Comment from two teenage girls after sitting on my floor and reading manga for an hour. "Let's go see if we can find it cheaper on the Internet."

Circuit City is firing 3400 workers so they can hire cheaper workers.

The store got so clogged a couple of times yesterday, that sales just stopped. I've heard it said that customer counts are the true sign of health, not sales. But it's hard to pay bills with customer counts.

Fortunately, until this week we were having yet another record month. (All of but 2 of last year's months were records, and all three of this years....)

Local kids are out of school, and sales have dropped. Did 40% of normal on Saturday, and 60% of normal on Wednesday. (Wednesday is usually my biggest day, because we get our weekly shipment of comics.) Did good on Tuesday because I spent a couple of hours with a sport card customer as he broke 490.00 worth of boxes. Without him, sales would have been 40% of normal. Average sales on Monday, at least. Same thing happened last year, so I was braced for it. Hope to get some out of town tourists later in the week to make up for the downturn.

Saturdays used to be my best day, because the kids are out of school. Now, it's my 3rd worst day, because the kids are out of school.... I'm still surprised by this, even though the changeover happened about 10 years ago.

I have 40 linear feet of comics for kids. I have hundreds and hundreds of linear feet of comics for everyone else. I'm thinking 40 feet is too much. It's a little bit like the chicken and the egg. If there are no comics for kids, there are no kids for comics. But I've kept the faith for years -- I've devoted the whole front of my store on the west side to kids product. And it's gathering dust.

I'm thinking very seriously of taking the bottom half of the children's section and turning it over other product. I could still keep the top half for kids. I could keep Asterix and TinTin and Bone and Disney and the best of the rest.

What do kids do these days?

Do you catch my frustration? How can a 12 year old boy come in my store and not see anything?

I'm trying not to take it to heart. I've realized that my store will do just as well if kids never came in, maybe even better. But it's kinda sad. For the kids.

The future is looking very bright for my store with customers (kids) between the ages of 20 and 50. I'm selling the hell out of Preacher and Sandman and Y - the Last Man, and Fables, and Sin City, and Watchmen, and so on. All written for people like me. My store, in a sense, has been liberated to be created the way I want it -- for people like me. And the more I morph in that direction, the better the store seems to do.

My wife says that kids buy books at her store, and I'm glad for that. But I'm beginning to despair that we'll ever get the kids back to reading comics.

So be it. I'll be open to the possibilities, but get on with creating a store that works for people who want it.