LIVE YOUR LIFE

I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.

—Kanye West, promoting his book “Thank You and You’re Welcome.”

Whoever said life is an open book probably didn’t have any friends. Sure, he probably liked the people in his book. But did they like him? No. Why? Because they aren’t real.

My friends are real. They actually talk to me. Like just the other day my friend Bill said, “I’m not reading your e-mail for you anymore. You need to learn how to read.” And I said, “Bill, if you don’t read me my e-mail, I won’t sign an autograph for your son.” And Bill was, like, “Well, go fuck yourself. I’m going back to the hospital.” Bill’s son, Bill, Jr., or Billy Bob, was in the children’s unit there. He didn’t read the label on the box of his Sticky Stones™, and when he swallowed three of the iron-ore magnets they fused into a chain along the wall of his esophagus. Bill, Sr., felt extra bad because he hadn’t read that a consumer safety group had placed the Sticky Stones™ on its annual list of the ten worst toys. I told Bill that’s life. That stuff happens when you are doing stuff. In life. Real life. If I had told you that what had happened to Billy Bob had happened in a book, you would have said no way, that would never happen, that’s fiction. But it did. Because I told you it did.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are a few books that I am a fan of. Matchbooks are good. A lot of people are under the impression that books burn only at a specific temperature. But it’s just not true. I can burn most books at or below 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes below 300, if I soak the jacket in lighter fluid.

I also like MacBooks. You can really do stuff on them, you know. Like see how many followers you have on Twitter, or take pictures of yourself with Photo Booth, or play Second Life, or check if Bill has checked your e-mail. I miss Bill. He set up my Facebook account on my MacBook. I’ve got my own page on there. I have more than a million fans. Do you know how many fans Books have? Twenty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-four. That’s it. So I’m not alone here. You know what else has more fans than Books? The Olive Garden. One hundred and eighty-five thousand nine hundred and eighty-six. What else? Sleep: over three hundred thousand. More people would rather be unconscious than read a book. Now, I’m not condoning sleep. I’m about doing stuff. Living life. But it just goes to show that I’m in the majority.

Right now you’re probably wondering, Hey, why is this guy, a proud non-reader of books, writing this? Isn’t this a Catch-22? And I say no, it’s not. It’s a Catch-23. What’s a Catch-23? It’s like a Catch-22, except there is no catch. I don’t want you to read this. In fact, you should stop reading right now. Seriously. Stop reading this. Start doing stuff. What kind of stuff, you ask? I don’t know. Why don’t you go to the Olive Garden? But just watch out. They give you the never-ending salad before the never-ending pasta bowl. You wouldn’t think so, but the salad fills you right up. The lettuce is mostly iceberg. All water. And the waiter really makes you feel like shit when you don’t make it to the fettucine Alfredo.

Sometimes when I don’t know what to do I imagine other people doing stuff. But like people in a different time. Or like people in a different place. And I think how cool would it be to be that person for awhile. Like to know how other people I don’t know talk or do stuff. How they really live, you know? But that’s when I’m not doing stuff of my own. Which is all the time anyway. ♦