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2006-06-24 - 9:27 p.m.

I consider Borders to be a music and movies store. Not books. I like battered old books on random subjects like philosophy, religion, environmentalism, and the pre-WW2 political scene. I don't like new books with shiny colorful covers on cliche subjects like cats who solve murders. But, for my birthday, three weeks ago my mom gave me a gift card to Borders, and you can't exchange gift cards for gas.

I download music, I record, I borrow and burn, I don't buy. I'm the worst kind of fan, but I'm too broke to pay for something I can get for free.

I don't have a movie collection. Well, I do, but it's VHS tapes given to me by an uncle who was leaving the country. I don't buy movies, because I know that eventually I'm going to see it on t.v. or have a friend who buys it. Very few movies are worth owning.

So with my giftcard the only thing left to buy is a new book that might not be so bad, like Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". When I was in the store, I picked out that book, turned to go to the register, and there she was, working a summer job in this corporate media store. The person I had to get through to return home as the owner of this book is the same girl that make me stop going to classes in college. In one of the most startling movie-esque moments of my life, I turn around and walk straight away from her, find one of the bookshelf ladders, grasp on and bang my head against it mumbling to myself that somebody has 'got to be fucking kidding me.' But they weren't. There she was, and eventually I steeled myself to walk over and buy the book. It was awkward, but not the awkward that I would expect after pining for this girl for two whole years, but the awkwardness that comes when you realize that what you have built up in your mind is so much more tragic than the true situation, and when you finally face that person you come to learn that you aren't really that attracted to them anymore.

So, I'm over her, as of three weeks ago. Today, I went back to Borders to return "The Name of the Rose" and get store credit, because... why not? More books for free. So I return it, get a store credit gift card thingie, and go to look at some physics books, because I've been intensely studying electromagnetic theory the past couple of days. I use their book search stand/kiosk/computer/what-have-you and search 'magnetism' first, and 'electromagnetism', and then I search for 'dynamo' and find a book that is $173, and it doesn't say "In Stock" or "Out of Stock" like the others, but "Ask at the information desk about this title." So I do. As the guy is looking it up, a very cute girl, with black hair in pigtails, who works there, comes up to me and says "I like your shirt." She likes my shirt, is what I get out of that.

"Thank you. I would ask you out if my life didn't so horribly suck right now," is what I did not say. Because the guy helping me out was talking at the time, I gave her a little "thanks" with a smile, and turned back to him. Yes, I'm a retard. I wonder what she got out of it? The guy tells me something about the $173 book and I immediately forget whatever it was he said. I go and buy "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs". I started reading this book last year in college but made the mistake of dropping one single bit of mango juice on it, and the guy who let me borrow it took it back. So I get it now, go home, read the rest of it in an hour, and go back to Borders to return it for a different one. I'm looking at my gas gauge as I'm driving and it has said 'empty' for about twenty-four miles, which leaves me with, in city driving, about four miles left.

The girl with the black hair is still working there. I ask her what her favorite book is, and she says she really likes Chuck Palahniuk (the author of the Fight Club book, among others) and that 'Choke' is her favorite of his books.

I've always hated people who liked things after it became cool to like them, and so I've never read any of his books, even though I knew I would find them awesome. It's a stupid mindset on my part.

I buy 'Choke', go home, read the first chapter, and drive back to the store with the quite real possibility of running out of gas on the way there, to ask the girl out.

If you never read anything but one single chapter of a book for the rest of your life, read the first chapter of 'Choke'. Or the fifth chapter of the encyclopedia, but more so 'Choke'.

Anyways, back to my story. I drive back to Borders after reading that first chapter, on the last 1/64th of a gallon of gas, and she's not there. Nowhere, in the entire store, is this fucking awesome girl that I am going to have to sell a kidney to take to dinner.

So now my quality of life just went past rock bottom. Oh, by the way, did I tell you that my phones got cut off last week? So I can't even use the internet without walking around in the middle of the night trying to find an unsecured wireless network. And I found a girl who is my new Ophelia and I missed out.

From the middle of 'Choke': The way she looks right now, you have to think about multiple car pile-ups. Imagine two bloodmobiles colliding head on. The way she looks, you'd have to think of mass graves to even log thirty seconds in the saddle.
Think of spoiled cat food and ulcerated cankers and expired donor organs.
That's how beautiful she looks.

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