Moving on, "Fish Sticks" is another tale that follows a recurring character- a demented woman who carries fish sticks about. Ok, an interesting premise, if some insight can be provided. Instead, she gets fucked, and an old man performs fellatio on a young man, and the tale ends with no real end. The second half of the book opens with Pollock’s most lauded tale, "Bactine." Why this is so lauded is a mystery. It’s no better than any of the other tales. In this story, the first aid medicine becomes an ingredient for getting high (didn’t see that comin’, didja?). There’s all sorts of non-intriguing intrigue, and then, at the end of the next tale, "Discipline," another druggy loser (a steroid freak) decides to spend the night naked in a McDonald’s parking lot (don’t ask why). By morning, he (presumably from the Great Beyond) tells us that, when he tried to move (cliché alert), ‘his body shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.’ Boy, Jimmy Frey is stroking himself about now.

"Assailants" is the further adventures of "Fish Sticks" girl, a"Rainy Sunday" lives down to its title’s novelty- literally nothing happens, and not in the good, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn sort of way. It opens with his real ‘grabber’ of a sentence: ‘It was one o’clock in the morning on a rainy Sunday, and Sharon was sitting at the kitchen table debating whether or not to stuff another slice of American cheese into her mouth when Aunt Joan called, begging her niece to ride into town.’ Don’t you just wanna find out more? "Holler" follows more losers strung out on Demerol, and ends with a faux poetic ‘moment’, with a loser trying to eat the skull of a dead bird. Why? Because that’s, like, deep and poetic, dude. Got it?

"I Start Over" is probably the best and most notable story in the book, yet it’s still not a good story compared to truly good writing. It has a novel idea but sloppy execution. In it, a fat man swells his dick over threatening some teenagers who make fun of a son of his who is mentally handicapped, and feels as if his life has begun anew. It ends, naturally, with a Lowest Common Denominator moment- a car chase, but it’s the only glimmer that Pollock had an idea worth a damn in this book. Yet, the same plethora of clichés and pointless descriptions abound.

"Blessed" follows another petty criminal and another retard, and has a scene where sadistic cops force a man to shit diarrhetically. The retard seems to lack the power of speech, but, at tale’s end, and given the abounding clues within the tale, you just know the kid can speak, he just refuses to speak to his dad. "Honolulu" is another pointless tale void of depth and character-developing digressions, and ends with a sentence that includes yet another insertion of pointless clichés: ‘And just like that, for one brief beautiful moment, as the crashing rays turn the kitchen a bright blood-red, she forgets everything.’ C’mon, now, you can spot’em, right?