This is probably mean-spirited and in poor taste, but you knew that coming in. It's funny to talk to someone who should be healthier than you because they are a vegan and do yoga and whatnot, but they aren't, because they've taken so many downers that poo no longer flumes out their asspipe.

In other news: Don't you hate when you order a book off Half.com and it's mostly fine except that one short story is all done up with annotations and marginalia, written in ink? Probably not, because I'm the only one who is bothered by such things. But man, that was disappointing.

Speaking of disappointing: I read Leo Tolstoy's Death Of Ivan Ilyich for Saturday class. In a word: Shit. Granted, "shit" is a bit harsh for most things, but I was just summarizing up in one word. A more long-winded response would be to call it dull. It's not very good.

A copy of Don DeLillo's Underworld arrived in my mail today. That book is large.

I ordered a copy of Lifter Puller's Soft Rock off Half.com. I guess I really like that band.

Oh: Erin Tustin read and enjoyed some short stories I sent her. Oh sure, she's a "friend of mine" and as such she's "biased." Look, I'm not saying my stories are "good." I'm saying that her words of praise made me feel good on the inside, although to call it praise might be a bit hyperbolic.

Oh oh oh: People I was in AP English with in high school, before I got kicked out! Remember when that teacher-bitch-lady taught us advanced tricky literary terminology she told us would be on the AP test? And everybody had to learn them and it was a real pain-in-the-ass? And then the words totally weren't on the test at all? Yeah, remember that? Well: Said teacher lady was pronouncing at least one of those words WRONG. The word in question is "synecdoche," and it's not pronounced in a way that even kind of brings to mind a feminine hygiene project. It's pronouned "sin-ek-duh-kee." Jesus fuck, did we have some dumbass English teachers at that school. I mean, some of the other teachers were alright, I guess. But the English ones were pretty goddamn terrible. Because I mean: They speak English. In retrospect, the fact that they were such horrible fascists regarding literature and its interpretation doesn't strike me as being nearly as bad as their inability to speak the language, their misuse and mispronunciation of words. Oh, and that they were fascists about that. That pisses me off too. You know, when I think about it, which is blessedly kind of rare. Granted, at college I had a teacher who insisted on multiple occasions that the idea of having sound health refers to one's ability to cross a sound of water.

Generally speaking, I find the idea of homeschooling abhorrent, (and for reasons besides the whole social skill thing) especially for kids in their later years, because there's no way the parents know that much (especially when you take into account all the narrow-mindedness and biases that accompanies most parents who make such a decision, whether it be fundamentalist Christianity or hippie bullshit). There's a reason why high school teachers are so niche-oriented: because no one retains all that information. Still, the idea of taking your kids out of school for a subject you know better than their teachers is tempting.