My mother once said "you need more books like you need another hole in your head." Not to be exceedingly disrespectful to my late mother (even though I was very disrespectful to her when she was alive--no need for details there since you undboubtedly can insert your own story of disrespect to your own mother and it would work pretty much the same, thank you very much), but fuck that shit. If I weren't doing what I'm doing for a living and liking it so much, I probably would own or at least try to own a book store. It is, of course, not the most profitable business in the world and you have to compete with companies that can buy books a enormous discounts and pass those discounts onto their customers. As any long-term reader will know, I have expounded on my rabid dislike for such big corporate behemoths and don't purposefully go to them (although I occasionally find myself in one of them when accompanying someone else.) But as with all things that come out of my keyboard or my mouth, it is more complicated than that. It is easy to expound the virtues of used books and used book stores, but one has to face the uncomfortable position that in buying used books one is only supporting that book store and possibly the people who sell books to such stores. Buying a used in print book ultimately takes money away from a contemporary author. Even if B&N can sell a new book at a discount, the author is still getting a cut (even though it might be small.) Something seems perniciously parsimonious about it.

So yesterday I paid my penance by buying two spanking new books by contemporary authors: David Sedaris' new Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and Daniel Clowes' not-so-new graphic story collection Caricature. I bought them at Sam's. Sedaris' book is a good read so far, but seems somehow more dark than his other collections--there is something depressed about it--the people seem a bit more desperate and their situations less outwardly funny. I haven't gotten to much Clowes' stories yet, but they also seem as equally desperate.

I'll keep you posted.

I received in the mail today a fascinating magazine called Hometown Values Magazine (HVM)--its "summer fun" issue. Eschewing anything as mundane as reading, HVM just gives us a series of brightly colored ads of, with one exception, frighteningly happy mostly blond white people with incredible teeth.

Apparantly HVM's major sponsor this month is KneeShorts Brand shorts: the "modest" apparel that won't show off your garments, if you happen to be of the faith and have decided that rolling up said garments just isn't de rigeur enough for you. Apparently, however, boys are not expected to be as modest since the cover indicates that KneeShorts has "Shorts for Men, Ladies and Girls."

Aside from garment-hiding clothing, other values that HVM supports include

• dazzling white teeth (seven ads)
• personal hygeine (3 ads)
• clean clothes (3 ads)
• clean house (5 ads)
• home ownership (3 ads)
• thinness (2 ads)
• fast food (9 ads)
• tires (4 ads)

Now those are the kinds of values we can all stand up for in the great state of Deseret, unless, of course, you're one of those darn Democrats or Protestants or Catholics* or--well you get the idea.

(Upon further examination, however, the single exception from the all white blond or near-blond people portrayed in HVM seems to be an overly tanned white male pimping care lubrication.)

P.S. Your garments are showing!

*There was an article in the Deseret News awhile back extolling the stunning fact that other groups such as Catholics have family values besides the Mormon Church. Unfortunately I could not find the link to this article at the News' archives.

+A suitable memorial that you could take to memorialize the late great communicator would be to drive your kid to school with a ketchup and government cheese sandwich in a Cadillac and then laugh your way to the bank to cash your big fat welfare check.

Remember those 8-track tapes I managed to score last year some time? Well yesterday I was cleaning up the erstwhile beer garden to make it functional again, and came up with a rather stupid idea of making them into some kitschy "art." Basically I am thinking of grouping appropriate tapes together (either in a strangely contrasting yet appropriate fashion, i.e. Van Halen and Debbie Boone or in a way to indicate some specific significance to the theme of the individual piece) and using that to somehow represent the somehow sadly pathetic life of the 70's single male. The tapes would be glued together so as to be inseparable and since 8-track tapes were often used as coasters or stands when they were stacked together, I would place appropriate stuff on top of them. A spilled beer can--roach clip--pet rock--ash tray...Firebird keys...you get the idea. Yes more clutter--that is what we need--recycled clutter art.

The other idea was to group them together and make them book ends.