p.s. Hey. A few things that deserve an alert: (1) Distinguished local Mark Gluth, who is also author of the new book from my Little House on the Bowery imprint aka 'The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis, a novella', has been splendidly interviewed by Blake Butler over on HTMLGIANT, and I highly recommend you give it a read. (2) Speaking of HTMLGIANT, another d.l., better known as the fiction writer and critic Alec Niedenthal, has written a fascinating piece in the same location entitled 'David Foster Wallace and Imagining Moral Fiction', and, again, I strongly urge you to head in its direction. (3) Last but certainly not least, the d.l. and writer supreme Jesse Hudson hits the big 21 today, so Happy birthday, Jesse! Otherwise, it's cleaning day at the Recollets, blah blah, so I'll be hurrying along, etc., as per usual, duh. And I think that's the totality from here this morning. ** Frighteyes, Hey. Gracias on behalf of Adjoun. ** Wolf, Wow, early bird. Hold on while I ... Everyone, Wolf and Tender Prey were just hiking around in this atmospheric French place, which you can apparently buy for a million euros, and they also hit/saw this majestic locale, and this one too, and if those three clicks don't make you a Francophile, something's wrong. What can I say? Yum. And after all of that, you still want to move to measly Barcelona, ha ha? Wtf! ** Allesfliest, RIP: negative energies. Is this book the 'rain' book you mentioned? How far along in the project are you? ** David Ehrenstein, What I've read about 'Hesher' makes it sound like a sunnier 'Donny Darko', and hopefully, if so, the original theater release version rather than the self-destructively pretentious director's cut. Yes, the mayor of Moscow is one psychotic, ignorant motherfucker, and, as I've probably mentioned, his wife is a big, vocal proponent of gay causes who even marched in Moscow's last, very quickly halted Satanic parade. ** NB, Highty-ho, N. What's new? ** Joseph, Hi, Joseph. I haven't read 'Futureproof'. I guess Jesse might have read it since those were his shelves, and hopefully he'll chime in. No, I didn't catch that Patterson piece in the NYTBR. Never read him, and his name doesn't attract me to things, but I'll go hunt that piece down today, assuming it's online. What you're talking about re: acceptable (entertaining and glancing) vs. unacceptable (attentive and exploratory) depictions of violence in fiction is one of the reasons I originally decided to write what I write the way I write it. That value system just seemed so wrong. Violence is one of the major subjects, themes, and what have you of human life or whatever, and it usually just ends up being used as a gloss. Very interesting about the dueling, concurrent versions of your long piece in progress. Curious to hear about your decision making process there as it develops and only if you feel like it. ** Adjoun, Exactly, I used you for all you were worth, and now I've thrown you away and moved on to the next pretty topic. And people think I'm so nice. Heh! No, really, thanks for being my blog's date. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Hugs, Nick. Oh, the Duvert posts, cool. Thanks. I should figure out what my favorite posts are one of these days. That'll take some brain work, but, hm, I'm pretty sure this post would be one of them. ** Christopher/ Mark, You're friends with Ton Simons? That's cool. I'm a fan of his. Oh, yes, in fact I've already created a blog home for your WT photos that'll be up here next week. I'll write to you with the details, coordinates. Thanks much, Mark. ** JW Veldhoen, Weighing your options, good. No extreme rush, right? Bermuda would be good if you liked the sun and got off on hurricanes and golfed. Could you be that person, JW? I can't take dark liquors. One little gulp, and I get a hangover the next day. Plus the taste is too exotic or something for me. ** Bill, Me too. Peppy-ish, but my jet lag didn't foist any good ideas on me. Whenever I'm sleep deprived, I tend to get really horny. The two definitely seem to be connected. Am I weird, am I the only one? ** Sypha, Your stress is totally understandable, man. I guess you just have to trust that the doctors know what they're doing at this point. Chances are, they do. Doctors fucking up royally is always big news, but, from what I read recently, one is less likely to be harmed by a negligent doctor than to be killed by a suicide bomber. Anyway, let us/me know how it goes, okay? Love to you, James. ** Thomas Moronic, Well, thank you for having provided me, sir. Quite the mixed blessing you're living through there, but you have this unmistakeable chipper thing going on in your tone. My jet lag's just about gone, I think. You Skype? It's kind of a miracle worker, no? ** Trees, Hey, Trees. Every time I get to your screen name, it's like passing by an air freshener, the good natural, organic or whatever kind. Oh, that's funny about the published piece ending up not being the final version. It's always kind of uncomfortable when that happens. Takes the joy out of the thing being published. For me, I mean. You're probably a lot more stoic. I love the idea of that poem sequence based on airplane views. Yeah, that's very nice. ** Creative Massacre, The world is really conspiring against you at the moment, pal. Those cluster fucks of bad shit happening all at once are so weird. Luckily bad luck has a short attention span most of the time. I hope the sunrise today made some kind of difference. You know how surgeons can do operations from halfway around the world thanks to new technology? Well, if I had that kind of tech at my disposal, you'd be getting a hell of a hug right now. ** Chris (British), I love the way you think and talk about your process, much less the actual hands on part. I just make cryptic scribbles in a notebook. ** Misanthrope, Thanks for helping poor old 'Closer' out. I do that too in bookstores with books, not with my own books of course. They're on their own. I'm going to a bookstore today, and I'm going to do that forefronting number for some lucky tome. I wish it were yours. Man, sweet and sad story about Erik and your brother. Yep, there's nothing rotten in the bunch around here. ** Steevee, Oh, yeah, I quite like Owen Pallett. In fact, I just missed seeing him here no thanks to my jet lag's swamping. You know his earlier stuff under the moniker Final Fantasy? It's real good too, although I think his new album might be his best. Excellent music. ** Alan, I always miss the juicy deleted stuff. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Band aid over gouging always. Or almost always. Trainwreck, interesting. Gotta love the name. It can't possibly live up. I hope it looks like a tiny wrecked train. If drugs were like animal crackers, the world would be a better place. Wait, maybe not. My day wasn't that fascinating at all, but I'm still wearing off the jet lag, so I guess that's to be expected. Let's see ... I did shower. I always shower. I worked on my novel. I worked on my/your blog. I had a coffee in the Recollets cafe with Kiddiepunk and Oscar. We cooked up various future schemes. Today's scheme involves going to Shakespeare & Co. as well as some used English language bookstore over by St. Germain des Pres that Kp found out about via Scott Treleaven. Kiddiepunk wants to learn tap dancing. Oscar goes to London tomorrow or Thursday to do a performance piece. I'll let her describe it if she feels like it. Anyway, that coffee thing was kind of the day's big highlight, truth be told. Otherwise, I just wrote and stuff, stopping to smoke and eat and talk to Yury once in a while. Wow, that was a pretty blah day, wasn't it? Sorry. I expect better from you. ** Postitbreakup, Hey, man. Uh, I don't know about visiting Texas. Maybe. Would be cool. We keep trying to get a theater piece gig there, but it hasn't been happening, and that would get me there probably. Either that or I'll come via some relatively spontaneous, late in the game idea/decision a la the trip to Georgia. ** L@rstonovich, Skype's a game changer. No matter how awesome the Apple Tablet is going to be, it won't touch Skype. At least if you live a million expensive miles away from 85% of your friends. ** Justin, Funny that they thought BdJ was Stewart. But, yeah. Stewart would be seriously rich by now if he were the dame in question, and, if he was, we would know all about it. Speaking of which, how's SH Day going? No pressure, need I say? ** Alec Niedenthal, That's a great, great DFW piece. Really something. Here's hoping the folks around here who don't already frequent HTMLG will zoom over there today. Mm, calm ... that sounds nice. I wish alcohol made me calm rather than sleepy and grumpy. Enjoy your day. ** Lord_s, Not fair: depriving the non-friends out here in the world of your groundbreaking, genre-straddling and, hence, -reinventing tape. But I'll shut up now. Oh, I see, about the manic energy burst thing. Yeah, I hear you, but it's quite possible you'll get the right kind of contact high when you're face to face with the text which that burst produced, you know? The writing probably has that state of mind encoded into it. Yeah, I'm the eternal optimist, but I might just have a point. My day was quiet too, probably even more quiet than yours since I don't have SXSW or anything like it looming. Who's playing, or, rather, who are you antsy to see? ** Uli, Thanks a lot, Uli. ** Tomkendall, Shit, on the bad stuff. Burgled even!? (Nice word, though: 'burgled'). If I could fast track you a silver lining, I would, dude. Oh, fuck no, I'm not finished with a first draft. Ways to go. Painful ways to go yet before I hit that mark. I'm trying. 30,000 words, nice. I mean, that's already a novella. Much love right back at you, Tom. ** Okay, off you go, and off I go, too. Today's post is the result of one of those weird ideas you get once in a while. I'd love any suggestions from you guys on mawkish/arch songs or music, successful or not. But don't feel at all obligated. That's it. Bye until Wednesday.