Thank you for your feedback recently with the discount problems at checkout. We think we have fixed the issue. See, in typical used book store style, we have cobbled together the duct-taped version of your splendid member benefits on our website, as there is not a single program built for used bookshops that does what we need it to do. There are bookshop programs for sure. There are some good ones out there, even for Big Deal shops with loads of inventory and millionaire clients. Ours, though, is the rickety shack of websites, running on a tenderly balanced platform with all sorts of weird wheels. It’s a “home brew” site, sort of, as if Brad Pitt and George Clooney were the avatars of Bob and Doug McKenzie. We keep thinking of things we want our site to do, so we plug in another little gadget here and there, and it mostly works. Blame it on the prejudicial blind-spot technocrats have for low-fi trades like ours that there isn’t really anything that functions virtually as a used bookstore functions IN REAL TIME when it is well organized and cared for. There’s a lesson there probably, but we’re not the pedantic sort so no mind.
But, yeah, NOW THE DISCOUNT WORKS AGAIN AT CHECKOUT! Sometimes we worry that our membership is TOO complicated, that limiting its function would be better than this wild and wacky thing we have now. The universe expands and nature coils tighter, always finding newer, perhaps better, ways of expressing life. That’s how we work too. Who can argue with the universe? WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH AFTER ALL? An omnipresent diety? Terrance McKenna’s “machine elves”? Inter-dimensional aliens? We’re down for the machine elves, personally, as they seem joyful and speak in colours (so we’re told). Their world is a psychedelic mind-ocean of play, much like the old ball pit at the McDonalds by the Ice House off Wonderland Road, where Jason is certain he experienced SOME kind of psychotropic experience after licking a black, plastic ball and diving in to find the bottom of the ball pit.
It was carpet, in all reality. But truth WAS discovered.
Point is, we aim to be good. We aim to be useful. So, please, always do let us know if something is going awry. How else could you languidly enjoy these lists of splendid New Arrivals? THEY ARE SO SPLENDID!
That guy came in earlier this week–just the image of a young Dude Getting his Life Together–with books on Cocktails, Tattoos, and Grumpy Male Authors. They passed through our hands but for a second and now they are here, listed, for your dreamy delight! And how about that spooky Occult lady who came back and sold us more of her pristine collection? Her eyes were black with ultra-violet spheres within them. She sold us Crowley, Waite, and the The Malleus Maleficarum. Now you can hunt witches irrationally with a entirely invented schema of “proof” and “evidence.” What about that sweet old comic collector whose hands shook from age who was downsizing and sold us some REALLY pervy comics? Sincerely, he was like the KINDEST man but WOAH his tastes were majestic and kinky. We’re just scratching the surface of that one but, if these comics suggest anything, it’s an itch you don’t stop scratching.
So please keep the feedback coming. We are totally beyond shame at this point but always, always, we’re trying to make this bookshop sing.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
