I LOVE NEWSPAPER

Just spent a couple of hours reading the paper and it was fantastic, one of the best nights in recent memory. Upstairs, rain sloshing up against the roof and walls of the HOTEL, self reclined on the couch snuggled under a comforter, one hand in madras pant pocket massaging meat: what's not to love? It's been a while since I've read through the Tuesday Times straight through: classes seem to get in the way of my education (har har). For a good while last year when I was living in Brooklyn and commuting to Midtown, I took great pride in reading every sq. inch of the Times, even the boring ass Thursday supplements (Circuits: ZZZZZs). I'd start the commute off with the World Business Section, then move onto Sports and the regular Business section. You know, save the juicy violent stuff for later. By the time I'd get to checking how my mutual funds performed the previous day, I'd find myself about to get off at 57th st stop. During lunch, I'd read the Arts section---sometimes I'd do the crossword, but more often not---and start up on A1. The train ride back, I'd usually be asleep, drool pooled at the corner of my lips and a protuberant knob of a thing sandwiched between thigh and pantleg. I'd somehow wake myself up a few stops before my stop and read the A1 jumps before getting off the train, newspaper positioned in front of crotch so as to shield the eyes of the subway passengers from the blinding eminence of said protuberant knob of a thing. At home, I'd finish section A and the supplemental before heading off to bed. For some reason, I was really proud of being able to polish off the whole paper each and every day without fail.
But, now that I'm in LA and in classes and/or working late into the night, I find it harder to finish the paper straight through and I'm sorta ashamed to admit that when I'm too busy w/ school, I sometimes don't even take the paper out of its blue plastic baggie. If I were a cutter, that'd be a good reason for me to cut. I haven't had TV for some time now so the only way I know what's going on in the world is through the paper---I can't stand reading the news on the internet; I need to touch the news---and on those days when I barely make a dent in the Times, I feel like, I don't know, a dickhead. So today was a good day because I read the paper straight through and now I don't feel like a dickhead, speaking of which, the front page picture of Bush made him look like a dickhead. Dickhead dickhead dickhead: that's coming back big time in 05.
LOVE
ALEX