Of Chickens and Bookstores

Someone should stop me from going into bookstores. It's bad news. I always end up walking out with a light wallet and a heavy stack of books on bizarre topics. Seriously, I go for the really random ones. These are some actual books in my collection:

- The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero. Incidentally, I've been fascinated with the number zero since high school; someone asked what topic I'd selected for the latest paper, and I said "nothing." That got me thinking... maybe I COULD write a paper on "nothing." So I did. I got an A.

- The Discovery of Time. A college lecture on the effect of standardization of timekeeping on international economics got me into this topic. Fascinating.

- Big Twitch: One Man, One Continent, a Race Against Time-A True Story about Birdwatching. I do like birds, but I'll be completely honest--I bought this one primarily for the cover.

Which leads to my latest educational acquisition: Extraordinary Chickens. Yep, this was because of the cover as well. You can just imagine the angry "BKAAW!" screaming out of the punk chicken on the cover. Amazing. Erase those misperceptions about chickens being nothing more than food and fun family pets. Indeed, chickens are also valued for their exquisite beauty. An entire industry (fine, a small one, but it exists) is dedicated to raising chickens for chicken beauty pageants. Who knew. Maybe I've found my next career. Breeder of Beauteous Chickenfolk. That'd look splendid on a business card...