THE RETURN OF HALF PRICE BOOKS

Well, sort of...

Prior to attending my last semester in College, my friend good friend, Brian, made me aware of the most magical bookstore I've ever had the pleasure of walking into. HALF PRICE BOOKS is a chain of bookstores, and from my count there are only 79 store locations acrossed the country. It's very much like a local used bookstore, only friendlier and not so full of junk. We have a local used bookstore chain here in Arizona called Bookman's. While Bookman's is nice for what it offers, too often have I gone in there only to find nothing of interest in a store full of thousands upon thousands of books. Bookman's to me is more like a museum of pieces of culture no one wanted or wanted to keep. It's the type of exeprience where you walk into a store and see items from your childhood being sold again for bargain bin prices. It forces you to think to yourself "Why the hell did I own that in the first place?"

Half Price Books on the other hand had plenty of excellent books for incredible prices. My copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep for example, goes on sale at any Borders or Barnes and Noble for 20 dollars. At half price I payed little more than five dollars for the same quality. It's quite easy to walk into the store, pay only 30 dollars, and walk out with an armful of books. This became a weekly activity for my friends and myself. The biggest draw the store had for all of us was of course the coffee. This wasn't your typical raw sewage coffee from a Barnes and Noble Starbucks. Oh no no no, quite the contrary. It was magically delicious coffee that you could have FOR FREE. Remember kids, free coffee is the best tasting coffee.

We had it all: great atmosphere, good books, and delicious free coffee. What could possibly go wrong? Well the location nearest to us just east of I-10 on Elliot Rd. closed down. This put us all in shock! How could our most favorite place in all of this wretched desert leave us? When something like this happens I always believe that it's my fault. I should've sacrificed a lamb before drinking each cup of delicious free coffee. Maybe I just want an excuse to repeatedly cut apart and kill an animal before I do anything in life, but that's not important. What is important is that we've been experiencing Hell on Earth without our beloved Half Price Books.

All hope is not lost, since 2 locations still exist in Arizona. Unfortunately they're located in Paradise Valley and Superstition Springs. Two areas really far out from where my friends and I live (The Southern ass-end of Phoenix). Yesterday my good pal Brian called me on the phone and came up with the excellent idea of finally venturing out and going to one of these other locations. It was an excellent idea, and well worth the drive. While the layout of this location was a little smaller than what we were used to, everything else was quite the same. Of course, there was coffee. Not just any coffee... delicious Irish Cream coffee. In less than an hour I managed to drink 3 cups.

The important thing to note is that caffiene is to me what alcohol is to a lot of people. When I drink too much alcohol, I don't get wild and crazy like most folk. I get really tired, grumpy, and sometimes angry. Caffiene on the other hand makes me goddamn crazy. In this particular instance I felt like my brain was trying to push itself out of the bridge of my nose. I think it would be best for everoyne that in cases of social drinking, I should forget the alcohol and instead stock up on redbull, jolt, and heaping amounts of coffee. I'll know when to stop if my nose starts to bleed and my teeth begin to wiggle.

To summarize, I had a good day yesterday.