"Read a book you illiterate son-of-a-bitch and step up your vocab" -"Big Pimpin"

The nurturing juxtaposition of the psychology section and the self-help section massaged me through adolescence; my insanity was predetermined in genre presentation. The humor section has helped me trip and fall semi-comfortably on my face through early adulthood. Like a socially versatile butterfly, I was able to maneuver clique by clique with ease, finding my niche from book corner to book corner. I casually greeted the autobiography section, traipsed through the Spanish-speaking section, and breezed past fiction (the untouchables, in my genre caste system) until I reached the literary core of my identity. I prided myself in having been able to play "process of elimination" with all the psychological memoirs I had conquered, leaving quite a paucity of unread books in the mushroom cloud of this game.

I took such comfort in the milieu of bookstore delineation that I inadvertently attempted this in my own bookshelf: racial inequities section, Irish history section, reference-text section, bullshit books section (I figured Barnes & Noble always meant to have one of these, but never could), Latino lit section, overwhelming-amount-of-crazy section. That last one is the truth. As a test of friendship, if the magnitude of my books-about-crazy-people section is OD for you, it's probably not a lasting friendship...in my book. <--Did you see what I did there? "In my book?"

PROBABLY NOT, BECAUSE THERE ARE NO BOOKSTORES ANYMORE. DESPAIR ABOUNDS!

My first "rilli tho?!" came when the 23rd & 6th Barnes & Noble was gone. Now Borders is gone from 33rd Street. We are not advanced enough to have compromised bookstores in our view of the future. As an editor, I feel that I am walking through my own custom-made version of "Twilight Zone" hell: Trader Joes and Kmarts where books used to be. The lowest form of consumerism where the highest form of consumerism used to be. $1 Sunny Delight where people used to learn stuff good. People spending money who probably can't read the words on the money.

Even if I WANTED to peruse the paranormal teen werewolf-vampire zombie-blob dialectical monster section of a bookstore, I'd have to work too hard to even begin to try to find one.

And no, Kindles and Nooks do not suffice (although I will probably have to buckle down at some point in the nearer-than-comfortable future); if I can't see from afar how many pages I have left in a book, I don't wanna read it. I'm an OG reader and I'm gonna act like an 80-year-old averse to technology for as long as I can hold out. The feeling of hitting "check out" online is incomparable to the adventure of finding your way to buying a new book.

It's 2011 and we don't have flying cars yet, but there are almost no bookstores. Rilli tho?!

Writer's block: haikus

Is writer's block real?
Or a rilli whack excuse
For writing poorly

Writer's block is, um...
It's the block of the writer
Like...blocking writing

Blank page. Cannot write
Snap snap snap snap snap snap snap
Son of a bitch. Shit!

Once upon a time
A white girl butchered haiku
Blahpropriation

Writing writer's block
Can I get any more meta?
Man, stop block-blocking.