Where All the Promotional Materials Go to Die

I love promotional materials. I really do. I love posters, pins, stickers, mugs, informational pamphlets, cardboard cutouts, bags, the works. My work space is slowly being overtaken--nay, decorated--by promotional materials.  My coaster is from our Drinking Boston event last month, my mug came from the Main Street Rag Publishing Company, and my walls are plastered with posters from events past. I can be counted on to acquire stickers and pins and then distribute them joyfully throughout the store, very similar to a flower girl tossing petals. If you see a cat sticker or a Snowy Day tattoo on a bookseller, a teacher with an armful of bookmarks, or a child with a full sheet of stickers that seem to have fallen from the heavens, I may have had something to do with it.

SO PRETTY.

One of my favorite posters is from Melville House. After putting this up (and then acquiring a few more for co-workers who wanted one too), I've suffered from the extreme desire to collect them all and recreate this poster in real life. It's more than just a pretty poster, it's a handy way to describe colors ("Yeah, I'm imagining the south-facing wall the color of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, you know? But The Duel is an option too.").

HOUGHTON MADE THESE BAGS,  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN!

I've been threatened repeatedly for The Hobbit bag, which currently houses about forty uninflated balloons, streamers, and rolls of tickets (working events=unintentionally collecting a wide assortment of objects). Please do not jump me for this bag. Where else would the balloons go? How would we hold raffles?

Sometimes you need a cat butt in your life.

My absolute favorite?  This sticker from Simon Tofield's upcoming Simon's Cat in Kitten Chaos which I have placed in a strategic surprise location. Answering the phone has become 100x more exciting than normal!

Hobbitual Chaos

Everyone's getting all "excited" and "worked up" and "anxious" for the first installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, hitting theaters in December. Well. I'm here to tell you that we recently acquired a book in the UBC that forewarns of the trouble wrought by fantasy novels and thematically similar role-playing games. Before you start reading The Hobbit, or taking home a volume of the below-mentioned Dungeons & Dragons guidebooks we have in used, please be aware of the chaos wrought by the Dark Lord when you play and have fun with EVIL.

In Satanism and Occult-Related Violence: What You Should Know ($6.50 used), authors Michael D. Langone, Ph.D. (Psychology) and Linda O. Blood, BFA (Fashion Design) warn of what can happen when teenagers get too worked up by fantasy worlds and role-playing games: "[...] players lose sight of the fact that it is only a game [and] report that the action in D&D is often described so vividly that they can visualize it as if they were watching it actually happen. [evidence is cited] indicating that 'fantasy role-playing games have been a significant factor in at least 125 deaths,'" when gamers take the game too far and start thinking they can cast spells away from the tabletop. So be warned, kids. D&D is no laughing matter.

And if you want to learn why yourself, a wise customer sold off his collection of game guides, so the UBC currently has the Dungeonmaster's Guide (Core Rulebook II, $15) and the Forgotten Realms Campaign book ($20). And I challenge you, reader, to come try and play a game with me and some booksellers. Things might be crazy but this is the only way to get to the bottom of this Satanic menace. Also you should probably read The Hobbit before the movie comes out. Just to know what to expect when the kids are all dressin' like dragons and ringwraiths and skippin' about in the streets.