Nobody told me, but apparantly Earth Day is now a celebratory holiday. Campus food service put out plates of barbacue fare out by the fish pond, and everybody is just sitting around and chatting. There are banners, and a band is out on the balcony. If our voice mail were working, we doubtless would have received a chipper message about it from Vivian Duran, the consumptive switchboard supervisor. It is like croquet, only small and pathetic, and it doesn't make me want to cry quite as much.

A message to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Why do you have to suck so much? Everybody else makes sense, so you're obviously just not trying hard enough. Although it might be better for you not to try harder. I sure wouldn't want to see what shit you come up with.

What's all this crap about a "critique," anyway? Are you a movie review? I mean, Siskel already got a replacement, so it's not like you're going to make any money doing it. Or are you going to bring in your obvious old-time Chrisitain values and say that money is bad? Maybe you should get out more, talk to some other books and get some perspective on things. Epistemology will only get you so far, and in my house it'll just get you kicked out. Maybe if you weren't so "in German" and everything. But no, you had to go and sprach Deutch. Really mature, you putz.

Are you aware that you serve no purpose? Nobody reads you to learn anymore. You are certainly rather heavy, and usually bound with stiff blue covers, so I could use you as a weapon if it came down to it, but then, if I had to, I could use my ass as a weapon.

I used to keep a picture of you by my bed. I used to snuff in the fumes from between your pages, rub your blistering protective plastic library layer, and reach my ecstasy. I used to respect you, look at you as my equal. You seemed to solve so many problems, and now you just keep making new ones. Please die, and take your foul-smelling transcendental logic with you, priori I break your nose.

Did you know that your are badly written? Yes. Your paragraphs, though seemingly full of meaning, crumble under any scrutiny. It may take six perusals to pin you down, but once you're down, boy, you don't have too much to say. Figuring you out is like learning Ugandan just so I can talk to the guy in the dry cleaning store. You drain most of my time, and in the end you're just a regular guy. Now I know why Hegel hated you. Why don't you get a job filing insurance claims?

And if you could be so kind, Critique, would you give me a topic for my seminar essay? It's getting desperate here.

Lecteur, c'est peut-être la haine que tu veux que j'invoque dans le commencement de cet ouvrage! Qui te dit que tu n'en renifleras pas, baigné dans d'innombrables voluptés, tant que tu voudras, avec tes narines orgueilleuses, larges et maigres, en te renversant de ventre, pareil à un requin, dans l'air beau et noir, comme si tu comprenais l'importance de cet acte et l'importance non moindre de ton appétit légitime, lentement et majestueusement, les rouges émanations? Je t'assure, elles réjouiront les deux trous informes de ton museau hideux, ô monstre, si toutefois tu t'appliques auparavant à respirer trois mille fois de suite la conscience maudite de l'Éternel! Tes narines, qui seront démesurément dilatées de contentement ineffable, d'extase immobile, ne demanderont pas quelque chose de meilleur à l'espace, devenu embaumé comme de parfums et d'encens; car, elles seront rassasiées d'un bonheur complet, comme les anges qui habitent dans la magnificence et la paix des agréables cieux.

-Compte de Lautémont

Reader, it is perhaps hatred that you would have me invoke at the outset of this work! Who told you that you wouldn't sniff it up, bathed in innumerable pleasures, as much as you could want, with your proud nostrils, wide and thin, upturning your belly, like a shark, in the beautiful black air, as if you understood the importance of this act and the equal importance of your legitimate appetite, slow and majestic, the red fluxes? I assure you, they will delight the two unformed holes of your hideous muzzle, O monster, if at first you always set yourself to inhale three thousand times the horrible awareness of the Eternal! Your nostrils, which will be limitlessly dilated with sublime contentment, with unmoving ecstasy, will ask nothing better of space, having become embalmed as with perfume and incense; for, they will be satisfied with a perfect happiness, like the angels who live in the magnificance and peace of the pleasant skies.

-Compte de Lautrémont

Word to the wise: Anton Chekhov

These Camels are causing all of my problems. Not the living ones--those are cool. It's those tubes with tobacco in them, the little orange filter with white splash-pattern specks, the curling paper as the cinder rides against gravity, and the smoke, oooh, the smoke . . . all my problems. Why am I running out of money? I spent hundreds of dollars on cigarettes in the past year. Why am I always tired? Smoke is fucking with my oxygen intake. Why do I nevertheless stay up later than midnight? The seratonin is confused. Why don't I care about anything? It's not as good as a cigarette.

This is also why I have nothing to say, ever, when I'm writing: I'm inside, and thus not smoking.

I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. People, I'm not kidding. I really don't.

"Look at me, I'm a blog entry."
-The above blog entry was written by Dave Eggers

I should very much like a snort of Adderal right now. How delightful would it be to blow congealed blue powder out of my nose for a few days, to grind my teeth helplessly despite the water I might drink, to experience distate in regarding food of any kind, and to have great bouts of wonder at the spectacle of ants like Euclidean points turned into a spectacular diagram of Maxwell's equations, bursting from all points onward to infinity, scrambling over the tiny grooves in the pavement, getting bogged down in the dusty pebbles, staring blankly at their perverse existence with a quietly posed question on their rapidly twitching mandibles, for crushing. La.

Behold speaks the sign, and it is too late to heed its message in any useful way. It really says, "you are a jackass." It was designed by Russian surrealists in an ironically ironic statement protosting the Danish pop invasion. They trusted in numbers and were disappointed. Freaky Wedding by a good five paces. Bland up to his ears, but a good runner. Reports have come in from Athens, they've decided on the shape of the phantom letter and it looks something like a mouse on fire. Twist, kneel, revive. Then suddenly a pair of disembodied sunglasses, pure reflecting surface and no frame, floated over and crashed the party, drinking more punch than most men can without becoming punch. The guy in the overalls gave them the nod, and they danced most appropriately, given their social standing. All were delighted. The clock struck three, and it was time for the night watchmen to poke his head in. The flashlight struggled to get a grip on the mass of vibrating slime in the south-east corner, then inverted and blinded the poor man, who was advised to mediately seek a doctor. The draperies combusted, having previously been dipped in sulfur to celebrate the occasion, and the Spaniard contingent rejoiced with great plosives and weirdly accented vowells. The mailman threw a missive through the parlor window; though a great partier himself, he didn't like the looks of this scene; and the letter sank diligently, aware of its duty, and landed slyly and precariously on the least crowded edge. "Check it out," cried Lady DeLaune, "he's barracking." And indeed he was.

There were, however, a few more vapid guests, who had never heard anything played without a hot mama beat, and they missed the reference entirely. The soirée ended nonchalantly on an unharmonious chord.