Tag: the village booksmith

When Harry Met My Fist

I’m far from Miss Manners here but it’s gotta be in poor form to unload your woe-is-me tale on someone that’s actually losing something, including possibly his finances, house, marriage, kid’s college fund, who knows what else.  It’s like telling your neighbor that you’re sorry that huge oak tree fell on his house; it was a nice tree for birds to hang out on and sing.

And with that uninspired observation, I turn the rest of the week’s snarking back to the master, TFHackett! Thanks for the opportunity to try and dredge some chuckles out of this bleak week!

Unlike

It was like Facebook but in the real world?  Has Tom B ever been to Facebook? Unless Crazy’s idea of chatting up the staff or other customers included begging them to join his mafia or showing random strangers pictures of his neice, I doubt it was much like Facebook.

I wonder if the real Village Booksmith sells DVDs or CDs, or just old back issues of Readers’s Digest.  Either way, getting accosted by my weird mailman at a bookstore would be enough to drive me away, or go nuclear on his butt.

Crazy Harry: “So what book did ya get?”

Me: “The joys of animal sex! I’ve always heard about it and was kind of curious. Lots of horse stuff in it.  I’m more of a marsupial man myself but kangaroos are hard to come by in Ohio…”

Please, you can have the book, just leave.

After an excruciatingly long conversation with the store owner who was just trying to make polite conversation, Crazy Harry delivers a bit of Dialog That No One Would Ever Actually Say and comes across as almost as smug and pompous of an ass as Les.

Again, one has to wonder, why in the hell did Les have his book tour in a pizza joint when he could have helped out an actual bookstore!?

Bungle in the Jungle

The more the week progresses the muddier the comic’s message is.  Is the bookstore owner griping about having to compete with big chain stores like Borders? Is he railing against online bookstores like Amazon, or is his ire drawn to eReaders like the Nook and Kindle? It might just be the economy in general, or just the fact that if you Sell Shit No One Wants that no one will buy it and you’ll be forced into bankruptcy.

Oh God, it’s a real place in Medina, Ohio. And to think they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, though I doubt the owner appreciates looking like a slightly older Charles Whitman.

Meanwhile, at Jabba's Palace…

Ah, book stores! Especially mom and pop bookstores, have been in trouble financially since  about, oh, 2003.  I guess “a while now” means 8 or so years.  I appreciate the opportunity to guest blog on here and give SnarkMaster T. the chance to chill for a little but it would appear I picked the week we’re going to be trapped in a small, stifling bookstore with the Unibomber and a misshapen blob of talking dough.