Felicia Day

When I go to a new city, if I speak the language there or not, there are two primary categories of shops I seek out first:  Bakery/Coffee shops (Brewing own beans is a Gonzo), and used book stores.  I don’t LOVE the smell of old books, but old book stores themselves, with their high looming shelves and crazy filing systems, make me feel so cozy and intimate, like I’m going into a distant relative’s house.

Sadly, the Los Angeles area has few relatives for me.   I have about 6 boxes of books to get rid of, believe me we kept a lot more, and I was hoping to trade them in for store credit, like I do at Ameoba for CD’s and DVD’s we don’t want to keep.  Great system, everyone seems to win.   Unfortunately, as I look around…no used book stores.  I guess the rents are ridiculously high in LA, because the nearest one I could find is in Pasadena, about 45 minutes away, more with traffic.  The big one in Long Beach, even farther, recently shut down due to rent increases.  The only ones I could find near me were those fancy first-edition places, who would probably poop on my used paperbacks by Gregory Keyes and stuff (not to insult his series )

I’m really sad that a city like this doesn’t have a Strand like in New York (favorite place in nation) or even a chain like Half-Priced Books in Austin, where I’m from.   It makes me feel like there’s no community if we can’t communally share our used books like we do CDs, Movies, Nagel paintings and gross furniture.  I’d buy a lot more books than I do now if I could go get them for half-price in person, because buying them used on the internet isn’t really viable with the shipping costs and stuff.  Is having only Borders and Barnes and Nobles better for the authors?  Sure, because they actually get royalties every sale, and I applaud that.  But I would really love to wander the aisles of a store and have something catch my eye that I didn’t expect, even if it smells a little musty, than…not having the option.

I got a message from someone about the new Facebook app about a new way “….for you to connect to things other than people, without cluttering your Friend List.” The blog entry can be read here. The upshot is, you can create a Facebook page for fans, of your TV show, film, carpet cleaning company, snack food, whatever. People can add themselves as “fans” and you can contact them, upload videos, etc.

Fine, I do it for The Guild. We have a Facebook group already, but I’m first to jump on new stuff, so I do it. A whole page pops up about creating an ad. This is when it gets creepy.

Boost your activity with Facebook Ads

Create an ad campaign to drive traffic and engagement with your Website, Application, or Facebook Page.

Advanced Targeting

Target by age, gender, location, interests, and more.

Content Integration

Get noticed, not skipped.

Flexible Pricing

Buy clicks (CPC) or impressions (CPM).

Trusted Referrals

Attach friend-to-friend interactions about your business to your ads.

Yeah. I start clicking, and all these options come up. I could create an ad targeting 13-15 year old boys in high school, in Georgia who are single, conservative, work at McDonalds, who like rock music and World of Warcraft and…what the fuck!? It even provides an option to have a little testimonial thing next to your ad from a “friend” of yours, like “Felicia bought tickets to Dave Matthews Yesterday” next to a Dave Matthews advertisement.

I don’t know about you guys, but it seems like a crazy invasion of privacy. Yes, I volunteered that information because it was part of setting up a page. Yes, I supposed I signed my rights away at some point for them to market it so this is semi-legal, but when it’s in your face like that…I don’t know, it makes me feel pretty skeeved out.

It makes me want to go back to MySpace, and man, you guys know how hard THAT is for me. I’d kinda rather have cluttered and disorganized, than sleek, shiny and diabolical.

The coup d’etat of my website:  The Now Reading widget is now working!  I’d love to claim credit for it, but Edgar the code samurai was able to slice and dice php code where I was all mush and gush.  Again, this place looks lovely all due to Monsieur Edgar, thank you!
So, what do I have to look forward to?  The most scrumptious, lovely time waster ever existed.  Move over librarything.com, I’ve got my OWN library now!  I can enter every book I’ve ever read WHEN I read it, how LONG it took to read it, rate it, review it, TAG IT, and it link it to Amazon if people are interested in buying it.  Whoah.  Procrastination tool extraordinarre!

I can’t even begin to drool over the hours of beautiful organization I’ll waste on this.  When I was a kid, around 9 or 10, I had a little index box full of index cards where I rated and wrote about every book and movie I saw.  My mom made fun of me for it, so I stopped.   Story for therapy I know, but now I have my personal online index box for books, and I’m recovering the little part of me that died inside.  Take THAT Mom!

I’m thinking of jettisoning the rest of the site and just have the root address be this blog because I’m that in love with how pretty it is.  Now all I need is a WordPress plugin for a photo gallery, EZ sauce, and the site will be done.

Check one off my to-do list.   Now, 300 left to go!

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