One of the things I love about reading is that it offers total unadulterated freedom of choice -- though I may have several books out from the library, and several more sitting by my bedside, waiting to be read, if I hear about something that piques my interest, I drop everything and commit wanton literary infidelity; I read whatever I want, when I want, without worrying about any recourse or repercussions; in other words, I'll break off a relationship with a book at the drop of a hat; this is the opposite of marriage (or my marriage anyway, as I'm pretty sure I'm forbidden to date other women -- not that I'm going to ask -- and I certainly can't engage in this sort of adulterous freedom with TV shows, because if my wife and I are watching a show, and I watch one without her, it's tantamount to cheating on her . . . and that's why when I heard that Jon Mooallem wrote a seventy one page article about the wild and ingenious plan at the turn of the century to solve America's meat shortage by farming hippos in the Louisiana bayous, I truncated all my previous literary relationships-- including getting to page seven in a new translation of Brothers Karamazov-- and immediately bought the article as a Kindle single on Amazon-- hippo farming!-- and it's well worth reading; there's megafauna, scouts, spies, terrorism, politics, subterfuge, feigned lunacy and plenty of hippo jerky (if you want a quick summary, then check out this Wired article on the article).
7 comments:
I spent some time at a hippo farm in Williamsburg, VA.
what? is this a euphemism about w&m girls?
All that reading and you still struggle with semi-clever jokes?
zwoman reads almost as much as Dave but she can't figure out how to put a twist-tie on a garbage bag nor can she follow the plot of a 40 minute episode of Girls. Reading makes you dumb.
30 minute. I'm dumb too.
there's no question reading makes you dumb. i can't do shit in the real world (and i still haven't put that washer fluid in the reservoir). but i teach a mean hamlet.
that's not a nice way to describe the bitter, plump kid in your second period class.
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