My last column..dedicated to...hypocrite lecteur...mon semblable, - mon frere...whatever...dedicated to cornell tasp 07...for L.L Nunn...i guess..eeww

“Reading,” Schopenhauer writes, “is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.”

“Reading,” you think, “no one does that anymore. I read chapter summaries on a popular website for students who don’t like to read. And anyway, if Brian Sherwin is telling me that Schopenhauer wrote that reading is preventing me from thinking for myself, then I shouldn’t read, anyway!”

Wrong, but I don’t want to give you a longwinded explanation of why you should read. However, since I must write a column for the Hilltop Beacon, I’ll spend a tiny slice of your time to tell you why you should read. But I don’t like to be dogmatic, though. I don’t want to force you to do something that you don’t want to do. You go to Roslyn; you are constantly being told what to do by your parents, your teachers, your friends, your voices in your head, which are not the telltale signs of insanity. The voices in your head are your unique thoughts that other people cannot steal or see or read or hear. But that sort of contradicts my attempt to convince you to read because reading would plant an ancient author’s insane ramblings in your brain instead of allowing you to think for yourself. I’ve heard “think for yourself” so much that I don’t know what the phrase means anymore, though. But I want you to read! Here’s why you should read…

Alright, imagine that you are illiterate. You are unable to gather new information for yourself except for what you hear from other people. You walk into a grocery store (I don’t support product placement, so I won’t name the store Pathmark). You obliviously walk past the smiling cashiers and…forget the article, which I am writing at the moment because recent complaints from Complaints Choirs Worldwide have forced me to stop writing about illiteracy. They think that people from Roslyn High School aren’t going to start reading because of a silly little article that no one is going to read anyway. They think that Roslyn High School students should just join Complaints Choirs Worldwide to complain about everything. At least the complainers will learn how to unionize.

Complaints Choirs Worldwide would like me to say a few words about their history.

It happened in Helsinki, Finland. It was cold. Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen were walking in a park. They huddled together with a large group of people. Naturally, the group complained about the weather. There is a Finnish expression which means “complaints choir,” which describes when a large group of people are complaining collectively. The Kalleinens thought that taking the expression literally would be a good idea.

The first Complaints Choir was started in Birmingham, England. They sang about complaints. After the success of the Birmingham Complaints Choir, the Kalleinens were invited to initiate choirs across the world.

Now that I think about it…I am basically just a professional complainer. I’ve complained about boredom, the conception of the self, RCP (in an unpublished article), complaining, and people who use SparkNotes. So, another thought pops into my puny pulp of a brain. Oh…what was the thought? I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.

I think both of us have had enough nonsense. Let’s just shake hands, part ways, and forget that my column ever existed.

I’ve always wanted to end a column with the word mayonnaise.