A Horrifying Discovery

At work yesterday I saw on the floor by the entrance what I thought was a black doo-rag. Thinking it something someone might come back for, yet possibly was endowed with gross head sweat, I picked it up by as little of my finger tips as possible and went to place them in the Lost and Found. I recoiled in horror, dropped them to the ground, and probably shrieked a little less than a manly bellow. Immediately I sanitized my fingers, and the rest of my hand to the rist.

They were underpants.

Dirty underpants.

Dirty, feminine, underpants. Inside-out, upside-down, probably size-M basic black women's panties, casually laid out on the floor. And I accidentally touched them.

The most vile part of this experience is the realization that this only points to something even more disgusting happening elsewhere yesterday, very likely right in my store. Best Case Scenario: some teenagers thought it would be funny to leave one of their sisters' dirty drawers in the entranceway to a public location and then laugh about how "punk" they were. That's Best Case.

Worst case?

Something tawdry happened in my very store, possibly in the bathroom, more likely in the corner of reference and computer books next to the kids' department, away from prying eyes. Just a quick finger or two, something to rev the engine without blowing the gasket, so to speak. Something that necessitated the removal of said undergarments and their wadding up into the corner of a pocket, not so well constructed as to hold its contents all the way out of the store.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it was pretty hot for them, but I'm in no mood to have to get a herpes test any time soon, and I would appreciate it if anyone and everyone could refrain from boning royally in the confines of my place of business.

I don't think James Deen has starred in a Sexy Bookstore porno yet, but if not, any day now.

On an Unnecessary Number of Shades of Grey

Erika Leonard, I begrudge you nothing but the millions of dollars you'll make
exploiting the market's overall lack of taste in fiction.You're no worse than the Disney Channel.

I'll admit, I'm completely a hypocritical elitist when it comes to books. I know what good literature is and I know what good writing is, in the non-fictitious realm, and I know that just because something is popular doesn't make it automatically bad writing.

I mean usually, but not always. ("Hunger Games" proved its worth to me.) Likewise, just because genre nerds love something doesn't make it good either, nor is a book well written just because I like it. Frankly, the bulk of my shelves are still Star Wars novels. They're not even particularly solid, anymore, just genre tropes, but I'm 40 years into a continually expanding universe. I'm plot committed. (Glad somebody else uses that term, apparently.)

Still, "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a piece of garbage I wouldn't tough if it were recycled into the only toilet paper in a five block radius.

Yes, yes, I bitched out "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" before it, but those at the very least had the distinction of gearing towards children and teens. This book began as "Twilight" erotic fan fiction and is selling like a new iPhone. It is not good, it is not even fun. It has all the undercurrent popularity of mild pornography smuggled into tree houses from brothers' backpacks.

And honestly, I'm fine with it.

Worst-case scenario, nothing happens aside from another terrible movie adaptation trilogy, currently rumored to star Alex Skarsgard. That could at least be a lot of sexy times in 4 hours of television men will get dragged to. Way more than Bridget Jones' Diary.

Best case? A whole generation of women latch onto light-to-moderate BDSM play as a weekend fetish on par with the Sexy Pirate swashbuckler novels and $8 naughty nurse VHS tapes.


Still, I'm thinking about exercising that "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason" clause if any more 14 year-olds ask for it.

We put age ratings on the manga and even shrink wrap the more violent ones or anything that draws the nipple. We shrink wrap "The Big Butts Book" in Photography for the same reason: while technically listed as it, the artistic merits of the nudity are questionable, especially in light of commercial and obscenity laws.

"Fifty Shades" is listed as 'Erotica' right on the back cover, and I'm selling it to grandmothers, mothers, and girls who were dropped off here on their way to the movies which, if rated R, would require their chaperone. Some local girls are even trying to read it for their high school's Free Choice quarterly book project.

Alright, I might steal that eight page sex contract/questionnaire, though. That might be useful at some point.

Selena Gomez: Some Kind of Mexican?

Anyone else noticing Selena Gomez is looking
more and more like Jenni "J-Woww" Farley?
Who's looking forward to the fake boobs?

Apparently local primary schools are requiring students to report on biographies, men for the boys and women for the girls. I was informed today that this particular school district also comprises a significant Mexican/Latino population.

It seems this cultural leaning has resulted in Selena Gomez being a popular choice among the girls, "because Selena's half Mexican or something."

"No she's not," I responded.

"Well, her dad was. Is? She's Mexican."

"No. She's rich."

"Ha. No, but really–"

"Nope. Rich. Whatever she was, she's white now."

And I felt I was pushing my luck with that comment, despite the chuckle it elicited, but unless she and Justin Bieber are part of the Jonas Brothers' abstinence cadre, she's also technically a statutory rapist in the state of California.

Then again, if I was 18, dating a 17 year old, and we collectively had about a billion dollars, I'd just fly us to a state more amiable to teen-on-teen dry humping.

Adolescence is a time of subtle nuances and blind, willful self-deception

At the local book store today there was a gaggle of kids about 15 and 16 years old hanging out at the toddler-scale round picnic table in the kids department, as there has been since the dawn of time (for that store I guess). They spent maybe fifteen or twenty minutes simply complaining about hipsters.

Really.

"Oh man, you know 'International Kick A Hipster Day' is soon, right?"

"Really? Oh my gawd! What's Yorktown going to do?!"

Ah, regional jokes. I remember that time, when Yorktown was a hellhole and we were awesome for not living there. It was great until a couple years after I graduated and a girl from my high school stabbed a girl from Yorktown to death because she was standing next to a girl who was sleeping with her boyfriend (who was incidentally also sleeping with said murderess' aunt, whose low-income, subsidized condo they agreed to meet at). But hey, I met a girl in college because of that. And then she got married to a nice Irishman. Yet I digress more than I meant to.

What stuck out in my mind was these children's … shall we say, "personal choice of stylistic expression." They were little scenesters.

Guys: both skinny, black jeans, black graphic tees, jet black straight hair all down and in their faces, black Cons, various facial piercings (ear, lip, brow).

One girl: brunette, baggy men's sweatshirt, dark hair, little round, mostly looking like the guys but pale instead of tan-due-to-ambiguous-heritage. The other: cute as hell, blonde, dark wash blue jeans, teal-and-white striped scoop neck tee with a matching teal knit beanie and pink stripes in her hair, and I think one lip ring.

Irony of them bitching about hipster: Through the roof levels. Not just off-the-charts, it's astronomical. You would have to literally be standing on the surface of a different heavenly body to read the precise scale of a graph if one were to graph irony over time for that precise interval of my walking past these teens.

I really wanted to tell them, too, to explain why everything they thing is shallow like a kiddie pool, all deep and meaningful when it's all you've ever known and yet immediately adjacent to a much grander picture than you've ever experienced.

But of course I didn't.

Firstly, they would have railed against me for calling them hipsters. I would surmise that to them a "hipster" is an unshowered, unshorn hemp-hugger living the bo-ho hobo chique lifestyle in deference to their tidy trust fund, eschewing Starbucks for free-trade grinds they fish out of their uncle's restaurant's dumpster or some such nonsense. I'm positive they would draw a very clear distinction between "hipster" and "scene kid."

Of course they would. No one likes to be labeled, especially a label they despise. What does it matter if they're driving around in a car their parents paid for, wearing $80 jeans and get to go to at least two different Sublime shows every year? No, they're not rich and tasteless. They don't all dress the same and wear ill-fitted clothing. They weren't all totally beaten up in grade school by the same guys who went on to be very good at extracurricular activities that involved running towards something in some capacity. Nope. Totally different.

And in any event, they're 16. They're supposed to think their kiddy pool is the hottest shit this side of Memento and Donnie Darko. They know how to swim without their swimmies and they're getting cocky. They've even learned how to look like they're just hanging out on the side of the pool when in fact they've very strategically found that one spot where the water jet is….

Who are we to pull them off of that water jet and throw them, boner-clad, into the deep end without so much as a swim test and a hot lifeguard upon whom to fixate? Let them grow up and be embarrassed about how they dressed and how they thought they knew everything when they were really provincial and intolerant.

We all were 16 once.

You're 16, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine

… "Said Ed Gein to the trundled up streetwalker."

… "Not in 16 states, she's not. Perv."

… "Says who? Women aren't property, buddy! What kind of fucked up Pleasentville 1950s military-industrial complex white misogynist bullshit are you into, asshole?"



You're a creepy, creepy guy, Johnny Burnette, and I'd wish you'd stop being creepy at least once every 4 hours over the speakers at my job. You're more awkward than the Beatles song where the purpose of love precludes non-binary sexual identity.

Plus, you're totally not helping the tween paranormal romance fans not stare at pale older dudes.