First of all, everyone should start using FetchBook, an internet service I might be in love with. And I thought Bartleby was the one.

Since I tend to keep my books rather than return them to Conkey's, it makes sense for me to shop online. Though if I'm buying used books, well, it's way more enjoyable to do that in the real world, browsing in a dimly-lit store without a clue what I'll find.

I used to admire the pricing restrictions Germans place on bookstores. Everyone has to sell at list, so that Barnes and Noble can't muscle out the competition. But some of us actually have a book budget, and higher prices mean less books — that's why I don't own Joseph Epstein's Snobbery or Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland. I've been a dollar away from getting Snobbery.

Moreover, though I can't be certain it's related, it does strike me as odd that in the four months I lived in Freiburg, and the three I spent in Konstanz, I didn't see one used bookstore. Have the caring capitalists spawned a market failure?

Only suckers pay list.

Now there's a T-shirt. It would probably sell better than my election-boycott bumper stickers. I guess some people have no respect for democracy.

Anyways. Last night was the senior party, off-campus for reasons I still think are stupid. Except for the raffle drawing, which I suspect was rigged, and a few free appetizers, the Bar-on-the-Ave didn't have much to offer. After some undue hesitation we left for Cleo's, Appleton's answer to the Samoan pub.

It's Christmas every day, in Cleo's. And basically every other holiday too, judging by the many shiny decorations. Zack and I stayed at the bar and nursed dirty snowballs while the rest of the group filled up a nearby table.

I liked Meg(h)an's suggestion that Cleo's is a good approximation of what Jinx's brain probably looks like. Edifying.

The rest of the night for me, despite stops at the VR and the Greenfire party, was a long winding-down. I had to turn in a pretty extensive annotated bibliography the next day (today) at noon and couldn't really relax until 11:59 this morning.

Lots of fun reading about Chomsky's linguistic theory though, and not only because one critic — Stanley Fish if that name means anything to you — accused him of foundationalism, i.e. theory fascism.