Senator Mike Fair offers winter house heating tips

Below: Fair uses The Descent of Man to heat home.

The Harry Potter series will keep your house warm all night, says Greenville politician

B & P News - Greenville

State Senator Mike Fair (R-Greenville) wants his Upstate constituents to stay warm in the imminent winter months.

"It gets cold up here in December," said Fair at a press conference in his living room. "A nice fire, fueled by books such as Origin of Species, is the perfect remedy for the winter chill."

Fair provided reporters with a list of books recommended for the fireplace based on combustibility, ash quality, and references to controversial topics like evolution, magic, and dinosaurs. Included on the list were Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, and Are You My Mother? -- a children's book that, according to Fair, glamorizes single-motherhood in its depiction of a bird family.

"Don't feel constrained to my list," added the senator as he doused a copy of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time with gasoline. "Be creative. The Harry Potter series will keep your house warm all night, I bet."

Greenville High teacher Marlene Lewter phoned Fair to voice her displeasure that her class's biology text was on the list. "He said it was missing the chapter on Noah's ark," Lewter said. "And the one about sly demons burying fossils all over the world. I thought he was joking, so I laughed. Then he hung up on me."

Arlo Humperdink, president of Christian Exodus, lauded Senator Fair. "I think it's important that we get full use of the earth's resources, and recycling initiatives such as this are instrumental to the balance," said Humperdink. "Plus, you know, book-learnin' is the expressway to Hell."