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I love used-bookstores, because I'm a cheap bastard, and supporting authors directly makes me feel all queasy and capitalistic inside; but moreso because they often only carry the 'good stuff' (particularly if in a densely populated area). It's a bit humbling, of course, when one can't find a single book on their 'to-read' list, it's either the books you want are so sought after that nobody ever sells them; or when they do, they are snatched up; OR, a big OR here, your literary tastes sucks. Which, well, granted, I can't disagree with. There's that great atmosphere of intellectual expansion in a used bookstore. They got your over-degreed Liberal Arts staff, and over the murmur of some progressive punk band from the 80's you can hear terms like 'Proustian', 'proto-liberal idealization of free-will' and other such heady thoughts that I've never gotten my brain around. But being awash in a limbo of grad students and intellect

an ostrich feather, a small gibbon with a subdued gag reflex, fifty-two dollars in quarters. Portuguese bleach, fishing tackle, Moose. an Esperanto handbook , cinnamon, all outstanding warrants cleared. a recently cleaned gasoline tank, left-handed brass knuckles, an unusually large avocado. gift card for Big N' Tall, two blenders (one hand, one standing), an empty stomach. a zip cord from a WWII era paratrooper, a sony walkman (cassette) with a cheetah print velour cover, two bucks. a strong magnet, a switchblade comb, Diana (who used to be Kent). the libretto to Euridice , an incontinent Macy's clerk, a new car battery. Vaseline, the soundtrack to Quicksilver , a passable grasp of market Hungarian

If you are red-blooded male of a certain stripe, the sort that likes Band of Brothers and Braveheart in which violence is visited upon bad guys and good guys form the sort of blood-brother connection that we office drones perpetually attempt to re-enact with company wilderness survival courses, whitewater rafting, or an open bar at the Christmas Party; where men of unusual heart and charisma lead other men to their peril, maiming, or worse; if you are, in short, 99% of all men, then I'm sure you've seen Master and Commander : The Far Side Of The World. It's the story of a small British man-of-war around the early 1800's that has to pursue a much larger brig around South America, guns blazing, storms a-wrecking, men a-maiming. Terror and danger from the enemy, from nature, the tight lashing together of men who must or die. It, like so many of its ilk, hits some raw, primordial nerves, at least in me. Mastodons and hunters and all that. So that movie, is actually an ama