Ted Rall, �2024�
Greetings criminal element of Santa Clara County! I�d just like to mention that due to the fact that I have now been the victim of crime three times in less than one month, I am very close to pulling a Charles Bronson, and by that I don�t mean I�m going to grow a mustache and scowl a lot.
Last night at the bookstore, at 8:00 p.m., a lanky older fellow asked me for a specific issue from the Incredible Hulk comic for his son. I explained that we don�t really carry comics, but did have a graphic novel section. He didn�t know what that meant, so I pulled out a collection, explaining how these collected specific issues.
I had gone out the night before for Amateur Drinking Night, known in some circles as Mardi Gras. From that evening, I had my fill of dealing with idiots, and this guy was an idiot. I answered his questions as quickly as I could and then distanced myself, going back to the front to shelve the back stock. He left two minutes after that.
Five minutes later, he was back. He told me he wanted to pick up some books for his son, who liked Westerns. That should have set off alarm bells in the first place, as I don�t know of anybody younger than 50 who likes Westerns. But I brought him to the back of the store and showed him the section.
There�s a standard speech for these areas; you explain where it begins, and how it�s set up. The dumb questions started.
�How do you sell them?�
�How do you mean?�
�I mean, like, how much are they?�
�They�re individually priced, there�s a price tag on the front cover.�
�Oh, I didn�t bring my glasses. How much is this?�
�Two bucks. The books are essentially half of the cover price, so for these you can pretty much count on them being between two and four bucks.�
I started to turn away, when he spoke again. �How about Louie L�Amour? Is he a western writer?�
�Yeah, he�s one of the most well known, he�s right at the bottom.� I excused myself again and returned to the front.
Five minutes later he was back again. �Hey, I don�t want to be a pain in the ass, but he likes Star Wars as well. You have any short stories like this one?�
He showed me the Star Wars novel in his hand. I brought him to the back room again and showed him the section, quickly pulling down three books that were short story collections and started back to the counter.
�Hey,� the guy said, �Is there a pay phone around here? I think I�ll call my wife and see what ones I should get for him.� I told him where the phone was in the area, and he stopped me again, saying he was going to leave his stack on the shelf. We walked back up to the front together. He headed toward the front door, saying he�d be back in a minute.
When we�re dealing with idiots, one of the ways to try and counter having to deal with them is to get on the phone. This started from my crazy ex-girlfriend, who would call me when somebody was hanging around trying to chat her up. But the concept works for anybody � if we�re putting on an appearance of helping somebody else, the person who is hanging around being a bother eventually tires of waiting.
I decided to call my mom. I picked up the cordless and dialed the number. Nothing happened. I pressed the call button again. There was no dial tone. I looked at the base, and noticed the power was off. The credit card machine had now power either. Following the cord to the power strip, I finally noticed that our cash register was gone.
�Holy fuck!� I shouted, bolting to the front door. I ran up the street, looking for somebody carrying an entire register.
A police cruiser passed me on the street, and I started chasing after it, screaming for him to stop. He didn�t. I ran back into the store. There were two people inside near the front, and I asked them if they had a pay phone. The looked at me blankly.
�I mean a cell phone,� I amended. They said that they didn�t.
�Did you just see or hear anything unusual just now?�
�No, why?�
�Because we were just robbed. Somebody ripped out the entire register.�
�Oh, how terrible! I�m so sorry!�
�Well, you didn�t do it,� I said, running back to the front counter. I checked the power strip, which was ripped out of the socket from the sheer force of whomever pulled on the register. I also noticed the power cords, which were sliced through. In their hurry, they also managed to slice through the cord of our pencil sharpener. I plugged the strip back in and called the cops.
Forty-five minutes later, I called a pizza place and placed an order. The pizza got there first.
Remember Public Enemy? Remember the line, �I�ll call a cab, �cause a cab will come quicker�?
Yeah.
Nearly two hours later, the cops still hadn�t come. I actually walked up the street to the local restaurant where I always see cops hanging out. There were two cruisers there. I walked inside and straight up to the table where two fat cops were stuffing their faces.
�Hey, I hate to bother you guys,� I said, �but I work just down the street, and we were robbed two hours ago. I called 911 and nobody has shown up.�
As we went outside, I saw a cruiser pulling up to our store. I thanked the cop I was with and sprinted back.
The cop who came was a dick. Look, I know that a lot of robberies are pulled off as inside jobs. I also know I�m a freak with purple hair and a leather jacket. But this guy did everything short of accusing me of stealing the register myself. I waited for the inevitable question: have you ever been arrested?
Frazzled as I was, I thought about how this conversation would go.
�Yes, I was arrested once, in 1992.�
�For what?�
�Spitting on a cop car.�
Which, by the way, is not illegal, but that�s a different story.
Anyhoo, apparently I have a sign on my back that reads �victim.� I guess I should just be glad that I wasn�t slipped a mickey at the bars on Tuesday night.
Really, what I�m most upset about is that this happened on my watch. Thinking about it while I was waiting for the cops, The guy brought me to the two sections in the store that were out of the line of sight and sound of the front counter. And we do have some individual comic books, located in the back room in the very far corner.
We had obviously been cased, and they thought I would help him search through the boxes looking for a specific issue. When I didn�t do that, the guy must have aborted the mission, only to be talked back into going inside. And I fell for it.
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So I know the entry is long already, but I did want to say something about this book, as it was so fucking good. A semi-satirical modern day update of Orwell�s 1984, Rall incorporates the Internet industry as the Ministry of Information, and turns Winston Smith into a neo-yuppie slacker.
Aside from gems like Winston revising the history Web pages to make Stiv Bators a Nobel Peace Prizewinner, the best part, as with Orwell�s book, comes with the importance of language and understanding. Which brings us back to the bookstore.
We recently restructured the fiction/literature department to make a new section. In the publishing industry, the new phenomenon is what�s deemed �Chick Lit.� One of the employees, a woman who was active during the entire Roe vs. Wade era, is extremely upset about this section. She hates the term, but she hates the concept even more, saying that these books are insidious and a harbinger of vacuous stories about women shopping, obsessing over body issues, and searching for a man.
So we�re trying to figure out what to call the section. I�ve already resigned to call it the Pastel Hell section, as the covers are invariably pink, yellow, or orange and the section looks like the medicine aisle near the tampons and Pepto Bismo. It�s also been suggested that we call it continue to call it Chick Lit, but attach a note saying that we know it�s a stupid term, and we welcome suggestions on alternatives (and to state at the bottom that you�re cute when you�re angry).
Consider this a suggestion box. The winner can have a pencil sharpener, though it needs a new cord.
