7:39 p.m. - January 09, 2002
his name is his name is alive, and not jump hump, jump rope.
I had a very interesting exchange with the cute guy behind the counter of Barnes&Noble after school today. It was like a tripped out game of semantics. In the music section (of COURSE I would go straight to the music section) with my gift card, there was a little ordering music machine thingie in a corner that I had to use because their CD collection was pretty sparse. (That is to say, they had fifty copies of Britney Spears' 'Britney', but nothing of anything I was remotedly interested in. So I printed out the order sheet and went to the counter. (Eric Matthews, It's Heavy In Here, for those who care.) "What do I do with this?" I asked the counter guy, whose name tag said 'Dan' on one side and 'Mr. Brill' on the other, for some reason.
"You give it to me," he replied, holding out his hand.
"All right, but it only printed out half of it; it cut off after my address," I said.
"Yeah, that machine's really fucked up.. I mean.. messed up, I mean. Give me your phone number and I'll just enter it by hand."
I gave it to him, then said I was going to go order a couple more from the machine. "Well, I could probably make it easier by just looking it up here," he said. "Do you know the group name?"
"His Name Is Alive," I said.
"Alive?"
"No, 'His Name Is Alive.'"
"Right, Alive."
"No, the name of the band is, 'His Name Is Alive'. As in the group name. His Name Is Alive."
"Right. Okay. I can't seem to find it. Did you find it on the machine?"
"Yeah, look, its name is.. His Name.. never mind. I'll just bring you a machine printout." So I went to the machine, obtained a printout, and got it back to him.
He looked at it for a second. "Oh! His Name Is... I thought you were.. okay. Okay. I thought you were saying his name was 'Alive.' I mean, yeah. 'His Name Is Alive.' I get it. That's why you... okay. I'm a complete idiot." He typed it in, shaking his head.
"I didn't know how else to say it," I told him, shrugging.
"Why don't you try a fucking slap across the head next time? Jesus. That was stupid of me. Or, like, 'When I begin speaking, this is the name of the band, et cetera.'"
"On the count of three...." I continued, raising my eyebrows..
"Right," he laughed. "Are you sure you couldn't find this Jump, Little Children album? It says we have it."
"You have Jump, Little Children, but not the right album." I told him.
"What kind of a name is that?" asked the old lady at the next register, while Dan/Mr Brill searched the shelves. "Jump Little Children?"
"No, not Jump Little Children, like.. Jump, Little Children. Telling little children to jump, not jumping little children."
"Not jump like hump, jump like jump rope," said Dan/Mr Brill, who'd returned with the correct copy in one hand. "I mean.. oops." The lady glared, paid, and left.
He rung up the Jump Not Hump Little Children album. "We'll call you when the His Name Is His Name Is Alive CD is in. Maybe you should have said it like that."
"I think the slap would have worked better," I said, smiling.

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