His riff on Jennifer Lopez (who "could have been a Playboy bunny, for few women are blessed with such a shapely shape, a shape for sex, for movement, for grandeur," notwithstanding that many wonder how much of the original shape remains) becomes a eulogy for a young Latin girl who committed suicide. It is here that his drifty prose is perhaps most effective, if only because of the emotional punch of his story, as he describes this fifteen year old girl, the things she wrote in his class, and his subsequent encounters with her parents.

And he isn't bashful about bashing a few sacred cows (yes, one should be goring such beasts, but perhaps "cow tipping" will do), as he does while exploring the topic of affirmative action:

I'm still stuck on this affirmative action thing. I do want to present a reflective, balanced and provocative perspective, but something perplexes me. If "diversity," a euphemism it seems for quotas, is acceptable in academic America, why not athletic America? Asians, it seems, are terribly underrepresented, as are Latinos and Arabs, on the NCAA basketball and football squads. Wouldn't a bit more diversity be interesting, and just, or would it be more interesting and just for the best qualified in both arenas to be chosen?

From that opening he bounces from Eminem's hostility to women to the stark black and whiteness of his birth certificate to the breakup between two lesbian lovers he overhears in a Starbucks to creative theory and the power of "lefties" to Jimi Hendrix to how "in the beginning, there were slaves, and the slaves were chained." Can you not see how difficult it is to honestly assess such thoughts as they careen past you, each a seemingly separate plate Borden tries to keep spinning as he dances around and over and under whatever nominal topic he is supposedly discussing?

A similar "train of thought," if you will, can be seen in his chapter entitled "Earth Mother." It opens as he notes that "Thanks to Oprah Winfrey," millions of Americans have started reading. And then he writes:

"Oprah" backwards would be Harpo, and Harpo was one of the Marx Brothers. The Marx brothers were Jewish immigrants who were instrumental in the transition and transmission of Jewish culture, thought and ideals from vaudeville to theatre to television and film. I wonder if the Marx brothers were Marxist.

I am not a Marxist, but Marx, who wrote two things that I think are most relevant. And what is relevant to me might not be relevant to you, but isn't all that relative and aren't we all relatives? Relatively speaking, that is. And Marx wrote, "Religion is the opiate of the masses," and, "Work expands to fill the time."