--Terry Pratchett, in Equal Rites

I've found my hot dog story.

Everybody eventually gets one, I suppose, although the actual item involved varies from person to person. In my case, it's paperback books.

See, I went to Borders this past Sunday, for Sibley had kindly given me a coupon good for 20% off pretty much everything in the store. With the exception of the college bookstore, this was the first time in a long while that I'd been to a bookstore that didn't specialize in either remaindered or used books. When I do buy new books, I invariably turn to Amazon.Com.

But I had a coupon, so off I went, buying two books. One of which was Equal Rites, the third book in the Discworld series, by Terry Pratchett. I'd read it years earlier, but wanted to reread it, and decided that it would be nice to own.

As it happens, this book and the two preceding books in the series were cheaper than the more recent volumes. The three had recently been reissued in paperback, and they all bore stickers proudly proclaiming "Special Introductory Price $3.99!" And this is where the hot dogs come in.

See, when my grandparents were young, hot dogs were only a nickel. Which is a fact I have heard many times, in nostalgic recollections of How Things Used To Be. Well, when I was young and in high school, paperback books were generally $2.99.

I used to buy new paperback books on a regular basis. My sister and I put together a respectable collection of Star Trek books that way. Then the prices started creeping up, fifty cents at a time, until they got to the point where I almost never buy 'em, unless they're used or remaindered. It's just not affordable anymore.

Anyway, seeing that a $3.99 price now merits a special sticker on the cover to herald its inexpensiveness sort of brought all that to mind. It might not be of interest to anybody having to hear me rant about this, but, hey, that's what hot dog stories are all about.

Well, that's not completely true. Actually, I was surprised at how I wasn't enamored by the store. Usually, when I do enter a real-life bookstore, I'm lucky to escape with anything left in my wallet. I think it came down to two factors: price and personality.

As alluded to above, the only real-life bookstores I generally go to have either specialized in remaindered books or used books. Both have the advantage of being substantially cheaper than new books. Which, somewhat paradoxically, generally leads to my spending more than I otherwise might, 'cause a bargain is a bargain...

But personality is also up there. Mercer Street Books, one of my favorite places, is this really small used bookstore, which I love browsing through. Partly because of the price angle, but partly because it has personality. It's fun to browse through; every time, I find some old favorites, and some interesting new books; it's a combination of familiarity and discovery.

I didn't really feel much personality at Borders. I'd hoped I would; I understand that Sibley puts a lot of energy into her sections at the branch she works at (not the one I went to), which made me hope that this wouldn't be, well, a monolithic superstore, but -- with the possible exception of the children's section, which was actually kinda cool -- I saw little to indicate otherwise.

In fairness, they had signs up apologizing for being in the midst of remodelling, so perhaps that had something to do with it. This may explain the lack of any directories of where the various sections were located. It took me two sweeps of all three floors until I finally found the women's studies section... which is where I made my other purchase: Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, by Elizabeth Wurtzel. It got a good review at the college paper when it first came out, and it looked good when I flipped through it on Sunday. I'm looking forward to reading it when I get the chance.

But, hey, the paper's been going pretty well so far. And, in discussing it with my sister earlier tonight, we even came up with a tentative conclusion to the running story I have underway... which, being weeks in advance, is probably a first. Usually, I have no idea where things are headed that far in advance. Although I can still change my mind, of course.

• I'm getting pretty frustrated with the reactions to allegations that, in the course of a heated argument back in 1974, Hillary Clinton called somebody a "fucking Jew bastard." Even if it were true (which, based on the evidence, is pretty questionable), what bloody difference would it make?

  But, no, the focus has been yanked away from the issues, away from her current positions on them, away from what she'd do as senator over the next six years if elected... in short, away from everything that actually matters, and, instead, all that's been on the agenda all week is the question of what she said twenty-six years ago. Sheesh.

  Of course, it might be nice if anybody knew what her opponent, Rick Lazio, actually stood for. About all he's been saying so far is that unlike his lying, cheating, underhanded, untrustworthy, possibly anti-Semitic, carpetbagger opponent, he refuses to run a negative campaign. Almost in so many words. Again, sheesh.

• Jeff Jacoby's four-month suspension seems fair, possibly even a bit lenient. He really should've known better than to build on older pieces about the Declaration of Independence signers without attributing them, especially after the previous plagiarism problems at the Boston Globe. It's inconceivable that writers weren't warned about this sort of thing. The evidence suggests that it wasn't deliberate plagiarism, but it was still really careless.

• Can somebody explain to me why Survivor is generally referred to as "reality TV"? I've only caught a few minutes of it (during commercial breaks on other shows I've watched), but what I saw looked pretty divorced from "reality." What I saw looked about as contrived as anything ever gets.

  At any rate, nothing I saw seemed even close to interesting enough to get me to keep watching after the commercial breaks on the other stations ended.

• You know, back when I was younger, I thought Camp David was a summer camp. I didn't quite know what Jimmy Carter did there, but I imagined he helped the kids or something.

  I didn't really expect anything to happen there this time around... but it might have been nice.

• Napster is overrated. After all the media hype about how it was a serious threat to record companies, and almost anything was available on it, I decided to check it out for myself. It turns out that if you're using a 28.8kbps modem, as I am, the odds of successfully downloading a song all the way through are extremely low. The odds of getting cut off partway through, on the other hand, are extremely high. And there's no way of resuming a download after it gets cut off. I suppose it's nice that I now have the first few seconds of several versions of "When the Saints Go Marching In" on my hard drive, but if my experiences are any guide, the record labels have nothing to worry about.

  On the other hand (and this is a long overdue observation), the one really good piece I've read on the whole subject came from Courtney Love, of all people. I confess that I've been unfamiliar with her music, and haven't been very positively disposed towards her until now (based strictly on her reputation)... but reading this transcript has changed that, probably for good. She makes a very well-articulated argument. It's kinda long, but well worth reading if you missed it when it first appeared.