I'll Bet Chuck Mangione Does Not Use a Kindle.

Hey, have you noticed that…

*text notification sound*

Hang on, I have a text message.

From Man To Me:  I just saw the most incredible thing.

From Me To Man: Whazzat?

From Man To Me:  Someone TALKING on an iphone!

From Me To Man: Ew!  How uncool.  They should be playing games and updating Twitter, not TALKING!  How three years ago!

Because, seriously?  Who actually talks on the phone anymore? I don’t even know why we bother calling them “phones” when clearly they’re pocket-sized-futuristic-communicator-device-thingies.  Honestly, I haven’t heard my phone ring since that time one of my co-workers got tanked and they called me to cover her shift.

Touch of the flu my ass.  The Tequila-Flu maybe!

The phone thing reminded me of an article I saw on The Onion.  The headline read 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles. 

“A new report published this week by researchers at Stanford University suggests that Americans spend the vast majority of each day staring at, interacting with, and deriving satisfaction from glowing rectangles.

"From the moment they wake up in the morning, to the moment they lose consciousness at night, Americans are in near-constant visual contact with bright, pulsating rectangles," said Dr. Richard Menken, lead author of the report, looking up briefly from the gleaming quadrangle that sits on his desk. "In fact, it's hard to find a single minute during which the American public is not completely captivated by these shining…these dazzling…."

"I'm sorry," Menken continued. "What were we discussing again?"

Ah, you chuckle, but how much of your day do you spend with your face stuck in your computer, television, ipod, and pocket-sized-futuristic-communicator-devices?  That says nothing about the fact that I’m pretty sure if the internet were to shut down—even for a day—I might actually cease to be.

And now?  Now we have The Kindle.  Or, as I call it, the ipod for book nerds.

On first sight, I wanted one.  Mostly because I have an unhealthy love-affair with all things gadget.  I’m a marketing executive’s wet dream when it comes to things like this.  Especially when I discovered I could own one of these fun things in the same shiny purple as my laptop and ipod.

Then I saw the price and nearly choked on my Caramel Macchiato! (Also known as a “Varamel”  at The French Press my friend Rachel and I discovered last Sunday night.)  ((Yes, I have actual organic friends… Well, two actual organic friends.))

I don’t know that I’ve spent $500 on books all year, let alone shelling out the cost of my laptop for yet another glowing rectangle that will—in all honesty—become just another thing weighing down my already overstuffed purse.  Then I’ve got to pay for the books, too?

Thanks, but no.

Frankly, I like my books.  I like the pretty art on the covers, and I enjoy the way they look on the shelf.  A person’s book shelf says a lot about who they are.  Examining someone’s bookshelf while they’re making coffee in the next room isn’t nearly as creepy as picking up and digging through their Kindle in the hopes that they don’t emerge from the next room and thus create one of those awkward “Um… What are you doing?” moments.

However, I don’t want to become the paperback equivalent of vinyl collectors.  You know who I mean.  You walk into their apartment and are treated to the sight (and smell) of shelf upon shelf of dusty old record albums.  Then they give you a speech about the superiority of vinyl over the nine thousand better ways modern technology has invented for us to listen to music.  Then, if you haven’t poked your ears out with the splintered pair of take-out chopsticks these people always have rotting in their sink (no doubt from a vegan take-out place), they’ll shuffle through every album and force you to listen to scratchy, staticy old jazz that nobody ever heard of but that guy and his two friends.

Ugh.  How many times did I find myself trapped at some after-hours party in someone’s grubby Philadelphia apartment thinking: The free drugs just weren’t worth this?

I mean, Chuck Mangione?  Seriously?  I’m going home.