*I wrote this post last week and never posted it*

I finished the Stand by Stephen King and Tiger King yesterday. The Stand is an 1,152 page novel by Stephen King about a virus killing 99% of the world. Tiger King is about a redneck from Oklahoma who is larger than life. I left one feeling that my time was well spent and the other it was completely wasted. Trump Exotic below.

If I can read a page a minute, it would equate to roughly 20 hours of my life. In those 20 hours I was immersed in thought about a possible pandemic (go figure) and how the characters involved were responding. I was shown an array of different personalities and various outlooks depending on that person’s background. Stephen King is truly a genius with his research and feeling of authenticity behind his work. I got to think about good vs evil and society as a whole. It certainly wasn’t the best book I ever read, as I was a bit disappointed in the ending, but all in all, I enjoyed the experience. The Stand is being brought back to life in a 2020 movie. Whether that is true, I don’t know.

Watching Tiger King was a waste of life. I was intrigued after watching the beginning and by the end I was sad about being an American. How people can skirt through life like Joe Exotic is unfair to society as a whole. The people he conned and used were accessories to a manic game that was lost in a world of drugs that the documentary barely touched on. I have to comment that his drive and entrepreneurial spirit was impressive. I’m not sure if it was the meth that kept him running, but he wasn’t sitting on his ass.

I don’t think anyone would argue that reading is a better mental exercise than watching TV. Yet how many people are reading books vs watching Tiger King? It’s the dumbing down of Americans. Do you think the Chinese look at America’s Tiger King and think we’re a nation that’s heading in a solid direction? Both of his partners are straight.

It’s certainly easier to watch than to read. Reading requires thought. Humans have gravitated toward pictures and video and the written word is being phased out. Why do you think I even bother to put gifs in every post? A huge block of text gets ignored faster than a cumshot from an FNG. That was used in my Frat initiation. The question is would society be better off if it read more instead of watched? I don’t think the answer is clear cut, and I can answer it accurately by saying (and if you want to answer almost all questions correctly), it’s a balance.