it's not gonna be a hit
so why even bother with it


Erwin Olaf, The Hairdresser, 2004

* Top Ten Conservative Idiots excerpt:

10. Rush Limbaugh

"And finally, speaking of rolls of flab our old friend Rush Limbaugh was back on fine form last week. As you probably know, the Republican party didn't do too well with female voters in the 2006 elections, so last week Rush did his best to woo them back. Here's what he had to say:

My cat -- here's how you can get fooled. My cat comes to me when she wants to be fed. I have learned this. I accept it for what it is. Many people in my position would think my cat's coming to me because she loves me. Well, she likes me, and she is attached, but she comes to me when she wants to be fed. And after I feed her -- guess what -- she's off to wherever she wants to be in the house, until the next time she gets hungry.

She's smart enough to know she can't feed herself. She's actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn't have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat's taught me more about women, than anything my whole life.

Did I mention that Rush has been divorced three times?"

* From an interview of David Berman. excerpt:

Interviewer: I've heard rumors that you're not writing poetry, right now. Do you still intend to finish your book, Richard Simmons 1950-?

David Berman: It's true , I've walked away from poetry in the last couple years. Perhaps it has something to do with the noise of the world going up. Poetry, right now, is too quiet in it's functions, too subtle, too finely laid out for me to concentrate on in haphazard times.

Interviewer: In Actual Air, I noticed you frequently referred to windows. I think it's intentional. Am I onto something?

DB: Hmmm, I never realized that. l like windows, but they don't figure prominently in my life story. They say when people remember bits of childhood they often remember moments in complete solitude. I think I stared out the window quite a bit. I regarded sandbox society with trepidation.

KL: Would you consider yourself to be somewhat of an introvert? If so, do you feel that this part of your personality has contributed to your work?

DB: Well I clearly started out as one. I felt marked as fundementally uncool.

Somewhere around at age 16
Somewhat due to information gained from music
Somewhat due to the way partying flushed out the corks.
I hoisted my willpower
and created successful stretches
of normal relations with others and so on it went.

As for affecting my work, I suppose pressure naturally builds up in silent types. Sometimes it might come out in the form of worthwhile art.

Interviewer: I have heard that Judaism has become very important to you. Religion has been featured in your work before. For instance, Democratic Vistas (unless I'm wrong) seems to allude to an incompetent deity. How has your religious journey affected your work, over the years?

DB: I don't know. There is probably more than a dollop of yearning for all this to be significant. In other words, I couldn't continue to invest time in this activity if I didn't feel like I was flushing out a quarry. Writing a good poem is like unleashing doves and losing the doves in the same moment.

Interviewer: Actual Air was published in 1999. To what extent do you still identify with what you were writing then?

DB: Some of it isn't charming to me anymore. To a certain degree my poems depend on charm, which is not necessarily a durable quality.

* "The farther a man follows the rainbow, the harder it is for him to get back to the life which he left starving like an old dog. Sometimes when a man gets older he has a revelation and wants awfully bad to get back to the place where he left his life, but he can't get back to that place-- not often. It's always better to stay alongside of your life." --Jane Bowles 'Plain Pleasures'