March is finally here!

Bloody bookmarks from Gearfuse

March, my birth month, has finally arrived. It's the time of the year when my family and close friends ask, "So what book do you want for your birthday?" Notice that they don't ask me anymore if I would want any other useful thing besides books like, errr, socks, batteries, or butter. This year, my ultimate bitrhday wish is to have Roberto Bolano's 2666. But judging from the trickle that represents the new arrivals in bookstores, I doubt if 2666 would be in stores by March 17.

Anyway, contrary to what most people think, book lovers are the easiest people to give gifts to. No, you don't give them books, you give them something for their books. Giving books to booklovers is actually a terrible idea, as most of us receive books that we already have. Eric, a good friend, says that giving a book to a booklover is actually kind of insulting, since you're assuming that he hasn't read that particular book yet. I see his point, but still, a book is a book is a book. All my duplicate books are stored in a box, only to be opened come Christmas time when it's time to give these books away as presents.

The best presents a booklover can receive are bookmarks and bookplates. And if this person has this outdated habit of wrapping all his books in plastic, then add gauge 8 plastic cover as another option. Gauge 8, the thickest kind of plastic, is hard to come by; office supplies stores don't seem to keep enough stock. (I usually buy them in rolls of two or three meters.) The innovative bookmarks by Gearfuse comes in blood, milk, and mercury variants. I get the blood and appreciate how blood can get on the book. Milk and oil are kinda cute too, although I'm not too fond of cute. And whoever spills milk or mercury on their books? Now if they came in phlegm, puke, piss, semen, and shadoobie variants, that would really be very very interesting. Let's face it, the kind of liquids that get near our books are bodily fluids.

Shadoobie, from "Chelsea Lately"

• noun: a log usually with pieces of corn lodged in it
  
• verb: to meditate in extreme concentration with your pants down
• from the Latin shad meaning "chocolate" and oobie meaning "miscarriage"
  
• see also burrito