Free Hitchens

A Barnes & Noble gift card is probably one of the best gifts that you could give me, so when an acquaintance passed on to me a $25 gift card that had been given to him I was only too happy to accept it.

Hey, I'm so unemployed and flat broke, at this point I'm considering theft and prostitution to earn a buck, so who am I to turn down a freebie like that?

Besides, not being able to figure out how to spend twenty-five bucks in B&N is a special kind of stupid, so I'm happy to profit from his stupidity.

So, of course, I picked up Hitchens and the latest issue of Esquire. I've been dwelling a lot on Hitchens lately, I know.

Total out of pocket for the book and the magazine? 25 Cents. Yes, I handed over a quarter and walked out of there feeling like I had gotten one over on The Man.

I was lucky to get home on Friday in time to catch Hitchens on Bill Maher, as well. Then I spent the entire weekend engrossed in the book, emerging at about 5pm yesterday, squinting and exhausted.

Ok, here's what I came away from it with: CH is not just some bloviating blowhard. He's an intellectual blowhard. I haven't decided yet if that's better or worse than just being a blowhard. Then again, if you have to dislike someone's personality, at least expend the energy disliking someone whose intellect you respect, right?

And I'm slowly beginning to believe, despite scary things like The National Day of Prayer (read this if you want to be truly terrified), there are more atheists, or nontheists, or non believers, or whatever the hell you want to call us, than you might think.