I think Barnes and Noble is on to me.

I think they've figured out that I'm one of those people who just browses through books for an hour, leaves them on the wrong shelf, and then walks out without buying anything. How else can you explain the fact that the alarm goes off every time I enter the store?

I've gotten into the habit of holding up my hands and shouting "It's just me!" whenever I walk into the store, which is usually pretty effective at negating suspicions. Except, of course, on those rare occasions when the alarm doesn't go off for some reason, in which case it has precisely the opposite effect. Funny how a preemptive declaration of harmlessness freaks people right out.

One time I carried a book from Barnes and Noble into Starbucks next door, picked up a coffee, then brought the book back into the store, at which point the alarm went off. An employee shot me an accusatory look. I sheepishly held up the book, demonstrating my willingness to cooperate.

"You can't take books out of the store," she said.

"Apparently I can take books out of the store," I replied. "What I can't do, at least without getting a lot of unwanted attention, is to bring books back into the store."

She clearly wanted to punish me in some way, but couldn't settle on her next course of action.

"Do you... want me to take the book back into Starbucks?" I said. "I promise not to bring it back into the store this time."

She grumbled something and walked off. You just can't satisfy some people.

I don't know how Barnes and Noble makes any money. Actually, I have my suspicions. I think they make all their money on those "bargain items" at the front of the store. You know the stuff I'm talking about: those oversized books and boxed "kits" that promise to teach you everything you need to know to get started with Feng Shui or drawing manga characters or mastering the art of the tarot.

I find these displays fascinating, because they're like a smörgåsbord* of lifestyle options. I like how they are always marked down from $19.95 to $14.95 or something. I imagine a young woman walking out of the store with her girlfriend, clutching one of those boxes.

Woman 1: I thought you were going to convert to Buddhism.

Woman 2: I was, but Calligraphy was on sale.

Barnes and Noble has something for everybody, including people who hate to read. The last time I was there I saw an audio book of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Now that's niche marketing. It's the book for people who want to hear someone read a movie to them.

Guy 1: You know what I really loved about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines?

Guy 2: The hot chick terminator?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger kicking ass?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: The awesome effects?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: The ever perky Claire Daines, in her best role since My So-Called Life?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: Okay, I give up. What did you love about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines?

Guy 1: The lyrical dialogue and rich thematic subtext. It's too bad I never learned how to read.

Guy 2: Ooh, have I got a book for you!

Every time I go to Barnes and Noble I have to spend half an hour browsing through the "humor" section. As a humor writer, this is therapeutic for me. Just when I start to feel a little guilty about shamelessly hawking my own book in every one of my posts, I pick up a book that is made up of 80 pages of "lessons" gleaned from Napoleon Dynamite -- one per page. The book was priced at $9.95, even though it looked like it had been written over a long weekend by a hungover middle schooler. Most of the books in the "humor" section are so painfully unfunny that they made me want to go to the literature section to take in a few pages of The Brothers Karamazov just to lighten my mood a bit. Not that there aren't any funny books there -- This book made me chuckle, and the Deep Thoughts collections are always good for some laughs. And of course there are books by the old pros, like Dave Barry and Woody Allen. But generally speaking, if you want to see something funny, you're better off browsing through some of the books they're trying to pawn off as "serious."

For example, I always find the "...for Dummies" books amusing. Well, mostly what I find amusing is the ambiguity of the titles. Fishing for Dummies, for example, sounds pretty cool. I have to admit that catching a dummy would be more exciting than landing a trout. Plus, dummies are way easier to gut. And when you're done cleaning your dummy, you can rely on your trusty copy of Sewing for Dummies to help you stitch your dummy back up so that it's suitable for hanging in your den.

And if the Dummies books are too advanced for you, there are also books for Complete Idiots. There's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Sex, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Accounting, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astrology -- which, now that I think about it, is redundant.

Some day I'm going to launch a line of books for people who are too dumb for the Complete Idiot books. I'm going to call them ________ for Total F---ing Retards Who Can't Even Read So they Don't Know this Book is Filled Entirely With Lyrics from Def Leppard Songs. I'm not even going to bother to fill in the blank in the title, because what difference is it going to make? I'll just change the color of the cover once a month to indicate that a new edition has been released.

I'd love to write more, but I've got to go smuggle some more copies of Antisocial Commentary into the "summer reading" section.


*I'd like to thank the developers of the Firefox web browser for "correcting" my spelling by adding those funky alien symbols to that word.

Humor-blogs.com is like an online version of the Barnes and Noble "humor" section. Except it's funny.