Borders Envy

Last week, a man lost his penis. This week, a nation loses a bookstore. Which is more important?

That depends on who you ask. Ask me, I’ll vote for the store. Books are my livelihood. Ask Mr. Woke-up No-Johnson, and he’ll see the forest with no tree. Ask my cat, and she’ll lick her shanks thoughtfully, before staring and yawning.

“Mew?”

Persephone is wise beyond her cat-years.

I’m still learning.

Last semester I took journalism. I thought I could elevate from mere blogger to real writer. In class, I learned about “newsworthiness”: a characteristic that makes stories worth writing; an important criterion that both blogger and writer blatantly disregard. I mean, books are published about things to do with penes, attached or not. Who really needs to know that? I didn’t have an instruction manual for mine, but I mastered the mechanism—and I certainly don’t need to know what to do with an unattached one.

Meanwhile bloggers are like Seinfeld: a blog about nothing.

“Just like the stork-o-pult baby placer, the world just isn't ready.”

So what’s the difference between blogger and writer? Bloggers are either superstars placating their fanbase or also-rans casting the illusion of importance. Writers are…uhm…no different really—except the paycheck.

My queen says I need one of those: a paycheck. I guess that’s why my vote for important news goes to Borders’ bookstore closing. If I’m gonna elevate to paid-writer, I’d kinda like a storefront to sell my goods. Otherwise I’m just a blogger who cuts down forests of wood.

“Timber!”

Just like that wood chopping woman in Garden Grove. Here’s the thing though: that woman knew the importance of newsworthiness. Penis chopping is so Lorena Bobbit 1994. It’s been done. It’s like blogging: nobody cares. This woman knew that making papers required more than cutting down trees. She also needed to pulp the wood. She’s McGyver. She utilized the tools available: she used a garbage disposal.

Yeah. For all the guys, this is where we’ll take a moment of silence, cuz we’re all looking down to make sure it’s still there. Go ahead; touch it if you need to. Nobody is gonna blame you.

It’s there? Yes. Good.

Now back to our story.

I’m amazed. Four out of four guys surveyed will tell you the real news here starts at the garbage disposal. Don’t get me wrong, we all wince at the chopping part, but the garbage disposal pushes things up a notch. It’s Emeril leaning over our crotch and shouting, “Bam!” And nobody wants that. In fact, most guys become quite thankful for the dismembered member once the garbage disposal cuts onto the news stage.

“Well at least she cut it off first…”

That’s right, cuz no man wants to come-to, lying on their belly, strapped over the kitchen sink to the sound of whirring blades while the woman they once loved pushes at their butt like a Bond villain with a toilet plunger.

“No Mr. Bond, I want you to cry. “

I’m not man enough to cry. No, seriously. Go ahead, strap me to the sink. Those blades? They aren’t coming anywhere near my privates. I’m hung like a 12-year-old white boy in an ice-cold swimming pool.

Who’s laughing now Mandingo?

Here’s another interesting newsbyte. More women read than men. No, it’s not that men can’t read it’s more that hunter/gatherers don’t require reading stimuli. We’ve got other things to worry about. That said, men do read. We just read differently, and not as much--at least not as much fiction. Men like history. We don’t want to learn from it; we just like the pictures. We like to learn other stuff. Teach us how to build or demolish anything except relationships and we’re on it, hammer in one hand, book in the other.

Borders disappearing from the book market won’t affect men. When buying books, we shop with purpose. We can do that on Amazon.

“Honey, I just bought a how-to book on installing a garbage disposal.”

Ok, men wouldn’t buy that book. Women would buy that book for us. Just because the paramedics removed us from the neighbor’s tree the last time we installed an outdoor wall socket, she thinks it’s a good idea to read.

“How ‘bout now?”

TZZZT!

But men do buy stuff. Men may not understand the import of closing a bookstore, but try closing a Home Depot in our home town and we’re mad as hell and we won’t take it anymore. Where else can we buy our garbage disposals?

And that’s where you separate the men knowledge from boy inexperience. Sure, we all winced at the disposal story, but the real men worked through the problem and found the disposal story half full. “Well, they lived in a condo and that might as well be an apartment. A condo is not gonna spring for anything more than the $19.99 garbage disposal special. That won’t chop through a sink of potato peels without backing up. His dick is fine. Pull it out, wipe it off, slap it back on, good as new. Now if he replaced the disposal with the InSinkErator Evolution Excel, he’s a eunuch--that think grinds bone…”

No, you reach in and get it.

That’s why beyond shock and “awww…” the penis story is missing something. It’s missing long term impact—unless you’re Mr. Johnsonless

Even if Americans don’t read books, we’ll still weep the loss of Borders for quite some time. First, our economy hasn’t recovered. We’re drugged and tied to the bed. We don’t know what’s going on. For those of us already scouring the job market for work, we’re going to wake up tomorrow with 10,700 new competitors vying for the same job.

Second, despite slumping book sales, malls will miss Borders. They’re losing an anchor store. Anchor stores drive up mall traffic and bring in new retailers. With local store fronts already closing, some malls will find it very difficult to stay open. Many property owners may find that the town without Borders is a town without a mall.

I know what you’re saying, “Rob, it’s just a bookstore. It’s not like they’ve lost their manhood.”

Maybe. It depends on how things swing. This could just be a kick to the groin, or it could be the Ginsu lopping off the whole retail market. I don’t think it’s permanent, but I don’t think it’s going to be painless either.

If you’re a reader, this is a bittersweet moment. It seems like just ten years ago that Barnes & Noble and Borders swung their sizable prepackaged packages into town and frightened your favorite local competitor away. Now Borders’ package has shriveled up, and there’s nothing big about them. Go ahead, laugh. They’re girly.

There’s also nobody around to fill the void.

For many towns, that leaves Barnes & Nobel as your sole brick and mortar bookstore pick, for others, like Moreno Valley, California, it leaves you in a town without a bookstore, except for the adult bookstore downtown, and they don’t sell books.

Bookstore free communities can go online. I don’t know about you though, but I like to touch a book before I read it.

Yeah. For all the readers, this is where we’ll take a moment of silence, cuz we’re all looking around to make sure our books are still there. Go ahead; touch them if you need to. Nobody is gonna blame you.

They’re not there? Yeah, sorry.

Now back to our story.

Readers do still have libraries, but libraries are government entities with tiny budgets and ebook envy. More and more libraries are reinventing themselves as civic gathering places and informational hubs, overcompensating for what they don’t have: books. They’d write a book about it, but nobody would check it out.

But all of this is yesterday’s news. We’ve already read it. The disposal victim was released from the hospital earlier this week. Like his name, the status of genitalia is undisclosed. He’s moving forward learning to live in a new world. He now has a lot more time to read a book.

He’d better hurry and buy one, though. Many Borders stores will close their doors Thursday.

I know that everything is cyclical. Eventually other stores will replace Borders. The economy will recover. People will still read books. Still, I’m gonna miss Borders as much as I miss the other local bookstores they replaced.

It’s a loss, and like a penis in a disposal, it’s just a waste.