The news that we is the third literatest city in America is uncomprehensible. Just a few years ago we was number one! And now we're beaten by Washington D.C., and some other big city I can't pronounce. What happened?

Some possibilities:

Enormous television sets got cheap, "Avatar" came out on DVD, and people who had previously spent the night poring through Homer let the book slip from their hands and stared slack-jawed at imaginary blue people with cat eyes.

Washington mounted a serious attempt to win the crown, holding a readathon like they have in elementary schools, and while they may be reading more books, 37 percent of them involve an inquisitive primate and a man in a yellow hat.

Or ... the study's methodology might be cockamamie. The criteria included the number of booksellers per resident, which is nonsense. This would mean a town that had one bookseller for one resident, and carried nothing but Paris Hilton's biography would be the most literate town in America, and a town with no booksellers but a population that downloaded Shakespeare daily to their Kindles would have the same rank as some hick-dump where people make angry faces when you ask them to pick out the letter "A" from a selection of vowels.

Internet usage was included, but basing literacy standards on simple Internet consumption is problematic. If you've been to the YouTube comments, you know there are people so garishly illiterate they conclude their neo-Nazi rants with HAIL HILTER! In short, it's nonsense, and I base that presumption entirely on the fact that we're not No. 1.

So how can we reclaim the crown?

Simple. Everyone needs to A) write a book, and B) declare their home a bookstore, and sell their book. Since the study also counts the number of people with degrees, everyone needs to get a sheepskin from some mail-order diploma mill. Then we can reclaim our top spot as the literatest city in the country. Also, everyone should wear glasses and pretend to smoke a pipe. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish reading this book, "Curious George Considers Raising the Debt Ceiling."

That little imp! It's No. 1 in D.C.