For an audio book, I’m listening to William S. Burroughs read Junkie, his autobiographical novel about heroin addiction during World War II. I’m interested in the subject of heroin abuse and have read other books on the subject, but Junkie is old-fashioned and the narrator’s emotions are oddly detached from his subject. So for the most part, the book is Burroughs rambling about junkies he knew back in the day. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s his old-man voice or his out-of-date slang, but throughout the whole thing, all I can think of is one of Grandpa Simpson’s rants:

…like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say…