June 27th, 2007

Flurgh

I am going to have braces for the rest of my life, and in the after-life I am going to have a retainer. This morning I put a dead bug in a Ziploc and brought it to work with me. The top layer of skin peeled off my nose. I am reading 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme, and it has so flumoxed me that when I came across the line, “Several waves of smickering washed over the class,” I had no idea whether that was a typo for snickering or a new word that I didn’t know (not in the dictionary, except an obsolete usage from Dryden that doesn’t seem to suit) or else a joke. Still unsure, despite “Stop that smickering!” in the next line. Argh.

Barthelme makes me question my IQ. Also it is very hot, and I am now at the library and very cold, and so my system is all confused.

How can you live in the northeast?
RR