King Dork

Normal: lacking in taste, compassion, understanding, kindness, and ordinary human decency.

Monty Python: A documentary series on everyday life in Great Britain.

High School is the penalty for transgressions yet to be specified.

Maybe they notice me wincing whenever I hear them say it, but I don't know: there are all sorts of reasons I could be wincing. Life is a wince-a-thon.

There's always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.

Girls have all the same parts, basically, and so much of how they look depends on the attitude, expectations, and obsessions of those who are looking at them.

D and D: a role-playing game played only by very cool guys.

Sam Hellerman is a genius!

I was starting to realize the extent of the problem here: everyone is always lying to each other, and even when they're trying to tell the truth, it can still be misleading or wrong. In fact, it almost always is wrong from at least one angle. I mean, the truth is really just a better class of lie.

It was more like an abortion than music, but he got a wildly enthusiastic response from the crowd. Well, we're all pro-choice out here in Hillmont, after all.

I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way.

I felt bad because Little Big Tom came in while we were making the tape and was like over the moon because he thought we were interested in his music. We had to humor him and listen to him deliver around six hundred speeches about fusion and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Chicano and Latino influences on pretentious jazzy pseudorock. I think it was probably the happiest I'd ever seen him. And I also felt bad about the fact that after he left we kind of made fun of the funny way he said Latino, like he was the Frito Bandito or something. I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way.

You can make something mean anything you want. And you can spend a great deal of time and effort choosing your words and allusions and quotations carefully and hardly anyone will even notice or get it anyway.

1975 was a great year for rock and roll, and don’t believe anyone who tells you different.

Life is a wince-a-thon.

And as for you, Holden, old son: if you happen to meet my body coming through the rye, I'd really appreciate it if you'd just stand aside and get out of my fucking way.

No one does antimaterialism better than multigazillionaire rock stars.

I'm not any religion myself, but for the record, I'm pretty sure I do believe in God. It's just a feeling I have. I can't prove it, but since when are you supposed to prove a feeling? God is the only situation where they expect you to do that. Plus, God embarrasses people. Which I totally enjoy.

Communication is pointless and we're all doomed.

When I dream of how it would be if I were suddenly transformed into the kind of guy that does not repulse the females of our species, I don’t necessarily think of any particular girl. Pick

The entire second-period sophomore girls’ PE class thought my balls were uniquely and supremely beneath contempt. Great.

What he meant was that he had fixed some vegetarian slop with lentils and bean-curd lumps and weird-tasting fake cheese, and that we were welcome to have a crack at choking some of it down. So Sam Hellerman hightailed it out of there. Lucky bastard.

Now, if this were a murder mystery, and I were a weird Belgian guy with a big mustache, this is the point where I would suddenly stop dead, drop my tiny glass of chocolate liqueur, and say something like “But no! But I have been an imbecile! Imbécile!” And then you’d have to wait another fifty pages or so to find out exactly what the hell I had been talking about. But I won’t do that to you. The salutation

You start by allowing your own world to be corrupted by their warped values, and then you gradually start using their sadistic methods and eventually end up adopting bits of their sick ideology. And even then, when you have become just like them, they will eventually turn on you anyway. Normal people are savage beasts.

The guy who wrote The Doors of Perception got off way easier, though, especially since the worst band in the history of the world, the Doors, named themselves after it. He has a lot to answer for.

And believe me, you don’t want to be around Migraine Mom. I strongly recommend avoiding that subject.

I’m a very spiritual person,” she likes to say, for instance. Like when she’s explaining how she hates religion and all those who practice it. Well, okay, if it makes you feel better, Carol.

I mean, everything beats me, even twos and threes.