As I stepped out of the movie theater, I had 2 things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.

I've finally finished with the neverending booklist. It's of books with great first lines or paragraphs, especially if said book has a sucky cover. It always takes me awhile to do stuff like this, mostly because I'm so easily distracted by books. It's just too damned inviting to, after checking a favorite to see if its first sentence is worthy, go on and read more. Or the ones I haven't read in a long time. Which is how I found this little gem:

"One time in biology I had to dissect a worm, and the razor wouldn't cut, so I used my switchblade. The minute I flicked it out--I forgot what I was doing or I would never have done it--this girl right beside me kind of gasped, and said, 'They are right. You are a hood.' That didn't make me feel so hot."

God bless you, S.E. Hinton, and all of your 16-yr-old hood friends. That's why she wrote The Outsiders, you know. She wished there were more books about kids like all her hoodrat friends. She also (in the interview I read the other day--and you know, I'm honestly not sure why I read it, aside from a pleasant distraction from the booklist) mentioned that she was a tomboy, so I'm now picturing Ms. Hinton as that kid in West Side Story. So, you think her friends were as attractive as she made all those greasers out to be?
Oh, I went through such a Hinton phase around 6th grade! And yet I've never seen any of the movies.
In the Things Coming Back to Bite me in the Ass Department, I think I'm getting sick. This is 2 days after I called in sick--well, I was sick, but it was my own damn fault, gin not germs, that sort of thing, so it feels less kosher to use a sick day, somehow. Where are those stupid Halls Defender things when I need them?
There are three high school freshmen working on a project that somehow combines Dante's Inferno and needing synonyms for "blackmail" "gold diggers" and "corrupted leaders". Kid told me they have to create their own levels of hell, and now I'm really wanting to know what the others are, especially since gold diggers are getting their very own level. I know that they're freshmen because the one asked me if I was that person who came and spoke that one time.