From Seth: The following is a fully fictional, made-up “manifesto”, written by me, which I am pretending was written by a fictional version of my real-life friend Ron. (got that?) Ron and I often talk about our fictional past (often the two of us were together on some grand adventure which, due to our age or simple pure human limitation, is impossible); the following is my own imaginings about what “fictional Ron” may write if he were to write a manifesto. Warning: high levels of absurdism.
Why I am Duty-Bound to Eradicate Humanity
By Ron Gutshall
An essay (containing a manifesto) in 8 parts,
encompassing 44 sections and 12 chapters,
utilizing photos of numerous dogs,
official government communiqués,
celebrity quotes, various lists,
and at least one swath of hair (taped).
Includes the bonus chapter,
“My Life on the Fringe: How Nazi Germany
Got Me to Finally Give Up Diapers”
Written between January 1953 and April 1992
Chapter One
Part One
Section One
Upon Looking Into Marx’s Bedpan
First and foremost, allow me to posit that I am not duty-bound to destroy humanity through some Holy divination, a Godly calling, a divine message, a spiritual mission, a message from beyond, or any other such hot dogging claptrap. My mission is clear and wholly realized, yet it rises not from any pre-conceived notions or pre-existing texts, but instead, from the wallowing swamp of my own mind. It is this writer’s opinion that our best and most true ideas are those which spring from what Plato would call “the world of Forms”, or that “otherness” which is an ether, the blank of our own souls. I do not wish harm unto all of humanity because I have learned in some hallowed halls, or some diptherial classroom that the destruction of humanity is right and good, but rather, through my own observation and gallant yet failed attempts to ingratiate myself to this “race”, that this “race” is altogether bad. Or, said another way, the only way humanity can rise to it’s clearly immense potential is through a thorough, complete, and painful destruction. I shall show the evidence of this throughout this text, as well as lay out a detailed plan for said destruction, as well as including a complete list of everything I eat (how I do hate the guttural requirement of victuals!) and an occasional complaint about whichever Avon catalogue I am currently and voraciously perusing.
To understand humanity’s need to be destroyed, we must first fully comprehend Marx, especially his theories on Labor Unions, as well as (and probably more importantly) his conception of the Ideal State. While it can never be said Marx was a prune-eater
[editor’s note: much text is missing here. Scholars disagree as to exactly how much is missing, but most estimates put it at between 112 and 123 pages. The content of these pages can only be guessed at, but the most interesting scholarly discussions can be found in the books Gutshall’s Last Stand: Jurisprudence and Art in Ron Gutshall’s Main Texts by Marrianne Luftoff, and Ron Gutshall’s Newer Deal by Ivan Mefoot. We now pick up the text where it is next available.]
there being, obviously, no reason to discredit the McCoys in the whole fracas, nonetheless the Hatfields displayed a cunning sense of the Historical in every action they performed; all this is neither here nor there, however, in our larger discussion of the origins of Jazz as they relate to modern-day biology, which is, in turn, neither here nor there in our larger discussion of my theory that ‘exit wounds’ as they relate to forensic science are a myth and in fact do not and have never existed. It is my contention (which I think I have proved in section 19, “Gandhi and Planetariums”) that everything which enters the human body stays inside the human body, whether it be a bullet, a sword, or a delicious bowl of Grape Nuts. Personally, after having consumed a delicious bowl of Grape Nuts—which I do with an alarming frequency—I have never once seen it come back out. In addition, I have been shot over three-hundred times (precisely 314 as of this writing) and have never experienced a so-called “exit wound”. And need I remind anyone of the story I related in section 5 (“Sex on the Beach and Then Some”) of the single passion-filled evening I spent with Julie Andrews, and the horrid results which ensued? Far from suggesting this is all some pointless government conspiracy, I posit that the “exit wound myth” is a prime example of humanity’s towering idiocy, it’s predilection for making wild assumptions, and the faulty logic capacity of our tiny brains, which are better suited to eating with a side of Pace brand chunk salsa than actual thinking. Yes, human brains are delicious, but I warn you, do not microwave them.
All of this brings me back to the point of this chapter. Years ago, I invented a product that I believed could save humanity from itself (for a full description of this product, see section 9, “Theories About Atlantis”), however, no company in the world is capable of manufacturing it on the level which would be necessary. In section 9 I called this product Gutshall’s Fast-Growing Arm Gel. However, this product is so multi-faceted, and there are so many ways to use it, that I have been considering different names. I will now list a few of my favorite options:
–The Reverse Blow Torch
–Old Grampy’s Cushion-in-a-Can
–The Symptom-Causer
–A Sliver of Ron Gutshall’s Belly
–Palsy Hat
–Gutshall’s Brown Beaver
–The Incredible Intensifying Powder for Children
–Ass
–The Yelling Room
–The Taste Box
–Rubber Heads & Spines
–Big Freaky Pants
–The Hobo’s Helper
–Saliva Trough
–Oil of Ant
–Crooner Juice
–Gutshall’s Crotch-and-Go
–Community College Locator
–The Automatic Cheese Eater
–Death-Smell in a Bag
–The Itty Bitty Book Lamp
–Charlie Daniels’ Worst Enemy
–Ron’s Mix
–Definitely Not Just a Penis
–Cow Toys
–Living Wigs
–The “Smell This!” 8-Point Self-Help Program
–Ace Snorley’s Unique Perspective
–Long Johns
–Cogs that Hurt You
–Chaps, Hair, and Hammers
–Elixir of Butane
–All Knees and Elbows
–Document Lube
–Gutshall’s Bleeding Chair
–The Redeemer
–Sheets to the Wind
–Plaid Opera Gloves
–Smasher
–“I Want to Kill Everyone” and Other Misheard Song Lyrics: A Novelty Book
–Flesh Plates
–Itchy Drink (includes mug)
–Exploding Toilet
–The Cousin’s Moustache Remover
–The Electrified Robotic Cat
–Quesada’s Deadline Detector
–Straight-up Cyanide
–Sony 19” Color Telekiller
–Sweater-Vest on Fire
–The Forehead Pen for Boys
–Muskrat
–Ron Gutshall’s Totally Effective Rose Killer
–Sleep-Deprivation Puzzles for the Mind
–Chinese Chess
–Soy Goo
–The Wimpy Wand
–Knife Baby
–Thirty Bucks in Dimes
–Ron’s Foot Silencer
–Armenian Radar
–Transparent Digestion Machine
–The Elbow-Operated Arm
–Car-sized Bread Loaf
–The Nietzsche–nator
–The Mississippi Mudslinger
–Andersen’s Marketing Company
–Gutshall’s Elastic Rodent Catapult
–Mournful Dirges
–The Barge Stopper
–The Swallower
–Popcorn and Sardine Pills
–A Large, Unregistered Handgun
–The Poop-Doer
–Where the Infection Starts
–Pangaea
–Vintage Meat Curtains
–Canned Boogers
–Ron’s Pickle Imploder
–Three Girdles
As you can see my options are many, and I will most likely re-introduce this prospect in a later section of this text. While it may initially seem a shame that this product can not, in fact, be manufactured (in large part due to a lack of naturally-occurring Talc in the earth’s upper-crust), I see it as quite the opposite: how fortunate for mankind that they will all get to perish, almost certainly immediately after experiencing intense and debilitating diarrhea. There is no death quite as satisfying as diarrhea death, both to the onlooker and the perishing. The whooshing of the evacuation, the totality of the sudden emptiness, the tearing and sudden ejection of the sphincter, the filling and potential ripping of the pants, all add up to a sensation equaled only by the fuzzy tingle of self-inflicted Appendicitis. I have personally killed four people by inducing massive diarrhea death upon them. One of them—a scamp who used to wander the hard-knock streets and alleyways of Boise, Idaho—went by the name of Gerald Chapcheeks. Gerald Chapcheeks was a first-rate ragamuffin with a penchant for filling his own coffers with my Uncle Ben’s Minute Rice, if you know what I mean. I chased that rapscallion halfway across Idaho in the winter of ’62: him on foot, me on my borrowed Vespa, until neither the wisp of the horizon nor the bile of the halfmoon could hide his stench-ridden overalls from me. When I finally caught him—cowering in a corner of an out-of-the-way Whole Foods, by the lactose-free yogurt, of all places—I was so mad I almost dropped my paperback copy of All Creatures Great and Small. I hovered over his terrified husk and I shook All Creatures Great and Small at him frenetically. It felt as out of place, and yet as powerful, as a Bantu medicine man from Niger wielding a copy of the Four Books of Confucianism at a Medieval serf. Power coursed through me.
Once I had harangued Gerald Chapcheeks out into the parking lot, I immediately induced deathly diarrhea on him. His face was a hilarious mixture of horror and (I surmised) untold regret. As his insides pounded out of him with funny and grotesque noises, his wails of despair caught us a sidelong glance from the teenybopper bagboy inside Whole Foods. As Gerald Chapcheeks slipped loose simultaneously from his bowels and this mortal coil, I couldn’t help but wonder how long I’d be able to squat in his moderately-furnished Boise apartment, and if he kept a satisfying supply of Tab brand cola in his icebox.
Chapter Seven
Part 3
Section 31
(Manifesto, Part 2)
French Fries and Turd-Burglars: One Year in Finland
I am cramped and destitute in this Finnish hellhole. My confidante and constant companion Seth has left again for his monthly transfusion, a process I do not understand, but which is the entire reason we have come to this rancid testicle of a nation. We have been here almost a year, and I rarely leave this boardinghouse, except to take in the occasional ballet, which is the only thing I will say the Finnish are good at. They are certainly not good at food, or ladies-of-the-evening, or haberdashery. Why, once this past December I stepped out onto the cobble-stone avenue merely to purchase a copy of the newest edition of Aamulehti (wherein I wished to find—in the Classifieds—a perhaps moderately priced set of butcher knives) and was immediately toppled by a sprinting urchin who smelled of rosehip and eye snot. I was angry enough to spit sand again, as I did the previous year in Moscow. Well, being as bored as I was (Seth was once again getting his monthly transfusion, a process which apparently takes one week) I followed this odiferous urchin in the hopes of being able to kill him out of sight of the authorities. However, I balked when he entered an opium playground, which in Finland is like an opium den but with slides, and even more whores. I did not want to follow the smelly orphan urchin into the cesspool of delirium, as, four years previous, I had lost my good friend Too-New G’Doo in an opium playground and had been unable to find him for upwards of seven hours, until he revealed himself to be performing self-fellatio in a gypsy nurse’s walk-in closet, nestled amongst the silk-scarves and tiger print leotards. Of course, that had been in Detroit, where opium playgrounds are totally different.
I opted to wait outside for the offending urchin to emerge. Many hours passed, during which time I was forced to trip multiple passers-by because of the scrunched nature of their faces. I detest scrunched faces, as well as faces that appear to be sniffing, or faces resembling the Wimbledon trophy. As I tripped these passers-by (through duty, not for pleasure) I was forced to defend myself occasionally by utilizing my pocket-sized cat-o-nine-tails, much to the hilarious surprise of these Finlanders who insist on yelping in their indecipherable jibber-jabber. I find it not only amusing but frightening that when you whip these Scandinavians viciously about the face and neck, they tend to bleed not blood but an obscure chocolate fondue which is typically known as Ostobloe and hasn’t been prepared properly since Count Basie gave up fonduing for bandleading. Ah, for the good old days!
As dusk ensconced me, it became apparent that either the urchin had escaped out a back door, or had probably been killed inside the opium playground; or, possibly, had been consumed by the vaginal canal of the famed Finnish whore Yum-Yum Sinclair Snowballeater, who was reputed to have a canal large enough to submerge your leg in slightly above the knee-cap, and that is a grown man! I have no doubt such an insubstantial urchin could have disappeared entirely inside such a monstrosity. A worse fate I cannot imagine. Hence, I gave up my vigil (while committing the offending lad’s face to my near-perfect memory, filed under To Be Given a Humiliating Haircut and then Murdered) and walked the city, the smell of their putrid Finlandian cooking assaulting my delicate nostrils, which—mind you—have once smelled the back of Brian Wilson’s knees. I hate Finland like Tony hated Angela. And yes, I mean the sexual subtext.
I came across finally a small café which I remembered Seth and I entering upon first arriving in this fish-eating nation. I found this café, at the time, one of the only acceptable places we had yet seen. Loosely translated, it is called something like Manpants, although my Finnish is about as good as my Norwegian. I steered my significant girth into this shanty.
It was dimly lit, and some inane waltz—probably Strauss, the pedagogue—was playing on the tinny radio. A mere three patrons inhabited the place, at a bar near the fully unnecessary and ideologically disgusting wall-length mirror, which resembled something out of the homogenous bars which litter the landscape of my homeland. As I settled into a corner booth, these three dimly-lit patrons appeared to be having a heated and poorly-designed argument. Of course, this could be owing to my poor Finnish skills, but more than likely it was due to their inclusion in the human race. I will here recreate the argument, as best as my near-perfect memory allows:
Ratty-Haired Fat Lady: I cannot find carrots in my sink again or I may vomit Finnish stew.
Ass-Crack Hanging-Out Man: I did not put carrots in your sink, and if I did, I would read Cezanne in the dark. Harlot!
Cold War-era Hat-Wearer Man: Silence! The parade!
Ass-Crack Hanging-Out Man: What is Finnish stew?
I do not know what these morons were speaking of; I can only guess. Even I do not know what Finnish stew is, and if there was a parade that day, I surely missed it (which is fully possible, since 90% of Finlandians are so tiny I do not even see them). Much against my will, I chuckled aloud at these infidel’s stupidity. Cold War-era Hat Wearer Man heard me, and swiveled quite quickly on his mahogany barstool. “You!” he shouted at me, “Do you find this funny?”
I replied, verbatim, “Surely I do, you non-bespectacled hat-head. In fact, your all-pervasive idiocy reminds me of Americans and turkeys, in that order.”
The hat-wearer—whose sideburns I admit I did envy, they were so lush and full of wriggling life—seemed immediately stunned into submission by my accusation; either that, or I had said something completely different, my Finnish being just as good as my Polish.
Apparently, this tête-à-tête had gained the interest of the hat-wearer’s two friends; they were now off their stools and walking like moustaches toward me (while, oddly, hat-head remained on his stool); it was only once they were walking toward me that I noticed Ass-Crack Hanging-Out man was wearing a yellow cashmere shirt which read across the front, in English, Top Gun, and in smaller letters, on the back, a word whose meaning on the shirt I shall never be able to figure out. It said this: Goose. Color me bewildered.
Both of Cold War hat-head’s protectors walked right up to me, and, pointing their sausage-like fingers in my face, so close I could smell their Triscuity goodness, they proceeded to defend this friend of theirs, as well as continuing to mention Finnish stew and I believe at one point Hollywood Squares. Of course I couldn’t understand a thing, and I was generally highly amused, but I don’t think my spirited laughter was helping to calm down these Chihuahua-esque locals. With every chortle that escaped my lips, they grew only more animated, pointing with more vigor, rebuking me with flying spit and Finnish expletives. I began to back away from them—not out of fear for my safety, mind you—but because they were entertaining me so much, I did not wish to bring out my pocket cat-o-nine-tails and silence their fat cheese faces permanently. However, as I was backing away, I stepped into a hitherto unseen aluminum bucket, which I later discerned had been placed on the floor to catch drops of water from a leak in the shanty’s ceiling. I have rather large feet. A stateside podiatrist once called me a modern marvel, but I still suspect he was stroking my ego.
So my enormous foot was quite well stuck in this ill-placed aluminum bucket. The locals continued to taunt me, but their histrionics now included laughter at me, as I hopped around the shanty on one foot, reaching down with one hand attempting to peel the ludicrous bucket off of me. I now genuinely wished to silence these fools with my pocket whip but was quite too off-balance to do so. The harder I tried to extricate myself from the bucket, the more off-balance I became, and the faster I had to hop. I quickly began to cycle the whole way around the shanty, back to the counter that the three idiots had originally sat at; all three Finnish Fools were now off their stools, pointing at me and now clearly screaming at me about Hollywood Squares. Their faces were red with oxygen deprivation.
I bent over and grasped the counter with one hand, while continuing to reach down with my other and fiddle with the accursed bucket, still being forced to simultaneously hop on my unencumbered foot, lest I lose my balance in front of these nameless Neanderthals. However, despite my most concerted efforts, I simply could not get that confounded aluminum bucket to budge, and my incredulity at the situation was gradually turning to a burning hot anger as I realized three things: one, there did not appear to be anyone actually working at this café, and despite my world-renowned dislike of accepting help of any kind, I would have appreciated a helping hand from some coffee-tossing waitress at that moment; two, the three apple-dashers who were laughing at me were not merely talking about Hollywood Squares, they were actually calling me Hollywood Squares, and the fact that this is actually a rather clever derogatory term for a Westerner, and three, I was becoming quite winded, being nary accustomed to physical activity beyond lashing out with my whip hand, or the slight, five minute heave-ho I usually left for Tanya Two-Hands, my harlot of choice in Phuket.
It was at this moment of heightened ludicrosity that the café door swing open, allowing in a pale, thin corridor of sunlight, with an inarguably beautiful woman silhouetted against the city street beyond the door. The Three Jackasses immediately stopped laughing at me, their ridicule replaced by the type of Schadenfreudian curiosity that can only be ascribed to a race a hideous as the Human, and especially the subset of that race, the Finnish. Meanwhile, of course, I was unable to cease my hopping and my maddening machinations, but I admit my eyes were glued to this newcomer; not because I have any especial interest in beautiful ladies—in fact, I have a heightened hatred for them. I prefer my women musky, with a hint of Davy Crockett-like ingenuity, and a brief history of gambling addiction; it is also preferred that they do not speak, or, at the very least, worship me after a fashion.
No, I was not staring at this brunette, hippy, buxom, scarved, olive-complexioned diva out of any hormonal necessity; in actuality, I was not looking at her at all, but instead I was astonished by what was on her shoulder. She had what appeared to be an enormous Chipmunk on her shoulder. After a few seconds of looking at her in stunned silence (during which she did not move a centimeter) it became quite apparent that it was, in fact, a huge Chipmunk. I did not know then, nor do I know now, whether Chipmunks are indigenous to Finland; however, on this woman’s right shoulder there quite clearly was one. It had all the identifying factors of a Chipmunk, but it was in fact as large as a squirrel. It may not sound impressive to say ‘as large as a squirrel’, but that just goes to show that you have never seen a Chipmunk which was as large as a squirrel. It nearly terrified me, and the only thing that had ever terrified me before was Orson Welles’ infamous Oscar snub.
Hippy Buxom Chipmunked Woman finally entered the shanty, after what I assume was an appropriately dramatic pause for her own sake. The Three Horsemen, who seemed to have completely forgotten me (despite the fact that my continued hopping was, in fact, quite loud), approached her immediately and began hurling Finnish questions at her (I assume they were questions like, “How do you get to Reykjavik?” or “Is that a chipmunk on your shoulder or have you stolen my daughter’s pubic hair?”) and, although Hippy Buxom Chipmunked Woman had obviously never met these morons before, she sat down with them in a matter of moments, and the four of them were prattling loudly and hysterically like a pack of female caffeinated wolves.
I continued my hopping, my bending, and my general insanity attempting to remove the bucket, all while keeping my eyes directly on this now truly and historically insipid group of chatterboxes; once I was fully certain that this new woman posed no danger to me, I turned my attention to the huge Chipmunk on her shoulder, except—it wasn’t there.
I immediately panicked. The last thing in the world I can stand are small furry rodent-like things on the loose (see Chapter 5, Part 9, Section 2, The Last Thing in the World I Can Stand). I let go of the counter I was holding onto and proceeded to hop around the shanty, completely abandoning any attempt to remove the bucket, just a man on a frantic search to find a small furry rodent-like thing on the loose. I began shouting at the Four Nincompoops as I circled around the shanty, things that should have really lit a fire under them and got them searching, too, like hey you four Scandinavian root beer barrels, there is a biting ball of eyebrows scurrying round your clubby feet, if you don’t help me find it I’ll bust your temples open with the business end of a jar of maple syrup and assorted other common threats like Find this hairball or I’ll jump into a burlap sack with you and smear you with bloody oatmeal and pummel you with open fists and then jump out leaving you alone in the sack. That last one seemed to get their attention, they
[editor’s note: here we lose the text again. The world’s foremost Gutshall scholar,
Czesclov Dominico, places the number of absent pages here at 49. Read his scholarly dissection of the significance of the missing section in his Pulitzer-Prize winning tome, Gutshall and Dellinger in Finland. We rejoin the next available text]
which is a question often asked about Howitzers. Regrettably, I do not know the answer (see footnote 1,321), but I can speculate it has much to do with the absence of capable sabot’s for the caliber of rifle; conversely, if Boeing were to today make guns of this size for it’s commercial airliners (which I have often suggested to their company president in breathless, unanswered, cologned letters) we’d almost certainly be out of this whole mesh-shirt mess anyway.
Section 25
A Brief Discussion on the Role of Polar Ice Caps
One cannot discount the important role of Polar Ice Caps both in the despicable nature of humanity and their need for destruction. I have already shown in Part 2, Chapter 4, Section 12, (“My Feet Talk To Me”) that the Polar Ice Caps are more than 60% responsible for the death of my third Turkey, who I had named Gruel. It should come as no surprise then, to any capable reader, that I despise the Polar Ice Caps, especially owing to the fact that Gruel was the best man in my wedding to Sirhan Sirhan.
As we all know, the Polar Ice Caps (heretofore to be referred to as the “Turkey Killers”) are made up mostly of Baking Soda. If one were to read their Bible very closely (which I do not recommend) we would see in Leviticus that God not only hates Baking Soda, He thinks it’s not even effective at keeping a refrigerator odor-free. I disagree with this, of course, as I have been using Arm-and-Hammer brand Baking Soda to keep my refrigerator free of odor for years; it is the only way I can enjoy my chilled Nilla Wafers without them absorbing the smell and taste of the equally delicious (yet wholly different) Manwhich, which I enjoy Thursday through Sunday, and keep a steady supply of in the flowered casserole dish my mother gave me, covered with an ample sheath of aluminum foil (lest the jeebies get in). Because as I have already shown, the jeebies (in their malignant form), can, in fact,
[editor’s note: here more text is missing, probably 8 pages, mostly dealing with the role of the Polar Ice Caps in Gutshall’s plan for human destruction, but he also probably had a lengthy tangent about the Thursday, May 14, 1971 Dear Abbey column; a column that much distressed him. These missing pages are discussed with the best scholarship by Abraham Dudikoff in his collection of essays True Genius and the Nature of Identity. Once again, we pick up the text where we can]
7. Crisp cucumbers
8. Anything rubber, especially Cher
9. The fact that I enjoy the taste of baby dolphin
10. Underwear
11. Pulpy submarines
12. 9×3=27
13. The MGM backlot
14. bones
15. Idealized Birthdays
16. Stockard Channing
17. Chum, Scrum, and Boy-Howdy
18. The Hydrologic Cycle
19. Paint Thinner Gumbo (and the chaos that ensues)
20. Actually dipping your balls in it
21. Loud Pudding
22. A Table for Three, and not near the bathroom
23. Yul Brynner’s magnetized necktie
24. Anyone named Paulo is a friend of mine
25. I once beat a murder rap
So, as you can clearly see, the need for paved roads in the era of the automobile has been much exaggerated. Not only that, the evidence I have laid out clearly shows that paved roads contribute to the soaring incidences of underage golfing, as well as the horrible things that keep happening to every illegal snake I purchase. Why can’t these things live more than two weeks in the aquarium I bought at Woolworth’s? I don’t care if their natural habitat is half the world away and they got smuggled into this country by a discredited Shaman. I am feeding them live mice as well as a steady supply of my own mucous. Someone should look into this. I think I’ll wear my London Fog scarf today. The gray one. There’s a bit of a nip in the air, and I have to drive the Gondola again today to pay for this hovel I am forced to call home.
Chapter 12
Part Eight
Section 44
Why It Hurts When I Wear Shirts
No one—not even the best doctors in Nepal—have been able to tell me why it hurts when I wear shirts. It feels like fine razors on my delicate, lotioned epidermis. Why do I go through the lengths of ordering Arbonne lotion, imported from France and scented with real Figs, and then bathing in said lotion for four hours daily, if these shirts insist on jabbing at me like some hairshirt a bevowed monk would wear in an obscure Alpine monastery? It simply cannot be endured. If this continues much longer I fear I shall have to murder again, and this time I will wear the cloak so that it scares them a lot, too. People hate the cloak. I should mention here that it also hurts when I wear the cloak, although not as much, as the cloak is custom-made form Extra Virgin silk. If it hurts even when I wear Extra Virgin silk, I must have some serious problem. I have tried to Google it but I only get results mentioning Edward James Olmos. Oh, also, humanity must be destroyed.
[editor’s note: here is where the existing text ends. To be sure, this is Gutshall’s most incomplete—yet also his most riveting—work. If the ideas in this piece intrigue you, I strongly suggest you read Gutshall’s important, complete texts, especially what are known in academic circles as his “Big Three”: How I Can Be Sure I Hate You, These Dogs Keep Eating My DVDs, and Thirty-Eight Ways to Put Socks on (and Take Socks Off): A Half-Fictional Account of Last Summer]
Notes From the Fire 
