Why Blogger needs emoticons

There I was shelving fiction when a pleasant-looking young guy with a beard approached. "Do you have the Sleeping Beauty trilogy?" he asked.
"You mean by Anne Rice?" I asked. "Only under another name?"
He consulted a note. "Yeah, that's the one. My friend told me I'd like it."
I took him to the R's. "Well, here's volume 1," I said as I pulled the book from the shelf.
"I'd like all three books," he said.

So I excused myself and went into the stockroom. Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy must be among the books most shoplifted from Bookstore C everywhere, and I wanted to check whether any were shelved safely in the stockroom. Unsurprisingly, I found volumes 2 and 3 and took them out to the customer.

"I thought they were all in one book," he said.
I explained that the three purchased together were the same price as the single volume.
"Well, then I'll only take the first one," he concluded. "What else can you recommend?"
"What are you looking for, exactly?" I asked, puzzled.
"Oh, a couple good books ... I'm going on vacation and I need stuff to read. Maybe some thrillers. You must know what's good," he added.
"Are you looking for more things like Sleeping Beauty?" I asked.
"You know, I don't really like Anne Rice's other books," he said, "but my friend told me I'd like these books. But, you know, whatever," he explained precisely.

"Do you know that the Sleeping Beauty books are BDSM porn?" I tried.
"BDSM? What's that?" he said, clearly puzzled.
:: oh, brother ::
"Bondage, dominance, S&M ..." I said.

Now this is why I could use emoticons right now. Because honestly, words fail me. But if I could simply run through an entire range of emoticons, I'd maybe convey what happened to this guy's face when I said that. "Smileys" are not what I have in mind. He opened the book at random and read for a minute. He turned absolutely crimson. He cleared his throat. "Well, I will take volume 1 and see why my friend thought I'd like it," he said. "What else do you suggest?"

So I took him through fiction and hand-sold a couple other books and sent him on his way. When I went back to the R's a half-hour later, volumes 2 and 3 were gone as well.

That's the cover of the Penguin paperback of volume 1.