I couldn't tell! Heh. I don't like *For Dummies, but that's just me.
D&D Starters Kit.. all right. I think I can scravenge up money for that. Is that pieces and stuff, too, or just rule books/guides?
Eh. I have no "local" Office Depot or Staples that I know of. The closest one is.. five+ miles from my house.
Truth be told, I was just going to pick an area and kind of improvise from there. 
Well, a lot of people don't play with "pieces and stuff", I personally only use books and dice. We can (and have *looks at Sidoh*) argue all day about whether or not using miniatures/figs is good, but there's one thing we can agree with: they cost more money. So if you want to experiment, if for nothing else, I recommend not using figs. But it's up to you.
If you want a really simple game that you can mold yourself (that's how I started), you should consider my Tunnels&Trolls rules. They're pretty straight-forward and open-ended. I tried to keep the rules as simple and fast as possible, for the most part, which lets you spend more time on the game and less time looking up rules and rolling dice. That's my personal preference, but again, it varies from person to person, some gamers I know are very much into rules, to the point where half the game time is spent flipping through stacks of rule books.
It really takes some experimenting, with a group of 2 or 3 good friends, before you figure out what you're doing. It definitely won't be easy the first time, especially because you've never played a game (I don't think?), but just have fun with it, and always keep in mind that you're there to have fun.
