An excerpt from "The wall of the sky The wall of the eye" by Jonathan Lethem, brought to you by www.Nerve.com

Q. If "going to school is my job" how come i'm not getting paid?
A.Supposedly you're getting paid in smarties.

Wednesday with Lenka

"That scarf makes you look like a Brethren" she said, her thick Czech accent making her sound like a female Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Or a smurf."
"A smurf?" I thought. "That doesn't even make sense..."
I didn't care, but I also wanted her to know I didn't care.
"I don't care" I said, hands on hips.
"Hey, I'm just being honest." She said and reaching up to adjust my head scarf
"Pull it up, like this"
"I'll look like I'm from "Little House on the Prarie" I pouted
"Little who?"

Monday with Lenka

"God, your image changed." she said with a little laugh
"Huh? What do you mean?"I asked
"You're such a baker now, what happened to sexy Madge?"
Now I gave a little laugh "she died the first time I had to wake up at 3AM."

Hey Cow!

As recently as last weekend I went on a road trip to a wild foods festival located on the West coast of the South Island. I went with a good group of friends, one of whom, Heidi, taught the rest of us how to play "Hey Cow". The way to play is, you spot an oncoming herd of cows in a field, roll down your window and yell "HEYYYY COOOOWWW" as loud as you possibly can. Then you count the number of cow's that turned to look at you. Whoever gets the most cows wins.
Heidi demonstrated the game for us, her hollar rewarded with 6 out of 12 bored looking cow faces.
What a great game! It was my turn next. I was nervous. What if they didn't look? I cleared my throat in preparation and I rolled down the window. "HEy cow?" I asked, apprehensive.
2 cows looked up. "Good effort" Heidi said sympathetically. "No, no, no, that was crap! You didn't even try!" cried Roger. The others agreed, it was a poor effort. Oh well.
"Let's do it all at once and see if we can get all of them to look" Heidi Suggested. We rolled down the windows and everyone, even the driver, leaned over to get a closer range in which to yell.
An unsuspecting herd came up just after the hill. "HEY COW!" We screamed in unison.
one
two, three, four cow heads turned. Six, Seven, Eight Ni...Oh!...uh.
A rather rotund woman stood amongst the cows in the field. Her glare was not pretty.
"Er..." Roger said. The rest of the car was silently suprised and embarassed.

The woman standing in the field watched the car drive on down the highway till it was out of sight. "Lunatic kids" .

Things Dallas

Things that are Dallas:

1)Dallas,Texas
2)Dallas Tamaira, lead singer of Fat Freddy's
3)Dallas Castle in Scotland
4)Dallas, T.V. series
5)Dallas,George Mifflin-11th U.S. Vice President under James K. Polk