this is what happens when meredith's computer crashes and for the second time must be sent to the apple store for repair...this time to the motherboard I think. So many things have happened lately and I promise I will discuss them all at length later its just that i have work to do. I'm only putting this up to keep the account active.

I’m standing here because someone told me I had to. Because mandatory volunteerism makes me a “better citizen." So I shelve books for the sake of the Union. Terrorists can’t stop me from restocking the library. I won’t give them that satisfaction.

But my back and knees hurts from standing and bending to look for the ever-elusive J 45.378 2001…I think it has something to do with psychoanalysis, or sexual dysfunction, they’re right next to each other. The pin on my shirt says “volunteer” but I’d really rather not talk to these people. They keep asking me who wrote that book that they can’t remember the name of… it had a character named “Larry” …if that helps. It doesn’t. And it occurs to me, while I’m not listening to them that people walking by come in because it’s warm here…that and how similar westerns and romance novels are. To change one to the other you just replace “penis” with “gun”... That’s all Freud ever did. They’re even right across from each other, lining the way to check out…like candy and tabloids in a supermarket. Only there is no way to escape these…and I have to rearrange them. But don’t have time to dwell on this.

I have three carts of grocery-store quality novels to organize, the ones from the “Latin Lovers” series have peppers on the front to indicate to the readers how “spicy” they are… Monks used to copy religious and philosophical texts by hand in intricate calligraphy. What we have left of the classics is what was worth the effort… Harlequin publishes almost weekly. Maybe reading doesn’t make you smart. Maybe it just makes you literate…mostly.

The more I put these books away, the more there seem to be, the more I don’t want any one to ever read them. The more I think censorship isn’t such a bad thing…if I could just get the government to ban poorly written books... Then someone comes up to me who can’t remember the name of the guy that wrote that play…they can’t remember the play either only that it had something to do with a prince and a skull he was talking to…Things certainly are rotten in the state of Denmark…

It’s at this moment that I want to throw the books in my hand at him. I want his paper cuts to sting for days. I want identification cards for morons. A caste system based on intelligence. Radical social Darwinism. Only the smart survive. I want to run out of the library and set fire to the whole damn building. Go to Wal-Mart and torch it too. Round-up anyone who ever said they liked the movie better. Take out a school board meeting that’s planning to cut music appreciation to save the football team. Fuck the football team. They’re dead already.

This boy waiting for an answer, unaware of how he’s brought down society in a single breath— one day he’ll have an MBA and a six figure salary and I’ll be shelving books to pay off student loans because I wanted to be an English major. An intellectual. Because for some reason I thought I could be a writer but never figured on having a back-up plan. He’ll have one. He might have two. But then again if the next generation of world leaders is like this boy then maybe global domination won’t be as hard as I’ve been led to believe by playing Risk and history class. Maybe I can take Siberia. Then the world would be a better place. A Utopia…

Only no matter how many time I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra or watch Fight Club I can’t do it. As much as I want to lock them all in and make the world a better place with equal parts gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate I stop myself. I’d be a disappointment to Nietzsche. No one’s ever asked me if I know Tyler Durden I stand there politely and tell him that it’s Hamlet and he can find in the 800’s under Shakespeare, he’ll even find the Cliff Notes there…after all this for the sake of the Union. Terrorists can’t stop him from being a moron.