Soaked, Then Purged

Is it ironic that I waterboarded a book on interrogation techniques?

Or is this just the Alanis Morrisette brand of irony? You know, where there are ten billion spoons when all you need is a knife, etc. Oh, and then you meet the man of your dreams, and then you meet his beautiful wife? Isn't it ironic? Don't you think? It's like raaaaaaaaain on your wedding day...

Now that I've blown Poptart chunks across my screen, let me tell you about this book.

Back when I owned a bookstore, 13 years ago, the co-owner, Rose, and I ordered all kinds of "offbeat" books. Just to put together a different vibe than the big generic bookstore across town. We ordered from crinkly little catalogs and from companies that didn't even have catalogs, only a guy answering a phone in Montana. Sometimes we didn't even know what the books were about, but had been made curious by the titles. And each time the boxes of new merchandise arrived in our store from their obscure origins, it was like Christmas.

How we thought that a book entitled Interrogation: A Complete Manual could be anything groovy or postmodern or humorous or kitschy is a simple testament to our stupidity. We opened it. We stared at it blankly. We never put it on our shelf to sell, because what kind of shredded up karma would that bring back?

And so, when we closed our store, after it went belly-up in less than two years, this was one of the books I kept, not wanting it to fall into the eager hands of a Jack Bauer wannabe. (Though Jack Bauer was yet to be created back then.) Here I am thirteen years later, with the book still in my possession. I didn't want to throw it in the trash, so I decided to drown it.

As you can see, I felt sorry for it, floating grimly in the kitchen sink. So I brought out the duckies.