Books.

This morning, my computer scientist and I said the same word at the same time inside two separate, unconnected trains of thought. He was singing Lady Gaga's Poker Face and I was telling the cat to get his ass out of my face, and at the exact same moment with the same pitch and articulation, we said face. I love that stuff. It makes me feel good about the state of our species' collective consciousness.

I cleaned today. It's my favorite thing to do on Saturdays, even though it's Wednesday. I made the bed, did laundry, cleaned up my nightstand (soooo many paystubs) and threw away about 19 Panera receipts. That's an exaggeration. I threw away about 15 Panera receipts. Honesty is the most important thing when blogging, ladies and gentlemen.

As I cleaned, I had the same thought I always have when I clean - "holy moly, I have a lot of books." I like to say holy moly. The letters stop looking like they form words and sounds if you look at them for long enough. But I do. I have so many books it's overwhelming, and the last time I moved them all it ended up in pulled back muscles and aching knees for everybody. And since then, I have acquired more books. AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY. Books, man. The thinking man's movies.

Lately I've been thinking about moving. I'll be moving soon, and to think about packing up this stupendous collection of literature is daunting at best, but I'll just have to suffer for fascinating bookshelves. I remember going over to people's houses when I was a kid and having to occupy myself with whatever non-toys I could find - one time at my grandmother's house, she handed me one of those glass oil-and-vinegar salad dressing dispensers with the plastic tip that holds the liquid in unless you shake it. I was supposed to play with this thing. So I filled it with water, threw in some glitter I found in the obligatory craft box all grandmothers have, tossed in some lego men and pretended like they were either drowning like criminals or swimming like mermaids. Probably mermaids, because of the glitter. Can't be sure.

I wasn't dark as a child. I wasn't one of those kids who ripped the heads off of barbies and covered dolls heads with green crayola smello-marker. I took care of my stuff and played with them as their purpose allowed. I did cull hundreds of non-barbie related items and create such massive apartment complexes for them that it was almost impossible to walk in my room from time to time. One time I took a weird playdough candle holder I'd made in art class and shoved a little barbie lamppost inside and voila, barbie shower stall. I was more constructive than destructive, although the feminist in me wishes I had some stories about yanking off my barbies' little plastic bras and burning them with a matchstick.

Either way, there's probably wet glitter still in that oil bottle.

This is because my grandmother had weird books. She still has weird books, and some of those weird books have made it to my shelves. A book tour, shall we? Intruders, by Bud Hopkins. Story of alien abduction. Transformation, Whitley Streiber. Communion: A True Story, Whitley Streiber. Alien abduction. Past Lives, Future Lives, Dr. Bruce Goldberg. Past life regression. Stalking the Wild Pendulum, Itzhak Bentov. Parallel universes. Journey to Ixtlan and A Separate Reality, Carlos Casteneda. Expanding your consciousness through peyote and other such psychosomatia.

That's it. That is the fare that stocked my grandmother's shelves. That, and the Great Books - those massive tomes that St. John's College based it's curriculum off of, did you know that? All that Socrates and Ptolemy and Copernicus. As noble a gesture as that is, I hope St. John's left room in their lesson plans to correct all those mistakes they made in the 1600s. My grandmother has totally legit books I will certainly read now that my brain can process it. But for a 9 year old, come on. If she would have had some cool fiction or something, I wouldn't have had to stick lego men in her dressing dispenser. So I want fascinating bookshelves, for all ages. I want people to walk into my house and know they will never be bored. This, of course, hinges on the belief that real books will not be totally replaced by digital books.

I don't know how I feel about all these Kindles and such. I'm of two minds. The thought of having 10,000 books at my fingertips is tantalizing, but having the books hidden as a series of zeros and ones on a green circuit board the size of my earlobe makes the whole experience of reading them seem cold and unnatural. Reading isn't just for your eyes, people! It's for your hands and your nose, too! I went on Amazon recently, though, and found that you can get certain books for FREE for the Kindle, which I am 100% in favor of. All the classics, basically. All the books I don't have but always wanted to have, but all the canonical writers, for free, for a Kindle. Um...that's something I can get behind. I think the Kindle and I could be great friends.

But I'm going to need my real books. I'm going to need bins upon bins to move them, and shelves upon shelves to store them. It's going to be inconvenient, and if obsessively watching Hoarders: Buried Alive has taught me anything, it's that you need to CONTAIN. YOUR. CRAP.

I'm trying to. I really am. I've been doing so well getting rid of the unnecessary, but I just don't put books in that category. So I'm going to collect real books so I'll have a fascinating house, and people will always be excited to come over and stay, or bring their kids, or hang out for a few hours away from the world, which is exactly what books are supposed to be for. And when you think about it, people in this world have spent inane amounts of time and money collecting much stupider things.

*ahem*Pokemon.