I stopped reading The Plague, because it's really not very engrossing. Half-pathetic, because I was the one who put in on my syllabus, but there were books on all syllabuses I didn't finish. For example: Billy Budd is on my syllabus for my Saturday class, and I just don't think it's going to happen. Something Happened is compelling as anything though, despite the subject matter (upper middle-class people are unhappy) being both done to death and not particularly interesting. Alan Moore has said in the past disparaging things about the British literary canon, its inclination towards the comedy of manners because it was what the critics could relate to at the time, and there's a lot to this. But Something Happened is really good, and it's not like I don't read a lot of the other less critic-approved works.

Season three of Curb Your Enthusiasm destroys the previous two seasons, which I enjoyed but might have thought a bit overrated due to lack of laugh-out-loud moments. But season three is just... Ah. Golden.

Deerhoof are coming to Olympia in March, as is Bad Education. Yeah.

I wrote a piece about Vanilla Creme Frosted Mini-Wheats for the New Food Reviews section of the McSweeney's website. It was rejected, albeit politely. It's not genius or anything so the rejection's not that crushing. (although to be bitter about it: Right now in the new food reviews there's a thing about Pabst Blue Ribbon, which I mean come the fuck on) I'll run it here, so you can learn what I think about said breakfast cereal:

They're not as sickly-sweet as you imagine. After the quantum leap that occurs when you've taken a chunk of shredded wheat and made it agreeable by applying frosting, any other change is just going to be (metaphorical) frosting. So the addition of vanilla is more of a slight variation than an actual improvement, possibly the most subtle of changes to ever occur in a breakfast cereal. However, it's enough to give it something of an edge over normal Frosted Mini-Wheats, at least in my mind. There is the possibility that this opinion might just be my love of the smell of the bag talking. When one opens the plastic bag surrounding the cereal and breathes deep, they are overwhelmed with pleasantness. The aroma is that of the hair of a ex-girlfriend in dreams that are sort of about how you've thrown away every good thing you've ever had, but are mostly just about vanilla.