Tuesday, January 02, 2007

The Library Incongruous

Not eight hours after I watched my favorite Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last,” (the one with bookworm Burgess Meredith as the lone survivor of an H-bomb attack in his own private heaven, a library with a lifetime full of books to savor) I awoke to read an equally eerie story in the Washington Post.

In Fairfax County, Va., where we previously noted that hot food for the homeless was deemed a health hazard, public libraries are throwing out Aristotle, Hemingway and Harper Lee. They are being replaced by John Grisham, James Patterson and Stephen King.

Why? The good stuff isn’t moving. If a book has been on the shelves for two years without being checked out, it’s toast at Fahrenheit 451.

But, hey, this is a Wal-Mart world and shelf space is golden. And, AFAIK, it’s an Internet world 224 for today’s youth. And that is truly a BFD. 4 where will a m8 ever learn the 2B||!2B soliloquy? IDK. GTG now.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:26 PM

    Well, I was following you until the last paragraph. Does that mean I'm old?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, I'm so old I remember when it was the Electoral High School! So I hired a middle school student to help me finish the thought.

    For a translation, try this. http://www.msc-inc.net/Documents/InternetSlang.htm

    ReplyDelete