I'm glad I'm not alone.

“I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,” said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. “He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ‘philosophy’ he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.”


It's Not You, It's Your Books [NYT]

I don't think Mike Judge is on the GRE.

I'm not sure how I feel about my creative writing class and here are some reasons why:

1. When we got to class our professor had us write a few paragraphs about each story we read. Two people didn't read them, and he scolded, "This is an advanced class. This isn't accounting. Do you know how many accountants there are? There aren't that many good writers."

2. When we started to actually talk about the stories, our professor made us read them aloud, with each person reading two or three sentences as we went around the room.

3. Our professor told us that "Bartleby the Scrivener" was just like Office Space. Sadly, this is the second time I've heard a professor say that, but the first one wore a lot of gel in his hair.

I don't "do" full screen.

Last night I rented The Departed from the Hollywood Video down the street from my apartment. When I got to Kristin's I realized I had accidentally picked up a FULL SCREEN copy, and I was really upset and said that we couldn't watch it. On my walk home from her apartment - after I had had a half bottle of cheap red wine (it was $6.99 at The Market Place, and, considering their price inflation, it was really about $4.99 at Normal Grocery Store) - I went back to Hollywood and told them I had to exchange the DVD. I felt bad for about five minutes - I even said, "I'm sorry, I feel really snobby about this, but I just can't watch a full screen DVD. Ha ha!" But then I realized I was talking to a grown man with a poorly-groomed goatee who had so much product in his hair that it was all standing on its end, and I immediately stopped caring.