I bought $80 worth of magazines last night. $40 were work magazines, and $40 were a bunch of literary journals I bought so I can hold a conversation with my sister. And because I went out to dinner on Thursday night with a bunch of girls and the only book we had in common was "And I Don't Want to Live This Life," by Debra Spungeon. So I need to catch up. I was a little bit conflicted about buying "The Believer" because it's such a typical play on my part, but I saw the actual pages, with that beautiful typography, I couldn't help myself. It's just a handsome, welcoming page. And it reminded me of when Pat Walsh gave me the first issue of McSweeney's. A genuinely exciting moment! So I'll catch up. But I'm also reading "The Longest Journey" by E.M. Forster as part of my Forster kick. Which gives me no dinner-table currency at all. I was in a car for four hours on Wednesday with three co-workers with whom I had nothing in common, and I was kind of kicking myself for reading all this obscure crapola that I can only really talk about with our renaissance-mailroom-guy.