d20

connection established between china and canada. talking to my father on msn is always a stroll through smarter-than-micah-land (posted in case someone other than me might find him funny):

duke: thanks for the time
me: hey, i don't own it
duke: no, but you distribute it

me: you'd think they'd have accepted by now that they have enough of a well-ordered militia already
duke: there you go again, you see, reading all the words and thinking about what they mean, that's just not fair

me: you know the first book i had trouble with? your goddamn copy of Ulysses. written with strange, strange punctuation
duke: trouble being a good thing, yeah, he put whole worlds into single words, not a typical beach read
me: not when there's cyclops afoot
me: wait
me: that was Odysseus wasn't it?
duke: ulysses was on the odyssey - but then i don't teach spelling
me: i've always confused the two. i guess i wasn't paying attention in school or something, heh
duke: they taught that in your school?
duke: a book, with words?
me: it was one of the few not translated to russian

i guess posting these odd exchanges is really my way of being proud of him, finally. when i was younger everyone else's dad had a real job, everyone else's dad stuck around, paid the bills, stayed sober, or whatever normal fathers do, but goddammit my dad is smarter than everyone else's, and his influence on my mind is something all the nice clothes and mortgage payments in the world can't replace. so there. i'm proud of him. ha.