Books Are Antiquated

I know, your heart is filling up with rage as you read this. Good, keep reading...you hypocrite!

Chances are, you are reading this very article on one of three things:

1) Computer - re: iMac, MacBook Air, Mac mini, etc.

2) Tablet - re: iPad

3) Smartphone - re: iPhone

By the way, if you're not using any of the above, do yourself a favour and run out and get them. Then throw away or recycle your old PC (PieceofCrap) to someone less fortunate. Wait, nevermind...I wouldn't wish something like a PC on the less fortunate. They already have it bad enough as it is.

Anyways, so you're reading this on some type of electronic device, courtesy of the world wide web, or "the Internets", as the worst President in my lifetime would refer to it. You know who that is, the one that ran the country into the ground for eight years? Yeah, Dubya. Thank God we have a Democrat in the office cleaning up his mess. Still.

When's the last time that you've read a book? Or more specifically, when's the last time that you've had the time to read a book? My mother-in-law and wife always contend that books are still great...I usually just look at them and shake my head. I would read books, but I don't have all day to sit there and read about the same damn thing, over and over again. I need it in an 1000 word (or less) article, so that I can read it, absorb the information, and then move on to my next task. In short, I can't be bothered with reading a book. Just give me the Cliff Notes.

But other people love reading books, you might be saying to yourself...otherwise, why would there still be bookstores around? Great response...sounds like you took about .5 seconds to come up with that. It's what we call a "knee-jerk" response, or what Americans were accustomed to seeing from Dubya. I had many a great chortling from President Obama taking his sweet time not releasing his birth certificate. It probably was in the top drawer in his desk. By the way, I don't have my long-form birth certificate either...does that not make me an American citizen? I could care less, seeing as I'm also a naturalised citizen of South Korea. I could pretty much give a "F U" to the Colonies and hop onboard a plane back to the homeland, where a F-4 visa is waiting for me to begin my citizenship paperwork. Always good to have a backup option in your back pocket.

So, back to the subject of bookstores...yeah, I must have forgotten how Borders, Waldenbooks, Books-a-Million, and all of the other defunct bookstores are thriving in today's economy. Oh wait, they're all gone. The lone survivor is Barnes and Noble, the proverbial 800 pound gorilla that has slain its competitors over the years. But, you might ask, what's keeping them afloat?

Nook...and Nook Color. Not to mention the zillions of e-books out there. Nowadays, you can make anything into an e-books. Articles, status updates (still convincing a friend of mine to compile his Facebook status updates into a book...it would be a heck of a read), even tweets...in fact, this was actually done by someone.

So you see, since anything can be converted into an e-book, even actual books that took a bunch of trees that were mercilessly killed and thus slowly depriving the Earth of the vital oxygen that we humans need to...oh, I don't know, actually breathe. Do yourself a favour next time you start to think about doing something wasteful like buying a book, and at least consider buying one through Kindle or another e-book programme out there.

Please...for the trees...