"I hate this place. It's always cold and everbody sucks"...

"I hate this place. It's always cold and everybody sucks." This concise declaration was flatly dropped after quite a few seconds of dead air between two high-school kids sitting at a table, drinking caffeinated beverages at Barnes & Noble in Fairbanks. I'm assuming the girl in the hoodie meant Fairbanks, or perhaps she was spurning Alaska in it's entirety. The finality of her statement struck me so much that I forgot - when prompted milliseconds later - whether I wanted Venti or Grande. Don't ask me why, but after well over a decade of dealing with those two words, I still can't remember when put on the spot which one is the bigger size of coffee... In any case, this post's is inspired by that evesdrop... The topic I'll explore is Barnes & Noble itself... I'll do this in as much wordy detail and as many convoluted run-on sentances as my own stomach will allow tonight.

First, let me sing praises to Barnes & Noble. The best thing about B&N is that I never waste money there. In fact, the only expenses are the liquid fuels that are required: gas to get there and coffee to drink while there. I did buy some books once if I recall correctly, but if I want to buy books I'll do one of two things. Either... A) support the local establishments (in Fairbanks that means Gulliver's, or my favorite pet charitable cause north of latitude 64: Forget-Me-Not Books, which benefits the Literacy Council of Alaska. Or... B) Support the poor struggling online startup called Amazon.com. A) or B), them's the options, C) is a distant third. Nevertheless, only B&N combines so perfectly numerous elements that feed certain core needs of mine. First is coffee. Yes, you can get decent coffee at Gullivers. And you can get incredibly awful Yuban-ish ("Yu-should-ban") coffee from Forget-Me-Not. The pretty obvious great thing about Barnes & Noble is that it really serves as a hybrid library slash coffee shop (I guess there's some redundancy in my two reasons...). Moreover when reading those books you don't intend to purchase, B&N provides the perfect luxuriance. Neither of the other bookstores has an audaciously sized gas fireplace with a huge faux slate hearth to sit around. The radiated warmth... the seating so plush it's hard to get up from... and a "classic" picked up off the bargain table... this trio of factors will have anyone dozing off in front of a dozen strangers in a matter of minutes. Thus the coffee. Gotta keep those customers rotating through that plush seating area... Well, I'm digressing... the point is that Barnes & Noble is wonderful and horrible at the same time... and this is coming close to my point: the comment I overheard was TOTALLY IRONIC. How can you talk about your geographic location from inside a Barnes & Noble? Unless you're enlighteningly close to the "local/regional interest" section, you could be anywhere. It's a chain. It's that epitome of the industrial society (or post-industrial or post-post-industrial or whatever were in now): the interchangeable part. You aren't in Fairbanks. You aren't in Berkeley. You aren't in San Francisco or Seattle. You're in Barnes & Noble. It's halfway between the parking lot and the internet. It's kind of crazy. Yes, yes, of course, there's more evidence as to true geography than just the "local/regional" section. There's the people. They're of course a dead giveaway: bunny boots and beaver hats are pretty good evidence against Berkeley... In any case, I love Fairbanks and Alaska, don't get me wrong. But sometimes I want to feel like I'm somewhere else or nowhere at all, (and also not be on the internet for crying out loud). To satisfy that urge, I drive to Barnes & Noble... And, I should highlight those people. Sometimes it's just great to surround yourself with people. People that you can look at, but aren't expected to talk too, etc. Barnes & Noble almost rivals Fred Meyer's in this regard, but not quite. I think this strange need originates from my origin in more crowded places like California.
So, what did I read around that big fake fireplace? Three books comprised the evenings reading: Learning Perl, 4th edition, Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway, and Relationships for Dummies. Computer science, geology inspired art, and relationships. All things you could round down my useful knowledge of... well, to approximately didly-squat. So.... although I spent only a couple hours freeloading off those books, I did learn a few things. In order: Perl is a computer programming language that I'm supposed to learn for a class. It has attributes like 'high-level,' 'dense,' and was designed to be easy to use at the cost of easy to learn... = I'm hosed. OK, second book. I learned that Ray Troll kicks butt. He's one of, if not the, all time greatest ichthyo-paleo-artists around. Hands down. Third book. According to Table 8-2 (don't quote me on that, remember, I didn't buy it...) in Relationships for Dummies: a couple should go on 3-4 dates per week for 3-4 months before considering "exclusivity." There were some other vocabulary words too... like serial monogamy... cohabit... and all sorts of other extremely scary and hazardous things that really shouldn't be recommended. One reassuring thing I read is that I have at least another 2 or 3 years until I become "emotionally mature." This happens to men at age 30 apparently. It happens to women at age 27-28, says the book. That gender coincidence doesn't seem too unfairly out of sync I guess... However, this emotionaly maturity doesn't coincide whatsoever with the peak sexual years of 18-21 for men (hmm... it's all downhill from 18-80, that's tragically depressing), but the late 30's to early 40's for women. Really? What the heck is up with our species? Anyway, this is what the yellow and black book told me, and what do I know. I'm the dummy. BTW, there are so many yellow and black books in B&N. Truly unbelievable the range of subjects in which people can lack a basic understanding...
Well, that's about it for this post. I'm definitely going to have to tell my mom about this one so somebody will read it. Self deprecating sure, but I'm proud to say that her emails to me remind me whence this style descended... If you want to know more about that, go to B&N tomorrow and pick up a book from the Genetics section...