If you follow no less than 5 people on Twitter you’ll quickly realize that this country’s literacy problem is like a drug-resistant strain of AIDS that even Magic Johnson couldn’t fight off. It just keeps evolving and mutating to the point where some people look like they’ve given up trying to spell and just threw a fucking bag of Scrabble tiles on the floor and then picked up random letters using their sweaty, bare ass cheeks. Then they take the tiles, throw them at the computer like a chimp hurling his own shit, and press “Enter”.
Americans’ choice of reading material seems no better than their ability to coherently combine a subject and predicate, either. Lucky for them, e-readers and iPads are rapidly growing in popularity, so nobody in a Starbucks, airport terminal, subway car or city bus will be able to judge them by the cover of the 700-page abortion of literature they’re struggling to comprehend. Rest easy, you closeted Dr. Phil fans – nobody can see you reading weight loss tips from a fat guy.
Personally, I haven’t the luxury of free time to read since I decided to get married and abandon various forms of contraception such as pulling out (Sure, I could skip this blog post and pick up a book, but then there’d be nobody to salvage Dustin’s sagging site traffic and waning credibility). However, when granted the rare opportunity to kick back and read with no interruptions I generally prefer dark humor, history and especially biographies. As much as I’ve enjoyed Stephen King’s tales of ghostly alien transsexual rapists from New England, somehow I doubt any of it really adds to the little knowledge my aging brain is able to retain.
Sadly our digital and brick & mortar book stores are stacked to the ceilings with more worthless material than an Ed Hardy factory outlet store. Our taste in what we read is as bad as our taste in the food we eat, so it came as no surprise to me to hear that Demi Moore has approached various publishers to shop around her autobiography, quite possibly the literary equivalent of the KFC Double Down.
If I took life more seriously, I’d almost be offended at the notion of a washed-up actress pushing age 50 thinking anyone gives a shit enough to buy and read a book about her life. First, let’s get the obvious out of the way – if you have to “shop around” your autobiography, that means nobody’s banging down your door to buy it. It’s like finding Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar at a yard sale and then going to every pawn shop in town trying to get the best deal for it. I guess acting school doesn’t offer a course on economics, because Mrs. Kutcher has no sense of supply and demand.
Second, what the fuck’s so interesting about Demi Moore? She’s lucky if the tabloids run a back-page story about her leaving a shitty tip at a trendy L.A. restaurant. Most people with popular autobiographies have already had their exploits fully disclosed to the public, but writing their own book gives the readers a first-hand account of what really went down. As far as I can recall, I don’t remember hearing any juicy tales of Demi Moore getting sent to drug rehab or her controversial acquittal of double-homicide. The most interesting thing about her is that she’s undergone more plastic surgery than the Jackson family, and at this point most likely douches with formaldehyde. She’s boring as shit. Even her high-profile divorce from Bruce Willis was amicable, and she probably has the Die Hard Trilogy (sorry, there’s no part 4 as far as I’m concerned) on the same shelf as her family home videos.
“Yippee-ki-yay, mother-of-my-children-fucker!”
Here’s the entire chapter list for those of you wondering what such a fascinating, in-depth peek into the life of Demi Moore may look like:
Chapter 1: A Bunch of Boring Shit About Growing Up
Chapter 2: People Actually Start Paying Me to Act
Chapter 3: I Marry John McClane
Chapter 4: My Career’s Slowing Down
Chapter 5: I Make My Plastic Surgeon an Overnight Millionaire
Chapter 6: I’m Hot and Still Can’t Find Work
Chapter 7: I Divorce John McClane and Marry the Guy from Punk’d
Chapter 8: Wrote This Book and Can’t Believe You Read This Far
Chapter 9: The Book is Too Worn by Now – No Refund for You
I think if I ever saw anyone actually reading this book, I’d grab it from their hands, set it on fire, scorch their eyes with it and throw them down a flight of stairs. This is the kind of book women buy when they don’t want to look dumb reading Star Magazine and feel they’d appear smarter with a thick, hardcover book in their hands. It’s like soccer moms listening to the Black Eyed Peas and thinking they’re hip and modern. Shit is shit is shit, and I wouldn’t use Demi Moore’s autobiography to wipe my ass (mostly because my hemorrhoids need something with aloe).
