steal this book. yesterday i got a chance to raid lilly's apartment's library. it was a glorious fifteen minutes. three big shelves full of books for the taking. at first i thought the books were to be borrowed on an honor system. then she explained to me that the books were there to be given away, to be added to your personal collection. i kept asking if it was okay to take all these books because i could hardly believe how this system worked. take and not pay? heaven must be a place like this. how often have you dreamed of being able to just snatch books off the shelf, not wondering about the price, not worrying about if it'll suck, not worried about returning it in twenty one days?

it's like that old game show where you go to the grocery store and fill your shopping cart with as much stuff as you could grab within a certain amount of time. what was that show called? anyway, that's the dream for anybody who shops. don't you walk into certain stores and think "man, what i could do here with five minutes of unsupervised time, a guilt-free conscience, and some quick hands." my number one type of store for this to happen would be a bookstore. followed, in order, by an apple store, a toy store, a costco, and maybe a shoe store -- if i could guarantee stealing the full pairs.

so now i have a dozen new books, stuff ranging from football for dummies, two david sedaris', something incident of some dog, the kite runner, da vinci code, running with scissors, a handful of other popular books from the past year or two. along with these were huge coffee table tomes about architecure and the sixth edition of the history of art. who throws this kind of stuff away? ridiculous. sure, half of the books were travel books or stuff so utterly curious -- s&m 101 anybody? -- that it makes you wonder about your friend's neighbors, but there are always gems in any stack of books. you can't go wrong with free books in front of you. pick a flavor, any flavor.

i've recently been thinking about taking some of my "savings" and buying books. like lots of books. like going down my amazon wish list and just purchasing every book i've ever shown even a modicum of interest in. with say, one thousand dollars, i could buy sixty seven books, at an average price of fifteen dollars each. and suppose i read all sixty seven books within a year or two, would i have justified my investment? i mean, knowledge is priceless but books are expensive. and food for thought is rarely free. and after i read all these books, would i have accomplished something? gotten more marketable? won a medal? become a better person? wasted my time? can i put the books i've read on my resume?

i hate having to go into a bookstore and not being able to get everything i want. purchasing just a few books can be quite costly. even a mere five books a month would amount to seventy five bucks, twelve times a year. that's like my cell phone bill -- and no, i'm not giving up my cell phone, otherwise known as my best friend. anyway, that's the kind of money some of us can't afford. i dream of buying every x-men graphic novel out there, but that would set me back the cost of an ipod or two. and what would i have anyway? a shelf full of comic books? that's so...high school.

supposing i bought all these books and then read them, loved them and let each one affect me in some positive, mind expanding, way. is all that worth more than a grand in cash? i can live for a month off of a grand. a month of free living versus a year's supply of books? hum, tough call. i think, given my financial situation and my on and off concern for my mother's sanity, going for anything but the free month would be idiotic. alternately, for a grand i could get two mini macs, a nice set of mcfarlane toys, a lifetime supply of gummi bears or two new wardrobes. or take my chance and purchase one tenth of a seat at the world poker championships. trading in one thousand dollars for books just doesn't add up.

i think people should get an endowment from the goverment to purchase five hundred dollars worth of books a year. food stamps? we need book stamps. i only eat one meal a day, i can read at least twice. so, forget leave no child behind, fuck the one hundred million given to poetry magazine, make me a make-a-wish kid and give me a lifetime's supply of books. if i got five hundred dollars a year for the next fifty years to buy books, i'd only have spent twenty five grand -- with the caveat that it's someone else's money, making it all the greater of an idea. ah, but the question is, what would i have accompished or done with that twenty five grand worth of reading?

well, honestly, knowing me, probably nothing.

but man would i have an enviable comic book collection.