Here are eight things.

1.
It seems that if you want to make a bazillion dollars in America today, what you must do is make and distribute soft-core porn. Evidence: Magic Mike, Fifty Shades of Grey, etc.

2.
Ladies, I don't mean to single you out here. Witness Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition, for instance.

3.
But seriously, nobody's reading Fifty Shades of Anything for the fantastic prose style.

Here's a paragraph from the free preview on Amazon:

Double-crap--me and my two left feet! I am on my hands and knees in the doorway to Mr. Grey's office, and gentle hands are around me, helping me to stand. I am so embarrassed, damn my clumsiness. I have to steel myself to glance up. Holy cow--he's so young.

Not since Dan Brown has such terrible writing made so much money.

4.
You know, I'm no big fan of the Harry Potter series, but at least the prose style was decent.

5.
If you're looking for something worthwhile to read this summer, though, I'll again recommend Josh Weil's The New Valley, which is available for an absolute steal over at Amazon.

Or I might plug the new issue of Willows Wept Review, which we released last week.

And I'll also recommend Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which certainly won't disappoint.

6.
Anyway, it's that time of the year again. You know, when students who are working on summer reading assignments on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself find their way here.

Welcome, students. I hope you find something useful here. But please remember not to plagiarize.

7.
By the way, if you're one of those students here for Frederick Douglass, that post is here.

8.
I'm running a race next week. Given the weather and my current training, it probably isn't the best idea in the world, especially since I want to run at least nine seconds faster than my last 5k.

It's an afternoon/evening race with a 6:30 start, which means it'll probably be in the mid-90s at race time. Also, I've been running a fairly large volume of base miles with almost no speed work, and I'll be running through this race--I ran just over 57 miles last week, and I'm scheduled for 58.5 this week and then 56 the week of the race.

But what the heck. I'm going to go out at 6:20 for the first mile, hang on for the second, and then give what I've got in the third.

But I am going to pack a cooler full of ice. Just in case, you know.