In other words, every cent the French government spent on guns for the Americans was another centime it would not have to spend on butter for the sta… - Sarah Vowell

Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.

If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre — the poems, the poems! — in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco.

You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.