Illiteracy

For a very intelligent person, my room mate is functionally illiterate. I don't mean that he can't read, I mean that he won't read. He says the only reason he reads at all is because Hugo the Hornet (the mascot for the Charlotte Hornets NBA team) came to his elementary school and told him to.

Not sure if he reads out of respect, or fear of a giant insect.

I can't count the times when I've begun a sentence with "Hey, have you read..." only to trail off and finish with "Never mind. Sigh." I'm not just talking about stuff like Pride and Prejudice, I mean things like Beverly Cleary books, all the way down to The Lost Little Puppy.

Pictured: A scholar and a gentleman.

If you've ever seen the show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", and are familiar with the character portrayed by Charlie Day, this next quote will hit home. "Your illiteracy has screwed us again, Charlie!" I think of that often when I try to bring up a character or plot that contributes to whatever discussion we're having. I will bring up something like Encyclopedia Brown or the differences between the movie and book version of The Da Vinci Code, and he will look at me like I'm speaking gibberish.

Paradoxically, he is an avid reader of Mark Twain's obscure short stories, books explaining theoretical physics and anything about NCSU basketball. And even though he has never read a single one of the Harry Potter series, he loves the movies. So much so that he and a friend once waited in line in full costume just because they had nothing better to do.

Not him, but you get the idea.

In order to solve this problem, I proposed that he get a Kindle 3. For those of you who don't know, the Kindle is basically a portable electronic screen that stores and presents books, cutting down on having to actually carry around books while at the same time looking like a pretentious technology snob.

Yes. I mean you Steve Jobs.

The only thing is, there is no such thing as the Kindle 3. It was a parody created by the folks at CollegeHumor. Although with a little research, it looks like Amazon is actually about to make the third installment in the product's line. The parody add shows testimonials from people who now love reading thanks to the Kindle 3.

What makes the Kindle 3 better than the previous two versions was the exciting new visual interface. One guy even read the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy in nine hours. Essentially, the fictional Kindle 3 is a DVD player. And that's the best way to get my room mate to read.

Mike Myers is a terrible author...