“I did it, and damn it, I should get credit for each of the three volumes individually, GOODREADS.
How am I supposed to meet my asinine reading goal if you count this as one? It’s three books, all fitted into a cardboard box that’s nicely decorated and open on one end, but still, three books. In fact, I checked them out at the library, and they were SEPARATE. That’s right, the library considers this three books.
So who are we to believe? The library, sacred, beloved institution? Or Goodreads, which has banner ads at the top that I’m pretty sure load slowly so that you accidentally click them?
If you’ve ever done a Goodreads banner ad and wondered why so few clickthroughs result in sales, I’m sorry, I’m like 15% of those. It’s not that I didn’t like your book. I just don’t have very fast internet.
I guess I’m looking at this all wrong, and reading isn’t a contest.
Unless…
Maybe that’s the problem: Reading IS a contest, we just don’t know it!
And if it’s a contest, it’s one I intend to win. What’s that line Sean Connery says in The Rock about winners? Something about…
Okay, I looked it up: “Your best? Losers whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.”
Not as inspiring as I remember. Somehow I don’t think that one’s going to end up as an epigraph in any new editions of Toni Morrison books.
It’s such a weird line. Obviously, it’s a setup so Nicolas Cage can say his wife WAS the prom queen. This whole exchange must’ve sounded much cooler in someone’s head.
Was Cage even at the prom with his wife? I mean, I guess he had sex with her eventually (actually, I know he did, we see it in the movie), so maybe “go home” is translated to “go home that night, continue your life for a decade, THEN the prom queen comes around.”
Kids, if you’re reading this, why, but also: Reading the most on Goodreads is probably not the best way to have sex with the prom queen, should that be a hypothetical possibility on the horizon. I don’t know that it’ll hurt your chances, but it’ll hurt your heart because the prom queen will bang someone who worked a lot less than you did this year, because let me tell you, some of these Goodreads folks read A SHITLOAD.
How would I advise a kid to end up with the prom queen?
Let’s presume this is an average kid, not the quarterback of the football team, not even ON the football team.
I think your best shot is the long game, banging the prom queen at your 20 year reunion. During those 20 years after high school, you’ve got lots of time to work out, take care of your teeth. If you’re bald, that’s okay, shave it.
Whatever the style is, do that. Right now it’s like beards and tattoos and shit, but who knows what it’ll be in 20 years.
I’m going to be so pissed if patchy beards are really cool in 20 years. I’ll have truly been born at the wrong time.
Forget the 10-year reunion. That shit’s pointless. Everyone is the same except some people have kids.
20 is where it’s at. By 20, people start to get blew out by life. If you can be the person who’s better at the 20 than you were at the 10, you’ve got a shot.
But for all I know, kids who graduate next year will be fuckin’ robots at their 20 year reunion. And then we’ve got a Ship of Theseus on our hands. If you finally sleep with the prom queen, but her entire body has been replaced with robot parts, is she still the prom queen?
It’s these questions that keep philosophy students up late at night. Fortunately, they do drugs, so the right pharmacology will get them right back to sleep, no problem.”