears/K-Mart?

I'll keep my fingers crossed for that local Barnes and Noble anyway, even if it does have more customers than the K-Mart.

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In completely different news, this has been passed around the internet a lot already, but if you missed it, Games Workshop is claiming that writer M.C.A. Hogarth is infringing on their trademark "space marine."

I'll just let all the gamers here savor the fun that this is coming from the same people behind that model of originality and not borrowing from anyone ever: Warhammer.

Originally, despite the urgings of a fellow wheelchair user, I wasn't going to say anything public about this at all. It's a pretty painful subject, and I'm not really fond of talking about this stuff in public. (It's the same reason I don't post rejection stats – I never got the point of saying, "Look how many editors turned me down this month!" Everybody's mileage differs on this, of course.)

And thentheferrett posted.

Let me tell you something about TheFerrett. Sometimes, he can get – he might disagree with this description – a little arrogant, a little cocky. Sometimes he makes me shake my head with, dude, you so did not just say that.

And sometimes he can write something that makes me say, yes. This.

So, a bit of backtrack.

Last year, I found out that our marvelous gaming group was coming to an end.

That was right at the end of what I quietly call "Cane Days." I use a wheelchair or a scooter these days, which puts, I know, an additional burden on friends who have to go up and down the stairs. I'd told the group about this, as lightheartedly as possible, but still worried, especially since most of them had met me when I was seeking a diagnosis and treatment for what then seemed to be a temporary illness. But given that a couple of them were among the ones urging me to get a wheelchair, they told me it wouldn't be a problem.

The gaming group made vague promises to keep meeting, which went as well as you might expect, especially when, a few weeks later, three members of the six people group started gaming without the rest of us.

It happens, you say. It happens. And yes, I know it does. Seen gaming groups drift apart and reform in smaller groups all the time.

Skip forward to last week, where I found that the other two members (who had actually done a much better job of maintaining contact through email and the very occasional meetup) had been invited back, but not me. It's not, I'm assured, anything about me as a player; they all thought I was excellent, wonderful and so on, and they do feel bad about this.

No, it's just that the gamemaster can only handle five players. He'd added another player in the intervening months to that group of two players. The other two gamers had been in the group longer than I have, and one of them had been the one to approach him. It wouldn't, of course, be fair to leave him out – since he'd been the one to request coming back – and it wouldn't, of course, be fair to leave the other player out, since he'd been gaming with the gamemaster for so much longer. And since he had to be unfair to someone, he would be unfair to me. Not – I'm reassured again, that it was me, or that I was a bad player, or anything of that sort. This happens. And of course, they are absolutely right – this does happen with gaming groups. Groups fill up, you don't have a space for another player.

And they are completely sincere when they say they have no space, and they were trying to be fair – or rather, as little unfair as possible.

Nonetheless, of the original group, I'm the only one not invited back.

I'm also the only one who can't drive and uses a wheelchair.

Ferrett explained things much better over here. Go read him before you come back.

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You can, of course, make excuses in things like this. "I really can't handle six players." "I'm not responsible for her social life." "Just looking at his skin makes me feel ill." "I'm so tired of driving her places especially since she can never pay me for gas." "I can't risk an infection." "I have kids." "He just tires me out." "Herpes? AUUGH."

And what makes it great is these excuses really are, for the most part, true. It really is harder to handle six players instead of five. (Although this strikes me as one of the weaker excuses.) You may, indeed, have felt nauseated looking at his skin. You may worry about getting AIDS or herpes or whatever. It's very easy to excuse yourself. To add that you're very busy. You have other things to think about. And what's happening to the person certainly isn't your fault. And of course, you wouldn't want it to happen to you.

It's very comforting, knowing that these excuses are absolutely correct, isn't it?

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In related news, a friend of a friend killed herself last week in a bout of clinical depression.

She'd been told she was too clingy and demanding.

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I don't have an answer for this. One problem is, of course, that the disabled and those with chronic illness are caught in a major bind. If we say nothing about our problems, everyone says, "But you should have said something." But if we do say something, and try to explain our issues, we run the very real risk of being seen as just making attempts to get attention, or as chronic complainers who aren't fun to hang around with anymore. I know that I myself have been fairly guilty in recent social encounters of talking too much about my current disability issues and THE ONGOING NIGHTMARE THAT IS STATE ROAD 50, with all due apologies to dragonsbane who just wanted to cheer me up. (Thanks and hugs and none of this entry is directed at you.)

Mary Robinette Kowal's recent novel, for instance, features a character of this type – no one believes her illnesses are real because she constantly complains about them, and people no longer want to spend time with her; her older daughter fears that the younger daughter is following the mother's path, what with faking injuries and enjoying the attention. Mind you, I don't think that Kowal necessarily believes this – it's right out of the Austen and Alcott tradition and helps make Kowal's world feel far more authentic, and it's absolutely what the older daughter would think. I mention it only because it's a very typical example. And typical, because it's true. People do tend to gravitate to people who complain less.

Or, you can become inundated with what I call Obvious Advice, where people cheerfully tell you to do things that you've already done or been trying to do for well over a year or that you cannot physically do for one reason or another and fail to believe you when you object to this advice, or point out that you've already tried it, and, "Oh, I'm sure something can be done about the bus." (One would indeed think that something could be done about the bus, and for what it's worth, I've been assured for months now that something is getting done about the bus. Perhaps eventually I will even see results. But this is drifting into another blog post.)

(Pretty much everyone at this point, and often before, says, "Have you thought about online gaming?" Sigh. Head thunk. Yes, yes I have, and yes, yes, I even do it. Online socialization and gaming is not the problem nor the solution here – as I've mentioned, I have plenty of online friends and games. I'm beyond grateful for its existence – I honestly don't know what I would have done this year without it – but that's not the issue here.

I do appreciate the thought, though, and I admit I threw in this bit to prevent ten comments of, "but what about [fill in online game here]")

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I spent a long time wondering if I should go public with this or not – it's the sort of thing I usually keep for venting at friends – but after reading Ferrett's post and the comments, I realized, it's not just me.

And maybe one of the answers is occasionally saying something.

Also, thanks, Ferrett.

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Addendum: one of the players involved (alas, not the guy running the game) has given me a complete and meaningful apology and is doing something about the situation. (I'm also ok with two of the others who have continued to socialize with me from time to time.)

One.

Edit: Make that two.