Dear friend,

Friends don’t let friends drink and drive. Friends don’t let friends run with scissors. Friends don’t let friends get a stupid-looking tattoo.

And above all, real friends don’t let friends read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

I arrived in Europe this summer armed with about 5 good books. All of which I enjoyed immensely, except for the last 10 pages of Vernon God Little, which I didn’t read because I left it in someone’s car, and I don’t think I’ll ever be seeing this person again unless luck is entirely against me.

Upon coming to Menorca, I needed some new reading material after finishing Neverworld. By the way, this seems to be a thinly-veiled book advertisement. I needed some light reading to keep me company on the beach after a day of digging, turning my joints into poorly oiled hinges, and my skin into ancient Egyptian parchment paper.

(Waaaah, let me complain! No one else here does!)

I went over to the apartment’s well-stocked library, which has several issues of Cosmopolitan and the The DaVinci Code, which I think I’m probably going to read next. Not because it’s particularly interesting, but Audrey Tautou was in Amelie, and I like Amelie, and I like Audrey Tautou, so I would be interested to see what the movie is like. That is what the summer is like. You read books so that you can see the movie. Hurray for motivation!

This particular library also had The Perks of Being a Wallflower. For some reason, I had heard of this book and decided to start it.

I started to wonder why I was laughing by the first 10 pages. Nothing was particularly funny. It was on page 61 when Charlie, the main character, lists the songs he puts on a tape for one of his friends, that I realized why I was laughing and impatiently skipping nearly every-other page.

I was reading a legitimate EMO novel.

It is so bad. I can’t coherently verbalize what a horrendous accident to literature this book is.

I suppose the message is a good one. I skipped about 80 pages of the novel because I just don’t have the patience to deal with the character’s whiny attitude that is something like the don’t- feel- sorry- for- me- even- though- all- this- shit- is- happening- to- me- and- I- won’t- call- attention- to- it- but- I- will- make- you- notice- it- by- mentioning- my- problems- offhandlike- and- win- you- over- with- my- innocence sort of attitude, if you know what I mean. The message is one of “participating” in life instead of just sitting “on the fringes.” However, when I’m reading the book, I can’t get past the picture of a kid from my high school chemistry class adjusting his long bangs to cover his eyes, making sure his thrift store shirt cut up and sewn together with 3 different shirts, and his tight pants are all appropriately folded or stretched on his body for The Maximum EMO Effect. Also, I can't get over the picture that the author was probably weeping while writing this novel, lamenting the poor fate of his created character, Charlie.

I’ve been asked why I classify people. Or how I can tell what group someone fits into. At the time, I didn’t really know why I did. However, now I think it gives you a pretty sure-fire way to get a step-up on their character. You are what you eat and more recently, you are what you look like. Yes, it is judging a “book by its cover.” However, I think it’s ok to do this nowadays, what with everyone eagerly listening to a certain type of music and eagerly buying stuff from certain people to have the prestige of owning that certain thing from that certain person representing that certain something. People walk around wanting to be identified with a certain type, or they would not look and act the way they do. By my classification, I am not saying anyone is a good or a bad person, but I am saying that he is a certain type of person.

I feel pretty stupid writing about that. Alas, my awesome people classification skills have not helped me in the least in classifying pottery. I suck at classifying pottery. In fact, I frequently mistake rock for pottery, and whenever I clean all the shards and pieces of pottery I found during the day, I inevitably find myself thinking about parsing Egyptian, which seems like it happened about a thousand years ago. It's that bad, everyone. Even though the pottery is all allegedly different, I've looked at little pieces of pottery enough to have them all look the same, although I guess the more I look at them, the easier it should be to differentiate.

In short, I guess I wish pottery and people could switch places. I wish it would be hard to classify a person, to have more people where you sit there wondering "what on earth is this person like?" and I wish I could classify pottery with my eyes practically closed.

Bruce Arthur, the site we are excavating is from 123 BC-50 BC. The Romans were there just long enough to conquer various parts of the mainland.

I desperately want to post pictures, but the internet connection is Very Low at the moment.

Ug.