Since I got the majority of my work done for my fulltime job of a summer class that they call Intensive Second-Year Spanish, I figured I'd pretty much just go ahead and enjoy the day fully. And oh, let me tell you, it's been an enjoyable day. Between EG and I going to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place which felt the need to not just serve up food but, rather, serve up some food to also going to Border's and picking up a couple of Philip K. Dick books (Flow My Tears... and A Scanner Darkly) along with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (an author I very recently talked about)... To then finishing up Chapter 3 of The Book. So, all-in-all, a very good day.

Anyhoo, a segment from the fairly short chapter:

I remember that I had just finished up the last final exam, thus signaling the end of my junior year of college. And, to celebrate, some friends and I went to a bar to, big surprise, get drunk. By the third drink, my four housemates had all found companions. Feeling bored, but not ready to call it a night, I went and sat by a bar. I ended up talking to a girl that sat next to me. She was, if I remember, a waitress. At Hooters. She was very pretty and incredibly nice, if not lacking a bit in... Well. She was nice.

Somehow, I got talking about Mice and Men. Not even sure why anymore, but it came up. I went on a lengthy little discourse about something or other. After I was done, the girl said that she was so sad when the little boy's pet mouse was eaten by the neighbor's Golden Retriever. I was speechless. I don't even think I responded. She said she had to go to the bathroom, asked me if I'd "be a dear" and get her a drink for when she got back.

I was trying to flag down the bartender, when I heard a soft, sweet voice from my left say, and I remember it exactly, "You got a real winner there, buddy."

And I turned to see who it was. What I saw was a thin girl dressed, fairly elegantly for a bar, in a long, thin satin navy blue dress. The thin straps drew attention to her soft white shoulders. Her small hands took hold of a shot sitting in front of her at the bar, and she drank it, and slammed it--softly, somehow--on the bar counter. I asked this girl, who didn't appear to have looked at me yet, "What?"

She turned her head to me, and smiled the kindest smile that I'd seen outside of a movie. Her eyes, which seemed almost an indigo color, looked straight into mine. "It's your own choice if you decide on breasts over brains tonight."

Not the best segment to choose, to be sure, but it's not a very lengthy chapter and I'm told that an entry without a snippet is just mean, torturous, and barbaric. So, there's that. The full chapter, as usual, can be grabbed in HTML, DOC, or PDF forms over at the writing segment of my lovely little corner of the Intarweb: http://www.polycat.net/fiction.

And now, the greatest thing I've seen all day:



but I won't lose no sleep on that