GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #287: WORTH THE SQUEEZE

Since my return from the hospital, I have mostly been cooped up at home, mostly in bed watching stuff on Netflix and Prime. Today I did something I haven't done in years. Maybe decades. And it felt so fucking good I had to tell you all about it.


I decided I wanted a book. Badly. Instead of going to Amazon I decided to get it the old fashioned way: go to bookstores and find it myself. Don't you sometimes miss that? Hunting something down instead of letting Jeff Bezos find it for you and possibly sending it to you the next day? Sure, I go to bookstores, but it's mostly to browse. I haven't gone to one in ages looking for one particular book. So I got outside today and did some hunting.


Yes, I went to every fucking bookstore within comfortable driving distance, and I searched them all for what I was looking for. I had to have been in half a dozen Half-Price Books. I went to Anderson's. Hell, I went all the way down to Darien to the Frugal Muse. And not a single fucking one of them had the book I was looking for.


My final planned stop was Cornerstone, a used book store in Villa Park pretty close to my comics shop. Dammit, I made it too late. They were closed. Then I had a horrible thought. So terrible that I don't want to admit it here. But . . . well . . . here goes.


There's a Barnes & Noble at the Oak Brook mall. Why not try there? It was still open. What else do I have to do? Go home and watch more Netflix?


So I went to Barnes & Noble. I went past all the crap that aren't books that they sell. I went up a fucking escalator, for fuck's sake. And then I went to the section I needed. And guess what?


They had the book I was looking for. They had three copies.


Shamefully I grabbed the book. I made sure it was the right one. Then I went down the escalator and bought the book. I hated that I had to resort to this. Who knows? Maybe in the end my purchase will keep Barnes & Noble alive for a full three extra minutes in the end.


Then I got out to my car. I held the object of my day-long hunt in my hands.  And goddam, if I didn't feel fucking elated. I'd done it the old fashioned way. It was still possible. Maybe I didn't win the way I expected, but goddammit I fucking won.


I can't tell you how happy that made me feel.


If you're wondering what the book was, take a guess. If you've been following me on social media, I'll give you a hint: it's the basis of one of the shows that kept me going during my most recent illness.