All Your Bookstore Are Belong To Bust

There are days when I can’t stand spending another minute at home, but yesterday afternoon, I really didn’t want to go out. So when my brother asked me to go to Tutuban with him, I kept yelling “GO ALONE!” at him.

But my brother isn’t one who takes “no” for answers; not, especially, from someone who’s years his junior. So he kept nudging me to come along, and I kept protesting. This went on for such a long time my father eventually knew what was going on. And then he took my brother’s side. Two versus one: How unfair.

So I begrudgingly joined my brother as he went to Tutuban. He seemed oblivious to the mud puddles that were consequences of a rain. I dirtied my footwear with splotches from origins unknown – and I’d rather not know – because my brother so wanted to buy a TV just so he can play Grant Theft Auto 4 in his own room. We only have one TV, and my brother wanted to buy another, since he got tired of trying to wring my father loose from our only TV so that my brother and I can use it for own purposes, which never interested my dad.

Anyway, we didn’t get a new TV, although my brother got all bright in the eye in finding out that a new flatscreen TV isn’t as expensive as it used to be. As we were heading home, I decided to go to National Book Store and to buy some school supplies.

Don’t go to National Bookstore Tutuban Branch.

I’m dead serious about that, especially after what I went through yesterday.

No, I didn’t get mugged or anything. Had that happened, I’d just go ahead and say don’t go to Tutuban: Tutuban is cool, and I frequently go there to buy videogames and some cheap goods. As it is, though, I can say, with the conviction of Martin Luther King Jr against racial segregation, that National Book Store Tutuban Branch is by far the worst National Bookstore I’ve ever gone to. It’s the worst bookstore in the whole wide of the universe. Bookstores that sell nothing but books eaten by silverfishes can’t be that bad. Bookstores that sell nothing but books written by Bill O Reilly and Anne Coulter can’t be that bad. Bookstores found inside craters of the moon can’t be that bad. NBS Tutuban is so bad, that even as a parody of bad bookstores, it fails horribly like Scary/Epic/Superhero/Date Movie fails as, well, being anything.

And I’m not just talking about the paucity of things. Oh, sure, none of the books from that NBS is worth buying unless you’re into local pulp romance novels with shirtless men on the covers. Yeah, that sucked. Do you know what made it worse? The disorderliness! I went to the bookstore intending to buy a sketchbook of a specific size, and then some pencils. I went to the section where they sell sketchbooks, and it was a mess. Sketchbooks the size of a mousepad got mixed up with those the size of a blackboard, and then they got mixed with lesson plans, music notebooks, organizers, and cheap “softcore” porn magazines. All within a kid’s reach! The pencils weren’t placed any better. The rack where I took the pencil had labels, but how was it that I got a 4H pen on a rack for 6B, and an F on a rack for 2H? Can’t the clerks read?

The service is the worst, if you can even call it service, because it’s more like bureaucracksy. Never did I imagine that bookstore would have queues as long as that of MRT’s ticket booths, but here I was, lining up as though I were applying for Visa. I had no choice but to wait, regretting not bringing two books the size of a Russian novel with me because by the time I finished them I still wouldn’t have reached the cashier. It wasn’t just the overcrowding that made the line so slow-moving; when I paid for the things I bought, the salesladies yapped among themselves so much, they spent five minutes wrapping the 4 things I bought, and then another five giving me my change. And for the record their conversations were incredibly boring: forget about bookstore clerks that don’t know the first thing about books; they don’t even know the first thing about making their conversations worth listening to, unless you’re into hearing fat people lecture you about how to lose weight.

As we were heading home my brother still kept yapping about how awesome Grand Theft Auto 4 was, but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. That National Bookstore got me nauseous. So nauseous, that I couldn’t even scold my brother for dragging me along to this short-but-stressing expedition.

So I repeat, don’t go to National Bookstore Tutuban Branch!