It took me a while, but I finally got around to reading Lullaby. Overall, I was disappointed by the book. Compared to his other works, I think Lullaby is clearly an weaker story (a culling spell - you read it and people die - is discovered and 4 people set out to try and destroy/exploit it), and more importantly filled with less interesting characters than we usually get from Chuck.

It does contain alot of the same anti-consumerism message that was so prominent in Fight Club - but this time around there is no powerful Tyler Durden type character capable of really championing the cause.

All in all, if this book had been written by anyone else I would have enjoyed it more. But coming from Palahniuk - I expected more.

A elementary school principal has been charged with battery against a minor after he handuffed a 9-year old for misbehaving at school. "We felt it warranted charges," Spain said. "I have no idea what his thinking was." Thinking? Somebody better clue in the Arkansas law enforcement community that they don't pay school administrators to think - they pay them to enforce rules blindly. And I'll bet that this school district doesn't have a specific rule against handcuffing students.

I've finally got around to finishing my review copy (yes, publishers have started sending me stuff to review) of Eric Shapiro's Short of a Picnic. Its a collection of ultra-short stories about people with mental disorders (the author actually suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive disorder); each of the 12 stories focuses on a different disorder.

My favorite of the stories deals with a guy who's beginning to realize that he's developed a split personality and has become convinced that his 'other self' is trying to kill him. The story is very good, but like many short stories - suffers from a lack of development.

The stories in the book are all a good starting point, but they lack any real sense of completeness or development. I hate to beat a dead horse here, but short stories should be short because the natural life-cycle of the story being told is brief - not because the author simply wishes to end the tale.

The story I liked most, 'Two Hermits', is a perfect example of this. Although the main character realizes he's other personality is trying to kill him, we never get a resolution as to what happens. There are also some disturbing phone calls to the character's mother that are never explained.

All in all, I'd give Short of a Picnic a 6.5 out of 10; and encourage the author to write each story until it reaches its natural conclusion.

"Give me that juris-my-diction crap, and you can shove it up your ass" - (The Matrix). Canada isn't immune to ZT idiocy either. A group of students who were boxing - off school property and during non-school hours (lunch time) were suspended from school for 4 days.

Combatants wore boxing gloves, said principal Robert Meikle. They videotaped the bouts and many of the students considered what they were doing to be a legitimate sporting activity. Sounds like a legitimate sporting activity to me. Putting on boxing gloves doesn't excatly make these folks Tyler Durden impersonator, now does it.

But the school and Sooke district officials strongly disagreed. They disagreed? I'm shocked.

"Violence will not be tolerated at this school," Meikle said. "It never has been. Whether they were wearing gloves makes no difference." Well, considering that the violence wasn't actually 'at this school' he's correct. And much as he'd like to make it otherwise, wearing boxing gloves does make a difference.

Maybe if Newfields Elementary School had a zero tolerance policy for teacher/administrator behavior in place they wouldn't be dealing with a principal who shoplifed 4 paintings. Last year, this same principal was suspended for 'abuse of power'. The unanimous School Board vote came five days after Ring allegedly entered the home of a 10-year-old student, when his parents were not there, in order to reprimand him for an alleged scuffle on the school bus that afternoon. The board meeting also came two days after the same child was allegedly pulled from his classroom and sent home in a police car during recess because he would not talk to the principal about the incident without his mother or father present as instructed by his parents.

The guy should have been fired on the spot - and honestly, the policemen who agreed to take the kid home should have been reprimanded as well. If the police aren't 'assisting' the child or arresting/questioning him about some crime - exactly how is it that they can take him into custody?