Wednesday was pretty cool. I had to go to the Bookstore and pick up a giant textbook for my Intro to Creativity class. It used to be the class that took only a notebook, but now we have this massive Necronomicon to haul around.

Here’s my experience at the bookstore:

I buy the book. Like, they rang the book up and I realized that (this has nothing to do with the story) an ant just crawled on my leg.

I didn’t know it was an ant at the time, but I felt that, “Something small but vicious is creeping through your leg-hair” sensation and I instantly realized there was a thing on me and basically it just had to die right away.

So like the tongue of a giant pink chameleon, my hand whipped out and seized that six-legged terrorist in my fingers and rolled him back and forth snapping his legs like the flimsy spindles they were.

Okay, another ant just assaulted my leg but I backhanded him down into the carpet and he’s never coming back.

I have killed two ants in about a minute. They can bite and sneak, but I am so much more powerful than them, and once I see or really even detect them, they are pretty much resigned to death.

That’s the tricky part, though. I could probably kill every ant in the universe, but even if one bites you it’s all over. That’s because ants all bite in unison, so when that first sting hits, you know that nine or 10 more alarms are going to be ringing within seconds.

At that point, you are on the defensive. The ants have taken the initiative. Seriously, it might be one ant bite now, but you may be just seconds from death.

The ants came in here because of the cereal bowls and the remnants of a mozzarella stick from times long since passed.

The ants have come here and staked out a claim. In the coming months they will branch out and search for more cereal or possibly fresh mozzarella sticks to feed on. That’s how Animal Planet would tell it. I’d probably say, “what are these ants doing here,” and then kill most of them using firecrackers.

That’s probably why I’m not on Animal Planet.

They’d have a full schedule of educational videos and then two hours of me running around Africa digging up termite queens and tying them to bottle rockets-just doesn’t have a place in any decent schedule.

Case in point: Just yesterday I was watching “Lost.” “Lost” is a television show that basically destroys an hour of your Wednesday for eight months of the year.

Anyway, at one point, characters Charlie and Locke are searching for a Polar bear. Charlie comments on how he remembers that he used to get high and watch Animal Planet, from which he knows that polar bears are highly intelligent and sometimes lay traps.

At this point I froze. Not twenty minutes earlier, I myself had been watching Animal Planet. More amazing still was that I, like Charlie, was watching a show about polar bears.

That episode of ‘Lost’ culminated with a key member having déjà vu. So at this point I am freaking out.

So like I was saying, I took the book to the counter and like any good Mustang, I charged that right to my parents. They reminded me that I could sell the book back at the end of the year. Thinking I was hilarious, I joked that I might get a whole fifteen dollars back.

Turns out, you can get way more than that. That book could net me up to twenty-five dollars, ten dollars more than previous estimates.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at T-minus $10. If this book were an Olympic skater, and had just performed a routine, I would have given it a whopping 10 out of 10 possible dollars.

That’s twenty hours of time on the parking meter last year and almost thirteen hours this semester. It still sucks though.

What makes me feel superior to the idiots who do that is selling my books online. You can buy them online too, but it takes a few weeks to get them. There is, however, an upside.

You are guaranteed to make at least half the cost of the book back. However, for a book that’s currently being used, you can actually get close to breaking even and get a taste of the scam our Bookstore would normally just launder and use to fund crack dealers.

So here we are, getting on my bicycle to head home.

A few people around me are buying bicycles. There’s this one guy, who shall remain nameless, who tried his damndest to explain the weird stuff he was going to do, but that was Wednesday and I was kind of out of it at the time. He tried really hard and I can tell that the bike is going to rock, but I have no clue what it looks like.

It’s a chill experience. Bikes are a really smooth way to move around America. You also get to use the DART. The little yellow arrow is your ticket to traverse the city with ease.

SMU students are sheltered, like puppies in a closet. So if you took these puppies and just whipped them out of the closet into the hot sun, they might yelp and be scared of the sun. That would be bad because puppies must frolic outside. So it is written.

For anyone on campus, our sole experience with 7-Eleven might be the one on Hillcrest.

Seriously, the 7-Eleven near my living quarters has nowhere near the quality or product of the Convenience store at SMU.

It is, in fact, an inconvenience store.

For one thing, they do have cookies, but they do not have milk. Now I don’t know what kind of child-pimping catamite would go and do something like that, but hell is where they’ll be if I ever find ’em.

DART, on the other hand, is a lovely way to experience new and interesting things. For instance, previous to my days on the train, I did not know what it smelled like if a homeless man were to sit down next to you and project desperation and flecks of tobacco-spittle all over your body for a minute straight.

I have also learned about homeless people and handouts. The cardboard sign hobo, for instance, looks down on the approach of the beggar who walks up and begs you for change.

They have this whole social system set up and live a little morlock existence in the shadows.

There’s also the mixed blessing of trains that stop after midnight and resume at 4 a.m. Either give yourself a ridiculous curfew and shave your club scene down to a moment you can’t even get drunk in, or resign yourself to a night of sin and catching the noon ride tomorrow.

Then there’s the wait at the station in clothes that are mysteriously sweaty, teeth unbrushed and a swilling, alcohol-poisoned empty stomach.

The Sun punishes the drunk. So you stumble off the train and clomp home in shoes that seem pretty ridiculous now. After 10 minutes of your own little Bataan death march, you buzz yourself into the building you live in.

One cold beer and a hot shower later you collapse into bed and take the Lord to his word on the Sabbath. Then you wake up in the dark. Completely unsure of the time or really even dimensional space.

If its Saturday or Sunday, you either cook something and or make cereal. Then, food in hand, it’s time to crouch in front of the T.V. and stare without focus at the moving lights until the food is gone.

Then it’s back to unrewarding sleep before the Monday commute. You always get to class early, but that doesn’t make up for sleep.

Aside from that, the DART rocks. School attendance consumes two tanks of fuel a month. Just school and back with a car would put me out $100.

DART is $5 per year. So DART saves me a $100. That is a lot more than $10.

This is my fact, this is the Truth as I see it.