Tuesday, April 5, 2011

You are what you read

The other day I was at a bookstore trying to figure out what copy of Water For Elephants I should buy. One cover is the traditional original paperback artwork, whatever it's nothing special. The other copy has fucking Edward Cullen, Elle Woods and the Jew Hunter in some sort of dramatic pose. So do I purchase the original copy because I am a slave to the NY Times best seller list or the movie poster because I want to appear to be one with pop culture. Either way I'm fucked because 50% of people are going to assume I am a douche for reading about a Veterinarian orphan dropout who joins the circus. But it brings up an interesting discussion, what does the antisocial paper blocker in front of one's face say about them? Most of the people in this city take some sort of public transport and I would venture to guess that a good majority of them spend their time on said trip reading. (I listen to a mix of bad top 40, am radio and glee cd's en route to the suburbs.)

People may read their new kindles to look super cutting edge, but really they just look like nerdy douche bags. How fucking cool are these clowns going to feel when Amazon starts giving them away for free in 2 months. Then you have your Red Eye readers, which is a combination of sluts checking to see if their pictures made it from the weekend before and 22 year olds looking up drink specials so they can go get peaced for 10 bucks and take home one of said sluts. If either of these two hedonistic sub cultures were found within Indian culture they would be burned at the stake for sport. Next we have our classic newspaper reader. This guys is probably reading the Trib or the Sun Times because he watched his dad do it growing up. He may have the WSJ if he wants you to think he is an I-banker, and wouldn't that be a nice move slick, meet a girl on the train, tell her you work in finance and ask her on a date. Even the Journal has editorial cartoons, this fuck probably sells real estate for home scout, don't be fooled. You will catch chicks reading their People, US Weekly etc and to be honest, more power to them at least they are bold enough to publicly admit that they have rape fantasies about Justin Bieber, I ain't mad at that. The people reading the novels probably just want to pass some time and escape from the miserable existence that is public transportation, with homeless people smelling like corpses and overenthusiastic streetwise salesmen waiting for them at the next stop, these people just want to pretend that it isn't a Tuesday with 10 more hours until they get home and pour themselves a stiffy.

Then again there are always the people that casually bomb the shit out of the pigs and try to 3 star every seasons version of angry birds whilst listening to a hot jam on their iphone. These people can be trusted, because they don't give a fuck what you're reading.

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