We watched the awful and amazing Exorcist III last night for shits and giggles. There’s a moment in the film where the demon says, “We are Legion!” and this seemed to us an apt description for the amount of books currently being sold to your little bookshop. Not that the books are demonically possessed (although some of the people selling might be possessed we can’t be sure) but it’s in the amount and uniqueness of each title rolling through the door like a swarm of locusts. Unlike the spawn of hell, we welcome these books, love them, and do not have to ritualize them from Earth, but they are many, and they go by many names, and they do kinda possess you in a sort of Romantic way, like a storm, or a lovely field. Okay, they aren’t actually evil… although there was that one guy who seemed evil, and with a collection of books on DMT and wanted to sell them to us with some urgency. Perhaps he got in too deep? Perhaps he saw something beyond the veil he’d rather forget? Apparently there are aliens in the psychedelic void, inter-dimensional elves with INFORMATION, as Terance McKenna says. Now that we’ve written this all down maybe, the Legion thing isn’t such a great comparison. It might just be that the Exorcist III is such a puzzzlingly bad film, with such amazing moments, and lots of bunk, that we can’t stop thinking about it, or evidently writing about it. Don’t watch it, whatever you do.
See, this is why we are unemployable. We’ve worked other jobs. We’ve pleased bosses. We’ve irradiated bosses. We’ve made them cry and we’ve made them cry with rage. We’re not easily managed. Obviously we have a problem if, in the slick world of retail, we start our pitch evoking the ancient rite of exorcism. This is not the worst idea we’d had either. We take the spaghetti gun approach to retail. So we take the, “I just rolled out of bed and look this beautiful” approach to bookselling. We figure that if we’re tired of the world and think it’s boring then there must be other people who feel that way too. Since every day is different, and the brain is a barrel of unlit firecrackers, then why not light THIS one today? Why not? Let’s see what it does? Does it invoke the ancient rite of exorcism? AMAZING! We’ve had customers walk into our shop, take one look around, then bolt for the door. “It has an odd vibe” one reviewer wrote online. One reviewer, a Top Reviewer on Google, who gave the local Walmart 5 Stars, gave our shop 2. That was a proud day.
What does this all have to do with books? What does it have to do with you, book lover? Well, think of it this way. Our shop is sort of a pirate ship. Not the REAL kind of pirate ship? Those are frightening. We mean the fantasy kind, the “held together with song and adventure” kind. We roll the swampy streets of this city hunting up all sorts of treasure and dock at your port. The rope ladder is thrown down (made of bones and hand-sewn cord by our first-mate Barney) and you climb up to find all sorts of beautiful things. Sure there is a port town near-by, and there are lovely shops there. Lovely shops. But we are a pirate ship. We barely make it out alive. But the treasure, Lord the treasure, it is (kisses fingers) out of this world. When you hear that parrot squawking in the night you know B&D are near. Our flag is a pombeagle eating a whale. Hey, sit down on this chest here and tell us a story. Tell us about the time you scaled One London Place high on shrooms. Tell us about the time you explored the old LPH and saw a REAL GHOST. You wrote a good tale? We’ll share it. We’ll take your art all over this land.
See? See why we are NOT FIT FOR RETAIL?
Thank you so much for enduring us. There’s so much more incredible adventures to come.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
