Ok, I have no credibility on the tough issues. But I do have less than half the carbs of my competition.

[technicolorsun]

Slowly, I will change my life into a series of mindless distractions. I'll stare out the window of my room onto the backyard, and the lighting will be just so, just right so I won't have to see my own reflection in the glass and be forced to realize that here I am. I. I am. And in the mornings I can run past the middle school and think about how far I've come (15 minutes out) and how far I've got to go (20 minutes back, 60 years if I'm lucky, nowhere in particular), and at night I can sleep and dream in Cinemascope, catching poorly dubbed versions of my life as the in-flight movie on the red-eye back to Alameda in the morning. In the afternoon I can take a few tokes and sit next to my dad's record player and listen to My Bloody Valentine and it's almost the same thing as dreaming, you can't understand a word the singer is saying so when the guitars sound like a vast sea of tossed red velvet sheets underneath you can make up your own spiraling narrative, and when side A ends you don't have to get up and turn the record over, you can just listen to the rhythmic brushing of stylus on spinning vinyl while you stare out the window at a woman pushing a stroller down the sidewalk.

But enough - I finished Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five a couple of weeks ago, both were awesome and mindblowing, anybody who tells you otherwise hates you. Then I managed to start three other very cool books all around the same time but I can only really read one at a time and the winner is Dave Eggers, sexy man of literature that he is. I think maybe I could be hot if I started lifting weights. I think maybe that would be nice, so maybe I'll look into it.. Or maybe I'll just sit on the porch and get high. It's so funny, being eighteen.