Delusional Advertising

You know what makes me laugh, cry, and bitter all at the same time?

Ads for selling your books back.

In said ads, there's usually a hand there clutching [in a manly and cool way] a dozen or so $100 bills. Accompanying that image is some slogan along the lines of "be awesome like this guy and sell your books back! You'll get so much money, you can use it for toilet paper! Righteous!"

The harsh reality is that in order to get that amount of money back, you'd have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on text books in the first place. Or resort to a life of crime and jack as many Bio or Psych 1001 text books as you can. See a guy sleeping in your lecture? Take a seat next to him sometime, maybe even talk to him to establish a bond of trust, and when he starts snoozin', take his book! Repeat.

Option B is hit as many parties as you can, escort drunk people back to their dwellings, and then rifle through their stuff until you hit the jackpot.

Remember my little social deviants, it's the quality of the book, not the quantity that counts. Take me for example. If some hot babe gets me trashed (actually, she'd have to have a killer personality more so than looks; I think I'd be too paranoid if a major cutie was trying to get me drunk**), and then brings me home (kudos to her for bringing me up from the U), she'll be sadly disapointed in her haul if she thinks the number of books count. Why? True, as an English major, I have tons of book; usually have to get around 15 per class. What's the catch? They cost about $7 to begin with, and given that the reading list practically always changes for those English courses, she'd get even less money.

In sum, I'd like to see a more truthful ad. For example, it could show a "Before & After" picture. A happy young student runs in his old text books, perhaps with a little thought bubble saying, "wow, Calculus was fun, but now I can't wait to get my $80 for this book!" Actually, if I'm going for the more realistic style, the thought bubble would be more like "Calc sucked! But hey, C's get degrees. At least I'll get my money back." Then the after image would have the student with a dumbfounded [or angry or disgruntled] look, holding a $10 bill, with slogan along the lines of "Oh! It's a screw isn't it, chump?" or "Didn't see that one coming now did ya?" or "If you think you'll get a fair price, you're living in a fantasy world."

Now, that may or may not help return sales. But then again, does the bookstore really want people to return their books? They'd most likely be content to turn to crime as well; hire some goons to blackjack people coming out of Finals and taking the books back by force. Oh man, it could be like 1920's Chicago! The corrupt officials [the bookstore] versus the mob [some powerful students who are using the technicques I described], with the poor students caught in between. Note to self, develop this idea...

So how to avoid the agony and sense of betrayl when trying to earn a few extra bucks? Sell only the crap books back. Tragically, only students of the liberal art nature can do this; you sciences are basically stuck with your stuff. Again using my self as a case study, I had to buy around oh, 20 books for Amer Lit 1001 (horrible class, with the exception of the questions which I've kept and will probably use once I'm a teacher). About half were the typical late 2oth Century post-modernist, politically correct, leftist, yadda yadda yadda worthless books that I was never going to read. Back to the bookstore I went. $80 worth of books; $17 back. Ouch. But still, since I had formed no attachment [yet alone read] those texts, I was fine in a minute or so, when I used my newly acquired funds to buy a slushy.

And in the end, that's all that counts; happiness comes in the form of frozen beverages.

**my reasoning for my paranoia is as follows:
I've seen enough movies to know that the only reason why a super babe would interested in me would be because she was either a). a con-woman trying to get all my money, b.) a space alien who wants to devour me, or both in rare instances.