Reading Is Funda-mental
Mrs. Pops is really a good sort. Frankly, I've been something of a mopey pain in the ass lately. The building housing my martial arts class got sold; the new owners wanted the space for something else, so we got evicted. Still waiting to hear if my teacher has found a new space yet.

So I've been this week (for the first time in over 18 months) without my physical and social outlet. Add to that an ugly, ugly couple of playoff baseball games and I've been somewhat pissy.

I would go to my class Tuesdays and Thursdays. On those days Mrs. Pops would load up the Family Truckster and take the sprogs to one of our local parks. Even though I've been home, she's still been taking them and giving me a little space for that hour or so.

Then yesterday she suggested I take myself to the new local Barnes & Noble while she worked out whatever kind of masochistic urges posess her to take three kids under 6 to a park by herself. We had gotten a 10% off coupon in the mail by way of advertising the new location and Mrs. Pops will spend any amount of money in the world so long as she can save 10%.

I found the arrangement to be satisfactory.

She knows I'm finally within 100 pages of completing The Brothers Karamazov (things are not looking good for our Mitya), which I started way back in July. It's not that hard to read, it's just that I only read while putting the kids down for naptime, which means anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour a day, depending on how long it takes for them to fall asleep or how long it is before snap and asphyxiate them with their own pillows. Only until unconscious people, not until death... that would be abusive.

They left. Within 5 minutes, I left, down dark and twisty hillside backroads (we still have a couple of those left... just follow the "Coming Soon!" housing tract signs and you'll find them) to the shiny new B&N. As is customary, I hit both of the double-doors at once at full force. The idea is to send them bursting inward as I explode into my domain. The problem is I always underestimate the weight of the doors, the change in air pressure and the hydraulic resistor thingies that keep the door from going all swingy, so it usually ends up less spectacular an entrace than I hope. Normally I jam a finger or something... dislocated shoulder, worst case.

Anyway, I usually stand in the little foyer for about 10-30 seconds as the adrenaline surge passes and I begin to acclimate to the sheer bounty laid out in a feast all just for me.

Once the shakes pass, I can browse. I set myself a $30 limit as it was not my birthday, so I had no excuse to violently abuse our modest budget. That meant, sadly, that The Daily Show's America (The Book) was out. I could spend $18 on that and get one more thing or get four paperbacks. So I pass.

I walked by the prominently featured The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us but did not, I repeat, did not pick it up and idly finger through it. OK, poor choice of words.

Anyway, I Just Said No. You don't go to the book store looking for porn. That's what the internet is for.

After much searching I came away with Virgil's Aeneid, de Tocqueville's Democracy In America, Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Hogfather which would be either my 17th or 18th Terry Pratchett book. I don't much care for the author, I'm just slogging through so I can see how the whole thing ends.

That last part was a joke.

An eclectic mix of classical epic poetry, long-winded Enlightenment intellectual masturbation and two light little parody/satire snacks. I like to cut my comedy with healthy doses of heavy, overly wordy dullness. That way I feel like I "earned" my short-and-funny breaks. It's the Catholic in me.

I figure it all up and it will come out to about $34 all told. Minus 10% and I'm right around my $30 limit. I saunter up to the Please Wait Here sign and do as it suggests. I'm smiling. I'm smiling.

Oh. I'm not smiling. I forgot my goddamn coupon.

Abort! Abort! Put 'em all back. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $34 when I could pay $31. The difference is nearly a whole gallon of gasoline!

Now I here I sit, bitching at you people who no doubt were looking for some kind of goof in preview of tonight's presidential debate. Bush is stupid and Kerry is not so much. There, are you happy?

Is there a term for the book-buyer's equivalent of blue balls? Well there should be.

Some day those books will be mine. They were clever minxes this time and they escaped, but they will be mine, oh yes. Some day.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.8


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 10:04 AM