Wonkette
Our favorite Washington Post old crab Richard Cohen has put together another gem today, following his recent coot-ish rambles about tattoos, his eyesight and, of course, uppity Negroes. Today’s topic: books! He is in Boulder in a bookstore, with the books that the children don’t give a hoot about anymore! They are buying them on this “Amazon” internet page, or not at all, because they are terrible, bwah bwah bwah.
Complete fucking psychobabble:
BOULDER, Colo. — On an average day when I am here, I amble over to the Boulder Book Store. Often, I simply browse — it’s a very good bookstore — and sometimes I buy something, but mostly I just like the feel of the place. It has a cafe and lots of specialized sections, and recently I watched my granddaughter as she observed a yoga lesson for children. I bet they don’t do that over at Amazon.
Instead, over at Amazon they are inadvertently thinking of ways to make the world worse for children and for the grown-ups who love them to pieces.
No, that’s true, because Amazon is a rainforest in fake Mexico or some such. They hunt wild parrot for food and do not have time for elitist yoga. WAIT, he is talking about the Amazon River? That’s it. WAIT, no, the website, Amazon.com, where you buy, what is it, BOOKS. But he is right: they do not offer yoga classes at this online bookstore.
Onward:
The book is warm. The book is handy. The book is handsome to the eye. The book occupies the shelf of the owner and is a reflection of him or her or, actually, me. The book is always there, to be reached for, to be thumbed and, too often, I admit, to wonder about: Why did I buy this? My bookcase is full of mysteries.
“Many of my book’s pages stick together after all the years, due to said warmth and handsomeness.”
Amazon has this device that downloads books. It is called the Kindle, which must be one of those focus group words. Sounds like the German word for children. Sounds like kind. Sounds innocent. Of course, it is not. My friends, book lovers all, have bought Kindles. At first, I was shocked: You? A Kindle? It’s like discovering some sort of secret perversion.
Feeling oddly guilty, I bought a Kindle myself. Someday soon, I’m going to see how it works. I hesitate because I know it represents the beginning of the end — books as books, bookstores, book lovers and, inescapably, the brilliant Frederic Manning, resurrected by a bookseller only to be eventually reinterred as too obscure to be Kindled.
That’s seriously how he ends the column. YOU, A KINDLE? Ha ha ha, he is just out of his mind forever, totally batshit.
YOUUUUUU? A KINDDDDDLE? OH MY GAWWWWD.
The Book on the Shelf [Washington Post]
Then he bought one?
Consumerist culture is bad!! (unless, of course, I’m the consumer. The poor, hapless consumer.)
“What’s the deal with bookstores?”
Someone had sex with Richard Cohen???? That’s definitely the newsiest bit of this post. Ewwww….
>>Instead, over at Amazon they are inadvertently thinking of ways to make the world worse for children and for the grown-ups who love them to pieces.
AMAZON DID WTC
Oh, please. Bookstores (and libraries) will not whither and die within our lifetime.
And if statistics are any indication, more grown-ups “inadvertently think of ways to make the world worse for children” than any online book seller.
Maybe we can invent some sort of ignorant, yapping, and bearded automaton that would make Richard Cohen obsolete? I bet he still listens to his Baroque period shit on a eight track.
It’s technology, you moronic piece of dogshit! What do you still travel by covered wagon?
Fucking idiot.
“Sounds like the German word for children” ummmmm, or maybe like a verb in the English language, which was pretty obviously chosen to invoke images of starting fires and sparking ideas.
“Many of my book’s pages stick together after all the years, due to said warmth and handsomeness.”
Thanks for sharing.
I always roll my eyes at the old codgers scared we’re going to take their books away.
They’re the same people who keep telling me I’m going to be out of a job annnnny minute now. (I’m a librarian.)
How much did the Boulder Book Store pay Cohen for product placement in his “column”?
Because nothing keeps the local indie bookstore going in the fight against Amazon and big box places like a cranky old guy who comes in, manhandles your product, watches your yoga class and “sometimes buys something” before he goes out and drops hundreds of dollars on a kindle at Amazon.
Well lamented Mr. Cohen. Well lamented.
And how the hell did he get to Boulder? That’s a long way to walk in your slippers and bathrobe.
He makes teh Amazon sound like a porn site, and “kindle”=jerking off…
People actually buy those Kindle things?
Too bad that the best books can’t be bought at a bookstore. They’re not “new” enough.
Hey you kids, get off my lawn!
Oh this is just painfully stupid. If he’s worried about obscure authors being reinterred, he should be delighted about online books. Project Gutenberg has a gazillion classics that you won’t find at your average bookstore, because they’re not profitable enough to take up shelf space. Google Books also lets you access old and rare texts that would never be reprinted by a conventional publisher. Real-world bookstores and publishers are more interested in putting out the latest Oprah-approved trash than real literature. The internet is helping to save good books, and Richard Cohen is a stupid dick.
angryhippopotamus: No, Amazon chose Kindle because they want to burn books. Soon, we will all be living in a Bradburian dystopia.
moneypenny: Yep. We’re a dying breed, ain’t we?
Maybe it’s because I can’t read, but that confused the shit out of me.
They cut off the part with
“Damn you kids, always comin’ on my lawn, stompin’ around like hooligans. Who the heck do you think you are? With your record players and your damned hot rods driving around like the devil’s creation, our world’s sure headin’ for the end of days. I’m sick of you little hummajummas making all kinds of NOISE. This neighborhood used to be quiet, darnnit. Go to a picture-show or something!”
…that article just increased my odds of developing a brain tumor.
>>, and Richard Cohen is a stupid dick.
People should start appending this to random sentences.
So dad’s of the future will take their kindle to the crapper?
You ever use the Men’s room in a bookstore? Once is enough, unless your like Larry Craig and like that sort of enviornment. Bookstore bathrooms are dens of satan. They should be closed down. That sort of nonsense doesn’t go on at Amazon, my friends.
I wish I could afford to buy $400 electronics that I don’t want and then not bother to learn how to use them.
trophy(forparticipation)wife: oops
4tehlulz: Dick fuck assholes, Cohen. Dick. Fuck. Assholes.
Reminds me of his article criticizing Charles Babbage’s “Difference Engine” and how it would lead to the downfall of feudal society. He keeps his abacus right next to his Kindle, I’m sure.
You know Richard will be sticking his dick in the Kindle, if that is possible…(I do not know what a Kindle looks like)
So to summarize: He likes going to bookstores, but not to actually buy books. If he does buy a book, he comes to regret it. He is indeed so illiterate that he can’t figure out where the word “Kindle” came from. Then he buys one and doesn’t use it. Then he wonders why Amazon (where he buys things he doesn’t want) is driving actual bookstores (where he doesn’t buy anything but does watch kids doing yoga) out of business.
WTF?
Is anyone else pretending that “Meat your Meat” is actually a part from Richard Cohen’s body?
Wow, Andy Rooney will be waiting for him after school to challenge him to a “Curmudgeon-Off”….
Oooh, overpriced coffee in bookstores for teh win.
Perhaps Richard Cohen is not aware of the electronic document traditions. Ceiling Cat sez, “Buy a frickin’ Kindle already, Richard!”
This article reads much better in Andy Rooney’s voice.
ManchuCandidate: hahahah!
jagorev: I’m glad you said that — I was going to present some sort of reasoned argument about why his point was idiotic, but I didn’t know where to begin.
And methinks Mr. Cohen is angling to have his greatest prose incorporated into the Old Testament as 2 Lamentations. And that whirring sound would be Jeremiah spinning in his ossuary.
mookworthjwilson: “Meet your Meat”
Also, these are the kind of people who miss the card catalog. Hey what does that endcap sign say? Gosse-Mexicans?
4tehlulz: Can you get Where’s Waldo on Kindle?, and Richard Cohen is a stupid dick.
At least he’s off humping McGoo’s leg for this week. Someone upstairs must have told him to tone it down, the Mexican cleaning lady was having trouble removing the stains.
Here’s a preview of Richard Cohen’s next column. It’s a wistful, semi-fictionalized account of how, as a young man, he met the great War Winner. McCain’s identity is cleverly concealed under the pseudonym “Ike Thomas”.
http://www.golfchat.info/golf/family-ownded-driving-range-job-t1473.html
This is the sort of “lede” that a writer uses when he assumes the reader’s attention will be granted, based on previous experience:
On an average day when I am here, I amble over to the Boulder Book Store. Often, I simply browse — it’s a very good bookstore — and sometimes I buy something, but mostly I just like the feel of the place. It has a cafe and lots of specialized sections…
But it’s actually the most boring piece of shit imaginable. New acronym: tb/dr = too boring, didn’t read.
Is “the Kindle” like “the Google?”
mookworthjwilson: I hate that thing. I made the mistake of watching it yesterday. I came home last night to find in my dog’s mouth, a mouse that looked like it had been sucked on for hours. I screamed for him to drop it, which he did - in my new shoe.
I’m off meat for a few days.
“there, to be reached for, to be thumbed”
‘Nuff said?
V572625694: gb2/b/
trophy(forparticipation)wife: It’s usually magazines that make *me* pour out my “warmth” at their “handsomeness.” I use books as, er, kindle in the fireplace before settling down with the aforementioned pubs.
Note to Richard Cohen: The one you so clearly emulate, Andy Rooney, has his latest book is available on…yes…Kindle. Welcome to the 21st century.
WikipediaBrown: compared to cohen, andy rooney is like jean-paul sartre
angryhippopotamus: THANK you.
Is he trying to be Garrison Keillor, or is Keillor trying to be him? I can’t tell.
Rev. Juan MessyCan: Kindle must clean up nicely.
Waldo Geraldo Faldo: Ha! You said it much better than I did!
Yes obscure books by Frederic Manning can only be found in good old book stores (apart from the 72 copies of his works currently on sale on Amazon; a selection of Manning biographies is also available.)
Next week, from Richard Cohen: Sal Mineo, Now There Was an Actor
4tehlulz: I give….
When I lived in Boulder, I ambled over to the Boulder Bookstore to apply for a job. I love books, and also eating. They told me that they only hire people with a master’s degree, and actually prefer to hire PhD candidates. So, I ambled out with my lowly BFA and said WTF. Books are desirable, unbelievably pretentious bookstores, not so much.
Also, Richard Cohen can tonguejack my shitbox. He really needs a bow tie in the byline photo.
Maybe bookstores wouldn’t be on the decline if jackwads like Cohen actually bought something when they went in instead of just wandering aimlessly reminiscing?!
His well-worn copy of “Billy Goats Gruff,” is sticky with spooge stains.
jimh: are you serious
what is this i dont even
Has anybody pointed out yet that Richard Cohen looks like the love child of Wolf Blitzer and a furtive raccoon - i.e. a bespectacled, lightly furred ballsack?
reminds me of that time I bought a Chrysler just so I could LOATHE it. oh, we stupid dicks….