We planned on discussing books tonight, dear reader, and for remembering this I deserve a dollop of Nutella and a nutritious treat. Reading is important. This claim, it’s safe to say, has been hammered into us since kindergarten, the handiwork of teachers, librarians, and dozens of tacky posters with Whoopi Goldberg exhorting the merits of literacy.
But the whole campaign always felt a little disingenuous, don’t you think? I mean, sure, books may indeed be tickets to fantastic worlds, invitations to broaden your imagination with lush verbal portraits, except tickets and invitations seldom exceed a sheet of paper. When that pass to Hogwarts balloons to the tune of 700 pages, it makes you wonder whether reading is as effortless as your library would have you believe. There’s investment involved. Let’s say you stumble into a clearing and find The Two Towers, resplendent in its 400-odd pages, along with its DVD counterpart. Which one would you choose?
Another reason for reading is arguably more selfish than a desire to picture orcs on a battlefield. Books fuel your communicative confidence like you wouldn’t believe. Your self-expression plateaus after a certain point because the context that informs you–your classes, workplace, prison cell–settles into its own predictable rhythm with its own predictable vocabulary. A good book is an out. What I need to do now is decide whether I want to walk to the bookstore. You know, the hermeneutics of laziness and all that.
For a while, a year or two ago, I embarked on an impossible quest to consume all the Pulitzer-winning books I could acquire. This went at a fine clip until I enrolled in the first third of American Pastoral, whereupon my desire for literature was replaced by an overwhelming compulsion to, how do you say, go blind. It’s unfortunate, and just a little awesome, but these tomes of culture have been replaced by the very devices responsible for the decline of civilization: those damn shiny discs that house everything from games to music to TV shows.
Gun is my media of the moment. Now, this isn’t an endorsement of the product, understand. It’s an action game, set against a ridiculous Old West, with an impressive voice cast and a pretty average everything else. The gunplay’s okay, which makes sense given, y’know, the title, but what makes me a repeat customer is the sheer excess of the game. Frontier life is itself an unexplored territory for me. The Quick and the Dead and Dr. Quinn don’t really cleave to accuracy, I don’t think, so I was pleased to find the following objectives within the first hour of play.
Save (6) whores.
Kill all the Indians.
Escort the chili-eater.
Protect the coolies.
Most of these are taken verbatim from the dialogue. Being a coolie myself, I immediately felt a connection to the game, substantive and profound, because what else could I have felt as my digital ancestors were butchered by those frenzied savages? The correct answer is I felt a pressing need to return to the books–more on this realization tomorrow.
An Irish setter. It’s imperative I attain one eventually. This isn’t to say my guinea pigs are inadequate, somehow boring or unloving, their four-fingered paws poised to thwart an imaginary pet mandate. They are, in fact, excellent pigs and fill the capacity ably, but cavy-human interaction has its limits. There’s the dark path, which involves testing cosmetics on them in the name of scientific advancement, and then there’s the pet path–my path–where the goal is to raise them, until one day you believe they will live forever.
I’m a dog person. Apparently you select your camp early on, and this was my choice. Faithfulness, emotional transparency, expressive eyes–you had me at the “dumb” in “dumb loyalty.” Sure, there are those with more ecumenical leanings who welcome both cats and dogs, but I simply do not have time for feline mind games. Do not manipulate me with your litter box, Dr. Seuss.
The reason cats and dogs enjoy their place in the pet hierarchy, and I don’t expect you to gasp in amazement, is because they can display an affection driven by something other than food. True, there’s the initial learning curve, the contours of which are essentially lots of piss and dog shit, but it’s nothing new to me. When this setter sidled up the other day and wagged her tail, man! That’s when intuition and my wallet and a feeling of urgent discovery intersected.