HOUSE

"Chasing down the Howl, Holloway opens a door and is suddenly realizes he is in a woman's shower!"

Yeah, that was in the footnote to the footnote from Appendix 112, diagram 1,202, the funniest part of the book so far...twice as hilarious when you realize he has stepped into the shower from the movie Psycho, man imagine seeing that lunatic with a rifle in your shower...and after the knife incident nonetheless!

Ok, just kidding, she is actually screaming in this picture because THERE IS NO HOT WATER! One of my favorite very short passages of the book so far is Johnny describing the long wait for hot water (p. 15) which is what originally prompts him to tell the Punching Bag Birds of Paradise Story.

"As you probably know, finding out there is no warm water is a particularly unpleasant discovery simply because it's not something you figure out immediately. You have to let the water run awhile and even though it remains icy, part of you refuses to believe it won't change, especially if you wait a little longer or open up the valve a little more. So you wait but no matter how many minutes run by, you still see no steam, you still feel no heat."

I really like this part for two reasons. First - its so effin' true! Second - at the time I was reading it and really still now - it struck me as kind of a metaphor for the reading fo this book and how difficult it was to get into it. Just insert the word "story" for warm water and "appendix" for valve and it seems to work pretty well.