Ways to read a boring textbook: 1) 1st chapter

Ways to read a boring textbook: 1) 1st chapter and last chapter only, 2) hold it upside down and laugh through each page, 3) read chapter titles only, 4) let Grover eat it, 5) pict

ure failing the class if you don't finish the textbook, 6) split up the task of reading with friends, 7) bribe them if necessary, 8) skim chapters, 9) read every third word only,

10) fool the teacher into thinking you actually read your assignment by using words like "subsequently" and "paradigm" in your homework, 11) just smile & nod in class, 12)

12) Howl like a wild beast. Wait what? how dumb. You really are a hapless student aren't you kid? You should probably choose the above answers if you think this shit will fly.

Whiskey and coke. His speech the next day was in Gibberish. Turkish coffee was served so he could stand up straight. Nobody understood a word he spoke. He coughed 618 times.

I counted. At the thirty-fourth cough I offered him some lozenges. He took one and spoke in Gibberish. no one in the board but me knew that he thought they tasted like

fear, the fear of the flu. I was interested to see what that tasted like, so I took a lozenge and put it on my tongue. As it dissolved I tasted sweat and tears and phlegm. My own.

Was this the last taste I'd ever experience? "Don't be so dramatic," said my mother, who was dead. How was she speaking to me? Ah, I see, I was also dead now. "Hi, mom," I said.

"Hi, Son," she said, "Let's go home." With my mother in the drivers seat, and myself riding shotgun, we drove that mini-van far out into the long lost suburbs of forever.