excerpt from The New Golden Bough

Thus, for instance, a certain superintendent of the king's cattle was once prosecuted in an Egyptian court of law for having made figures of women and men in wax, thereby causing paralysis of their limbs and other grevious bodily harm.~~the adjectives here please me.

yesterday, Harvard stop

Any seasoned eavesdropper is aware of the inverse relationship between the intrigue of a comment and the volume at which it's spoken. This makes a pack of teenagers, particularly shrill groups of co-ed acquaintances, one of the least interesting populations on the T. To the right, one is shrieking about her inability to be "cute" in a drama--obviously soliciting comments to the contrary--and to the left is a boy who wiggles his pelvis at the girl in front of him--a display of misplaced virility, as he's obviously gay, but still very masculine when he moves with carelessness, that ole totem of testosterone. By this I mean, his backpack swayed within an inch of my face.

There was one boy who just clung to a pole with slate-neutral body language, neither confirming or denying his membership in the group. When he spoke (in response to not-cute girl's question, I admit), he grinned, leaned in, and answered her in low, rapid speech, spilling his own roots (a public school, he admitted) before she could comment.

The best facebook message I will ever receive

Subject: Hi!

How's everything going?? It's cold here, money's always a problem, and the new fulbrighter is really nice, but she's not you (and by that, I only mean she's shorter, curvaceous and not hippie at all).
I'm still working in jail, but I have fewer and fewer students each time (two were transferred, one was released)
Language II is (very) slowly getting more organized, and some of the ppl actually enjoy it! (?)
Nicanor is hiding in my closet...
My little sister's been asking about peanut butter... d'u think u can send me some? She's just survived a nose job, so... she deserves it.
OK, got to go. I've got to play hide-n-seek with my babies (both of them)
Write soon!!

fall-back exercises

There is nothing weaker than a man who will excuse himself.

When I was seventeen and angsty in the way only a suburban Ohioan hopped up on Ayn Rand and scholarship essays can be, I told my mother that I felt defeated, every single day--same material, same classmates, same homework, same self-referential poem, same bed in the same position--that by the time I tucked my understimulated self in every night, I felt the bitter inertia of my existence. And Mom said, "Well, why don't you sleep on the couch?"

That worked.

another excerpt

Trial advocates face times of success (!), failure (#%?), excitement (yea!), weariness (sigh), fun (yes!), anxiety (oh, no), satisfaction (ahhh), frustration (ah, me) and peace (it's over).~ from Trial ed. Haydock and Sonsteng

Listed right after "cheerleaders to hold carwash" (selected July 24)

Written directions lead to cocaine