Exhibit 18.8

Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously

So I have nothing to say about Chris Higgs's chapbook from Publishing Genius other than that you should order it and read it and enjoy it. I'd read through it online once or twice, but it's the sort of text you want to hold in your hands. It's the sort of text you have to strangle. Order/print your own here.

Read online, well, right here I suppose. It beats whatever I'd usually write about. Beats it good.

Exhibit 16.9

So I want to get a new laptop. And by 'new' laptop I mean 'a' laptop. I've been using a desktop since I sold my first and only notebook computer after college because, in the days before WiFi, I never took it off my desk. I mean ever. Sam, my old college roommate, will vouch for this. I literally connected it to an external monitor and never moved it except for the times I spilled soda on it. This was a lot of times.

(Days before WiFi? After college? You may be asking yourself how old I am. Old. Way older than I have any right to be).

Now, the trouble is that I've always been a fairly loyal PC user. Not because I love PCs so much, I just sort of hate Macs. Now, hold on, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking Adam, I use a Mac. We've met each other. You know I use a Mac. Do you hate me?

If your name is Dave, the answer is sort of. Otherwise, no, I love you. Please don't be offended by anything I have said or will say. I know you're thinking this because everyone I know uses a Mac with the exception of two or three people who are, like me, irrationally committed in their opposition.

So naturally I'm now considering getting a Mac.

It all started when I realized that I believed my blind opposition to one company was somehow a noble and morally necessary struggle while other people's blind faith in the same company was crazy and dumb. This is also how I feel about my favorite band versus your favorite band. Oh, and religion. I think it's Apple's fault for forcing me into such dichotomies (it's certainly not mine). From their Mac Guy vs. PC Guy marketing campaign to their oh-so-very-careful-and-brilliant branding, they seem to be making decisions based on what will infuriate me.

I mean, I hate the Mac Guy and love the PC Guy. I don't want to be the Mac Guy. I want to be James Bond (who, as a fictional character, apparently endorses the Vaio I'm also considering). Now that's branding I can get behind. It's the same reason I own a Lotus Espirit that turns into a submarine.

I'm telling myself that I could buy a Mac, try it out, and sell it if I don't like it. Or I could buy one and then run Windows on it. Or I could buy one, get an iPhone which are also awesome, get Apple TV, put a sticker on my car, grow a goatee, hang out at the coffee shop, and live a happy life where I cede the troublesome business of having an identity to a company which is really good at picking music for their commercials.

See? See how hard it is to give up the fight? To realize there is no fight? No one I know who uses a Mac is that guy, they're all people who, among many other fine qualities, seem to be happy in their computer purchase. I'm the bad guy here.

The worst part is, every single person I know who has purchased a Mac loves it and will never go back. With anything else, this would convince me to give it a try, but then I got to Apple's website, look at their photos of Jack Johnson listeners, and get cold feet again.

Damn it. If the next time you see me I'm carrying a new Macbook, you have every right to hate me. Just know that you won't hate me more than I'll hate myself.

Help.

Exhibit 14.16

I just watched the movie Wanted and thought I should tell you how it's the awesomest. (Before you say anything, just know that I was determined to watch this movie since the moment I saw them talk about bending bullets in the trailer. No, I don't care what you think that says about me. Yes, I'm comfortable with where I stand on bullet bending).

Sure, it's thoroughly, thoroughly terrible but in what some would call the best. way. ever. Not me, but some. I just thought it was a pretty good way of being terrible.

Every aspect of it from its ludicrous plot to its absurd anti-physics to its questionable moral code is done with such a kinetic clash between unwinking sincerity and knowing gusto that it's hard to imagine what the filmmakers thought while making it. Somehow it ends up being neither a stolid and pretentious action movie (like any American John Woo movie) nor a self-consciously capital-M Movie (like Running Scared or Shoot 'Em Up). In fact, it's as if at no point did anyone ask any questions, especially not any questions which might have led to the appearance of intention or judgment.

I guess I'm just excited to see a movie so awful yet without one iota of irony to protect itself. There are so many hilarious lines to illustrate this, but I'd hate to ruin it for you so I'll just give you one.

Morgan Freeman says, "We take our orders from the loom."

Note: Nothing in the above line is in any way a metaphor. There is literally a loom which tells them to kill people who are going to do bad things in the future yet this loom never gets explained or questioned.

Also, no one is ashamed of the loom.

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