So. It’s Saturday morning and things are swirling in my head. BJ posted a video story over to Dumb Perignon about an elderly man in Florida who was beaten by an asshole cop for no reason. The cop had turned his dash-cam off, beat an old man senseless and his bosses’ only reprimand was for turning the camera off. Someone somehow retrieved the video from the hard drive. Click over there ===}}}} to BJ’s place and see why I’m pissed.

OK, wait. BJ actually calls his place “Un-Original Thoughts” now.

I’m also conflicted about Rick Perry’s aborted Presidential run, the case for which I made yesterday. Rick Perry is a sickness that threatened to be pandemic should his authorities stretch beyond the borders of Texas. Confined within my state’s borders he’s managed to kill or maim most state governmental civility, and I fear he returns to finish us off.

I look around myself everywhere I go now, searching the faces of the people I see. They don’t all look that stupid. Most, actually, appear to have moral intellect. So how, in the fuck, has Rick Perry been elected over and over again? What, in the fuck, has happened to people?

Then, there is my guerrilla marketing program to stimulate book sales. That would be the plan to stimulate sales of the book I wrote, called Full Rising Mooner, that you can investigate by clicking to one of the linkster tabbies over there ====}}}}. There’s linkster tabbies for the book’s video trailer—a masterful advertisement if I say so myself—and also one for the four-of-five stars Clarion book review.

I have encountered both a conundrum and a dilemma with marketing the book in local bookstores. I’ve found myself in a perplexing situation with a difficult selection of choices to make, and I must say that this dilemmonic conundrum has dichotomous aspects as well—it’s full of diametrically-opposed aspects that are about to bring me to my knees.

Here’s the deal. I told you the other day about how Barnes&Noble Bookstores don’t give store managers any authority over book choices and that if I want my book stocked at the one store here to Austin, I must endure a vetting exercise somewhat akin to that time I was suspected of being a homegrown, domestic terrorist. I think the only thing missing is the rectal probes, but I’m only half way through the forms.

I’m normally a local business supporter but I shop at that B&N because I always buy my daughter gift cards to the bookstore and she has no local bookstore where she lives that I can online purchase from, and none of our local Austin bookstores are also local in Vermont, and this particular B&N is convenient to me and has a sister store up there with convenience to my daughter.

Rather than purchase from one of the two local new book bookstores of which I am aware, I go to the B&N in the Arboretum. Somehow in my ADHD-addled illogic, that makes perfect sense. Somehow, that is one of those rare ideas of mine wherein I feel no remorse for having locked, loaded and fired.

But I got to thinking after I wrote about my visit to B&N the other day. “Why,” I thought to myself and maybe out loud, “don’t I focus my marketing efforts on local bookstores?”

“A very good question, Sir,” was my response, aloud for certain. The first of Austin’s independent, local bookstores is Book Women. The title says it all. If I was a woman or had written a book aimed at a woman audience, I’d be all over Book Women. Hell, I might be all over Book Women anyway, but I’ve never met them.

The second local retailer of new books is Book People. Located near downtown, Book People is across the street from Whole Foods Market’s flagship store and universal headquarters building located at Sixth and Lamar. It’s a popular store and supports local writers.

But that support has a price. In order to be displayed on their shelves at Book People, a writer must be vetted—not FBI-styled like at B&N, but vetted just the same—and then if approved, the writer must choose from among a market basket of payment plans. Priced from $25.00 to get on the shelves and up to as much as $225.00 for shelf space, Local Author Display time, mention in the online store and a book signing in-store with three other locals, a writer is required to spend money to be read.

Intrinsically, as a businessman I get that. I understand that Book People cannot afford the shelf space to stock the book of every crackpot who can string 125,000 words together. Their store is maybe half the size of the B&N, and it already has the more crowded feel of an old corner bookstore. They can’t afford to support my bad habits and require me to support myself.

You guys are smart so you know where all of this bookstore bullshit is going. It’s only 9:00 am and I’m headed to the walk-in friggie back in our kitchen to load a cooler with Carta Blanca beers, and I’m taking the circus I call my pets fishing.

My gay ostrich and pig are both as pasty looking as a beached whale from all their time in the closet, and Rush Limbaugh has put on enough weight during the holidays to look like a whale, un-beached. His lover, the ostrich I named Rick Perry, called him “Fatso” last night at supper when the two of them fought over the last of the fried quail on the table.

That started a terrible row with the two of them bickering and spitting nasty remarks around. Rush Limbaugh told Ricky that he is as stupid as his namesake and then Rick Perry countered with, “And you are as fat and mean-spirited as yours,” and then the crying and hissy-fitting ensued. Rick finally had a belly full and stormed off to hide his head in his sandbox, and Rush asked me to refill his trough with beer.

“Nope, not gonna happen,” I told him. “You get your lard ass in there and apologize to him. And I don’t want to ever hear you tell him he’s as stupid as our Governor again. Once more and you’ll be served as the BBQ pork you so love to be served. That’s the meanest thing you could say to anyone.”

Later last night I got the payback for exhibiting good parenting skills and responsibilities. The make-up sex happening in my closet kept me awake until all hours and when I finally got to sleep, I had nightmares.

I’m a mess. I need another vacation to Tennessee where my most important decision was which kind of prepared pork food would be the first of the flavor of my day, and my biggest concern was if I could outlast BJ in the cold contest that is a visit to Squatlo’s Ice House.

Or maybe I should go stick my head in Rick Perry’s sand box. Hiding from your issues doesn’t solve any problems, but it is nice to escape them for awhile. Manana, y’all.

So. I was surfing around yesterday and somebody was wondering why the Pope is against same-sex marriages. To me the answer was patently obvious—jealousy. That’s right, the Green-eyed Monster has Her Royal Highness La Pope gripped firmly by the balls.

See, back in the 1950′s when the Pope was known as Joey Ratzinger of Marktl am Inn, Germany, openly-homosexual lifestyle options were limited to the Catholic clergy, Hollywood, a limited number of writer colonies, and the occasional big city bathhouse. Marking an exception for the bigoted fuckwad Christian right—who have their heads stuck so far up their asses it’s still 1959—today’s American populace both excepts and embraces gay folks simply as folks.

Gay people are in important elected positions as legislators and husbands of women running for President, they head giant corporations to be important members of the One-Percent Club, they cut our hair and work on our cars, and hold responsible positions in every aspect of American society.

Gay people are in every… single… place… in… America.

But back in little Joey’s time, openly gay lifestyles were not expectable. Gays were shunned and treated sometimes worse than blacks and Hispanics. Which reminds me. If we say Hispanics with a big H, why isn’t it Blacks, and even Whites for that matter?

Back in the day, almost every extended Catholic family had someone who joined the priesthood or a convent. Hell, my family is Baptist all the way back from before the family name was changed from Jones, and my third cousin from over to Virginia ran off and became a Catholic monk, or some fucking thing. That’s right, Bubba Jones become Brother Eusebius.

I didn’t know him well—just met him the one time at a family reunion—but I had serious questions about Bubba. I was but a tyke, but he seemed out of place at a Jones/Johnson family reunion with his bowl-cut hair and brown robe.

I had this great uncle who was an especially large asshole. My own daddy found cause to place a particularly tight left cross on his nose for how he spoke to a Mexican worker at our place one time. Uncle Herman was his name, and what sticks in my head most about my cousin Bubba was that Uncle Herman kept telling everyone that, “Bubba’s a queer,” or “That boy’s a sissy-queer.” My Gram’s the one who made him stop saying that, and did it with just a look.

Anyway, poor Joey must not have been a good actor or artist, and anyone who has listened to him speak knows the silly sonofabitch can’t write for shit. So, he joined the priesthood and became a member of that “secret” society. And now, dear friends, he’s mad as all hell that all of these other gay people can live openly and get married and shit.

Hell, I’d be jealous too. So would you if you had spent your entire adult life living a lie for the same thing that today’s gays are openly proud.

And look, all of you pious Catholics. Before you go getting all pompous and pissy with me, think about what the reason the Popester is down on gay marriage if I was proven wrong. He’s either jealous, or he’s a ranting, raving bigoted flaming right-wing fuckball. Take your pick, and I choose to give the boy the reasonable doubt.

Which reminds me of something else. I went to the Barnes and Noble over to the Arboretum—that’s the one my regular readers already know about. I needed a b-day gift for my daughter and she loves books more than me, so I always get her gift cards to B&N. There’s a B&N within walking distance of her apartment in the town where she lives.

Anyway, I’m walking out after making my purchase and it dawned on me that one, I’m standing in a bookstore, and two, I have written a book that is not stocked on the shelves of said bookstore.

I stood near the exit to the store while my ADHD-addled brain processed a few thousand ideas as to precisely what steps I might take. Long story short, the very nice woman at the information counter whose name I failed to obtain but I will tell you was nice, helpful, interested, and interesting, listened to my requests and turned me over to Charley, the store manager.

Holy shit was that a complex and confusing sentence. Maybe I’ll self edit later and fix that. Maybe not.

Now, I know that at least 87% of you have already jumped the gun on me and assumed that the manager was a man, because that’s what 87% of us do. But Charley was no man, and I found her as attractive as the woman whose name I failed to get, and for all of the same reasons. We had a discussion about her stocking my book there to my personal B&N, and although she was EXTREMELY helpful, she couldn’t help with this one. See, they don’t allow the store managers to make any decisions as to what books are stocked on the thousands of fucking feet of shelf space in a B&N store.

Charley gave me a few sheets of paper with instructions as to how I go about getting my book into position where they can “special order” it if someone requests one. “We can’t even have it listed in our computers if you don’t follow those procedures first,” Charley told me.

I went to the car and retrieved a copy of Full Rising Mooner, brought it into the store and signed it, “To: the store.” The woman whose name I didn’t get because I can be a thoughtless jerk said she needed something to read, and Charley agreed to place the copy in the break room as what I think she called a “reader”[,] but maybe she used a different word.

And that, dear friends, is the reason I sat down to write this posting. I could never be a big company boss because I don’t think their way. I could never be the boss of people that I hired, trained and paid big bucks to run multi-million-dollar retail stores without giving them some at least small measure of control over store inventory.

I’ll bet you that there aren’t a dozen local, Austin writers who would give that store the kind of service and support for one silly book the way that I would. I’d give them books on consignment, I’d visit the store for signings and stand outside on the sidewalks and invite people to come inside. I’d dust their shelves, for shitsakes.

I read all the time how the bookstore is a dying animal. Hmmm.

I love bookstores and buy every book I buy from one, and I buy many books. I read like a machine and I give books and book cards as gifts. So, I’m going to attempt to follow the procedures for getting licensed by B&N and see what happens. Whatever happens, you’ll hear it here first. OK, here first unless something happens and I accidentally get arrested on a visit to B&N. Again.

Manana, y’all.