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Back. I could have written something here in the last two weeks. It can take all of five minutes to write a blog entry, but I wanted to see what it felt like to not be tethered to it. The answer: it’s more boring.

I could have written about that guy who killed his ten-year-old neighbor. Old news now that it’s a week past. If you didn’t see it, he had a blogspot blog. I read through it and it kept me up at night. He was obviously a creep but he was also strikingly normal. He links Tony Pierce, McSweeney’s on his sidebar, says that The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson is one of his favorite books--stuff you have to dig for. This was someone you could possibly know.

It was a profoundly disturbing experience reading his blog. Part of me had a car accident curiosity about what he wrote. The writer part of me read the thing like it’s a weird kind of fiction. I’ve written books before in which murderous psychopaths go around writing their manifesto. Reading his blog made me feel irresponsible about glorifying a psychopath. Made me look back at my archives and the fiction I’ve written and see all the signals that I’m a deranged lunatic in the making. The whole thing’s just baffling and terrible.

Moving on. Had an interesting weekend. Went to the going away party for Dan Fante. A scene from his play was read, he read a story. Sounds a lot cooler than it was. The vibe there was weirdly uptight. Or maybe that’s just me. Not drunk and renegade as you might expect or hope, it was as staid and austere as a reading in a bookstore. I also got insulted by a couple people at the party and it left me with a bad taste. For some reason, people want to compare me to embarrassing celebrities.

Last night went to the screening of the short directed by the guy who just optioned Oscar Caliber Gun.



After the ego-battle of the night before it was good to hang out there with people who dig the book. I liked his short too. I didn’t know what to expect. If you have a million dollars to give him to make the movie, just shoot me an email.

For some reason, this fairly uninteresting post is getting a huge amount of traffic. Someone please let me know why.