Hey Paul, Hey Paul, Hey Paul, let's have a ball

Toe,
I am cleaning my office and have youtube playing a playlist of Pixies songs. I keep thinking, damn, if I had a time machine handy, I would want to go back to 1988 and flirt with Kim Deal. I was alive and definitely able to have sex in 1988, but I was not cool enough to even talk to Kim Deal. I wasn't even cool enough to know who the Pixies were.

Anyway, just a thought.
Love,
E-Word

We saw this

Toe,
I was just going through some old pictures and found some from the trip we took out west. Somehow I can't believe that I saw this with my own eyes. Do you remember it being this beautiful?

I have some comments on your story. I will email them as soon as I type them into the document. I really like what you are doing in the story, with the details about the films and the different voice you are using.

Anyway, hope you are well. Thought about you yesterday with the news out of Korea.
E-word

We Don't Need No Education

Toe,
You are right about the teaching. I probably would end up working over the summer. I do think of trying it out, though--as you say, I am in a position to do that. But doing it just to get my summers off would be wrong.
Love,
E-word

Paranoidus Androidicus

Toe!
I love your Facebook rant. I don't feel the exact anger/despair about my high school acquaintances, mostly because I feel like I went through high school the way that new fat-free oil goes through your body--in one side and out the other, without much happening in between. Well, not exactly true, I guess--I made a few friends, and certainly suffered a sort of lonely existence for the first three years there. But regarding Facebook, I do have some other people in my life I would prefer not to have get in touch with me, or know anything about me. I hate the Internet, because people can find out where you are and what you are doing so easily. The mental sheild I use to hold my paranoia at bay is that there is someone else with my exact name who lives in the midwest, not too far from here, and I assume people will think we are the same person, or something, I don't know. The midwest being so far from where I grew up, I also assume people trying to figure out where I am will never guess I am the same guy, now in the midwest.

But FaceFuck would change that. My face would be on there. Fuck!

Anyway. I share a similar neurosis about my past, I think. I want to get away from it, yet I sometimes get in this mood where I look up people I've known on the internet. I have found Facebook and MySpace pages for old girlfriends, classmates, people I liked, people I didn't like. It gives me a weird feeling, sort of bittersweet, and when I get done looking at them, I feel out-of-time and displaced. I blink, look around, and think, where the hell am I? What year is it?

I could write more, but I probably should go. I think the feeling you express is interesting--it's a very modern feeling, something we couldn't have experienced before the InterWebs. We should write a book about it.

I'm happy you sent your story. I am going to read it today. Then I will finish the one I have been working on. It too may end up being fragmented, or a little anemic, as right now it feels more like a series of scenes than a coherent story.

Anyway, have a good trip! I look forward to hearing about it.
Love,
E-word

Don't stop believin'

E-word,

I can't imagine I'm the first person to call facebook facefuck. When I don't think of high school, I can't hardly remember names of folks from back then, but somehow I started flipping through and seeing faces of people who I haven't thought of in years, and who in all reality I wouldn't be able to recognize now. Jesus H Christ. Sometimes I think I need to face my fear of these people and maybe move the fuck on. I'm a grown fucking man. I think there used to be a time that you could just start the fuck over without the baggage of an ill-remembered childhood, but with this bullshit internet thing, it's like- shit, I don't know. It also made me sad that I'm still living in the same fucking place, like most of these provincial-ass motherfuckers I grew up with, it's like we're all fucking neighbors or some shit. I've moved on, goddammit. I've moved onto bigger and better things, I've made good friends, I've fallen in love, I've built a life, I'm a million miles away from that life but the fucking internet, the fucking internet won't let me let go of my past. Fucking hell.

I can be a neurotic fruitcake. Damn. My heart palpitated when I went through facebook. I'm feeling much better now. I know it sounds obvious and silly, but I've moved beyond those kind of troubled years. I have had experiences and lived a life that is not encompassed by high school. Man, I sound ridiculous. I graduated 18 years ago!

I think you are thinking of becoming a teacher for the wrong reasons. I know you are just musing, but screw teaching if you can make much more money doing what you're doing. I mean, I'm all up for summers off, but if you take a paycut you'll probably just end up working summers anyway doing your old job. But, at the same time, if you have a bug in your butt (I don't think I've ever used that phrase before), you do have all the connections you need to try it out for a semester or year, right?

I will have something to you. It's an odd fragment of a story- sorry it's not completed, this is going to take a little bit more work than usual, like I need to really do a little research to make this believable.

Love,

Toe

In the weeds

Toe,
I am the polar opposite of your brother. I have no power tools at all for my yard. I have a reel mower, a hoe, some rakes, a shovel, and some clippers. Instead of a weedwacker, I have what looks like a hand-clipper on the end of a pole. Why? I don't like the smell of gas. Using a gasoline-powered mower always used to give me a sore throat. Plus I like the idea not using any energy except what I produce.

This may need to change. I can't keep up with the weeds along the edges of the fence, so I think I need to break down and get a weedwacker.

Anyway, I have not started writing a story this month. I have an idea for a sad one. Just need to start writing.

OK, just a random aside. I like to read comments people write on the Web, whether it is comments in response to an editorial on the NY Times web site, or comments on a YouTube video or whatever. Lately I have come to appreciate the briefer comments. My favorite laudatory comment for Superchunk, something I saw today: "God's house band." My favorite response to an hysterically funny video: "LOLOCAUST." That one never stops making me laugh.

Another random aside: The semester is winding down for all these teachers I know, and they are making plans for their three-months off. Makes me want to teach. There are only two things that stop me: My stage fright and the fact that I make a lot more money doing what I am doing. I keep it in the back of my head as an option. Would it be so fucked up to quit my job, start teaching English at a community college, for the sole purpose of having summers off? It seems like the wrong reason to enter what many consider to be a calling. However, all the people I know who teach seem to hold on to their summer vacations as a sort of lifeline that keeps them going throughout the year.

Anyway, just thinking here. I hope you are well. Have a good trip! Send back pictures. Oh, and your story. I look forward to reading it.
Love,
E-Word