h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

26 REASONS BOOKS ARE BETTER THAN DRUGS


1. Books are available in clean, well-lit libraries and bookstores. You don’t have to go to dark, smelly alleyways to get them.
2. No one ever had to check into the Betty Ford Clinic for reading too much.
3. While it’s not impossible to be arrested and imprisoned for years for mere possession of a book, it is very, very difficult.
4. Good books can be enjoyed forever; they don’t disappear up your nose.
5. Books do not have seeds that explode and burn little holes in your clothes.
6. You can read books without having to burn expensive incense to cover the odor.
7. Although driving an automobile while reading is dangerous and not recommended, at least there is no organization called Mothers Against Smart Drivers running a noisy picket line outside your local courthouse.
8. A book is self-contained -- there are no needles, pipes, papers, spoons, screens, razor blades, straws, mirrors, or other extras to buy.
9. Books allow you to enter other realities and visit other worlds and come back again.
10. Nobody ever read too many books and then jumped off a building, walked through a plate-glass window, or mooned a cop.
11. You don’t have to flush all your books down the toilet when there’s an unexpected knock at the door.
12. Books enable you to enter other people’s minds. Drugs only allow you to enter your own mind – and stay there.
13. It is extremely rare that anyone gets machine-gunned to death in a book dispute.
14. Your friends won’t desert you when you run out of books.
15. Dogs won’t slobber all over your luggage at the airport sniffing for books.
16. You can proudly display books on your coffee table, even when the preacher visits.
17. You cannot get AIDS, hepatitis, or cirrhosis of the liver from a book.
18. You can read all you want to and it won’t show up on a urine test.
19. If you miss reading one day, you won’t go into painful withdrawal.
20. No matter how many books you have, you can’t be charged with “intent to distribute.”
21. Books don’t have negative interactions. You never have to worry what’s going to happen if you mix two or more books.
22. The supply of books is not governed by unpredictable circumstances such as the weather in South America.
23. Courtroom and hospital stories are always more fun and exciting to read about than to be a participant in.
24. Books don’t make your nose run.
25. If you sneeze, you won’t blow your expensive books all over the floor.
26. When you expand your mind with books, it stays expanded.

Marvellous!

Though I'm not convinced that this one is true:

19. If you miss reading one day, you won’t go into painful withdrawal.

David