There ain't many times in my life that I've picked up a book and then read it. Most of the time, I just tear off the cover and roll a cigarette with it. Then I rip out all the other pages until there's only one page left in my hand. Then I get all misty-eyed and warbly like a choleric child because I start feeling bad about destroying another man's hard work.

     I almost did that with a book the other day called The 5-Minute Iliad by some feller named Greg Nagan. But for some reason, after I tore the cover off, I couldn't muster the strength to tear out any more of the other pages. It could have been because I was drunk. It could have been because I had swallowed a whole bottle of medication pills that I found inside a tightly locked Mercedes Benz last Wednesday.

     My point is that since it was a Wednesday, that meant I had nothing to do until the next Wednesday, so I sat down and read whatever words of this book that I could understand. Surprisingly, I understood most of what I saw and I happened to have a good time while doing it.

     Sure, it could have been because of Magan's outlandish caricature of that mean old Scrooge in his parody of A Christmas Carol. Or it could have been Logan's dead-on imitation of Homer's violent ramblings in The Iliad. Or it could have been because I kept releasing a whole slew of funny-sounding gases out of my rectum that day.

     As the day continued and I kept laughing and having a good time and paying attention to the funny stories that poked high- and low-brow fun at all the classic books that I never got around to reading, I started to sober up. In other words, I started to become more aware of my surroundings and the current state of my affairs.

     This was not something that I was necessarily hoping to get accomplished that day. So I got all mad at myself for all of the years that I wasted doing dumb things like working at a plant and pouring dirt down my throat and I started ripping pages out of the book.

	Above: See that trash bag over my shoulder there? In it are all my possessions. I don't appreciate you looking at it like that.

But just pages of stories that I had already read, mind you. For some illicit, retarded reason I'll never know, I preserved the unread portions of that book and kept them tightly rolled up in the cuff of my right pant-leg, where I knew the cops would never find it and the dogs wouldn't whizz on.

     Fortunately for myself and that poor sucker Nagon, I was able to get my hands on a syringe full of orange substance that made my face go numb and my legs dance around like a wooden puppet with the willies. That got me in a reading mood again and I found a cubby-spot to finish that book up.

     As I came closer to the end of Naghan's book, I found that there were a number of books in there that I needed to read so I could better understand how and why Mr. Nathan was making fun of them like he was. That made me wish that I had a library card and that the library hadn't kicked me out permanently for taking a bath in their women's bathroom sink.