Conversation overheard between two guys sitting near me in a restaurant:

As a man, the AUTHOR, eats Chinese food, another man, the CRITIC, looks up from a laptop.

CRITIC: It's good. You just need to proofread a little bit. Like here. You misspelled 'killers'.
AUTHOR: Oh, yeah.
CRITIC: And right here...try 'vengeance'.
AUTHOR: Yeah?
CRITIC: Because you said that he wants revenge...he wants revenge, right?
AUTHOR: Yeah.
CRITIC: So, if you say that he wants revenge, and then you have him say, "I want revenge", you're just reiterating.
AUTHOR: I like 'vengeance'. I want to use that.
CRITIC: It's a good story, man. You just need a little structure.


I have quit shaving for a while in order to express my inner emotional desolation, and people at work are reacting in all the wrong ways. I have set a very clear precedent over the past year that I am not interested in talking to any of them, but the appearance of this new bearded version of me seems to have reset their entire schema, making them once again a flock of chatty fuckers. I ask: why, if I have shown no interest in conversing about anything whatsoever over the past year, and have responded to past entreaties with a disdain that borders on art, would you think that I am interested in conversing about how various other people are growing beards? I need to make an example out of someone or something. I will do so, in furious fashion.

(news) "The monkey is a tough opponent," huffed a police officer in Kagoshima, where the child was bitten in September by a monkey that eluded police. "He appears and disappears like a ghost. Today, he may appear on the top of a roof. Tomorrow, he may be somewhere else. "We couldn't capture him," the officer admitted. But, he added, "we couldn't have charged him either."

The above article, about monkeys causing trouble in Japan, is essential reading for two reasons: for the antics of the monkeys, of course, but also for its role in the ongoing dialectic of the representation of the monkey, a field in which I am the world's foremost expert. The article is an important text because it highlights the struggle of modern man to write seriously about problems caused by monkeys. Clearly, these monkeys are causing problems for the villagers, and clearly, the author would like to do justice to their plight, but he can't help himself, adding qualifiers such as 'huffed' to a police officer's speech. I think it is a spectacular piece of writing, myself, but perhaps I'd feel differently if they were my crops. Well, probably not. I'd go out to eat.

(news) "We have improved from last season … [but] we have to find a way to salvage victories," Rose said. "That's really the only way for us to grow as a unit. Anytime you don't have victory, it breeds all kinds of evil."

I love it when athletes become incredibly serious and start phrasing sports in terms of basic, profound moral concepts such as good and evil. Man, here's for the home team.