Excerpt from "The Unedited Holiday Diary"

"Today is my last day at work before going on vacation. You can imagine the inertia. I've pretty much just sat at my desk, motionless, for the past six hours, neither giving nor receiving. There was a brief break for lunch because V came over and was all: 'I hear they have a new dressing at the salad bar.' This made everyone's heads jerk back in alarm, as if a loud, piercing wail had just banshee'd its way through the office, like the day before when the fire alarm went off (thank you very little you miserable lawyers on the fifth floor who can't seem to monitor the toasting of your bagels!!!!) and it was the kind of sound that makes your mind howl, you know, like the cries of a thousand dead souls."

Excerpt from "My Affair with Transdermal Patches"

"It all started when I woke up with crippling back pain. It was just like that time back in school when the gang thought it'd be a hoot to give me local anesthetic and plunge industrial-grade acupuncture needles into 'funny' sensory locations on my brain's topography. And sure enough, when I woke up everything was in black-and-white and my knees were itchy and my back hurt and I couldn't get the taste of wild strawberries out of my mouth. Ha ha."

Excerpt from "Hydrocephalia"

"I'm printing up five-dollar bills in the basement and I see Big-Head stick his big head into the room and says, 'Hey man,' or bro or whatever he said instead of my forgotten name, he says, 'Bro, I'm about to hit the town with some stone-cold foxes. You think you could print up a little batch for me?' And I say something like, 'These fine ladies like the lean green?' And Big-Head says, 'You know it' or 'Word' and I cry out: 'No! No, Big-Head! Get out and go away!' and we're both in tears as he stomps back up the stairs. I hate when I get like that, but sometimes I need a project that's just for me, you know, and the way I see it, basement time is me-time."

Excerpt from "Lick My Literary ***, You Vile *****"

Do you have the swollen cojones to argue with science? Do you have the rampant cruelty to resign me to an empty life of customer service instead of placing me in a nicely-furnished rec room and allowing me to excrete one magical and PROFITABLE novel after another? Don't you think I'll cut you a deal? Don't you think my agent/proctologist will slide a healthy percentage your way? A healthy percentage which should be sufficient enough for you to retire early and turn your wasted, useless life into a distant memory as you blast away at your already-withering brain with expensive sex and narcotics? Allowing me to move in and take your place as Emeritus or whatever and run the Creative Writing department with an iron fist, brainwashing the other feeble-minded "writing students" into doing my wicked and ribald bidding, turning office hours into a nonstop nightmare of violent sin, faculty meetings into a Caligulan cesspool? Don't you think it's a WIN-WIN SITUATION you vile, stinking puppets? Don't you think it's time STANFORD UNVERSITY accepted its miserable fate and accepted me as its new master? WELL DON'T YOU???"