How to Have Fun in a Bookstore...

[From the archives; adapted from a piece about offices, so office dwellers should feel free to feel free to adapt it to their needs]


HOW TO KEEP A HEALTHY LEVEL OF INSANITY IN YOUR BOOKSTORE

Pretend to page yourself over the intercom when the store is full of customers. (Don't disguise your voice.) This is even more effective if your store is small and does not have a real intercom and you use one of those home karioke machines.

Find out where the owner shops and buy exactly the same outfits. Always wear them one day after the owner does. (This is especially effective if the owner is a different gender than you are.)

Make up nicknames on the spur of the moment for all your customers and refer to them only by these names (but never the same one twice). "The Nautical books are over there, Sparky." "No I'm sorry we don't have any new Gardening books, Chachi."

Send email to your entire customer mailing list telling them what you're doing. For example "If anyone needs me on Wednesday, I'll be in the bathroom."

"Hi-lite" your shoes. Tell people that you haven't lost your shoes since you did this.

At lunchtime sit in the big overstuffed chair in the middle of the shop and soak your fingers in "Palmolive."

Put mosquito netting up all around the counter.

Arrive for work late, say you're sorry, but you didn't have time for breakfast, and you're going to be nibbling while you stock shelves. Over the next hour consume 5 entire raw potatoes.

Insist that your co-workers refer to you as Zena, Goddess of Fire. This is especially effective if you are a man.

Every time someone asks you for a book, ask them if they want fries with it.

Send email to yourself engaging yourself in an intelligent debate about a hot book-related controversy. Forward the mail to a book email list and ask other listers to settle the disagreement.

Replace the "free coffee" pot with a full beer cooler.

Encourage your customers to join you in a little synchronized chair dancing.

Put your garbage can on the front counter. Label it "New York Times Best Sellers".

Determine how many cups of coffee is "too many."

Develop an unnatural fear of bookends.

Decorate the front counter with pictures of Cindy Brady and Danny Partridge. Tell everyone that they're your children (works especially well for anyone under 40).

For a relaxing break, get away from it all with a mask and snorkel in the store's tropical fish tank. If no one notices, take out your snorkel and see how many fish you can catch in your mouth.

Announce that there is free pizza, free donuts etc... at the front counter and when people come over, see an empty plate and complain, lean back, pat your stomach, and say, "Oh you've got to be faster than that."

Put decaf in the store coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.

I Dream of Genie-

[from the Archives]

This newlywed couple is on their honeymoon. They've spent the first couple of days in the hotel room, so they decide to go outside and play a game of golf for the first time in their lives.

On the first tee the husband slices the ball so hard to the right that it goes crashing through the plateglass window of an antiques/bookstore across the street from the golf course.

The couple immediately run over to the shop to apologize, but when they get there they don't see anyone....just broken glass everywhere.

Then the young wife screams when she notices a man with a goatee laying on the floor. The man is in a daze. The couple drop to their knees and begin apologizing. The goateed man raises a finger to his lips and tells the couple that they have done him a great favor.

The goateed man then explains that he is a genie and has been trapped in an antique vase for 211 years. By virtue of the errant golf ball, the vase was shattered, and he was finally freed.

The newlyweds are relieved, but still slightly baffled by the turn of events.

The genie then stands, dusts himself off, and then says with a big smile, "Now I would like to repay you for your act of kindness. I'll grant you two wishes. What would you like? Anything.... Just name it!"

The husband speaks up first. "One billion dollars."

The genie smile and says, "Your wish is my command. I'll have the money deposited into your joint account within 15 days."

The young wife hugs her husband with delight and says to the genie, "For our second wish, I'd like you to make us PAR golfers on any golfcourse in the world."

The genie says, "After this day, playing par golf will be as natural for you as breathing."

The newlyweds are giddy with delight. The young wife turns to the genie and says, "You've been so kind to us, is there ANYTHING we can do for you?"

The genie lowers his head, smiles a slightly embarrassed smile, and says: "Well, I have been locked in a bottle for 211 years, without the warmth of a woman's touch. I would very much like to make love with you. I would understand if you didn't want to, but I am GIVING you one billion dollars...."

The husband and wife are shocked, but they they figure what the hell....it is a BILLION dollars.

The young bride goes upstairs with the genie. While the genie and his wife are upstairs, the husband sits down and begins to read one of the old first edition books in the store. As he reads he can hear the squeaking of the antique boxsprings coming from one of the beds upstairs.

After a couple of hours of strenuous lovemaking, the genie looks down at the young bride and asks her how old she is. "22," she says demurely.

"And how old is your husband?" asks the genie.

"He's 32," she answers.

"32? And he still believes in genies?" asks the bookdealer with a smile.

Diet Time-

[stolen from Tuco on the Beekslayers list]

I was buying a large bag of Purina at Wal-Mart and was in line to check out.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog?

On impulse, I told her that no, and that I was starting The Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry and that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story.

Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me.

I told her no; I'd been sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.

Bon Apetit!

Yes, that's Julia Child and her kitchen in corn! This year's "Mike's Corn Maze" at Warner Farm in Sunderland, Massachusetts, features Julia Child, "The French Chef", a graduate of nearby Smith College. Mike has a complete website devoted to this year's maze, past mazes, and other interesting stuff. The designers have even added some "additions" this year to keep things interesting, including a potato bazooka and tomato trebuchet (a sort of catapult). The maze opens this coming weekend, and stays open through October. FB and I will be mosying over and will have a full report...

Nerdilicious...

This truck driver hauling a tractor-trailer load of computers stops for a beer. As he approaches the bar he sees a big sign on the door saying:

"NERDS NOT ALLOWED -- ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!"

He goes in and sits down. The bartender comes over to him, sniffs, says he smells kind of nerdy, asks him what he does for a living. The truck driver says he drives a truck, and the smell is just from the computers he is hauling. The bartender says OK, truck drivers are not nerds, and serves him a beer.

As he is sipping his beer, a skinny guy walks in with tape around his glasses, a pocket protector with twelve kinds of pens and pencils, and a belt at least a foot too long. The bartender, without saying a word, pulls out a shotgun and blows the guy away.

The truck driver asks him why he did that. The bartender said not to worry, the nerds are overpopulating the Silicon Valley, and are in season now. You don't even need a license, he said.

So the truck driver finishes his beer, gets back in his truck, and heads back onto the freeway. Suddenly he veers to avoid an accident, and the load shifts. The back door breaks open and computers spill out all over the freeway. He jumps out and sees a crowd already forming, grabbing up the computers. They are all engineers, accountants and programmers wearing the nerdiest clothes he has ever seen. He can't let them steal his whole load. So remembering what happened in the bar, he pulls out his gun and starts blasting away, felling several of them instantly.

A highway patrol officer comes zooming up and jumps out of the car screaming at him to stop.

The truck driver said, "What's wrong? I thought nerds were in season."

"Well, sure," said the patrolman, "But you can't bait 'em."

Thistle Talk

We had the world's tallest thistle growing behind the garage this summer. We never measured it, but Amy is about 5'3"...

(this isn't really a garage, but more like a stable with a loft over it that goes up almost two stories, and, as you can see, the thistle got to the base of the roof line).

X-Treme Croquet

Tomorrow (weather permitting) we hold the First Annual Foggygates X-Treme Croquet Bar-B-Q, and are expecting somewhere between 5 and 30 people... It was forecast to be a good day today, so we planned to mow the lawn this afternoon, but it rained all day instead, and may shower in the morning, which means the croquet may be a bit more X-treme than usual.

WTF???

On the one hand, one is tempted to find this story slightly humorous in the same way that all those "Darwin Award" stories are- a "what the fuck were they thinking???" moment. On the other hand, it's an instructive moment for those who think that the Jewish people are just hyper-sensitive these days. Obviously some folks have forgotten about the Holocaust, or perhaps they just don't think that killing 6 million Jews is that big a deal... If the guy had named his place "Osama Bin Laden's Place" and featured big color blow-ups of the Trade Center on fire not only would this have made more newspapers, you can bet the Marines would be on his doorstep tomorrow morning...

Fuhrer furor: India's Hitler eatery to change name

BOMBAY, India -- The owner of a restaurant named after Adolf Hitler said Thursday he will change its name.

Puneet Sablok said he would remove Hitler's name and the Nazi swastika from billboards and the menu. He had said the restaurant's name -- ''Hitler's Cross'' -- and symbols were only meant to attract attention.

Sablok made the decision after meeting with members of Bombay's small Jewish community.

''Once they told me how upset they were with the name, I decided to change it,'' he said. ''I don't want to do business by hurting people.''

Sablok said he had not yet decided on a new name.

Hitler's Cross opened five days ago and serves pizza, salad and pastries in Navi Mumbai, a suburb of Bombay.

From Wildlife Activist to Terror Suspect in 1 Day-

I debated whether to put this here or on 'State of Denial', and eventually decided that the acts of reading, writing and speaking are closely allied enough to include it here.

There are a variety of stories about this on the internet, but this one, from the Sierra Club website, includes an update where the Army Corps of Engineers is caught lying about sending Mr. Bensman's name to the FBI as a possible terror suspect, even when the Corps knew very well that the information they were forwarding was false...

The Army Corps Admits it Lied

Alton, Illinois -- Jim Bensman, the Sierra Club activist who was being "investigated" by the FBI as a terrorist because he stood up at a public hearing being held by the Army Corps of Engineers and suggested that the Corps should pursue its idea of removing some dams to improve fish habitat, has now discovered that the Corps lied when it denied having turned him into the FBI as a suspect. In a response to The Alton Telegraph the Corps now says:

"On July 26, the Telegraph had an article on the day following the public meeting; we sent that article to our district staff. We had some employees who pointed out that the article attributed certain statements to Mr. Bensman. Our security officer's determination, based on U.S. Army regulations concerning possible threats to public facilities, was that the article should be forwarded to the appropriate federal agency, the FBI, for their consideration to determine whether there was a threat or not."

This item appears only a day after the Army Corps denied to the New York Times that it had asked the FBI to investigate Jim. Now the Army Corps admits that it sent the FBI a newspaper story which incorrectly said that Jim Bensman had suggested "blowing up dams" when this suggestion was actually the Army's own idea -- Jim simply said it was worth looking into. The Corps had prepared the PowerPoint presentation that had the picture of dams being blown up. They were aware that it was their idea, not Jim's; therefore, they knew that the article they sent the FBI was wrong. And the Corps further admits that it did not send the FBI the transcript of the hearing which would have clearly shown the FBI that Jim did not even make the statement which allegedly warranted turning his name over to the Bureau in the first place.

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Army Corps of Engineers decided to set up one of their critics for an FBI investigation using a bogus charge based on a newspaper article the Corps knew was false. They withheld from the Bureau information in their possession which they knew exonerated Jim. They may well have assumed that eventually the FBI would learn the truth and drop the investigation, as the Bureau in fact did -- but in the meantime they were harassing Jim, and, one suspects, hoping to intimidate him.

"Denigrating Turkishness" ???

A Turkish novelist is being prosecuted for having a fictional character state that one of his ancestors was an Armeian victim of Turkish genocide. The New York Times reports that Elif Shafak, "a Turkish novelist who has spent much of her life in Europe and the United States...fills her books with characters who defy all orthodoxy, and in her journalism she lives by the same code, mixing feminism and nuanced political analysis with a deep interest in Ottoman culture."

She's now in trouble, as are many other Turkish writers for, among other things, "denigrating Turkishness". It's all part of a backlash against an attempt to liberalize Turkey and get it into the European Union. The Times article is interesting, if troubling, reading.

"State of Denial" (see the sidebar) is back, and this morning features a semi-book related story, about the Department of Education dropping Evolutionary Biology from its list of approved studies.

Dog Days

What I've been doing lately is going through my "Humor" email box of material I've been saving for about 8 years. I figure these days we all need a laugh or two.

What dog is best at changing light bulbs?

Golden Retriever- "The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid burned-out light bulb?"

Border Collie- "Just one. And I'll replace any wiring that's not up to code."

Dachshund- "I can't reach the stupid lamp!"

Toy Poodle- "I'll just blow in the Border Collie's ear and he'll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry."

Rottweiler- "Go ahead! Make me!"

Shi-tzu- "Puh-leeze, dahling. Let the servants..."

Lab- "Oh, me, me!!! Pleeeeeeze let me change the light bulb!" Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Can I?"

Malamute- "Let the Border Collie do it. You can feed me while he's busy."

Cocker Spaniel- "Why change it? I can still pee on the carpet in the dark."

Doberman Pinscher- "While it's dark, I'm going to sleep on the couch."

Mastiff- "Mastiffs are NOT afraid of the dark."

Hound Dog- "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ"

Chihuahua- "Yo Quero Taco Bulb."

Greyhound- "It isn't moving. Who cares?"

Australian Shepherd- "Put all the light bulbs in a little circle..."

Old English Sheep Dog- "Light bulb? Light bulb? That thing I just ate was a light bulb?"

Offered without comment...

(from The President's last press conference)

BUSH (continuing) The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were ...

QUESTION: What did Iraqi have to do with that?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attacks upon the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except for it's part of- and nobody's ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a, Iraq, the lesson of September the 11th is, Take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

Pathetic

Last Friday Boston baseball fans were gearing up for what promised to be an entertaining, exciting weekend series, as the Yankees came into town for 5 games in 4 days.

This afternoon we are left sitting, dazed, in the smouldering wreckage of a season which imploded so fast, and in such dramatic fashion, that we are left barely knowing what to think.

Well- even though we got gutsy, professional performances from Wells and Schilling, Sox pitching sucks, that's one thing we think. And they'd better get some bats back into the lineup as well, bats that can fucking hit in the clutch, with runners on base. Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, tie game, one out last night and we couldn't score?


All together now -PATHETIC!

Even Fay Wray is shocked out of her wits by this weekend's sweep.

Just Ducky

A big-city, California, lawyer went duck hunting in rural Texas. He shot and dropped a bird, but it fell into a farmer's field on the other side of a fence. As the lawyer climbed over the fence, an elderly farmer drove up on his tractor and asked him what he was doing. The litigator responded, "I shot a duck and it fell into this field, and now I'm going to retrieve it."

The old farmer replied, "This is my property, and you are not coming over here."

The indignant lawyer said, "I am one of the best trial attorneys in the U.S. and, if you don't let me get that duck, I'll sue you and take everything you own."

The old farmer smiled and said, "Apparently, you don't know how we do things in Texas. We settle small disagreements like this with the Texas Three-Kick Rule."

The lawyer asked, "What is the Texas Three-Kick Rule?"

The Farmer replied, "Well, first I kick you three times and then you kick me three times, and so on, back and forth, until someone gives up."

The attorney quickly thought about the proposed contest and decided that he could easily take the old codger. He agreed to abide by the local custom. The old farmer slowly climbed down from the tractor and walked up to the city feller. His first kick planted the toe of his heavy work boot into the lawyer's groin and dropped him to his knees. His second kick nearly wiped the man's nose off his face. The barrister was flat on his belly when the farmer's third kick to a kidney nearly caused him to give up.

The lawyer summoned every bit of his strength, managed to get to his feet and said, "Okay, you old coot! Now, it's my turn!"

The old farmer smiled and said, "No, I give up. You can have the duck!"

Fraud on Ebay

There's an interesting thread today on the BookfinderInsider list about an Ebay seller who is offering a number of books they do not own, whose descriptions they have lifted from the internet, without telling the actual owners.

Sounds odd, eh? It happens all the time. The Ebay "seller" puts a reserve on the book which will allow him a profit if the book sells and he actually has to go buy the copy. OK, some folks say, what's wrong with that?

Well, what's wrong is that it is misrepresentation and fraud.

The seller is misrepresenting that he has examined the book (when he gives a statement of condition) and he is misrepresenting that the book will be available to a buyer at the close of the auction, which it may not be.

To explain- since the seller has not seen the book he is, in fact, lying when he states it is in "such and such condition" as if he has seen it when he has not. Further, there is absolutely no way he can guarantee delivery, since the book may well have been sold by the actual owner in the meantime. That's the most serious offense- by offering an item for sale there is an implicit understanding that if I want to buy it and meet your price you will deliver it- that implicit trust is broken in this case. By misrepresenting their ability to deliver goods, they are committing fraud.

There are sellers on Ebay who sell goods they do not own, but those are resellers of new material, bought from wholesalers or suppliers, who encourage that sort of business. That is a completely different matter than offering a unique item you do not own, while making it appear that you do own it and have it in your possession, available for delivery, when in fact neither is true.

In addition, the actual dealer who owns the book suffers financial harm. As anyone who has been in the book business for more than ten minutes will realize, the value of your stock is hurt when unique or scarce copies you own "proliferate" on the internet so that they appear to be significantly more available than they in fact are.

One would think that problems with these sorts of fraudulent sellers would be somewhat self-correcting, as their bad feedback will be significantly higher than those of sellers who actually have possession of what they are selling. This would be especially true if there was a concerted effort to identify them, publicize them, and encourage everyone to refuse to sell anything to them.

It all comes down to one of the hard-and-fast rules in the business:

1. Own what you offer for sale.

2. If you do not own it, get the permission of the owner before offering it to somebody else as available for purchase.

3. If you do not get the permission of the seller, be honest with the person you offer it to about the fact that you do not own it and cannot guarantee that it will be available.

Any other type of dealing constitutes fraud, pure and simple.

Sure, people will say, but booksellers were quoting books from other dealer's stock for decades before the internet came along.

True enough. But you were not supposed to claim ownership- when you sent your list of books on the exploration of Artic caves by one-legged pigmy eskimos to your customer you simply said that these were books you could obtain for them -that is different than claiming ownership.

Folks go around crowing that the "internet has changed everything".

Bullshit. The internet has changed NOTHING. There are still rules in this business, and ethical dealers adhere to them.

Period.