Conspiracy Theory #42

Every semester, I cringe when I see my textbook bill. It's just ridiculous. Some Asshole a long time ago discovered that students could be trapped into paying exorbitant prices for textbooks, despite being the most broke-ass people on earth (well, except for the starving Ethernopians).

This system worked well and good until the Rise of the Internet threatened to foil the Textbook Asshole's brilliant scheme. Thanks to Al Gore and the joys of the World Wide Web, I got my Secured Transactions book for $12.50 off Amazon.com Marketplace. Another one of my classes has no book at all. Yep, that's right: No. Book. Eat it, Textbook Asshole.

However, a third professor decided to change textbooks this year, thwarting my plan to purchase a used copy from a recent graduate desperate to recover the money she flushed down the toilet paying for BarBri. My final two classes are both taught by new professors, which forecloses the possibility of getting used books for those classes as well. And because the law school took its sweet time releasing the book list, I couldn't get those books off Marketplace, either.

Thankfully, I have a free trial to Amazon's Prime Membership dealie, which gets me free 2-day air shipping on all orders. I will probably get my free trial suspended due to abuse of the 2-day shipping privilege. I am almost certainly single-handedly responsible for the recent spike in jet fuel prices, BP be damned.

Although I've been taking an active role in depleting our fossil fuel sources so that I can get my books on time, at least I don't have to pay sales tax on Internet purchases. For some reason entirely unbeknownst to me, this Great State charges sales tax on textbooks (personally, I think the legislatures of this Great State got together with the Textbook Asshole to develop this little racket).

I might have to challenge that as cruel and unusual punishment. As if buying books isn't bad enough, we have to pay an average of $7 a book in sales tax. That's more than a large pizza and pitcher of beer costs on Tuesday nights! Just think of all the pizza and beer money being wasted away on ridiculous textbook sales tax. It's really a tragedy, especially since I'm now a 3L with no Wednesday classes and can actually go out for pizza and beer on Tuesdays.