Reading is sexy, but I still ain't getting laid

From A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett


"You must be Tully. I'm Bucky Norman, " he said.
I slipped off my horse and went to shake hands. I had been expecting to meet some lanky. bleach-blond, bronzed-skinned expatiate in cutoffs and flip-flops, but Bucky stood there under a large straw hat that sat upon a collection of strawberry blond curls. Across the front of the hat were the words NEVER GROW UP were painted in bright red letters. His long fishing pants and long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the collar covered nearly every inch of his six-foot-four-inch frame except for his hands and neck which were dotted with freckles. "Welcome to the Lost Boys," he said.


My good friend Utah Savage has saw fit to honor me with the "Proud Bookworm" award which is used to encourage reading. There is a meme portion to this award in which you have to open the nearest book to page 46. Write out the fifth sentence on that page and the next two to five. Now for some it might have been a simple matter for most people to open the nearest book and write out the required portion. For me, as usual, it was far more complicated.

The lovely Dragonwife ever in the mood to rearrange something for no apparent reason pulled out about six rather large storage cartons last weekend filled with books. Five of those cartons were filled with her books that over the course of last Saturday were opened and the contents strewed all cross the upstairs room. Books with Martha Stewart's smiling face posing with various food, craft, and other torture items even now occupies several areas of the floor. Along with Martha are various "chick lit" books that just oozed angst, feminist books (I didn't know she had) on how to mentally terrorize the man in your life, and assorted tax code books that even the rats won't chew on because such items are beneath them. Feeling that answering the meme requirements with such items close by just wouldn't work for me I went searching for my lone storage box filled with proper "guy lit" consisting of regular and military science fiction novels, my Carl Sagan books, various history texts, and my Jimmy Buffett books. So I will have to be excused for not using my wife's copy of "If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?!" which technically was the closest book from where I sat.

As for encouraging reading if I was as civic minded as I should be I would have dug out my copy of "The Federalist Papers" which as simply as I can put is an owners manual for the United States Constitution. A document that still amazes even now in my more cynical years. My concern is that no matter where I seem to turn the blatant ignorance of what is actually written in that document sends chills down my spine along with my eventual expatiation to some far off land if the fascists minions are ever successful in completely taking over the country.

The prime example I have is the conversation I had with one guy at work that for all the world acts and looks like McCain/Palin mascot "Joe the Plumber". During one group meeting that had devolved into a general bullshit session the Joe Clone I work with exclaimed how the government was a huge scam because that even after Bill Clinton was impeached he wasn't kicked out of office. Me being the biggest fool in three star systems decided to chime in that yes he was impeached but he was not convicted in the senate. Which if he had been found guilty would have resulted in his removal from office. After I finished my little lesson in American government I was greeted with stares and stone silence from my coworkers as if I stood up and recited Shakespeare or quantum physics. I quickly realized my mistake and to this day I don't open my better informed mouth unless I'm asked a question.

Now for getting those type of guys into reading such an epic endeavor would probably involve using something written by the fascists minions such as O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, or Coulter. But at times I doubt those guys know their vowels so it is probably beside the point.