I take the family out for "Sad Bookstore Night," which includes a trip, first, to a decent, stinky-carpeted used bookstore in a strip-mall, then to a garishly named, cavernous, big box mega-budget bookmart just down the road. I'm relieved to find a few comrades milling the aisles of the former, and a vast, empty parking lot moating the latter.

My hunt for a couple of specific short stories turns up cold, but I find several Cliffordian odysseys that will prove big, red and useful. As Amonymous meanders the empty aisles of the bookmart, and I follow in classic Kubrick steadycam tradition, I notice several displays that trouble me: new trade-sized editions of dozens of L. Ron Hubbard books, with inky, sexy, retro sci-fi comic covers; vast rows of milky white Ayn Rand reprints, austere art deco lettering and all.

Amonymous settles in on a bin display of Chinese-made toys, wind-up scuba divers, rubber balls with glitter, mooing cans...He picks up an item that is shaped like a microphone or an ice cream cone and presses a conveniently placed button with his thumb. Inside the plastic globe at its top, small gears whirl into motion and tiny lights spin in glorious patterns. Amonymous gazes.

A store worker tries to look busy nearby, and gives a benign "how cute" to the tableau of my son staring mindlessly into toy. "It's a time-travel machine!" I say to Amonymous. "It sends you several seconds into the future!" He looks up at me, then back to the whirring toy in his hand. "See? It works!"

The store worker chuckles. But I'm not interested in her commiserations. "It was invented by L. Ron Hubbard," I continue, "with help from his girlfriend Ayn Rand..." The store worker looks confused. "...before they invented the second half of the twentieth century and turned America into an Amway distributorship for decades."

The worker walks away nervously. I continue, louder, "Thank god we put them in a box together and sent them into space so they couldn't stick their hands in our pockets while we stared at little whirring Chinese made toys anymore!" Amonymous is still gazing at the stupid thing. He turns to me to ask if he can have it, but before a syllable comes out I boom, "NO." He puts it down without a fight.

As we leave the store, I pass a garish poster of the lipsticked whore, her eyes fixed on the future, like a propagandist photo, and another of that mental patient talkshow host dressed as...as...Generalissimo Francisco Franco? Really?

"Say goodbye to this place, Amonymous. We'll never come back." A Bloomsday pox upon thee.