“I’m not a genius, or are I?” - Homer Simpson
And now, a lesson on how to look smart (or “intelligent” as some smart people might say).
Go to a bookstore (remember those) and look for an ancient book on philosophy like The Republic by Plato or a classic work of literature, like perhaps Don Quixote or The Complete Works Of Shakespeare (this one is also good for holding open heavy doors and crushing walnuts).
When you have selected your tome of choice, buy all the copies that are available in the store. For this technique to work properly you must have at least four copies of your book of choice, and the more you have at your disposal the better.
You then take this book and prominently display it everywhere you can; the bathroom in your house, on your coffee table, on the corner of your desk in your office at work (with the spine of the book pointing out of course), on your bedside table and of course keep one copy to carry around with you at all times. Read this copy while standing in line at the bank or while sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. (Resist mightily the urge to pick up that copy of Us Weekly or People Magazine.)
Also, carry this book along with you to any job interviews or first dates.
If you like, you can hollow out the insides of this book and fill in the space with the reading material of your choice. The bigger the book the more space you have to work with. If the book is large enough you may be able to fit a Spiderman comic book inside. (I would not know anything about this or course.)
It is also advisable to do a little research on the book in order to answer any questions that are asked beyond “Is that a good book?” I know this seems like a lot of work, but just a few minutes on the Wikipedia web site can save you a whole lot of embarrassment. And if all else fails you can always respond to any book inquiries with “Oh, I just started this thing; ask me again in a week.” (This is then a crucial time to go on Wikipedia and get the information you need.)
The above method of impressing others with your erudite tastes and high I.Q. was perfected by a college roommate of mine, who piled high the ancient texts on our dorm room coffee table and carried an abridged copy of The Socratic Dialogues in his backpack on our semester overseas in the Middle East.
The irony of course was that he eventually ended up reading many of the works that were hanging around our place and went on to actually become a very smart person(while yours truly still reads Mad Magazine regularly).
This is why I will miss the nearby and recently shuttered Border’s Bookstore location in Concord, because it was my source of “smart guy” books.
This is also the great tragedy of the electronic age we live in. It is extremely difficult to display all my electronic books on the shelves of my home for maximum viewer impact.
Take for instance my downstairs bathroom.
When I know that we will have a house full of guests, say for a dinner party or family get together, I will copiously arrange the books in the bathroom in order to weed out the comic books and volumes of Twilight (they belong to my wife, I swear!) or Harry Potter.
And in their place I will stack copies of The New Yorker (I’m not really smart enough to even get the cartoons in this magazine) and a strategically placed copy of that 3,000 page John Adams biography that came out a few years ago.
This sadness also applies to music. When someone browses your iPod they are sure to see all your musical guilty pleasures (Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Garth Brooks) and not the cool, hip stuff (your complete works of Thelonious Monk, your Chopin collection) you wish to be seen.
I was actually the second to last customer at the Concord Borders branch, desperately looking for new titles to add to my farcical collection, because to keep this rues going long term, you need to switch out the books once and a while.
But alas, as I scanned the one remaining book shelf full of 90% off books, there were no smart book options. The only reading material left was a collection of odd celebrity publishings that never sold, like Ashton Kutcher’s Guide To Bow Hunting, The Sarah Palin Tribute To J.F.K. and that weird Tom Brokaw book about disco.
As the overhead speaker announced that the store was about to be closing for good I sighed a deep sigh and admitted to myself that the smart guy con I was running was about to get much harder, as my steady supply of books was about to dry up.
Does anyone know of any smart people currently having a yard sale?
