This was in my inbox this morning, and I just had to share it. Hope you all appreciate it. I’m sure Brad won’t mind.

Friend of my friend S___, a blonde college girlfriend, a blowjob in a
public bathroom, the apology email,and the inspired response. The
spirit was with him….he was not the writer, he was taken over by the
True Presence. It is one of the most goddamn genius emails I have
read. Get through the girl’s email. It is worth it.

E________

—–Original Message—–
From: [mailto:*******
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 9:50 AM
To: ******
Subject: ugh

Brad,

It would be difficult for me to be any more miserable right now, I
feel like the worst person ever. First, let me start by saying that I
am truly truly sorry, and I hate myself for hurting you. Of all the
people in the whole entire world, you were honestly the last person
that I would ever want to wrong in any way. There is no excuse at all
for anything that happened, so I won't even try other than to say all
of us had WAY too much to drink, and I did a stupid thing. I can
handle you being pissed at me, I absolutely deserve it, I can even
handle the ugly words that were exchanged between us, what I can't
handle is thinking that you see me as a different person. It is weird,
I feel like I just went through a horrible break up or something. The
world looked funny yesterday, I couldn't crack a smile if you paid me,
there are songs I can't listen to, and I just ! feel beyond crushed. I
don't know if you meant everything you said to me, and I am hoping
that you didn't. I know that I was wrong on many levels, but I am also
hoping that this is something that we can deal with. I know it sounds
totally crazy and stupid, but you have come to play such a significant
role in my life, I can't imagine my days without you. It is totally
strange and weird to say that, and you could say that my behavior
didn't reflect that, and you would be correct. I hate feeling like you
hate me, and I hate feeling like all of your friends think I am a
terrible person, because I am not. I know there is nothing I can say
or do to take back what happened, but I just want you to know that
fighting with you was just about the worst thing I could have ever
imagined. It was right up there with one of the ugliest nights of my
life, and I would give anything in the world to rewind and fix it.

I am not sure if you will respond to this, part of me thinks that you
won't. If not today, then maybe some other time. Also, thanks for
getting my stuff together, although I think my sunglasses are still at
your house, if you could keep your eyes peeled for them that would be
great. I can't even focus or work today, I can't eat, I seriously feel
like it was an ugly break up, and I am hoping against hopes that it
was not that and you are not done with me. Please don't cut me off, I
really don't think I can handle that.

I am so sorry.

Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth,

Thank you for your concern. I'll be sure to file it away under "L"
for "Long-winded diatribes from drunken whores I couldn't care less
about".

You did a stupid thing huh? No...doing long division and forgetting
to carry the one is "a stupid thing"; Mixing in a red sock with a load
of whites is "a stupid thing"; Blowing some guy in a bathroom for 45
minutes while I sit at the bar wondering if you're taking so long
because you ate too much bran that morning isn't as much a "Stupid
thing" as it is grounds for permanent removal from my social calendar.

To be honest, I'm not sure if it was more amusing that you went and
degraded yourself in a public toilet not once but twice in a 2 hour
span, or that you seemed to think that by saying "Well, I didn't Fuck
him" somehow gave you a clean slate.

So forgive me if I couldn't care less if the world "looked funny" to
you yesterday. Since your world revolves around blow dryers, golden
retrievers, Prada Bags and Jelly Beans, I'm sure it must have been
most unsettling to actually have to consider someone else's feelings
for 24 hours straight. The good news for you is that my friends don't
think you're a terrible person, they just think you're the average run
of the mill cum-guzzling blond who commands about as much respect as
your average child porn collector. I could be wrong but, it's pretty
hard to respect some B&T chick who comes out to spend the night at my
place even though she's seeing someone else in New jersey and winds up
tongue-bathing the taint of anyone who decides 30 minutes of droning
commentary on Colin Farrell's new haircut is worth putting up with for
a hand job in the men's room. The good thing about being a guy is that
when I eventually bump into the young lad who finger-blasted you on
top of a towel dispenser last saturday [sic], we’ll have a shot and laugh
our heads off about the time it happened.

By the way, for the amount of time you claim to spend in spin class
you really must be doing something wrong to sport the thunder thighs
you do. Watching you parade around my bedroom in a thong was a little
like watching sea lions mate. Thought you might like to know.

PS. I BCC’d about 100 people on this email.

Talk to you never,
Brad

Some entertainment. [link]  Meanwhile, I’ve not been writing for a while as I am busy putting together an art show. I’ll see if I can’t spare some time, but I doubt it. I’ll be posting the process of putting the show together at the other site, as well as putting up the pieces featured in the show.All for now.[update] So, Rats Live On lives no more. He said, after this little exchange that he was going to quit blogging. But he actually pulled down his site completely.

The entire exchange occurred as a result of a comment I wrote at blogcritics.org on one of his posts. He was posting about the ridiculousness of the new INXS band, and the ordeal of selecting a new lead singer on the reality TV show. He didn’t like how the selections were going.

I commented that his article would have been a stronger one without the use of the word “fuck”. I was very diplomatic in the way I worded my comment so as not to appear attacking. He ripped into me on his now defunct site, personally attacking me, my writing and my art.

All that’s left is the original post over at Blogcritics. Interestingly, even though he killed his blog and is no longer participating at BC, my comment was deleted, but his post remains. Just to be sure, I checked, and my posts themselves have not been deleted.

Some of you may know that I have been poaching wireless @ home + that my Internet connection is a touch spotty. That’s one of the reasons I post with such great infrequency here of late. Whomever I’m poaching from, I think, has figured it out, and usually shuts off the router. Whoever it is isn’t smart enough to password protect the connection, but shutting off the router. Damn. That puts a cramp in my surfing. I was pleased to find Airport recognized a new network recently, but it’s the same story.

Been slammed @ werk, and, though I did write a new story last night, I forgot to bring it to werk to post, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

Meantime, though, fellow Montana blogger hosted the newest Rascal Fair, featuring fiction-writing bloggers from all over, but mainly from Montana from what I have seen. Head over and check it out.

Big shout out to Julia who recently arrived in all of her glory in Brooklyn, NY. Watch out NYC, a Knitting Revolution is about to begin.

Have a new story ready to roll but Internet’s spotty @ home. Meantime, here are some things that have been keeping me entertained of late…

And, just to let you know what you’re in for, some hate mail from The Best Page in the Universe

Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 17:12:28 -0700
From: Janine L.
To: maddox@xmission.com
Subject: Lonely Bitter Man

Hmm, after reading your articles about classifying nerds. I guess you fit
into one of those categories. Hmm, shall I say the lonely, bitter one
that sits at home all day and sulks about how much his life sucks?

Oh, and pretty sad that you go and diss little kids pictures. I guess
your parents didn’t beat you enough when you were a kid cause you sure
didn’t turn out fine.

He had this to say about blogs. For the most part, he’s right on,

He’s also an art critic, which is what the hate mail above references.

From the fine folks over @ Haiku Circus

Hope to get that story up before the week’s out.

So I haven’t written much of late because I’ve been out in my garage matting art. That is, when I’m not outside enjoying the summer. And now it’s serious. I’ve had to craft a “proposal”, whatever that is, in order to submit to galleries. They will in turn review the proposal and decide if they want to feature me. Some of it is merely a bullshit formality, some of it is more along the lines that (shhh_) these galleries take themselves too seriously. But I have to play along if I want to be included, I guess. I think it’s all a bunch of pretentious bullshit. My original artist statement is kind of an “eff you” to that idea:

My artist statement
Paint collage photography
order in chaos

But I don’t think that would fly. Plus, most folks who don’t know me would think I was being a pretentious asshole anyway, not understanding the inherent sarcasm of the haiku.

Anyway, here’s the proposal.

I possess a body of work consisting of over five hundred pieces spanning a variety of media including photography, both film and digital, painting in a variety of medium, collage, homemade paper, and a combination of all of these. All of the pieces have not been documented. Taken together, they explore a variety of themes including depression, the joy of living, relationships and political ideas.

An artist statement is, as is the body of work, a living, breathing thing. Writing about art, for me, even though I am a writer as well as an artist, is next to impossible, for art must be an experience, must make the viewer feel something, must touch the individual. Generally, my art exposes truth around me as I see it. I explore decay and rebirth, considering the subjects I choose to explore, as well as the mediums I use. The medium of collage exemplifies this, but even the photographs I take tend towards urban decay and the beauty inherent in that. A solid artist statement makes more sense for me after a show has been solidified, even if the show hasn’t yet been hung.

Creatively, I am constantly electrified by the opportunities for creation that surround me. I like to create at night, and tend towards short bursts of creativity lasting several days, and then collecting materials again in order to create anew.

My biggest weakness as an artist is my interest in so many different mediums that I am unable to develop one fully. Areas of interest include…

1. The potential of the digital darkroom
2. Sculpture - traditional and “found object’ sculpture
3. Polaroid
4. Medium format photography
5. Homemade cameras
6. Becoming better trained in the exploitation of color on the canvas, or paper as it may be
7. The potential to exploit the Internet in creating new art via HTML and Flash technologies
8. Sound collage
9. Multi-media experiences
10. Graphic Design

Taking that as an outline for my goals as an artist….

Short term goals:

1. Learn how to frame my own work
2. Learn how to market my work effectively
3. Expose my work in local galleries
4. Work more consistently
5. Continue challenging myself to learn more about the areas of interest outlined above

Long term goals:

1. Sell my work consistently
2. Produce enough work consistently to maintain the demand for my work
3. Donate work to charitable causes
4. Move beyond themes that I currently explore and branch out into more socio-political topics
5. Always remain fresh

Past Exhibitions

•1998 - Angel Falls Coffee Company, Akron, OH
•2003 - Art Missoula, Missoula, MT

All day long I search for True. >>06/29/2005 21:16:40:[NtProvUDevs]:AddAccount: addAccount ret=True. These kinds of statements make me smile. The system is working. The headphones are on. I am alone. The rain falls outside my windowpane. The sun shines. I do not notice. >>06/29/2005 21:16:41:[NtProvUDevs]:ProvisionDevs: finished, ret=True The Truth is sometimes elusive. I am a modern day Sage. Always seeking Truth, and, on days like today, finding it with great regularity: >>06/29/2005 21:16:41:[NtProvUDevs]:RmMsgSw: retv = True My fingers go numb from the typing. The air conditioning won’t shut off. The cold keeps me awake. Coffee appears on my desk. I drink it. Truth fails me all of a sudden: >>06/29/2005 20:57:56:[NtProvUDevs]:ProvisionDevs: op(1) ret=False
>>06/29/2005 20:57:56:[NtProvUDevs]:ProvisionDevs: finished, ret=False
>>06/29/2005 20:57:56:[NtProvUDevs]:RmMsgSw: retv = False I check the code and realize this is expected behavior. I am back again on the path to Truth. I look up. The moon is out. It is brilliant above the mountain.

The rain is falling lightly, around me, lightly falling. The smoke from my cigarette twirls in the mist. I look up and see a rainbow in the soft moonlight. I am tired. I climb into my car and press {POWER}. Noiselessly, the car purrs to life. I ease it from the now empty parking lot and onto the deserted highway.

“I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” –James Joyce

Happy Bloomsday, all. Anyone who has read, or attempted to read Joyce’s Ulysses Has their story to tell. Here’s mine.

Back when I was a sophomore at Kent State University, I had the good fortune to study under Dr. Culleton, who is, though I didn’t know it at the time, a Joyce fanatic. She tricked me and the rest of our British Novelists class into falling in love with Joyce.

It began simply enough. The reading list included Conrad’s Nigger of the Narcissus, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and Joyce’s Ulysses. We blasted through most of the reading list and hunkered down with U, as it came to be called, for most of the semester.

Some of us were excited, others intimidated, still others stressed out that we wouldn’t “get” it. Dr. Culleton was so in love with Joyce, and she wanted so badly for others to see his brilliance that her patience guided her teaching of the book, never allowing us to become discouraged, always enthusiastic and finally overjoyed when we all “got” it. We got it so much, and loved Joyce so much that Dr. Culleton petitioned the Dean to allow her to teach a James Joyce seminar class the following semester, and we all attended.

Since that first time though, I’ve completed U five times. I even was paid by one of the other instructors at the university to teach him how to read it. Each time, the book is more interesting, more funny, less complex and more enjoyable.

Every year since at least 1954, fans of author James Joyce have celebrated Bloomsday on June 16– the date (in 1904) when Ulysses takes place.

For Joyce, the special significance of 16 June 1904 was that on that date he had his first date with 20 year old Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid he’d met on 10 June on Nassau street. She’d stood him up on the 14th (or 15th?) but he wrote her a note asking for another meeting, and by August (’heavenly summer’) they were in love.

When the book was published, however, a huge scandal ensued, many claiming that the book was “obscene” or “pornographic”. It was contraband in the United States, and had to be shipped to America in a false book jacket.

But it is not pornographic or obscene. It is beautiful. Each chapter is written in a different style, culminating with Molly’s stream-of-consciousness soliloquy at the end. Plenty of guidebooks exist on how to read Ulysses, but the best piece of advice I can give to anyone is to not get too wrapped up in the details of it the first time though. Dr. Culleton compared reading Ulysses to seeing someone walking in a snowstorm. You see them out the window, you cannot get any details about them, but the important thing is that you see them.

Read it. Enjoy it. Laugh. And for those of you too lazy to read it, here’s a handy summary told in horrid animated gifs and brief one or two sentence summaries for each chapter.

Happy Bloomsday. Tip a pint for Bloom.

(Note: I was unable to find online the best edition of Ulysses. If you plan to buy it, pick up ULYSSES, The Corrected Text, edited by Hans Walter Gabler.

A recurring theme in the lives of many of my friends is that of uncertainty. Uncertainty about what it is we want to be doing with our lives. We are a creative bunch. Most of us have jobs that, at the very least, pay the bills. None of us, none that I can think of, love our jobs. There may be one or two of us who have a job that we believe matters – that the work we do contributes to society and that we are doing important work.

But, for the most part, we all merely tolerate our jobs. None of us are doing something for money that we love. And that breeds resentment. Resentment of our situations, and, on an inherent level, of ourselves. We resent that we are forced to work forty or more hours a week for someone else. We want to be creating art, or music, to be living and experiencing life instead of merely existing within it.

And we do create, but not nearly as prolifically as we would like. We drink to escape the disconnect we feel within ourselves. And I want to go one further, and say that the disconnect is much deeper, and that it is a disconnect from our own wild nature.

We are animals, we are wild beings. We are hardwired for wildness, even someone who has never left the city, even that person longs to be connected with nature in some fashion, because we are a part of nature. We were not meant to slave away for hours a day in a cubicle in front of a computer. We were meant to be outside, and because of that, our ancestors lived off the land, planted gardens from which they got their food, raised cattle from which they gained their sustenance. We are so disconnected from that, believing our food to come from Acme, or Safeway, or Albertsons, wrapped in Styrofoam and plastic. We put faux natural products into our bodies further removing us from our wild nature.

I am not romanticizing the lifestyle of people who came before us. I understand that working off the land is hard, but I believe that those folks had a better connection with the land, with nature, with themselves, and with their true wild nature.

I feel this everyday in my life, and am trying to pay attention to the occurrences of wildness in my daily experience. Even if it is something as simple as stopping on the way to work to smell the lilacs in bloom, something as simple as stopping for fifteen seconds to soak up the sunshine, warm on my face. Sometimes simply being aware of the wild nature we all have is a step closer to reconnecting with that wild nature.

I am much less articulate about this subject than is Becca.