Hardcovers.

Browsing the last 100 or so posts for this thing I found an interesting entry hanging out in Draft purgatory called "Steady as She Goes: a Hetero Lady's Guide to Abstinence".

While that previous sentence may have been grammatically incorrect, rest assured that none of it was a typo.

I'm off that hype now and actually fucking on the regular, but reading the entry brought me back to a time when I wasn't so self-conscious here. Even though it stayed in Draft mode, the gist of the thing made me wistful for a time when clicking Publish didn't feel so daunting and permanent. One of the first blogs I ever wrote was called "A Guide to Pussy", or something else similarly irreverent.

I feel like I'm writing my resume nowadays.

But it's even more depressing. Cause at least my resume would focus on the high points. My professional website talks about me like I'm some sort of goddamn superhero. And on my best days I actually feel like one. One would think that on my worst days I could at least summon supervillainy.

One of my new favorite places to go is this comic book store in Berkeley. After a year or so of letting Amazon turn me into the worst kind of consumer I realized that there is a list of actual brick and mortar retail businesses that I'd like to see remain standing even if every shopping mall in this fine nation is turned into a massive Starbucks. The list is short. Comic stores are on the list.

So anyway, I Google the things I'm interested in and then go into the actual comic store to ask a live person for them. If they don't have the thing in stock they order it for me and send me a note when it arrives. The first thing I ordered was like 5 or 6 library edition Hellboy books. They are fucking massive and comprise several stories each plus all kinds of over-sized goodies and character studies and back stories and whatnot. Wireframes. Concepts that didn't make it. That sort of shit. I love these things.

The last thing I ordered was the third Omnivore edition of Chew, which is a comic that is still being written and released. Another hardcover edition, it's one step up from the little softcover 3-issue compilations and each of them has 2 of those editions, meaning 6 of the original issue episodes each. I read it in about a day and then have to wait 4 months for the next one to come out because that's how I consume comics.

I'm horrible with softcover books. I wreck them by slamming them into backpacks or leaving them tangled in my bed covers or kicking them across the floor while I'm doing Michael Jackson dance moves in my living room. Something about a soft cover inherently garners less respect from me. Poor things. So yeah. I wait 4 months and order the next hardcover.

Anyway, picking up big boy Chew #3 meant a visit to my new favorite comic store. All of my previous visits I'd been helped by really awesome but also stereotypical comic store employee/owner types. Like. Awesome sources of knowledge on anything comic lore related, but also socially awkward in that way that people who live in fantasy worlds can be.

But not the guy who dug up my Chew #3. I don't know where the fuck he came from, but he was sort of cool with a little bit of dashing and I-don't-give-a-damn thrown in. And now I'm a little obsessed. Not in the "I'd date the hell out of him" sort of way, but in the "I didn't know people like you existed" sort of way. So I must find out what his deal is. I'm totally gonna get all detective on him the next time we cross paths. But I need to come up with something subtler than "where the fuck did you come from?" as an opening line, I think.

While I was waiting to be rung up by the cashier with the awesome rack (another comic book store staple I've grown fond of: intensely nerdy but you know that if someone took her into the girls' bathroom with some lip-liner, a pair of scissors and a couple of scrunchies she'd come out looking like a car show model) I saw a Punisher belt buckle and fell in love with that insignia. It's the old school icon, all straight edges and not trying to be punk rock.

I bought one immediately, but now I'm a poser cause I haven't read a single Punisher comic book. I did read all that I could about him otherwise, but I'm planning a manicure in his honor so I kinda need to dig in deeper in case someone calls me out on that. A mission that will bring me right back to the comic book store, I guess. Ahem.

If it sounds like my life is intensely uneventful, that's because it kind of is right now. I spend a lot of time with my boyfriend watching crazy shit on Netflix, occasionally sitting on his lap to play Diablo. When I'm not doing that I'm selling people things they do not need in rather unexciting ways or critiquing the outfits of Berkeley freshmen as I pass them on the sidewalks.

Oh. On that note. I've started wondering whether or not it would be good for people's self esteem if I walked up to them and yelled "YOU ARE GODDAMN *FIERCE*, HONEY. YOU BETTER *WORK*!" out of the blue for no reason whatsoever. Or if it would simply get me arrested.

I'll keep you posted on that.