Dillard's puts me into a box

My quest for a decent pillow sent me to Dillard's, one of the few remaining department stores in Albuquerque. Situated in the Winrock Center, once the Happening Mall but now in the throes of rejuvenation, they have two two-story buildings with floorwalkers and escalators and all the trappings of big old-fashioned department stores.

I'm very picky about pillows. Must be feathers or down. No foam, no synthetics, no fiberfill. Dillard's has usually come through, but this time they were looking kind of picked-over. I finally settled for a reasonably-priced feather model in an odd “European” size: square, 25"x25". I foolishly assumed that it would fit into one of my king-sized pillowcases.

Well, apparently all pillowcases are 20" wide, so stuffed into a king case, this pillow resembles a large sausage. Not a very relaxed pillow at all.

Today I go back and demand a “European”-sized pillowcase. Wouldn't one assume that they want to sell you the linens that fit their weird pillow? But noooooo, as the late John Belushi might say.

They had a large number of color-coordinates ruffs, shams, duvets, foofaraws, googlymushes and carnelians and several other items of which I have never heard and which looked both expensive and uncomfortable.

All these these would doubtless make my futon a decorator showplace—if I ever actually made the bed. But because my decorator scheme is Aging Bachelor, stuff that lives on my bed is for comfort, not to entice Sunset magazine to feature my house in a photo spread.

“I would prefer,” I said, “something that is not made of silk or brocade, without embroidery, because I would like to rest my face on this pillow at night.”

Once she finished the 20-minute phone call that started her shift, the woman who runs this half of the floor suggested that try Bed Bath and Beyond. “They're right around the corner.”

Oh perfidious floorwalker, to put your customer in a box and then suggest they try the competition?

Naturally, Bed Bath had nothing either. Not to mention no pillowcase covers that would fit.

Maybe I can try Europe.

The NY Times has spell checker software, yet....

From Bozo Brooks' daily excretion, as quoted by Balloon Juice:

The whole world should be like the Internet — a disbursed semianarchy in which authority is suspect and each individual is king.

It's all about the disbursement, in his world.

Spellcheck follies #2

From Trains magazine, July 2012, p. 7, in an article discussing how the Talgo corporation gambled on being able to build trains in the USA for domestic markets:

Although Washington and Amtrak had initially purchased four trainsets, Talgo built a fifth set at its own expense to pedal in other corridors.

It's an old Shipman family tradition, when in a car climbing a grade without quite enough power, to shout, “Pedal harder!”