Air in the Paragraph Line A Newsletter about Jon Konrath's writing and life. Issue 1- March 1996 My latest deal: Hey all. I'm still alive and kicking it up here in Seattle. This is my latest attempt to keep in touch and distribute some of my most fucked-up day to day writing to those interested, and keep you updated on larger projects. I'm still plugging away on two books, in addition to other projects. Summer Rain, my first book, has been in a continual editing process, and I'm hoping for a good final draft by summer. I've been focusing on making it 'thicker', and bringing out some of the hidden emotion that I don't feel I correctly conveyed during the earlier drafts. My second book, Rumored to Exist, recently hit the halfway mark, in shortly under 3 months of on-and-off writing. An excerpt was published in Metal Curse zine ($3 payable to Ray Miller at POB 302, Elkhart, IN 46515-0302) and I'm currently looking for other zines or small journals to pick up excerpts. I've also been working on a tag-team story with Ray Miller. We wrote some insane stuff together when he was in Seattle a few months ago, so look for something interesting... Enough babbling, let's get to work here... Scraping the Bucket: The worst of Feb's outgoing email. [editor's note - this is all a bunch of outgoing mail I sent to various people. It isn't a poem written in cantos in some random fashion while on angel dust. Just a clarification.] Hey, I guess I am going to see Rollins speak here in seattle on 2/13. Do you know anything I could get him for his birthday? It would have to be something I could throw from my cheap balcony seat. No TVs, lawn tractors, Nautilus gear, etc. which brings us to the whole dating thing. no nothing has happened with the 6'1 chick, i havent talked to her we have just been playing phone tag. she is answering my calls which is a good thing but i am sure she got like 400 replies to her ad and if there was a 400:1 horse, would you bet your paycheck on it let alone your sanity? because i have absolutely no self-esteem at this point, i doubt that anything would happen if i met her. and i have been seriously fucked up about the dating thing since i got here, because i have not met anyone even friends since i moved here. one of the reasons i stayed in school for such a long time is because i feared that i would graduate, get a job, move away, work 9 to 5 with a bunch of yuppies and then spend my evenings alone watching tv and eating microwave food. well, that basically happened except i dont have a tv. and every fucking counselor or self help book tells you to turn to god, your family, or your friends to get guidance, and i dont really have any of the three. so that's what's been sticking it in and breaking it off lately. thats why im always writing, thats why i have been drinking lately, although i plan on stopping after last night's little stunt. How's things? My book is sinking like the titanic after the fucking iceberg. I haven't been able to get any cohesive writing done, the day job's really sticking it in and breaking it off. im hoping for weird, fucked up dreams about scooby doo and the antichrist. and nobody's speaking english. this one's all about japanese, spanish and subtitles. and a porno-film soundtrack with dubbed moaning. oh, in 3-d. I had a dream that I had sex with an ex-girlfriend in one of those photo booths in the mall. and later in the dream, i had to give a speech on carpal tunnel syndrome, and i knew absolutely nothing about it except i know people who have had it and i fear that i will get it myself someday. it is raining and 50. and i have to go to some dumb banquet dinner for work today. time to break out the Charles Manson T-Shirt. Sorry to hear of the simmsmobile. My image of that car was like one of those monsters in a zombie film, where the people keep chopping off limbs and lighting it on fire, but it keeps trundling along. Except your car never killed a bunch of people at a summer camp (well, as far as I know). what a car... i have very odd and fond memories of riding in that thing during the summer of 94, toting around beer and dole and duckman video tapes and zappa cds and sitting in that basement apartment while JM freaked out over the concept of us watching TV i say you get a rottweiler and train it to kill people when they say "daddy" or "mommy" i.e. a sorority dunce in dunn meadow says "my daddy is sending me to cancun" and the dog fucking devastates them. also train it to bark the theme song from hawaii five-o. that is good for parties. and it should be able to drink beer from bottles every night I plan on writing a lot. every night i fall asleep for 4 hours, wake up, find something to completely fuck about 3 or 4 hours of time, and then suddenly have no motivation to write because it is 4 in the morning. There are times I wish I was back in Lindley hall at 3am with the broken machines and all. But then I wish I still had the shithole apartment at mitchell st, a 15 minute walk in the darkness along the empty traffic of 3rd street. I was in Canada today. It was beautiful here, 50-60 degrees and very sunny, so I piled a few tapes in the car and headed north. From my apartment to Canadian customs is 100 miles, almost exactly. The drive up was incredible, very breathtaking views of every mountain range in the northern part of the state, and great evergreens and rock formations and fields of winter golden plants. I crossed into BC, and drove around just south of Vancouver. I got sort of lost, and it was like 3:30 and I hadn't eaten lunch. I then realized there was no place to change money and I didn't want to look like a dork trying to spend US currency. So, I turned around and came back. Got a little shock at a "Seattle - 200" sign until I realized it was K and not miles. Also, the gas stations all said 559, I didn't realize it was 55 cents canadian per liter. Duh. American customs was far ruder and more stupid than Canadian. They actually made me get out and open up the car and trunk. Single person, new car, one hour in the country, no purpose, no apparent cargo, I don't know maybe they did expect me to have an illegal alien in the hatchback or something. Anyway, my impression of British Columbia is much poorer than that of Ontario. Ontario seems much more royal, with wide open roads, majestic plains, and cities that look like they have hundreds of years of history. The part of BC I saw looked more like Alabama. Lots of crappy strip malls, no real sights to see, and a lot of congestion and confusing roadway. Maybe the heart of Vancouver has more noble metropolis centers, but the southern suburbs were pretty lame. However, it was cool to finally take the old escort into a foreign land, and the little metric differences along the way gave me a chuckle or two. Also on the way, I heard a radio station that sounded like the soundtrack to that Raja Babu movie crossed with Tori Amos singing the Indian lyrics. Pretty weird. i went out with this chick who is a registered nurse and she gets to pronounce people dead and she has to catheterize people sometimes. so i figure she must be good in bed. but she is 6'1 and weights 135 lbs so i am afraid i would break her in half. you should get the next issue of Details (the one with Coolio on the cover) it has an article about working in slaughterhouses, this guy worked at one and it has his picture wearing all of his gear, covered in blood and holding a cow's small intestine which weighs like 50 lbs. anyway tell me if you have done any new stuff with bones or anything. Then I spent like 2 hours on the phone arguing with someone about my dating life, or lack thereof. They are concerned that if I spend all of my weekends writing and reading books that I will wake up some day and realize I am all alone. I told them I write and read books so I won't wake up someday and realize I'm all alone. One of the reasons I sold my soul to the devil with regard to the writing thing was that I felt that I could no longer beat the game of dating. I wish I could convince my friends that I like doing this more than I would like a volvo station wagon, mortgage, wife and kids. I guess it all sounds stupid unless you're there. Hey! Where have you been!?!? A lot has happened since 1947 when we last talked. lets see, there was the korean war, then they came out with this restaurant called mcdonalds, then they started putting fins on cars, then they took them off again... you gotta be careful with the mind drug stuff. i have taken about 7 or 8 different kinds of drugs to make me into a shiny happy people and effects have ranged from loss of money because of the cost to lots of side effects. i have been taking lithium for about 5 years and that helps me to some degree. at least it keeps me off the overpasses and keeps the sniper rifle in the closet. it stops the manic part but i still get really depressed. i could take prozac or some shit but that doesnt do much for me. now if i get depressed i just listen to silly music real loud and sleep a lot. Since Henry is always talking about riding in cabs and on busses and soforth, we thought a car would be a good gift for him. So, taking an idea from an old M*A*S*H episode, we bought a small Volkswagon, took it apart, and threw all of the pieces on stage while he spoke. We could not get the radio from the car into the venue because the bouncers thought we were trying to bootleg record the concert. I think he liked the gift, although he got hit pretty hard in the head with an exhaust manifold while he was talking about the grammys, but the bleeding pretty much stopped by the end of the set. Also, during his more serious rap about the boy with leukemia, we launched one of the fenders from the balcony and it didn't quite make it to the stage. Luckily the people near where it hit were able to herd the piece up to Rollins without causing too much chaos. I sure hope he is able to get that thing back together and running good, maybe he can drive it back to New York and then just drive everywhere in the Big Apple. Are there many good, safe places to park cars out in the big city? Can I just give you answers to a bunch of questions, and no questions? John Wayne Gacy, 17 inches, Orange Crush in an enema bag, La Femme Nikita played backwards, valvoline motor oil, and in the middle of iowa naked. i live in seattle. im from the midwest but i dont like to admit it. i work as a technical writer to pay the bills, but at night i am a mean motherfucking fiction writing machine. i am editing my first book, finishing my second, both kick ass and are unconventional spirals of napalm pain and robitussen. i read like its orgasm-producing, kerouac, bukowski, miller, vonnegut, jong, sontag, heller, rollins, and fante to name a few. i dont own a tv because i think that the people who can force a jillion people to watch baywatch are just going to tell them to all start drinking jim jones koolaid or something. plus i dont have room for one in my apartment. if there were a lot of pirate tv stations i would buy one though. im nocturnal but i have a 9-5 job so at any given moment i am probably hallucinatory from sleep dep. cds are my religion, my kenwood is the altar, my paycheck is the ritual sacrifice. i listen to a lot of stuff, some alt some fringe some progressive some fusion some jazz. my prized posession is my german peter gabriel cd and i think all problems in the world would vanish if everyone listened to a stanley clarke song a day. or wilson pickett. im not into country or too much rap, but i think apple computer should license the public enemy song 'dont believe the hype'. i just ate some unidentified fish objects and angelhair pasta with tomato basil sauce. but i cant cook. thank Thor for microwaves. AND I LIKE THE OUTDOORS AND I LIKE TO GO OUT DANCING AND I LIKE WALKS ON BEACHES AND I LIKE ROMANTIC DINNERS AND I LIKE HOLDING HANDS IN THE MOONLIGHT AND I LIKE TO FUCK CORPSES AND I LIKE TO EAT THE SHIT OF ZOO ANIMALS AND I LIKE TO JUMP INTO LARGE POOLS FULL OF LEECHES AND HAVE THEM STICK TO MY PRIVATES AND I sorry, went insane for a second there. or was that a moment of clarity? speaking of which, i saw pulp fiction 20 times in the theatre. i watch a lot of films, when i get writer's block i sometimes watch 2 or 3 in a row, alone. i saw beyond rangoon, one of the best films of 95, back to back with while i was sleeping or whatever the fuck that julia roberts film was. ending sents. with was, the english dept is going to show up and take back the diploma. hobbies include caffiene, monkeywrenching, yelling from my 5th floor balcony, music that makes my eyes bleed, punching the keys at 3 in the morning, spontaneous roadtrips, buying toys, and working on a large thesis about how the planet of the apes is a social document of the 70s, comparing it to star wars, all in the family, and star trek. Okay maybe not. can i ask a million questions how are you where are you from what do you like how do you eat a reeses peanut butter cup what type of global economic system would result in a medium term solution to churning interest rates what is your favorite cartoon can you say sally sells sea shells by the sea shore 10 times real fast do you like anchovies on your pizza have you ever brought chicken entrails to a catholic church and acted like you thought it was a pagan ritual do you ever have that dream where youre falling and you always wake up before you hit why do people instinctively sniff fresh mimeographs who did you vote for in 1904 do you think i should buy aluminum siding for my car do you have any tattoos of european contour maps on your thighs do you think dr seuss translates well to sanskrit have you ever played black sabbath at 16 speed and convinced someone it was a form of time travel do you like red grapes or green grapes and finally DO YOU HAVE A WEB PAGE A FAX MACHINE AND AN 800 NUMBER? 1) I don't shoot up, but I have a permanent sternum IV and hook it up the four tubes to two liters of Coca-Cola, Jolt, Mountain Dew, and Dr. Pepper every morning. 2) as for anal intercourse, my job's got me bent over the table from 9-5 every week. 3) I watch my three sons episodes nude about 4 times daily. I have complete computerized measurements of the circumference of my penis for the complete run of the series. maybe we can split a PhD thesis in psych and american studies over the data? let me know. i take photos of ugly things. i like to take photos of ugly buildings that nobody cares about so when they are gone and some chrome and glass bank is there, I can go "see what used to be here?" Halloween 95, in Boston, sick to death but completely fucked out on a 6x dose of dayquil, wallflowering at a place called the Ramrod. There was an AWESOME mix of drag and Halloween costumes, guys dressed as nuns, a totally buff superman with slicked black hair and makeup, and a huge guy dressed as chef boy-ardee, swinging a big plastic cleaver over his head on the dance floor.i read more than a lot. i read too much. i wish i could write as much as I read but that's a flawed assumption. i am reading Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter, it doesnt really count though because it is a Penguin 60 and I will finish it tonight. Penguin 60's are awesome, 60 titles, a buck each, today they were on sale buy 1 get 1 free so i got like 12 of them. i am a BIG charles bukowski fan, and Henry Miller too. I am going to see Tim O'Brien in a week, he also rules. He is sort of into the pacifist-type thing, because he was in vietnam and got sort of fucked up. his writing is severely twisted, his last book _in the lake of the woods_ will take the paint right off your house. i have never been anyone's ball and chain, per se. I'm more like a fur-lined set of handcuffs. i had a dream about you last night! we were at my old old apartment on mitchell street and we were sitting on the couch and reading these magazines. you were reading news week or something and i think i was reading omni and you kept asking me questions about some computer ad in the magazine. but you had long hair so maybe it was really someone else trying to trick me, or maybe it was an old dream. i dont remember where we got the magazines, maybe we got them at the bookstore! anyway i dont remember any more of the dream but it was still neat. I feel a great need to quote from the Jimi Hendrix song 'Fire'. I think it's the dayquil. its 12:19 and I'm at home. i was going to go to elliott bay books, get fully caffienated, and then go to the fenix underground and do the meat market thing. but id upgrade my cold to bronchitis and then have to go to the doctor and he'd ask me a bunch of inane questions blah blah blah. i prefer not to go to the doctor, i would rather just figure it out myself. in fact, i removed my own appendix last year. i bought a dissecting kit and a fifth of smirnoff, saved myself a lot of money. ruined a few towels though and i couldnt sit down for 6 months, but im cool now. my lang was spanish, two semesters about 5 years ago that's mostly vanished. "donde es tu hall pass, senor beavis?" i occasionally have a dream where i can fluently speak spanish, but my dreams are fucked up and another topic entirely. I was in the middle of editing my first book, and was on a business trip, dragging this laptop all over boston trying to EDIT and I just started fucking with a new idea. within a weekend, I had the framework for a second book, and just started working on both, full throttle. the first book, i dont know who will like it. but the second is getting there, part of it was published as a work in progress in a magazine and now im sort of pressured to finish the damn thing. I washed my car today in an act of reverse-reverse psychology, to get it to stop raining. It didn't work. i am experiencing this heavy, sinking feeling from being domestic, doing laundry, cleaning my car, dusting the house, it feels sort of like the night after you freebase Immonium AD and feel all shaky and nap-desiring. i have been celibate for two years for no other reason than I have been too lazy to find a partner. i am afraid i am going to pull a 'just out of prison' on the next poor woman i sleep with. of course, that might not be a bad thing, i dont know. my three least favorite tastes in the world are squid, that white shit women use for yeast infections, and dishsoap. each of the three are a long, bizarre story for a later date.. hey you know i think i found a cool product idea. you see, you could cross allergy testing with tattooing. they could put colors in all of the test specimens and then when you got done, you'd have a full back tattoo. think people would go for it? so im sitting here listening to chick corea and reading charles bukowski and trying to think of ideas for the book, so it is pretty much business as usual. the scantily clad women who peel me grapes and massage my feet did not show up today, so i have to pull the grapes from the little vine-thingees myself, and run the ceiling fan instead of having someone wave one of those giant peacock-feather type things above the room. so i feel your pain about the workers not showing up tonight. im in a sort of weird mood today. driving back from the u-district tonight, im on I-5 doing about 70 and I suddenly realize that my apartment doesn't really feel like a home and I don't exactly know where my home is because it sure isn't Indiana anymore and I just got this very disorienting which-way-is-up feeling. Sometimes I don't even think about the fact that I'm in Seattle now, and I've got a job and I'm financially independent (barely) and this is my home. So I looked at my driver's license and I feel better now. i think i am just permanently fucked up when it comes to relationships. maybe i am just feeling sorry for myself, but this whole woman thing makes me want to just lock myself in my apartment with 10 years worth of hi-c and snickers bars and just never come out. its the typical argument ive been whining about for years now, most of the women out there want something other than what i really am, and the ones that might be somewhat of a match are so hidden that a person as shy as me will never find them. of course it is stupid for me to whine about this but i do. and i should go out and meet people blah blah blah but that is so self-serving of an argument i mean we are talking about a person who routinely spends entire weekends inside because they fear having to talk to a stranger. meanwhile the sex oils stay locked away and my hormones are driving me nuts and im going to have to start adding saltpetre to my food or just cut it off or take a lot of cold showers or something. but more than the hormone thing, which is actually pretty minor since its been so long, is just the sinking feeling that im just going to snap my fingers and wake up and find myself in my 80's, having been completely celibate for 60 years, with nothing but a bunch of memories of spending my weekends in bed reading stupid books. maybe i can buy some shares [of stock] for real cheap and then sell them and then buy a BMW and then buy a condo and a cell phone and marry someone named barbi who looks like a model but is frigid and we'll have kids and buy a volvo station wagon and go to church and send the kids to boarding school in connecticut and then she will start fucking around on me and i will start drinking a lot and then i will divorce her and lose the kids the stock the bmw and have to keep the volvo and ill sell the condo at a loss and the cell phones gone already and ill be 40 and look like im 80 and then think, man, why dont i just go back to being single and writing books after all? or maybe i will just spend my money on oreo cookies and pornography and CDs and just avoid the horror. and whenever i see him it is like "hey jon did you hear i am buying a yacht or something?" and i say "hey, did i tell you i managed to stay up 60 hours last weekend and i pissed off my balcony and got it to hit the I-5 overpass with the wind shear?" and then they are never impressed. see, that's why i dont like hanging out with yuppies. gotta go make my toaster strudels drink my coke write in the book and then give the plastic woman the old one-two. have a good one. no new stories no new women no new exploits no new nothing except my heart beat about 115,000 times and all of them worked. A toast to all things boring which didnt raise the number and use up any of the ones i need later. nothing new to report here today more dumb stuff more writing more work more rain more wind more time more death more shit more piss more roadkill more guns more bombs more rapes more records more cough syrup more mroe more more more makes you wanna just not spend any money and put it in a jar and then smash the jar and go buy 23,574 boxes of Atomic Fireballs at the village pantry. well gotta go run gotta cook my toaster strudels they are good i pretent that the strawberry is really human blood The money thing has become a more focal point in my life. Sometimes I miss the days when I was so far in debt that I knew I would never have money for big things and I just didn't worry. Now that I have a decent check, I've gotta think about savings, 401K, cars, rent, furniture, houses, vacations, whatever. I'm still clearing out a lot of debt and getting caught up on some big stuff - I still owe IU some money I flat out haven't paid them, and the credit cards are always a bitch. But by fall, only the student loans and this damn car will be left. But I might not start buying shit, I might just eat potatoes and fish heads and ramen and keep writing and put the whole damn check into gold bars or in a big penny jar or something so I don't have to worry about money for a while. I'd like to just work for a few years, clear out all of the debt, and stash enough that I can go back to school and get a $200 room and take a class a year and just do nothing but write and fuck women 10 years younger than me for a while. Who knows. then i dont sleep for 3 days and listen to Jimi Hendrix and when he is singing all along the watchtower i imagine talking to god and im the joker and god is the thief and i complain about the confusion and how i cant get no relief. and then i realize i need a vacation. Anyway, I agree that there's a strong relationship between writing and loneliness (and depression). I feel that the people who best perceive life and see this human condition of loneliness and respond to it are also those who can see life through different lenses and portray it on paper in a way that's entertaining, or at least endearing. Same holds true for musicians, artists, and others of artistic ability. My lifestyle borders between simple and chaotic. I now work a full-time, salaried job at a big computer company writing essentially boring documentation. I'm fairly good at leaving my work and its related thoughts at the office at 5 everyday, which leaves me my own life outside the corporate maze. It pays enough that I can afford the luxury of my own studio and complete solitude. So most of my time can be spent writing, or pursuing other passions like books, reading, music, or just wandering around town observing the normal yet abnormal. As for people, I'm fairly nonplussed. The office gives me an extended family which keeps me busy on the weekends when I want it. But I enjoy seclusion, especially when linked to writing. I do write in public places at times, airports, malls, coffeeshops, restaurants, parks, etc. But I guess I've managed to train myself to enjoy passing time by myself at times. And when I am around others and I don't want to be, it tends to make me a bit nutsy. (i.e. the holidays with my family). I guess it sort of bothers me that most of America feels a need to be around other people when they are not working or schooling or whatever. And my job is fairly tedious too, so I spend a lot of time writing mail. I don't correspond to a great number of people, but I write too much and too often. Or maybe not. Okay, here's why I like Bukowski. He worked the Post Office job, he did the repetition, played the timeclock, and realized how much the system ran on masses who did what he did. So he started writing, started calling in sick, and when he got a few people to pay him pennies for his poems, he left. And as he spent most of the 70's in his run down apartment, beating the typer every night for 4 or 5 or 10 hours, he saw the world around him as flawed as these zombies did the same thing every day just to do the same thing every day. Bukowski never lived on the edge. When the hippies and freaks and acid-heads and beatniks and eccentric euro-poet hipsters showed up at his door, he usually put a pillow over his ear and stayed in bed. He isn't easily pigeonholed with other literary movements because he pissed off most literary movements by ignoring them and just writing miles of poems about horse-racing and waking up drunk in bus-stations (write what you know, I guess). So, to me, Bukowski symbolizes the need to call in sick or avoid the giant marketing machine of life to sit in a cheap apartment and scribble poetry on the backs of old computer printouts. I don't bet on horses, I don't drink, I don't screw women I meet from poetry readings, and I don't pretend I'm some hardened dirty old man. But I do wish I had his synergy for writing so many damn books for so little money. As for stalking, I've never tried it myself. But I imagine it would take more time and energy than doing your laundry. And I'm not having much luck with that this week, even though I have a washer and drier in my place. I also figured out how to play "satisfaction" on the phone keypad. along with my renditions of "another one bites the dust" and "whip it", I'll probably have enough stuff to cut a demo by summer. The Journal Pit: February's spiral notebook scribbling in action 2/1 The mirror I'm looking into is disturbed, broken, untrue. I want to rise (or sink) to another level where the self-emulation, the purgatory becomes valuable instead of destructive. Now, my self-criticisms only produce more ripples in the lake, more pain. I'd like to reach a point where they produce a more true item, an artwork. THen my own indoctrination becomes an item to draw others to my feelings and existence. 2/7 Everyone said it rained like hell in Seattle, warning me of some new, more evil rain. But rain is rain is rain. Back in Indiana, I remember the summer drought-breakers, the 4 and 5 day long rainstorms. Like an orgasm after a year of celibacy, inches, feet of heavy downpour, almost closing down the cities as the drainage ditches filled and overpoured into streets and basements. And I used to deal with the pissy spring cold rain, days of charcoal skies, pounding winds, and frigid showers in the fifty degree rain. And Seattle is worse? 2/8 If I was back, I'd go to CD exchange, say hi to Tom. Stroll Kirkwood, duck into BW3 for a quick look around and maybe a beer and a game of trivia. Then I'd walk to Karma, see if Michelle still worked there. Then to Dagwood's for a corned beef on a Kaiser roll, swiss, mayo, mustard, green pepper, tomato, and a liter of doctor pepper. With the food in hand, I'd walk through Dunn meadow, and over to the IMU, where I'd sit in the union commons and eat. Dagwood's, Dr. Pepper, and Chaucer in the union - the total experience of taking L297 last spring. I hated Chaucer, but damn I miss it. 2/21 Thoughts of money, LS Ayres, Visa, dentist, doctor, Ford, IU still tear and eat my flesh (yes Simms, like weasels). The list gets smaller but more roaches keep running out from the floorboards, more shit, more problems. I scratched my car bumper today, I looked at my teeth and saw 6 or 7 holes, and then I thought about my other bills. At least I have cash coming in, but hell, when does it stop? I think when I move, I'm not going to buy the furniture I planned on getting. Just a small bed and my bookcases, no couch, no TV, nothing but milk crates and stolen lumber. Fuck Ikea, if I had $1000 to buy a new leather sofa, I'd buy a $20 futon and put the other $980 in the running-away-to-mexico jar. [...] No writing, no nothing just a bunch of sleep and a headache and I'm still tired. Kicking ideas with no thought, and I'm too sleepy and too nothing-esque to put the fingers to the keyboard and kick life into a blank screen. It's all futile, I think, telling the life of someone who has no life to tell. Cyclical - I stay inside trying to tell others how I lived when I haven't started. I need ways to go out and grab life by the shaft. I need something anyway to worry about besides this damn stack of bills my teeth the books the job my car my dick my toenails my apartment my computer tape drive my family my stereo volume knob blah blah blah. Fuck the ones that increase my circulation my pulse the pressure of my crimson fluid. Every heartbeat shortens my trip on this slab, and they're punching my ticket early. A toast to the boring, the old, the ignorable of the world. Thanks for keeping me alive. And so on: I forgot to mention that I got to see both Henry Rollins and Tim O'Brien this month. Rollins spoke for 4 hours, pretty intense and funny stuff. I've been waiting to see him live for years, so it was a pretty cool experience. O'Brien wasn't as good of a speaker, but he did have some good stuff to say about The Things They Carried. Unfortunately, he only spoke for about an hour. With an $18 ticket price for balcony seats, that wasn't too cool. But he's given me some new ideas for the eventual final draft of Summer Rain, so it was worth it. So that's it for now. Keep in touch (or get in touch) with my info below. Buy the new Metal Curse from Ray if you want to take a look at my stuff, or send me an e-mail or letter and I can fire off part of a draft for you to check out. To Contact me: [Editor's note: I changed this to be current as of 9/9/96] Jon Konrath 600 7th Ave #520 Seattle, WA 98104-1933 (206) 343-5604 (home) (206) 217-7811 (work) jkonrath@speakeasy.org http://www.speakeasy.org/~jkonrath I am also responsive to skywriting. Copyright (C) 1996 Jon Konrath. All rights reserved.