I love books.

And when I say “I love books” I mean I really, really, REALLY love books. Some might say they are an obsession. If you come to my house you will find stacks of books of every shape and size crammed into every corner and nook and cranny of our little 1,100 square foot home. I’ve got books on every possible subject: from history to art to philosophy to motor racing to witchcraft, geopolitics, humor, music, conspiracy, and UFOs and esoterica of every kind.

Stacks upon stacks of books: that’s what gets me excited. I love the way books look; I love the way they smell; I love the way they feel in my hands. Books are real, solid objects to keep and hold and cherish forever. Hard or softbound: printed books with numbered pages, made of real paper!

You want to get rid of me for awhile? Take me to a bookstore – if you can still find one. Ha!

Or drop me off at the library. We’ve still got those, at least…for now…

Heck, I’ve got an entire library of books at home I haven’t even read yet.

One of the many problems with our worthless society is that people own hardly anything tangible anymore – virtually everything is digital or virtual or online now. And that’s perfectly okay with most people…

Even the things we think we “own” are really debts we owe to creditors. Until you finish paying off your car or the mortgage on your house, the banks own those, too. There are so few things we can actually truly say we own anymore.

Fuck that. Call me old fashioned – I like physical objects. Stuff I can keep for as long as I want – or I can give away if I want to without having to worry about ILLEGAL PIRATING or copyright infringement or some such bullshit.

I’ve been to hundreds of thrift stores and god knows how many yard sales and garage sales over the years and it’s clear from the paltry selection of books on display that the vast majority of my fellow Umerkins are basically illiterate.

Most of the homes I’ve visited have a BUYBULL and a couple of cook books; maybe a picture book of the Grand Canyon or a Reader’s Digest on the shelf. And that’s about it.

You can bet they’ve got plenty of guns, though…that’s for sure!

When you look at how debased and retarded this country has become it kinda makes sense that so few people actually read books anymore.

At best, they use some fucking App like Kindle where you supposedly ‘buy’ it just to read – but really you’re only borrowing it until it ultimately floats away into the ether or onto the cloud or whatever!

And how did they come up with the fucking CLOUD as the name for the supposedly secure place to store all your stuff, anyway? A cloud is made up of water vapor. That doesn’t sound very secure to me. If I want something secure I’ll send it to a goddam VAULT or a safety deposit box, right? Not some fucking cloud.

STUPID!

Compact Discs are even being phased out, now, apparently. Fuck, I’ve got hundreds of CD’s that I am NEVER gonna give up. I waited for years before I sold all my vinyl until I was finally convinced that CD’s were any good – and now they’re gonna take those away, too?!

I’ve never owned an iPod, or any other Apple product for that matter. And I don’t intend to start listening to crappy, compressed, poor quality MP3s now – where half the audio range is missing! But of course, delivering higher quality uncompressed music is completely meaningless if you only listen to music on fucking ear buds while working out or whatever. Not me.

And I still have hundreds of VHS tapes scattered about my home, stored away in cardboard boxes and old milk crates. You used to be able to tape any TV show you wanted for the price of the video cassette. Now I can’t even make copies of videos I personally recorded on my own goddam camera, thanks to the digitalisation of what used to be free airwaves.

“President” Bill Clinton included this provision in the original Telecommunications Act of 1996, but the deadline to transition to ’digital only’ broadcasts was pushed back several times following numerous complaints and  legal challenges. The original date was supposed to be December 31, 2006. However, the transfer to digital was set back three times: first to December 31, 2008, then to February 17, 2009, and then finally to June 12, 2009, when “president” Obama finally signed it into law.

[Our Rulers know that they simply have to persevere and wait it out until public outcry dies down to get unpopular legislation passed. If they can pass the legislation in secret, during a holiday break or in the midst of some manufactured crisis, even better…]

In any case, the inevitable result was that all analog TV broadcasts were banned in the USA, so that folks like me could no longer tape the programs we used to enjoy. You know, in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ and all that…

Since 2007, all new devices that receive signals over the airwaves – including pocket-sized portable TVs, personal computer video capture card tuners and DVD recorders – have been required to include digital ATSC encoded tuners, simply because whoever owns the company that makes ATSC tuners bribed enough people in Washington, DC to get the ‘mandatory’ law passed…

But I also wanna know: how were people duped into, like, never actually owning anything? All we really own anymore are fucking ONES and ZEROS. How is this acceptable? Most people don’t bat a fucking eye.

I for one miss the days when we had access to real, ‘hard copy’ stuff. Not just fucking MEGABYTES and PIXELS and shit: things with weight and volume; stuff that you could touch and hold in your hands and keep and throw across the room if you want to…

And now they’re pushing “virtual” everything. Virtual banking, virtual doctor visits; virtual vacations, virtual dating: virtual reality, indeed. That’s what we’ve got.

Nothing is actually real anymore.

Our society is decaying because this country is populated by a bunch of brain dead zombies who lack even the most basic survival skills, let alone the ability to think critically. But the scariest part is that this is exactly what Our Rulers wanted. The USA has purposely been turned into a nation of morons. It’s a lot easier to get away with all the looting and raping and pillaging that way…

The appalling lack of literacy in the USA is what has sealed America’s fate as an utterly failed state. And we’re never coming back, btw.

It’s clearly super-easy to manipulate dumb people into believing just about anything. And with the help of a little technology you can keep the unwashed masses stupefied forever. Our Rulers are able to get away with this shit time and time again…it’s literally child’s play to them.

One of the big reasons for our decline is that reading [and by extension, learning] is actively discouraged; everything except the BUYBULL of course.  

Books convey knowledge; knowledge is power. This is why critical thinking is such a threat to the Ruling Class. That’s why certain “offensive” books are currently being banned from local libraries and schools in record numbers.

But I tell you one thing: when that massive XXX-class solar flare takes down the global power grid and that fucking cloud evaporates I’ll be sitting pretty.

I’ve got enough books to keep me busy for the next ten years!