Adolf Spongebob and the End of Civilization

[Ysarex]

OK, I'm old and naive and I'm overreacting, but OMG!

I had to drive out to campus yesterday to run an errand and I did something a bit uncommon for me. I stopped at a McDonalds for a quick snack.

I see what appears to be an unusual interior decorating item right between the order counter and the seating section -- a bookcase. I walked over to check out some of the book titles and OMG! They had taken real books and sawed off the splines and glued them into the case. After a few moments of stunned disbelief I took a photo.





So all the way driving back I just kept repeating this thought in my head:

The Nazi's burned books, the Bolshevik's burned books, the Red Guard burned books and they all failed, but the real enemy is turning them into cheezy interior decorations and they've actually got a shot at success. Civilization finally collapses under the laughing face of Adolf Spongebob! I have hundreds and hundreds of books. I revere them and cherish them and I read every day. This brought tears to my eyes!

When I get home my wife tells me it's real common and lots of people decorate with fake bookcases -- I'm so naive!

Joe

P.S. Many of you know I'm a retired college professor. I've taught for over 30 years. A decade ago we suffered through a crisis at my college when we had to face the fact that a large percentage of our incoming students couldn't read. Some of us wanted to institute an intake reading placement test and remedial action. Others wanted to sweep it under the rug. Hard to believe but the US is becoming increasing illiterate.

 

[pic_chick]

This hurt my heart. I love books, my husband and I both enjoy going to resale shops and the 1st thing we look at are the books. We are building our collection and I could NEVER cut one to make a fake bookcase. I think that the fake bookcase would in fact be more work to make and look real cheesy. People do some of the dumbest things. :scratch:

 

[Jaemie]

Couldn't the franchisee have found a better prop than one which uses real mutilated books? It's just so ...viscerally repugnant.

 

[MK3Brent]

People are admitted to college without the ability to read?
Who let them graduate high school?

 

[12sndsgood]

im kind of on the fence on this one. I like to read as well. I geneally buy my books, does that make me better buying my couple books a year versus my wife who buys about a book every other week on her ipad, she reads 10x as much as i do but never picks up a book. when was the last time you listened to an 8-track tape, or a real to real? doesn't mean music has gone by the wayside nessicarily. Granted stupid people abound. but cutting up books for a fake bookshelf isn't the reason, nor will it be any reason to cause illiteracy.

 

[Derrel]

OMG--my son and I stopped at McDonald's this weekend after a day spent on my family's heritage farm...and they had the same Spongebob display. I bought him a Happy Meal, and he received the Spongebob-on-purple-skateboard pull-n-go toy as the Happy Meal prize. Oddly...another McDonald's located here, some 60 miles from farm, has some wallpaper that is...a fake bookcase pattern...

 

[Jaemie]

...but cutting up books for a fake bookshelf isn't the reason, nor will it be any reason to cause illiteracy.

For me, the mutilation of books and illiteracy are different issues. Book destruction, as mentioned by the OP, evokes images of fascism, intolerance, and censorship.

 

[12sndsgood]

I agree bit this wasn't done to ban books because they were evil or wrong. it was done to make a fake bookshelf, two completly diffrent things.

 

[12sndsgood]

I need to remember to check my spelling and punctuation, I'm starting to look illiterate here.

 

[pic_chick]

im kind of on the fence on this one. I like to read as well. I geneally buy my books, does that make me better buying my couple books a year versus my wife who buys about a book every other week on her ipad, she reads 10x as much as i do but never picks up a book. when was the last time you listened to an 8-track tape, or a real to real? doesn't mean music has gone by the wayside nessicarily. Granted stupid people abound. but cutting up books for a fake bookshelf isn't the reason, nor will it be any reason to cause illiteracy.

Reading is Reading. A digital book is still a book in my eye.

 

[cgipson1]

Reading is good.. no matter how you access the material!

Destruction of books for any reason just seems wrong to me... especially for decoration. I have held and loved too many books, for them not to be special to me. Some people will understand that... some people wont!

 

[sm4him]

People are admitted to college without the ability to read?
Who let them graduate high school?

Don't EVEN get me started!! Our high schools have TEACHERS who can barely put together a grammatically correct sentence! ENGLISH teachers who can't (or don't bother to) spell correctly, and who couldn't diagram a sentence if their life depended on it. I have several friends who are teachers in our area (at least three of them teach high school English) and they could tell you HORROR stories--not just about papers that students have written, but about the other English teachers who grade those papers and simply *dismiss* problems with punctuation, even spelling errors sometimes because "it's not that important." Seriously???

Okay, I'd better step down off THAT soapbox before I blow an artery.

im kind of on the fence on this one. I like to read as well. I geneally buy my books, does that make me better buying my couple books a year versus my wife who buys about a book every other week on her ipad, she reads 10x as much as i do but never picks up a book. when was the last time you listened to an 8-track tape, or a real to real? doesn't mean music has gone by the wayside nessicarily. Granted stupid people abound. but cutting up books for a fake bookshelf isn't the reason, nor will it be any reason to cause illiteracy.

No, reading a paper book does not make one "better" than reading via any other means available, and I applaud the fact that there ARE so many options today. I have a Kindle Fire, my laptop and my smartphone, all of which are loaded with a myriad of books and magazines, so that I am never without reading material. Still, on a rainy evening or a lazy Saturday morning, I would MuCH (sorry, this keyboard will NOT make a cap "u") rather curl up under the covers with a REAL book than with any of my electronic options. There is just something soothing and magical about turning those pages!

Reading is good.. no matter how you access the material!

Destruction of books for any reason just seems wrong to me... especially for decoration. I have held and loved too many books, for them not to be special to me. Some people will understand that... some people wont!

^+1. I'll join that club!!

That said, I *have* used books as decoration; but ONLY if the original book was already damaged to the extent that it was no longer useful as a book. But, except for a flood in my basement a few years back (shortly after moving, so some boxes were still being stored down there) I can honestly say that no book of MINE has ever been allowed to get damaged to that extent!

 

[pgriz]

Yeah, but.... Ah, I'm just old-fashioned. There's something tactile about reading a physical book. And there's more to it than just the pages. Sometimes you pick up a second-hand book, and discover bit and pieces of the lives of previous owners, in the form of underlined passages, or notes in the margins, or slips of paper can be as intimate as forgotten love letters, or as functional as a shopping list. And when you pick up a well-used book, with corners a bit dirty and slightly curled, you get to share, through the book a connection to another person.

Even the physicality of a book gives a different experience. The creaking of the binding if it was cheaply made, or sheer texture of fine paper if it was a heritage hard-cover book, make the experience of opening and holding a book more than just the reading of words. And to know that people just use the spines of books to give the appearance of culture, without any foundation behind it, emphasizes the shallowness and vapidity of much which passes for "modern" culture. In my family, we revere books. There are bookshelves with classics and sci-fi, and crafts and self-help books, with books on cooking (crammed with additional recipies and notes on what worked and what didn't)... The kids, now grown up, refuse to give up the books which we read when they were young - they are mementos of moments of childhood when reading a book before bedtime was as much part of the ritual as brushing the teeth.

Even now, if we exchange gifts, the gifts most anticipated and appreciated are books. They allow us to discover new passions, and relive old moments. We like our physical books.

 

[cgipson1]

Yeah, but.... Ah, I'm just old-fashioned. There's something tactile about reading a physical book. And there's more to it than just the pages. Sometimes you pick up a second-hand book, and discover bit and pieces of the lives of previous owners, in the form of underlined passages, or notes in the margins, or slips of paper can be as intimate as forgotten love letters, or as functional as a shopping list. And when you pick up a well-used book, with corners a bit dirty and slightly curled, you get to share, through the book a connection to another person.

Even the physicality of a book gives a different experience. The creaking of the binding if it was cheaply made, or sheer texture of fine paper if it was a heritage hard-cover book, make the experience of opening and holding a book more than just the reading of words. And to know that people just use the spines of books to give the appearance of culture, without any foundation behind it, emphasizes the shallowness and vapidity of much which passes for "modern" culture. In my family, we revere books. There are bookshelves with classics and sci-fi, and crafts and self-help books, with books on cooking (crammed with additional recipies and notes on what worked and what didn't)... The kids, now grown up, refuse to give up the books which we read when they were young - they are mementos of moments of childhood when reading a book before bedtime was as much part of the ritual as brushing the teeth.

Even now, if we exchange gifts, the gifts most anticipated and appreciated are books. They allow us to discover new passions, and relive old moments. We like our physical books.

Friend request sent... after reading this.. I had too! lol!

 

[sleist]

Couldn't the franchisee have found a better prop than one which uses real mutilated books? It's just so ...viscerally repugnant.

What makes you think it wasn't a mass produced prop? (i.e. not real books)
Franchises are usually very strict about what you use for promotional material.