Or rude to stoned people, which is a lot more fun? Seriously, they have no idea what's happening to them and the way they react is priceless!

"Alphapretty" to go with "cashierabsent?"

Minnesota can hold out indefinitely. Would be tyrants have often invaded its snowy wastes only to come to grief. Unless Bieber merges with some sandworm larvae and becomes for all intents and purposes immortal, he has almost no chance against Minnesota.

Smart, savvy and stealing from a bookstore, eh? I'm going to own up to having taken advantage of a morally casual bookstore-employed friend who made money on the side by tossing out books with the trash then selling them at a huge discount.

As long as they can use their gift cards to buy Sarah Palin's latest heartfelt ode to the American heart, yeah. I think they can bring their Chick-Fil-A to the coffee house part and eat in while they read it, too.

Seriously, I love libraries and spent almost every summer of my childhood in the one near our house. But our library is only open part of the day and even then it's more like a coffee house/internet cafe now with a few books you can borrow.

@Evan Waters: We had one, unless it was a Chapter 11. But it went out of business, too. Seeing that storefront empty was almost enough to make me teary eyed because I love me some books and cheap ones I love even more. And I know the library loans them for free— but that's just it. It's a loan. I crave a huge…

What really hurts is the loss of a lot of those remaindered bookstores, the ones with books no one bought when they were officially in print. Sometimes you could get classics for a buck, or some shelf-worn entertainment book about a musician or band or genre of movies or just any old thing for 2.99. I miss those…

Their overhead is low because they don't seem to have employees. At least I've never been able to find one near the cash registers.

Well, there used to be a Borders near my old apartment and it was a good place to browse and hang out at after Sunday lunch with friends. I love the idea of an actual bookstore where you can hold the books you want to buy, but like most people I'm doing a lot of my book shopping on Amazon.

The cookie-lovingest blue muppet scores another rhetorical point!

What the muppet said.

Thank you! I mentioned this… oh… about a million hours after you but every time I'm exposed to Lily Tomlin, I end up singing that jingle for days afterward. And that's not a complaint by any means. I love Lily Tomlin and "Incredible Shrinking Woman," which all the kids in my neighborhood must have watched dozens of…

Do you still have the "Galaxy Glue" jingle stuck in your head? Galaxy Glue/Galaxy Glue/What would we do without Galaxy Glue?/Galaxy Glue/Galaxy Glue/Life would go to pieces without Galaxy Glue…

I only just now realized how much thought I've put into Taylor Swift! I'm going to stop right… now!

@Flaubert: Oh ah'm from way down South so I get what you're saying. I think that's why when I first heard or saw her she seemed kind of like a challenge to me or almost a rebuke. I know that's a silly thing to feel but there you go! That's also why I can't really hate her because it would actually be the result of…

I thought that was the whole point of Taylor Swift.
How white she is. Like the article points out, she's what results when you distill the very essence of white American cultural expectations of Pretty White Girl. The first time I saw or heard anything about her, it was like a voice telling me, "You're doing it…

I actually read "Anthem" in high school thanks to dating a guy who was a weightlifter and very into Ayn Rand. All his weightlifting friends were into Objectivism, too. So what little I know about her, I know strictly from a bunch of steroidal meatheads haranguing me about how even altruism is motivated by…

Thanks, Lexicondevil! My own favorite of her stories "The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp" with the weird time travel stuff. Especially the subtle call out to "E.T." at one point. I'm thrilled anyone's read any of those books.

Well, those are all good points, too. I mean didn't Stephen King live in Boulder himself or somewhere in Colorado at one point? He does tend to write to his geographical familiarity. And he really knows his audience, that's for sure.