Saturday, Simptempter 9, 41 A.B.
"Yeah, sometimes I wish my wife would go off and
screw my best friend just so I might finally have
the chance to wash the dishes MY way, too...."- "Confessions of the Male Animal:
The Secret Locker Room Tapes"
(Basick Books, 1999) p. 37
Once a year our local chapter of the Association of American University Women holds a used book sale in an empty store at our nearest mall.
Once a year I go there and buy books.
Once a year came today.
It's not exactly as if I need more books. I just counted all that I have in the house and the total came to 1663.
That's roughly one book for every 10 days I've been alive.
Even subtracting the 316 that are strictly my wife's, that's probably enough to last me for some months to come.
Why then did I bother to go?
Why do you bother to stuff your abode with air when you'll actually be breathing very little of it?
Until I can just open a window or door and let the books blow in, I simply must seize every opportunity that comes along to stockpile more.
If you don't share that compulsion, well, all I can say is "Don't come crying to me when the looming information shortage hits and you don't have a single idea to get you through another day."
I'll just hit you with my copy of Aesop's fables if you do.
I bought 9 books. Yes, just 9. A mere 0.5441% increase in our previous total of 1654. But, oh! How did I ever get by for 41 years without these particular 9??
The most expensive was "The Story of the Declaration of Independence" by Dumas Malone, et al. The idiotic expression on the face of Dorothy Quincy on page 106 was worth the $5 cost all by itself. I previously had had no idea that the feminine visage might comport itself in quite that way before. I am left to wonder if the portrait painter charged John Hancock extra for capturing his spouse's inner moron so superbly.
And this is merely one cause for wonderment that this tome provides me with. Why, just two pages back I found this:
"While he [John Hancock] was governor, President George Washington visited Boston, and Hancock's tardiness in making him a ceremonial visit has often been cited as an instance of his own vanity. It may also be explained, however, on the ground that he [John Hancock] was genuinely incapacitated from gout."
Well, maybe in other families this behavior has often been cited as an instance of Hancock's vanity, but not mine. We preferred to sit around and debate whether or not the size of a man's signature is directly or inversely related to the size of his doppelgänger. How nice to find something new to argue about!
The fact that I've also just learned that Sam Adams did virtually nothing important after the Revolution besides being John Adams' cousin just adds to my overall giddiness.
The 8 other books I bought were a mere 50¢ each. How is one to explain the fact that they are chock-full of even more delicious tidbits??
Take, for example, John Liggert's aptly titled "The Human Face." It is nothing less than 280 full-length pages of facial analysis. Indeed, I can say without reservation that it is the best analysis of the human face I've ever come across. The table of contents alone goes on for 12 pages and ranges from the faces of embryos to the impact of primitive skull structure on proto-human faces to muscle diagrams which leave nothing to the imagination to traditional facial deformations and decorations to the faces of mummies and shrunken heads to the faces we humans allegedly make during lovemaking to goat-faced men to the "saddle nose" face of congenital syphilis.
Oh, the face of Jack Benny is in there, too.
The best word-gleanings so far:
"Pericles was known as 'onion-head' to his contemporaries on account of his disproportionately tall head and domed, 'peak-skull.' In nearly all his statues he is seen wearing a helmet which, according to Plutarch, the sculptors used to conceal these 'blemishes.'"
and
"Erasmus (1466-1536) was notoriously vain and always concealed his exceptionally small head with his large biretta. He never appeared in public without it."
Oh, Reader! It is all I can do to keep from running out and buying a large biretta of my very own right now!!!
Oh, what the hell - WHY resist!?
I'll be back to continue describing my latest book treasures just as soon as I can!!
(Be forewarned, however: "Confessions of the Male Animal: The Secret Locker Room Tapes" is not among them. That remains one of the Holy Grails of my book buying excursions. Sorry! Rest assured, the stuff I have yet to describe is almost as doggone swell!)
Back To Pre-Enlightenment Times
Home To See If You Can Tell
What 1654 Books I Already Had
Just From Re-Reading All My Old Entries
(©Just As Soon As The Quivers Of Excitement
Stop Coursing Through His Body by D. Birtcher)