I have two weeks to read Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. My room-mate Andrew lent it to me, and I want to give it back to him before I move (oh yeah I'm moving). I love Stephenson's books, but they are not light reads- Cryptonomicon is 1152 pages. So, in two weeks (divide by 14, factor in the apple pi and nominate the denominator) that is about 800 pages per day. Don't think I can do it, especially considering how busy the next two weeks will be.. It took me almost that long to read the relatively lightweight Road Fever, which I finally finished today. Hmmm. I think the solution is to write my own version of Cryptonimicon, and tell Andrew that I read it.

There once was a man who lived in a crypt, and he was something of an icon to all the other crypt-dwellers he roomed with. But then one day he announced he was moving out of the crypt into a much nicer place whose only connection to crypts was that it was relatively close to a cemetary. This made all the other crypt-dwellers very mad, and they attempted to kill Cryptonimicon by placing a cassowary in his crypt one day while he was out. But Cryptonimicon was much too smrt for that, and he befriended the cassowary (after a briefly scary encounter in which the cassowary came this close to eviscerating Cryptonimicon), and hired it to perform certain secret agent missions in New Zealand and Wabamun, the details of which muist remain somewhat cryptic in order to preserve the safety of the cassowary. The end.

"Here's your book back, Andrew. Thanks."
"Yeah no problem. Did you like it?"
"Uh-huh, it was great, especially the part about the cassowary."
" . . . ?"