What Brown Can't Do For You

I don’t read nearly as much as I should. Unlike a nutritional regimen based on calories, I don’t think there is a recommended amount of pages one should consume in a day, but I would assume a steady diet of literature keeps the mind from getting flabby (you see what I did there).

My apathy toward reading is not entirely my fault. For those of you who don’t know me, I was a fat kid. Right now, I am wearing the same pants as I did on my first day in the 4th grade, which is good because it is both thrifty and vintage, and therefore fashionable. Even the professional aptitude test I took as a child foreshadowed that I would grow up to be either a fat guy or an unentertaining acrobat (not mutually exclusive). Anyway, my rotund figure in my academically formative years is noteworthy because my elementary school participated in the now deceased “Book-It” program sponsored by Pizza Hut. Essentially, through a good faith contract between the school and the benevolent and intellectually enterprising pizza chain, each student would be guaranteed one personal pan pizza, with a choice of one topping, for every five books that he/she read. However, there was one glaring loophole in that otherwise hermetic agreement—Pizza Hut did not clearly define how many pages constituted a book. My class, as would almost every other grade school student, took advantage of the gaffe, and with free food at stake, I took carte blanche. However, as I whetted my literary appetite and voraciously read small book after small book, my teacher gradually realized that my motives weren’t totally academic. It was after I notified her that I had just completed the illustrated novelization of a Thundercats episode entitled “Eye of the Tygra”, when she panned my transparently cheesy attempt to extort Pizza Hut for free food.

In this poignant novelization, Tygra painfully discovers that he is the bastard love child of Tony the Tiger and Paulie Walnuts of "The Sopranos"

I was indelibly discouraged from reading thereafter. I just did enough to get by for the rest of my academic career and stubbornly tried to disrupt President Bush’s vision of no child left behind by matriculating for three sophomore years. However, over the past few weeks, I have experienced a renewed and unadulterated pleasure in reading reminiscent of my halcyon (I’m not really quite sure what that word means, but I am going to use it anyway) days of perusing illustrated novellas based on Saturday morning cartoon shows and watching Lavaar Burton creep out scores of children (including myself) on Reading Rainbow—a show whose hallucinogenic opening credits suggest that reading a children’s book produces the same euphoria as a hit of acid. I owe this refreshed outlook to a little periodical known as the New York Post. Whether it is their snappy abbreviated headlines (Prez Sez Fuel is Cool) or a picture only story of a celebrity with accompanying caption, the Post seems to inherently know that I am not capable of handling anything that doesn’t rhyme or that isn’t in color.

Here our hero is excitedly reading "Mouth Sounds" to millions of impressionable children. Wait, exactly how did his character on Star Trek go blind?

As a Journalism major, one might believe that I would be offended that the Post presents itself as a legitimate news source. However, it is important to understand that I was a Journalism major by default as it required the least amount of credits to attain and the building took the least amount of time to get to. Therefore, I really don’t have a philosophy on what should be considered viable, unbiased, hard-nosed journalism and what should be deemed as tabloid gossip--for me the line is not black and white even though the print is.

As a matter of fact, I have decided that it is easier and less burdensome not to adopt any further philosophies. Because if I possessed any additional philosophies, I could then be considered a philosopher—a tag I don’t want any thing to do with. See, the term philosopher derives from Greek meaning “lover of knowledge.” Not that I have anything against knowledge, it is cool and I like it a lot, but I am at a very non-committal stage in my life right now and I don’t think I am quite ready to take the next step. However, I must concede that, in the past, I have been guilty of sending knowledge mixed messages, especially when I was in college. There were nights when I would totally ignore knowledge by going to a bar or watching SportsCenter until 3am then passing out. Conversely, there were nights when I was desperate or had a test the next day in which I would spend hours getting intimate with knowledge—what Tom Wolfe might deem “a one night cram”—only to completely neglect it the following evening. I wouldn’t doubt if knowledge felt somewhat used from time to time, however that was just the nature of our relationship and, despite all the hurt I may have inflicted on knowledge, it is important to understand how overbearing it could be sometimes. No matter what subject was breached, it always insisted it was right and had no trouble issuing constant reminders that it always beat me at Jeopardy. Anyway, I have decided that it would be mutually beneficial if knowledge and I, for the time being, created some distance between us.

I think knowledge would be better off with somebody a little bit more successful, yet misguided; someone who is in a position to take advantage of all that knowledge has to offer; someone who would benefit himself and others exponentially from knowledge’s presence. Someone like, let’s say . . . President Bush.

Again, let me preface the following diatribe by acknowledging that I am mostly of an apolitical nature and didn’t vote in the last presidential election (I was graciously spared by P. Diddy) and therefore have no right to criticize. However, it is difficult to ignore President Bush’s plummeting approval rating and subsequent second-guessing about his strategy in Iraq. I feel that knowledge would be a calming, yet reassuring influence for the President, thus drawing yet another parallel to a Saturday morning cartoon show, G.I. Joe which espoused that knowing is half the battle. Unfortunately, over the last 3 years of his administration, the White House has provided a mitigated version of G.I. Joe: G.W. Joe where the battle is only half-knowing. It is unfortunate that the President and his Cabinet believed that the people of Iraq would welcome the United States as a liberating presence and that they assumed post-war Iraqis would be veritable Tabula Rasas (or based on the latest edition of Most Popular Iraqi Baby Names Tabula Rezas) warmly receptive to the infusion of Western ideals and principles. Perhaps knowledge’s sanctimonious demeanor could have prevented the current divisive quagmire that has been created overseas. However, like I stated before, too much knowledge can be a detriment. For instance, Bush tried to overcompensate for his lack of pre-war international intelligence, but creating a surplus of domestic intelligence via his clandestine surveillance program. In doing so, he almost effectively changed the acronym of the PATRIOT Act from Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism to Passive Aggressive Tapping program Requiring Illegally Obtained Transmissions. However, time will only tell if the President and knowledge will settle down together so he, our country, and the rest of the world can live happily ever after.

At least that is just my philosophy on the matter . . . shit