Wikipedia it, because reading a book takes too long

This has become my new theory on education. Granted, I've been on a hiatus from the University of Pennsylvania for almost a year now and soon I will be packing up my shit (again) and heading back to the Intellectual Bubble that lies in West Philadelphia. I've also decided to actually do my work and attend class. What I haven't decided on is whether I'm going to spend hundreds of bucks on books that my professors probably wrote or the time waiting in line at the crowded Penn Bookstore. Instead I'm going to find the text online and read it online while I'm IMing friends that are probably at the library toiling through their text books in search of the perfect quotes that will make their senior thesis zing. Me, I like to multi-task. On the computer I can just highlight and hit CTRL+C and paste it right into my paper. For the record, don't forget to reference your illegitimate internet source.

Ergo: Wikipedia is my solution. Yes, this isn't new news. Nor is it old news. But, it makes me wonder what my aversion towards books is. It's always been like this unless it's the latest Nick Hornby book. (High Fidelity and About a Boy are great). If the book doesn't have to do with the inner male-psyche, I want nothing to do with it.

In the past two days, I've figured out how ancient Hillary Clinton and John McCain really are. I've learned more about Human Rights than I may ever need to. I've also increased my knowledge of the legend-to-be, John Legend. (Ordinary People is a must have). You can also learn how to quit smoking or how to make the perfect Mixed-CD on WikiHow.com (although High Fidelity really taught me how to make the best CD).

It's faster. Period. (That was redundant). I don't have time to learn stuff while I should be on facebook, blogspot, youtube, and Gmail all at the same time. I just don't. Now, if all my lectures were conducted via PodCast, my life would be perfecto. Everyday, no make that every second, of my life, I'm getting older. Sigh. Do I want to waste it in a dusty aisle of the library that is too huge for anyone's sanity? Then I find a book, right, how do I know that it's actually got what I'm looking for? Yet, I still go to and wait at the checkout line. There's no line on the internet. I don't have to read the entire thing to find a quote. Actually, if there's a quote I have in mind I just google it and hopefully a quote pops up. And if it didn't? Well while I was waiting for google to search I just poked three friends on facebook. So, no time lost.

The same theory goes towards movies based on books. A book costs around (let's just say) $20. The price of paper has severely sky rocketed due to Bush's war in the desert. Afterall, we blame him for everything, don't we? A movie ticket at The Bridge on Walnut Street costs $5-9. You can even buy nachos for like $4 and don't have to worry about smearing Cheese-Wiz all over the pages of your brand new book. If you do spill, some cheap labor is going to clean it up anyway. An hour and a half later, I'm left with a decent interpretation of a book that would have taken about one day to finish (depending). For the multi-tasker in me, the movie is the better deal. Not only did I get to eat and not clean up afterwards, I also took a girl out on a cheap date. Taking a date to read my book is less appealing and sexy.