PRINCE ALBERT, SK – As internet service returns to hundreds of Rogers customers nationwide, local copywriter Jack Pally’s plan to enjoy literature has been postponed yet again until the next time he has absolutely no other source of entertainment or distraction.
“I was literally just about to crack this thing open. But that notification from my phone saying that the service was back on came just when I was reading the title,” Pally said, putting his still unread first edition of The Da Vinci Code upside-down on the shelf. “Maybe if there’s still time later I’ll try to read a few pages, but I’ve got a lot of tweets from my friends who are with Bell to catch up on.”
Previous attempts to encourage Pally to read as a hobby on its own have met with failure. “Whenever I tried to tell him that reading can be fun, he asks me how that’s possible when a book can’t send you down a Wikipedia click spiral,” comments Pally’s wife Donna.
“And I know I can’t ask him to try it when the electricity goes out. I don’t want to take away from the time he begrudgingly spends with the children talking about playing Minecraft.”
Pally claims he doesn’t hate reading, he just wants to pace himself. “I’m sure books are great once in a while. But you gotta be careful. Too much of it can be bad for your eyes,” Pally said, before bombarding himself with harsh light from his smartphone.
A study at McGill University suggests that Canada’s constant service outages are the sole reason the country’s adult literacy rate is higher than the United States.
At press time, Pally was starting to learn the value of a good book when he used a dictionary to fix his wobbly TV stand.
