Barnes & Noble, 8:45 p.m. – I suffered for this post!

I have never had to work under such primitive conditions.

The battery on my MacBook Pro is dead. Very, very dead – so I have to keep the power cord plugged in at all times. I am at the Barnes & Noble – and there is exactly ONE power point in the café area. ONE.

Let me repeat that. ONE. It is not even near a table. It is near a plush chair – which is currently occupied by a skinny old dried up prune of a woman who looks like she sand-blasts the hulls of oil-tankers with her tongue in her spare time.

There are NO other power points anywhere else in the café area. NONE. I’m currently wedged beside a structural support staring at a display of MAD compilations and “The Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes.”

There are women and children and assorted howlers monkeys crawling all over me like I’m a dropped ice cream cone at a fair and they’re an army of ants. There is a shelf poking me in the back and I’m desperately wishing I didn’t have that extra soda for dinner. So help me Kali I’ll never spend another penny at Barnes & Noble again as long as I live.

Mon dieu. Why do parents shop with their children? This fat woman is arguing with her kid, who is bored and wants to leave. “HONEY I’M TRYING TO LOOK AT BOOKS.”

She’s yanking his arms and trying to make him understand that whining in public is unacceptable. Well, maybe if you paid more attention to him – and taught him to read – he’d find more to interest him in a bookstore.

This shelf keeps digging into my back and I can’t get comfortable on this floor. I have to keep remembering to hit APPLE-S to save so my entire volume of beautiful prose won’t go down the tubes – and protect my work from the hordes of people who go stomping by.

I just noticed that the display in front of me includes “Uncle John’s 4-Ply Bathroom Reader.” Neatorama.com is always quoting articles from Uncle John’s. I find it breezy fun – but I’m not sure I’d spend $9.98 on a book. Actually, I don’t even know the last time I bought a book. I usually just reserve a copy of whatever I want at the library and read the best-sellers that way.

There is a woman in a pink T-shirt and a pink velour jacket browsing the books over to my right. She has a Christmas list in her hand. She has on the ugliest pair of horn-rimmed glasses I’ve ever see on a human being. Totally wrong for her face.

Help me Kali. This shelf is totally killing my back. My left leg is totally numb. If you are reading this, please know that I suffered to bring these words to you.

There’s an old man in a red gingham shirt browsing the $12.98 table. He’s looking at a slim “The Beatles” tome.

My god. There’s a twelve year old girl with a giant glitter bow on her behind. She is wearing heelies and trying to skate on the carpet. She nearly wiped out and caught the edge of a table. Too bad the forces of Darwinism were denied a victim.

WOACA alert. Skinny woman in black jeans and black long-sleeved tee browsing the bargain paperbacks. She’s a short one, Mr. Grinch – trying to look taller by wearing three-inch heels. That’s fine – but she really needs to cover up the gray in her hair.

The girl that wiped out on the heelies is being marched out by her mother now. I wonder if they were asked to leave or if they’re just leaving? Hopefully it is the former.

Creepy man alert. There’s a dude in blue jeans and a white shirt staring at me. YES IT IS A LAPTOP AND I AM TYPING ON IT. He’s looking at pop-up books.

Cute boy alert. He’s checking out gift boxes. How to play the guitar. Is the flirting? No. He’s talking to a girlfriend. But he did say “excuse me” as he walked in front of me – which is more than the 27 other people who walked by did.

When did it become acceptable to go out in public with your lower buttocks exposed? Someone please tell me. Please. I’m looking at a girl – who has to be in high school – who is wearing a pair of short-shorts that would make Catherine Bach blush with shame. There is NOTHING left to the imagination here. She’s parading around with a Hollister bag and a frappuccino like nobody’s business.

Loud people coming up on my left. Please leave. And take the old man with you. He has wrinkles.

There’s a rampaging pack of teenage girls in here. One keeps reaching down to “adjust” something in her female area. I hope to the heavens she just has a tight thong. Although it would be poetic justice if she’s got a case of the LiLo firecrotch.

Anyway. There’s a freaky woman in a red spaghetti-strap tee and those horrible red Crocs who’s shuffling across the floor toward me. She has a tattoo on her ankle. This I noticed as she went RIGHT by my and didn’t excuse herself.

Die in a fire heifer. Die in a fire.

I’m out. I can’t deal with this anymore.

Peace, love and understanding.

Books-a-Million, 9:32 p.m. - "Mine is so big and heavy."

The Joe Muggs Café at Books-A-Million has none of the frenetic energy of Barnes & Noble. I wonder which chain is doing better on Wall Street? Just look at the customer traffic and you can easily decide. Books-A-Million is the Wal-Mart of the book world, while Barnes & Noble has, for better or for worse, cultivated an image as the Target of the middle-class literati.

There's not much going on here. There are a couple of off-duty nurses unwinding after what looks to have been an exhausting shift. The male nurse (murse?) has his head dug down into his chin and looks completely knackered. His baby-blue scrubs are wrinkled and, while not grimy, definitely look lived in. I find it cute and a sign of his personality that he has on black Vans.

The female nurse is sipping coffee out of a brought-from-home tumbler. She's much older - at least in her early 60s, and has a no-nonsense haircut and the signs of too many long nights with too many patients are clearly etched across her caring face.

She has a look of competency and caring but at the same time, you know that she forgets her patients the moment they leave the ward. You have to adopt that attitude in order to survive. She's wearing green scrubs with some hideous (but surely comfortable) Barney-colored Crocs and has a black knitted sweater thrown over her hunched shoulders. She's got a gigantic handbag and a lot of stuff strewn out on the table in front of her - a crossword, keys, a case for some glasses. She looks like she's about to nod off now.

I have to say that I like the café at Books-A-Million more than Barnes & Noble. It is more open, spacious and airy. It feels like a place you could settle in for a nice coffee and a good read, as opposed to a clanging New York train station.

I didn't choose my seat well. I'm staring out onto the parking lot, which unfortunately affords a direct view of the main turn lane into the shopping center where this Books-A-Million is located. The lights at night are gorgeously pretty, but I get an eyeful of spectrum every time someone turns in.

Do they let old people out on their breaks on Saturday nights? This old liver spot just wandered by. He's wearing khaki pants and a loose-fitting shirt that advertises that he recently lost weight. He is eying my laptop like goods on a auction showroom floor.

I am concentrating and don't look up, but I do realize I left my cell phone lying on the table. I look up, right at him, and then look right at my phone.

He totters on by. Then he stares at my laptop bag, which is a GAP special edition. It doesn't have anything in it at the moment but would be impossible to replace. I stare. He stares. I smile and he smiles back and lurches on. OK. Thank you, creepy old man.

I can hear a raspy voice ordering a coffee or something from the cafe bar. There's another old man acting as a coffee-slinger tonight who can't make an iced mocha to save his life. I paid $5 for a coffee that I wouldn't feed to my worst enemy's dog.

Unbeknownst to me, the creepy old man is apparently coming around for a second pass. I hear the sound of shuffling feet and then a face appears on my right, followed by a light tap on my shoulder.

"Excuse me, what kind of computer is that?" Because the entire planet cannot tell that this is an Apple. You know, the glowing fruit on the top and the sheer beauty of the styling should be enough to convince the legions of Microsoft zombies to convert.

But old people will be old people. "Oh." (because I'm sort of upset at being interrupted and then a little shocked at being approached.) "It's a Mac. See, it has the little glowy apple on the lid." And I fold the screen down and show him the Apple.

His reply? "That's nice. MINE IS SO BIG AND HEAVY." Thank you, old man, for giving me nightmares about your laptop and whatever else you have that might be big and heavy.

At this point, his caretaker/wife/daughter comes up and is boring holes in him with her eyes. "What are you doing? Did you buy something?" She asks because he has a receipt from the café but no obvious coffee. Actually, that's a good question. I wonder what he did with whatever he bought?

It is very slow here. There's no delicious coffee grinder aroma, and the only noise is the constant hum of the machine used to keep those iced fruity drinks iced.

The murse is awake and gone to the bathroom. Power nap maybe? And his aged companion is now reading. Maybe they are waiting on a companion to get off a shift or on a ride.

My time is up. Thank you.

Barnes & Noble, 9:13 p.m. - Hooker-lookers and the Hershey Grannies are out in force

So this is where the literati of town hang out. The place is slamming tonight. There are exactly two seats open at the in-store Starbucks cafe and then I had to cadge a chair from a hostile gentleman with seaman's whiskers to slide under one of those vacant mesas for myself.

The crowd is only growing. A group of teenagers or early college age kids just walked up. They've got a couple cans of Red Bull and both girls have humongous purses. They're holding a diplomatic conference worth of Condi Rice and a boatload of Israeli diplomats. If only it weren't accompanied by a similar raftload of hair flips, "Girl, I knows" and the like.

The background noise level is astounding. There's the noise of the coffee bar. *Whir* *Grind* *Blend* There's the noise of about 15 chairs and tables in constant motion, scraping, moving, sliding. There's glassware, coffee cups, spoons, forks and plates. Think tiny restaurant filled with twenty-seven of your closest friends talking at the top of their lungs. Then cut the space in half.

Don't forget we're backed onto a huge retail bookstore, right next to the magazine racks. There are people browsing, moving, shuffling papers.

There's an incredibly loud man yakking at the top of his lungs somewhere over to my right. I'm trying not to look up. He's haggling with the baristas for something. "HOW ARE YOU DOING? HOW'S THE COFFEE TONIGHT?" Damn. If you know them, just say so. No need to yell. Everybody up in here knows how you're doing tonight.

The visual clutter of a Barnes & Noble is amazing. I realize this is a retail space, but I've never actually stopped to think about how incredibly crammed with junk every single line of sight is with messages imploring me to BUY BUY BUY.

The retail creep extends even into the coffee cafe space. There are five six-foot-tall racks of merchandise extending through to the coffee condiment bar. One is selling Harry & David chocolates. The next sells B&N branded coffee mugs and tumblers. The next is selling some god-awful audio books that some unhappy parent is sure to receive as a gift come Christmas morning. Then, we've got the tea display and finally a rack of magazines - HELLO, People, Us Weekly, In Style, Star, Entertainment Weekly - rags that frankly don't need the exposure.

There is barely room for the customer in all this. I can almost feel the breath of Mr. Whiskers right behind me. He had a stack of books on his table and looked to be settling in for a nice read. I'm sure he's got his reasons for hanging out alone at the Barnes & Noble on a Friday night. Maybe his wife died. Maybe he's lonely. Maybe his lover died. Maybe he just can't afford $19.95 for a hardback version of "An Assault on Reason."

The girl at table next to me just clicked open her laptop. She is trying to purchase the crappy AT&T/B&N Wayport Internet Access. That is going to run her $3.99 for a two-hour session or $19.99 a month. Good luck with that. She's got on a nice black top and jeans and black flip flops. The gold chain around her neck is way too large, going right down to somewhere in the area of her navel. I don't like it.

What I do like on her in the way of her accessories is sitting across the table from her. Mr. Boyfriend. Latin, faded jeans. Black shirt worn over a white shirt. Tall, dark and handsome. He's got two of those "wear it for a cause" plastic bracelets on. Yellow and dark blue. No clue what those mean.

The girlfriend is still having issues trying to pay for Internet access. She huffing and slapping the credit card around and throwing her purse into her lap. Now she's got one finger held up to her temple and is staring at the screen with a mean look. If that computer were a person, it would seriously be running for its life.

The old people contingent here is amazing. There's one old bird that looks just like a Hershey kiss candy (thin at the top with a turkey neck and an expandable bottom), except she has a big fluff of screwy blonde hair on top.

Despite the fact that we're in the middle of a cool snap, half the planet seems to be ordering blended ice drinks. The noise from the blender is driving me seriously insane. *whir* *whir* *whir*

I get bits and pieces from about eight different conversations but can't really sort any of them out.

Hershey Granny ran out to get a magazine and trip-trapped back to her table. It's even worse than I thought. She's got on thigh-length brown shorts and turquoise earrings. Her hair is screwed up on top of her head with a huge black butterfly clip.

Let this be a lesson to you all. Never go out in public in anything you would not be comfortable with someone fugging you on!

The action at the coffee bar is slowing down. Two college-age hooker-lookers in matching red and blue sweater vests pulled over Banana Republic button-downs and some flip flops just walked out. I can actually hear the jazz on the speakers now. It is making a valiant effort to cut through the din.

My time is up. Thank you and good night.