So Many Books, So Little Time

I'm so excited. Actually, just simply pleased. I don't get really "excited" very often. I found nine books in the latest Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller discount book catalog. You might remember me talking about Edward R. Hamilton in the Half-Naked Woman Sitting in a Piano post (hey, that's pretty exciting). Anyway, I love filling out the order form and writing the check and mailing the envelope. It's so much more personal (and time-consuming) than merely clicking the instant purchase buttons online at other places. And I know that the whole stack of books will be here in a couple of weeks. A huge bundle of hardcovers inside an industrial strength cardboard wrap, all held together with Big-A$$ staples. And the lady that delivers my mail will struggle with it (bless her). And the shipping and handling only costs me $3.50, no matter how much I order. Is that cool or what?

I like to read and eat. Not that I eat all the time. But when I eat, I read. I eat kinda slow and read kinda slow. Let's make that leisurely. And when I retire and flee to South America with, no doubt, Federal warrants out for me everywhere, well, I'll sit on the beach with my cool caramel-colored drink and red and white umbrella and little brown girlfriend, and I'll just read and sip the drink and wonder what the phuck all these Portuguese-speaking people around me are muttering about. And I'll say hi to my mysterious old neighbor guy, Hans, who has even more people looking for him than I do. And Maria, my little brown girlfriend...she likes rum and Coke and sometimes a little weed...will ask me, in her cute broken English, if I can rub some lotion on her back. And, of course, I'll smile and cough, because there'll be no point in stopping smoking by then, and I'll put my ragged Panama hat on her head, and she'll laugh that naughty little laugh she has, and I won't have to warm up the lotion, because it's already 87 degrees.

Maria, she don't have no tan lines at all, but she'll giggle a bit when I get the lotion on the back of her knees. And when she's fast asleep on the big towel that we stole from the tourist place up the beach, I'll get back to my book and my caramel-colored beverage and my endless cigarettes. And I know that Raúl, our other neighbor, is gay, because he stops by to chat and not once even glances at Maria's brown little rump in the cherry red bikini bottom beside me. And when Raúl is finished chatting about his tan or the seemingly endless supply of "cousins" that come to stay with him, I steal my hat back from Maria and get back to my reading, far away from the snow and the Rust Belt and the slow grinding inner-city death machine. But I won't be able to order my books from Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller, because he simply doesn't ship to foreign countries. But once Maria wakes up and we have a little dinner and a whole lot of her rum, she'll take my mind of that. She always does.
Alas, I digress.
Basically, reading can be exciting. And it's good for you.

Many thanks to Christina Milian, Vanessa Hudgens,
and Nicole Scherzinger for illustrating this rather
monumental digression.