The Amazing Adventures of Kyrgyzstan and Col

Chapter Two: "Save 10%"

A three months ago the man at the Barnes and Noble bookstore near my house asked me as I purchased "The Brothers Karamazov," whether I wanted to become a Barnes and Noble card member, save 10% off the purchase and then all subsequent purchases throughout the year for a small fee of $25. I brushed him off, said, "No thanks," and maybe even something along the lines of, "I'm moving out of the country for a while, so it wont make a lot of sense."

I am officially a moron.

I have gone to Barnes and Noble probably twenty times since that conversation and now own another 15 books. I bet that with all the money I spent and not saved an additional 10% on, I could have bought a small country... or fed a family of five for a week down in Mississippi.

To top it off, it hit me as I swiped my credit card one last time that I could have given my Barnes and Noble card to a family member or a friend as a gift or something. Chances are they would check for IDs or something, but still.

Well, at least I now have my Russian-English/English-Russian dictionaries, an atlas, some workbooks, Dostoevsky and... Christopher Moore.

If I can't leave you with anything tangible, I leave you with some of Fyodor's existential friends:

"Here, then, awaiting our study, lies man's authentic "being"-- stretching the whole length of his past. Man is what has happened to him, what he has done. Other things might have happened to him or have been done to him, but what did in fact happen to him and was done by him, this constitutes a relentless trajectory of experiences that he carries on his back as the vagabond his bundle of all he possesses. Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being."
-Ortega

"For, believe me, the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!"
-Nietzsche

Next time the Barnes and Noble guy asks whether I want to buy the card, I'm doing it. I'm dangerous.

posted by C @ 6:30 AM