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By popular request, here is the book rant, published for the first time ever on the web!
I wrote this one evening while I was particularly aggrivated while doing some english
homework.
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The Book Rant - May 7, 2003
The utter lack of intelligence displayed in the average high school student truly amazes
me. Yes, I do realize that by making such a statement one could argue that, by stereotype, I also
fall into this category. I'm okay with that. I’ll admit to the recurring demonstration of stupidity
on my own part. However, this is not what I'm talking about right now. I'm referring more to
those who feel the necessity to deface any school-owned book, which by any twist of fate, will
inevitably end up in my possession at some point in time. At first it was merely textbooks. This
I was able to handle. In fact, the scribbles in the margins all throughout my pre-calc book
actually proved to be quite useful. But, that’s where it needs to stop. Seriously, I am sick of
morons abusing my books so when I try to go do my homework, I end up getting mad at
somebody whom I don’t know, but could (if I so pleased) call to yell at since at one point they
must have figured it was funny to inscribe their personal phone number on the inside cover. I’m
not talking about the occasional underline or highlight (a crime usually committed by one who
actually read the book and intended to, in some way, complete an assignment). No. I’m mainly
speaking of those who, through their own lack of intellect, decide to make my life increasingly
difficult by actually making the books impossible to read.
A prime example of such a situation would be in "The Glass Menagerie." Here’s a novel idea!
Someone is assigned to read a play (as I was) but through their own indicated distaste of the play,
as inferred from their negative comments in the margins (which I took as a sorry sort of
explanation for defending their, for a lack of a better term, moronic actions), decides to take their
gum wrappers and rub them into the middle of several carefully chosen pages, thus creating a
shimmering silver layer of foil coating a large section of dialogue. If this is not annoying the first
time you encounter it early in the play, let me tell you, you’re pretty darn near throwing
something (or punching the wall, whatever works for you) upon your eighth or ninth gum
wrapper sighting. Well, during the near forty minutes required to literally scrape the disgusting
display of foil from my book, I found myself with the pleasingly disgusting image of someone
even chewing that much gum in the time it took to read a single play. Or perhaps they simply
opted to wedge the whole lot of gum in their mouth at once, thus supplying themselves with an
ample amount of wrappers to wreak havoc upon the pages. Another startling proposition also
came to mind (while I was scraping the mess from the pages). Maybe they hated this single play
so much that they felt the uncontrollable desire to diminish their hard-earned, gum wrapper
collection into it, with the very considerate intent to spare others the torture of reading, what I
thought to be, a pretty good play. I’ve reached a point where I’m starting to question the possible
hyphenation of the phrase gum wrapper, so I feel it is time to move on.
Now here’s another fun proposition. The librarian gave me a book. (hehe!) The teacher told me
to read the book. (hmm...) Instead, why don’t I use this time to turn the little blank corners into a
flipbook! Great idea! What could possibly be more fun than to draw the same questionable car
picture over and over again on every page, only in a slightly different location, as to produce a
small visual show lasting in total about 2.35 seconds? Well, I know there’s a right answer to this
question out there somewhere... unfortunately, the person who had my particular copy of The
Catcher in the Rye before me didn’t find it. So yes, I have a nice little image of a car (again, I’m
not totally sure if that is in fact what it is) rolling around the bottom of my book while I’m
reading. In case this is not enough excitement for one book to contain, on the right hand side of
each page, I have the added bonus of viewing not just a second flip book, but a whole flip
message! This one I must admit I was not so quick to notice. I was reading, completely
absorbed in the story (or the small car tumbling around - you guess which!), when I finally
diverted my eyes slightly to the right of the text, only to notice the word "Fur" printed sideways,
perpendicular to the print. Well, honestly I didn’t think much of this, since people writing totally
weird and random junk in school books isn’t that unusual. Well, upon turning the page, I
revealed a pleasant addition: the "r" in "Fur" had further developed into a "c." Now, I’m
not stupid, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what letter was probably slated to appear next, so
I calmly took note of my page number, returned to the start of my book and flipped through to
fully appreciate the message letter by letter. As I watched the short, derogatory message flash
before me, the initial desire to write this pointless rant (which was originally planned to be placed
in my instant messenger profile, but grew a little longer than anticipated) began to surface.
Returning to the message, I noticed the addition of the word "you," thus making the message
much more personal. Thoughtful really. Well, after the message appeared, it then began to move
up the side of the page making a delightfully grand exit out the top corner. (This was actually
somewhat humorous to watch) But, oh my God! Who would want to spend that much time on
literally nothing? I’ll probably finish the book in less time it took whoever wrote the message (I
have reasons to suspect someone by the name of Greenfield, as their name was kindly scribbled
in the book as well) to complete it. Seriously! Did this guy really despise the book that much?
Did he hate the author, his teacher, the librarian, or whoever so much as to waste countless
amounts of time on his rebellious (but creatively cute!) insult? I don’t know. Maybe, he just
hated me.
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