Over the last couple years I have manufactured something of a tradition here in the Nation of PDR. National Bookorderin’ Day is the one day in the year I waste some money on the ordering of new books from the Internet (I get books from my mother for Christmas as well, but I don’t pay for those, obviously) and the date of National Bookorderin’ Day is entirely decided by when the new John Swartzwelder novel is made available on Amazon. Well, the announcement of that novel has just been made: The Million Dollar Policeman will drop in a matter of months, so I’ve got to start figuring out what books will be coming with it.

Obviously this year has the Nation of PDR in a sort of financial state where maybe we shouldn’t be spending much money on books, but I remain confident that by the time this book rolls out (in the vicinity of April or May) I should have at least enough disposable income to make this one order. I’m diggin’ myself out of the red, so it’s good to have a reward waiting on the other side.

Okay, so, as I’ve mentioned, I’m in a state of brokeness these last few months. But having just gotten paid and having woken up pretty early by my standards, I decided to get some shopping in. Today, I’m spendin’.

First off, I went down to the comic shop to pick up the stuff in my account. I figure I should at least clean out my account every few months so they don’t hate me. Judging by the number of Captain Americas that were waiting for me, I’d say it had been three months since my last trip to the shop. While I was there, I also picked up the Hark A Vagrant book, since that’s something I wanted to pick up a few months back or whenever it was when it came out, but I wasn’t spendin’ then. Today, I’m spendin’.

Then I went and got groceries from that store that is below my apartment. I think most people will agree that food is not something I should feel bad about spenin’ on. Mostly I think I did pretty good. I got stuff that was on sale and stuff that is frozen, so I don’t panic and assume I have to eat it all right away. But then I went and bought some juice. I love juice and all, but if I’m supposed to be saving money, it is a dumb expenditure. There is water, free water, pumped into my apartment for free! Someone remind me not to buy juice ever again until I’ve got at least $2000 less debt than I’ve got now. I don’t care if I am spendin’, I could be spendin’ more wisely.

One of the other things I decided was worth spendin’ on was a pack of four Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup “bars” which, despite being called bars on the package are actually the regular three cups, which is exactly what I was expecting, I’m not complaining about that. My thought process was like this: “Those things cost $1.50 each in the vending machine at work and this pack of four costs only twice that. Sound logic. I could get them pretty cheap and they could last several days. Probably worth spendin'”

But now I’m actually looking at these things. They have simply got too much associated garbage. There’s the bag they all come in, then there’s the four wrappers for each “bar” and then each one also has a paper support thing and then each individual cup is also in a little individual cup/wrapper thing. I’m not good at math, but I’m pretty sure that adds up to A LOT of garbage. It makes me feel wasteful. Someone needs to get me a better means of enjoying Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups without producing so much waste. Until then, I don’t think I should be spendin’ on them either.

Also, I suspect they will not last as long as I’d hoped either.

At some point in the past I noticed that the daily Archie comic strip seems to feature more scenes of the teachers in the school cafeteria than the students in the cafeteria. For no good reason, I decided to test my hypothesis by watching the strip in 2011 to see if it remained true. But then the artist on the strip changed about a few months into the year and there just hasn’t been that many strips in the cafeteria at all. Plus, when I realized I was paying close enough attention to the Archie comic strip to notice the change of artist, I figured I was getting too invested in it. And then Chron.com, which I use to read comic strips online, underwent some remodeling and I missed a couple weeks and I honestly did not feel like going back through to see if I’d missed any important information (plus the links to the strips I’d gathered no longer worked). So I aborted my experiment.

But here is the information I did collect:

January 11th: Teachers in Cafeteria.
January 13th: Teachers in Cafeteria.
January 20th: Teachers in Cafeteria.
April 29th: Nobody in Cafeteria, but they talk about it.
May 12th: Teachers in Cafeteria.

I think that my hypothesis would have been proven correct. What I should have done is go through all the 2010 strips. But I ain’t gonna.

Haiku!

Sometimes people die.
This is because ghosts need us
to be their new friends.

I got rid of twenty of my books today. That’s something I usually don’t do. For the past year and a bit I have been trying to rid myself of all sorts of my belongings. Chairs and desks I have cast aside. Abut half of my clothes were given away. But books (and comics and DVDs) I am obsessed with and they are the only things that have continued coming in more than going out. I hang on to my books forever, generally. But by trimming twenty of the books I figured I probably wouldn’t ever read again, I have gained a little bit of shelf space. Twenty books doesn’t even make a dent in my collection, really, but it feels like a lot.

That said, I’ll probably have more than twenty new books well before this time next year.

What’s new? Not much for PDR. But here’s some things:

This week I finished reading the Aeneid, which is a book I bought like twelve years ago during my failed attempt at going to university. I feel like the “books I’ve yet to read” section of my bookshelf has lost one of its most stalwart pillars. I shall soon move across this shelf in a big sweep, reading all in my path. Or at least I would if the shelf wasn’t constantly calling for reinforcements in the form of new books…

In other news, there’s now a new African country. This, just a few years after I decided to memorize the continent as it was. How the chunks am I supposed to remember where South Sudan is?

I’m pretty sure that those two things are the only interesting things that have happened since the last time I had anything to say. Let’s see… We’re currently in the middle of new seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Louie, so I am all about watching those. And Futurama is on at the moment and, while it occasionally disappoints me, I still haven’t given up on it altogether. So… now my television watching habits are known, as the prophecy foretold…

I got nothing else. Go away.

As I said, I am starting a tradition wherein I will order my year’s supply of when John Swartzwelder’s latest book is released. This year that is the Fifty Foot Detective, which has recently become orderable on Amazon. So I have ordered this latest chapter of Frank Burly absurdity and alongside it some other books including Towing Jehova, (a book which I first heard about in my childhood on Prisoners of Gravity (a Canadian show about sci-fi). but I could never remember what it was called until I realized the Internet could probably tell me) and A Man of the People (For years I thought Chinua Achebe had only written four novels and that I’d read them all, but then it turns out I plumb forgot about this one). I love books and it makes me happy to have some coming my way. Hooray!