The Grade Keeps Increasing and My Brakes Are Nearly Shot

Today I realized that I reached my intellectual peak in 1993. I'm not sure it has been downhill ever since -- I recall plateaus with the occasional rise along the way -- but the overall trend has not indicated an ascent to greatness. Bearing this depressing realization in mind, I have decided that I need to do a series of things to get back on track:

• Grow my remaining hair as long as I can
• Start smoking again
• Curl up on the sofa with a pint of Ben and Jerry's chocolate cookie dough ice cream and watch my tapes of MTV's 120 Minutes while fantasizing about Sarah McLachlan's dreamy raven-hued tresses
• Wear baseball caps backwards, even on "formal" occasions
• Read a lot of Pierre Bourdieu
• Listen to Pavement incessantly
• Spend long hours conversing about international literature on the sly
• Take a trip to the Pacific Northwest
• Eat more microwaveable meals
• Exercise less
• Live in a place where I can where chamois shirts
• Wear chamois shirts
• Start smoking again
• Wait, did I already mention that?
• Start smoking again

I'm hoping that, if I stick resolutely to these vows, that my chronic depression will turn into chronic productivity. Even better, when Sleater-Kinney comes on the scene again, I'll be ready to clip every mention of the band for my files. It would make the chapter I'm writing a lot easier if I'd done so the first time around.

Agonizing Dilemma

Should I become a Kyle Busch hater? I refused to become a Jeff Gordon hater, back in my halcyon days of the previous decade. But perhaps I should manifest my generational loyalties by ruing the changing of the guard. Plus, something about Kyle's nose bothers me. Oh, and, though I know I haven't told you this, I was a huge NASCAR fan in my childhood. I remember Richard Petty and David Pearson dueling down the last lap at Daytona like it was yesterday. I was for 43 back then, before a certain self-satisfied mediocrity tarred the number's name.