About Burroughs

OK, you saw Running with Scissors, but the story of Augusten (and his coterie of equally dysfunctional friends and family, including my personal favorite, Drugged Out Debbie) continues in his other memoirs, all of which are amazingly true. (Augusten is no James Frey. My friend Jane actually knew his mother's psychiatrist when she lived in Amherst.) I recommend them all: Dry: A Memoir, Magical Thinking: True Stories, and Possible Side Effects.
Now, about Debbie. Debbie liked to drive, anywhere, at very high speeds, and not always with all of her mental pistons firing, but she would get very upset when other drivers disobeyed the traffic laws. (You know, those who would cut you off, steal a parking space, slide into your lane, etc.) Debbie soon found a solution, aided by the opportunities that her day job at Staples provided. She went in search of porn, and as Augusten says, not just your garden variety porn that can be found on the Internet, but really bad stuff from Scandinavian countries. Debbie enlarged her favorite truly disgusting pictures to poster size, then laminated them so they were sturdy signs, and affixed as captions common traffic admonitions, innocuous stuff like, "Use your signal," "Don't pass on the right," "No tailgating." When someone cut her off or equally offended her traffic sensibilities, she would tell Augusten, who would be riding shotgun, to flash one of the randomly selected signs at the offending driver. The people were so stunned by the horrific visuals that, although they may have failed to see the traffic admonition, they usually drove off the road anyway. If you liked this, you'll love the rest! If not, there's always fiction.