My New Fiction Blog

Not sure anyone still reads this, but I wanted to let anyone who might that I'm doing a new fiction project.

Writing 500 words a day then blogging whatever I write. Whether it's on one story or five. The beginning, middle or end. No real context, just the words. We'll see what happens.

lukebaumgarten.tumblr.com

Read the full thing here.

The Scene

A film review as a scene of a group of friends watching the film as told in a style that recalls Kurt Vonnegut:

The three sat in the middle of a row, midway back from the screen. The film they watched was about a man who doesn’t understand himself and is unhappy. Desiring happiness, he observes his life to find out what’s wrong. He doesn’t find happiness, so he observes others observing him. He doesn’t find happiness there either, so he observes himself observing himself. Nothing. So he observes others observing him observing himself. And on and on.

The layers of observation build until he’s watching entire cities worth of people observing entire cities of people observing themselves and everyone else.

Then, after two hours and four minutes, the man dies.

When the film ended but before the credits did, they stood to leave. They guy noticed the girl with the short hair wore a furrowed-brow frown. He noticed the girl with the long hair looked peevish. He himself bore a kind of wry, mouth-half-open smile. They walked down the hall and out of the theater. They walked into the lobby and rode three sets of escalators.

They paused at the bottom.

The looks they wore after the escalators were the same as when they had just stood from the theater seats. They stayed that way for a long moment, not looking at each other and not looking at anything else either. Just staring into a middle distance, a seam in reality not populated by objects, but ideas, words and thoughts.

Being more or less precise people, they sought in that seam the right way of characterizing this film. This being's quest for understanding. This sad half thing who had spent his life being merely an observer, a fastidious chronicler of the minutia of life, as though by observing life in great enough detail he might learn how to live it. A voyeur of such relentless joylessness. An infinite regression of self-reference. A man frozen by thought. An inactive agent. A being that was, in fact, no kind of being at all.

After a long while, the guy spoke: “That was exhausting.”

More or less silently, they agreed that that was about all that could be said. The three parted ways without really saying proper goodbyes.

The film was by Charlie Kaufman.

Read the full thing here.

Turning from God's Middlemen

Mike Huckabee is splitting evangelicals along caste lines.

Check it:

Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.

[via NYTimes.com]

This is what good populism should do, something that John Edwards — more because of his place on the political spectrum than because of his ability as a politician or his views — never has. Mike Huckabee is connecting on a deep, broad level with a large group of people who feel their leaders' views falling out of step with their own.

It shows the extent to which the Pat Robertsons of the world were able to piggyback pro-business conservatism atop evangelical faith and sell the whole thing to millions of conservative Christians as a set of holistic political and moral principles. A complete worldview basically, not simply an ethics or a politics. Whether that exact worldview was shared by the entirety of the religious right when it was winning elections for Reagan and Bush 2 or if it was just the best fit at the time can never be clear, but Huckabee has certainly exposed a rift now, one that cuts along caste lines.

(I say "caste" because the leaders of the religious/political right — the remnants of the Christian Coalition/Moral Majority —aren't just all rich white men, putting them in an economic class above their followers. They've also set themselves up as God's middlemen, making themselves the high priests, the law-givers.)

What Huckabee has given middleclass, middle-of-the-road conservative believers is a third way between liberals and the pro-God/pro-business of their presumptive demagogues. That doesn't make Huck's way the right way and it doesn't make him the right candidate (he scares me to death), but we live in a deeply pluralistic society whose political system masks the diversity of its people. The more candidates like Huckabee and Ron Paul (and Edwards, though he hasn't found the cleavage point the other two have) that can ignite people's passion against what Edwards somewhat tritely calls the status quo, the better it is for America.

... and also for Democrats, if one of these wedge candidates ends up running as an independent.

Read the full thing here.

Thoughts on Tone

A few caveats, some background and at least one digression to get out of the way before I get around to the matter at hand: (1) despite once dating a girl who worshiped the ground he walked on (having discovered him whilst working her way through the Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century), despite his having won every major literary award available to an American short of the Nobel, despite his shoe-in status for getting the nobel (unless perhaps he's deemed too American), despite having enjoyed a film adaptation of his work — despite actually owning five of his novels — I've never read anything by Philip Roth until now.



(2) The book I'm reading isn't any of the ones I own, The ones I bought on the recommendations of friends or girlfriends or the Pen/Faulkner people or whoever gives out the National Book Award. No, I'm reading Exit Ghost, his latest novel (which, with massive type, generous margins, film-script dialog formatting for and a relatively slim 290 pages, might easily be called a novella). I'm reading it with the intention to review it. (3) I generally don't like books I review, for whatever reason.

(4) I'm exactly seven pages in. (5) They've all been about prostate surgery and its frequent sidekicks, impotence, incontinence (adult diapers; involuntary pissing while swimming; flaccid, nerve-damaged pork swords).

Having said that, let me share my very preliminary thoughts: Page 1: Written from the perspective of an aging, self-important writer, his sentences are complex bordering on labyrinthine. Page 2: he's explaining the minutia of his boring life in great detail. Page 3: too much detail, in fact. Page 4: needless detail. Stultifying detail. Page 5: the writing reminds me — a lot actually — of my own. Page 6: I don't think I like it. Page 7: It's boring.

So then: should I be happy that I write like Philip Roth or worried that I write like one of his 70-year-old luddite characters?

Read the full thing here.

My Insatiable Melancholy

It's been a long time. A really long time. Thanks to Don and my insistent depression for getting my brain to want to write for itself again.



The backstory: I'm depressed. I have a job that no longer fulfills me (which, un-ironically, was the impetus for starting this blog 4 years ago). I live in a town where I connect with so few people I might as well not connect with anyone at all. I've tried to remedy this, I've gone out every night for weeks to places I've never gone, being a kind of outgoing I've never been, looking for a group of people worth finding.

I never find them.

A friend from high school was in town this weekend. He, his wife and I had these amazing, topic-hopping, existence-spanning conversations. The kind of thing I haven't gotten in years. It was beautiful. It's the kind of thing I want more of — the kind of thing I feel I need in my life — but am fucked to find it. So here we are.

(One of the great ironies of this situation is that another great conversationalist and dear friend of mine is planning to move back to Spokane — to take a fantastic, prestigious job at a big law firm — at exactly the time this spring I feel I NEED to be gone.)

I need to move away. Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco. Somewhere. I need a job before I get there so I'm updating my resume and checking job boards. Teaching kids to beat standardized tests for Kaplan or Princeton Review is one idea. I'm a hell of a test-taker. I could do that, make decent money and still have time for other things. Like the only thing I've ever really wanted to do: write.

Still, not writing full-time feels like a step back. Unless it isn't. Confusing.

I'm also working on a new writing project with a friend and colleague — the kind of person I have great conversations with; the kind of person who lives nowhere near me. I want to travel to old war zones and write about how cultures heal themselves. Our plan is to head to Italy to report a story about a friend who's going to school to be a democratizer and builder of nations (a master's degree! In only one year!). While there, we plan to jaunt down to Sarajevo and then further, to Kosovo, examining two types of nation-splitting conflict — the kind that involves genocide and the kind that doesn't — and how people cope with them.

This requires a lot of money and a ton of planning, so right now we're writing grants and pitching the story to anyone who'll listen. This is a hopelessly long process. The kind that's hard to keep a firm grasp on the culmination of. Suffice it to say: we're not far enough along. That both frightens and infuriates me. I'm beginning to question my friend's dedication to this plan. I'm beginning to question my own.

Right now, in Spokane, I have a lot of irons. Some are dedicated to stoking the tinder I've already built (the job here, my few friends, my family). The majority are working to build new fires in other places. It's hard to manage these things, their sizes and scopes. Their end-points. When it feels like too much, I tend to focus on the already-built fire. I have bills for fuck's sake. Loans. et cetera. It infuriates me that I can't juggle this better, that I can't let go of the current job enough and focus on the future.

I'm a loyal person and I'm also not great at organizing things — finding other writers to write the things I'd normally write, etc. (I'm an editor, this is what I should be doing) — I don't want to be here, but I don't want to fuck those that have returned my loyalty with a career (I owe this place a lot, but not my life or my happiness) by churning out dreck.

That's the long and the short of it.

SO: Last night I'm talking to one of the people I care most about in this world, explaining to her that I feel like shit — a ton of shit — and that this amount of shit is squeezed into an impossibly small sack. I tell her the dimensions. She doesn't seem impressed. She's known me a long time. We've shared almost everything. She knows I feel like a shit sack. I've felt it before.

I then shift gears, telling her the path I see — off in the distance, yeah, but in my line of sight ("I squint, I can see it dear, I swear!" — I didn't really say that, but I should have) — leading out of this valley of chest-tightening sorrow. I start with the most physical, easiest to explain instance of the road: When I workout, I feel better. When I wake my ass up early enough; when I cut through the miasma of dread that confronts me every morning; when I spend the languid minute or two lacing my trainers, donning a still-sweat-soaked shirt, sidling into a pair of mesh-underwared running shorts; when I run the mile-and-a-half to the gym; when I run another 3.78 on the treadmill (in 30 minutes! a personal best!); when I gasp and drip through a circuit of flys and overhead presses and rows and crunches and windshield wipers and deadlifts (sets of 14! four times each!); when I run the mile-and-a-half back home; when I stop sweating; when I stop gasping; when I've done what I've set out to do — when I've conquered it — I feel really, really good.

I feel amazing.

I feel like I used to feel, like the world is open and I can just walk out into it and be embraced for my natural talents, my hard-won skills and for my personal goodness. I also feel like the world will forgive me shortcomings, my personal quirks (which, I've learned recently, are more numerous that I'd ever imagined!) and, generally, the person I am. This is a rare thing for me, and a beautiful thing.

At first, I thought I felt this way because I was losing weight, getting in shape (running faster! jumping higher!) and looking better. That's part of it, certainly. As I continue to do it, though, as less fat falls off, as less muscle is built, as I experience on my body what is called diminishing returns in economics, I realize that can't be it entirely. The biggest thing is taking control. Affecting change. Creating the person I want to be in that small way.

Realizing this: rewind to the part where I've accomplished the task I set for myself. Now I reflect on the times when I've been most happy. Professionally: when I first started writing the blog. When I first started writing for a paper. When I first started writing for an important regional paper. When I set about rehabilitating the music section of that regional paper. When I set about trying to make a difference for a community I saw as needing more than was being provided. Personally: when I am open to the occasional emptinesses caused by my self-imposed solitude and seek to fill them with people who edify and excite me. Personality-y: when I see my flaws of character (there are many of these, which I usually only see after I've really, really hurt someone I care deeply about, as I was about to do last night), and set about righting them. When I set about becoming a better person. The person I deserve to be and the person others deserve to be around.

I'm happiest when I'm becoming better. I'm often happy too when I'm not doing anything, in periods of flatness, but this is always fleeting. I inevitably feel a stirring. I always come back around to it. I eventually want to move forward.

I tell her this, in much less detail, but just as emphatically, because whenever I even talk about it, it energizes me. Then I ask her what she thinks. "I don't know man, it just sounds like a lot of words." She's right, in a sense, of course. It is words. The difference is that she doesn't have much faith in words, whereas I've build my entire life around them.

I ask her what she means and she comes around to basically that same thing. I'm talking, but not doing anything. This is partially true, partially false. There are things I'm doing. There are things I'm not doing. I am doing things, though, and I need to keep doing them. I need to do more things. I need to do everything I've set out to do. Words help me organize that ... "I mean, why aren't you seeing a counselor?" She asks. I feel like she's not listening.

This snaps something in me. Something deep and hurt and childish. "Fuck, why aren't YOU seeing a counselor?" Then immediately regret it. I've done what I often do. I got hurt and, rather than allowing that hurt a voice, I lashed back. It's one of the things that makes me a shit-heel to a lot of people I care about. She gets quiet the way she does, says she's going to go to bed. She's sick. I apologize. She says she'll talk to me later. We hang up. I'm fucked up, I know that, but I'm getting better. I lash out less than I used to. Every day I get better. Every time I blow it, I learn.

This is it: I have career problems and I have personal problems and I have personality problems. I'm not the person I want to be in any aspect of my life, but I'm excited by the prospect of becoming. I see the roads leading out of those several valleys and it's like, "fuck, which do I take first?" Maybe that's what a counselor is for. Maybe it's for seeing other roads. Maybe, though, it's for becoming comfortable in the valleys. If there's one thing I don't want, it's to become comfortable in the valleys.

Comfort scares me because, besides a life writing, it's the thing I most crave. Comfort comes in many forms, it's easy to come by, and it's immensely destructive. It dampens the spirit and makes things seem better than they are. It breeds complacency. It stultifies. Last time I went to counseling, I felt like I was being taught how to be comfortable with myself. If there's one thing I don't want to be comfortable with, it's that.

I don't know what I'll ultimately do vis-a-vis this whole thing. know I need to find an edifying career and an edifying group of peers — neither of which can be found in Spokane, I've looked for so long with so few results it makes tears squeeze out between my bitter eyelids. There's nothing left for me here.

I know I need to achieve a better self, but I can do that from anywhere.

Read the full thing here.

A pain worse than lower back

When planning this blog some 10 hours ago, I had decided to begin with "butt nuggets:" by way of salutation. It'd've been funny, but most of the humor's been sucked out since 10 pm, when Adrienne got a call from her Dad saying her Momd had a stroke. I won't tarry on it more than to point you to her blog and to ask for your thoughts and prayers, as your beliefs and creeds deem appropriate. To those of my friends (in the traditional sense, not the MySpace sense, which is hopelessly dilluted [j/k we're all totally bff, swear]) who are athiests -- which I think is most of you -- take this time to curse the intentionless void for our hopelessly small existences. For you agnostics, then, hedge your bets however you see fit. I know I have been.

[This was supposed to be about my cover story, and now it's going to be about something else ... let me dispense with this then quickly: I spent the last two weeks writing myself stupid over the newish phenomenon of Evangelical Environmentalism. It's conservative Christians, essentially, who see the environment as a pro-life issue and it's fascinating. The view point is fascinating that is, whether or not the article is I leave to you.]

Back to the thoughtful agnosticism with to which I generally resign myself. I once had a friend tell me that agnostics were cowards who couldn't pick a side. My reply at the time was: "choke on that yoga mat you ideological claim-jumper. Come talk to me when you find a religion you didn't get out of the liner notes of a Ben Harper album." That retort clearly doesn't work for all situations, but the sentiment is essentially the same in each. And though it may seem counter-intuitive, experiencing this thing -- an out of the blue phone call, a hurried walk to the car, a frantic jaunt cross-town, a mother with clear misfirings in the communication centers of her brain, frustration, anguish, utter fucking impotence -- has only made that assertion (agnosticism = cowardice) more absurd and myopic.

After these last fourish hours, I wish I'd just have a Holy Ghost moment already, or some blinding point of clarity that would allow me to put away all notion of God. One or the other, then at least I'd know how to react. I'd either be able to engage on some level whatever spiritual experience Adrienne is accessing, or just be there as a person and feel that mere personhood is enough. As it is, though, I sit idly, providing what I can as she does her thing, not having that spiritual tug and yet -- since she certainly does -- feeling inadequate as shit to just be one dude, trying to comfort a species-deep sorrow. So I acted like a go-between, calling the people I know who do know God, hoping that the connection they have that I don't would do some good to someone.

In order to avoid coming to terms with that intense feeling of inadequacy, I decided to detach and do a little reasoning. This'll keep my mind off things:

The armchair anthropologist in me now sees the birth of religion coming not in the need to explain the vast unknown but in the desire to quell grief. Though it's certainly a more romantic image to picture some human ancestor looking up at the stars and seeing God there, it's more likely he/she looked into the eyes of a helpless, agony-stricken loved one and needed God so as to reassure his/herself the pain wasn't for naught. Pondering an immesurable vastness seems far less primal -- and ultimately less important -- to me than needing reassurance and purpose. Put another way: a man-sized embrace is way less comforting than a God-sized one.

Tonight, I felt inadequate as shit offering either.

Read the full thing here.

Wanna buy a monkey? (an update and a promise)

God I'm handsome (see below). Devastatingly handsome, but lately, crippled.

Here's what: the devil-may-care lifestyle of Luke John Baumgarten -- a fitness enthusiast, socialite, journeyman writer, scoundrel and peddler of various salves (and a mere 25 years old I might add) -- finally caught up with him on no less a day than July 4th.

The irony.

The very day on which he was to celebrate his great country's 230th year free of the yoke of bondage, the young chap himself was placed in the manacles and leg irons of his ill-functioning middle region. After a nice sun-warmed wake up, a "how do you do Lord's morning, hail and well met," and a spry run of no less than three miles, the young and estimable Baumgarten was cut down in his prime by what would be diagnosed via MRI (some two weeks and like 300 dollars in Blue Cross co-pays later) as two herniations between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebra and the fifth lumbar and first sacral vertebra respectively.

Two bulging discs, kids, and I'm twenty-mother-fuckin-five.

The good news: I might not need back surgery. Might not. The twenty-five year old mightn't need to have his spinal chord laid bare and fiddled with. Sometimes young bodies can fix themselves. Unsure as yet but, fingers crossed.

Some bad news: After four days of chiropracty and general homeopathy failed to offer relief (and four nights of sleeplessness, punctuated by midnight thigh cramps that made the usually cool-tempered lad Baumgarten scream like a wraith and very nearly piss himself), I went the route of Western medicine and was given a round-robin cocktail of drugs. An anti-inflammatory, a muscle relaxant, and enough Vicodin to bring down a team of bear wrestlers and their bears. The bad part: one of those three drugs, it seems, I have a fairly severe allergy to.

Not sure which, really, because modern medicine hasn't yet mastered the art of figuring out which drugs kill which people. That is: while we know how to figure out which molds and pollens will give junior a runny nose come hay fever season, we haven't figured out which opium derivative will -- in the dead of night, some weeks after junior began taking it -- cluster his body with hives, seize the muscles in his chest and block his air ways, then continue doing so nightly for some five days after the drug ceases to be taken.

(actual conversation with my primary care physician: "which [drug] is it?" He asks, rhetorically, "Short answer: we don't know." Shrug, chuckle. Eyes widen to show good-nature, light-hearted sympathy, then narrow to denote solemnity, earnestness, a Clintonian feeling-of-my-pain.)

Sweet.

A bit more good news: I went and had acupuncture, something that's been on my list of things to do for some time. Didn't seem to accomplish anything at all, but it's nice to dabble in the art of the Orient from time to time, and though it didn't fix me straight away, it at least didn't cover me with leprous, weeping lesions.

Whatever else can be said of the Chinese, they don't often make things worse. Except for that Great Leap Forward, which was remarkable for its ambition and decentralized focus, but was a clusterfuck of implementation. The goodly Mr. Liu (the acupuncturist, you see) took this lesson-learned and relieved a bit of pain, reduced a bit of inflammation, and sent me, head-well-patted, scampering on my way, one good leg trailing one now-slightly-less-crooked one.

There are no miracle cures in life, my friends, only herbal anti-inflammatories peppered with quaint Chinese glyphs that leave your breath smelling of kelp.

I'd planned on making some grave and foundation-shaking conclusions about youth, agedness, life, death, the market economy, the frailty of the mind and it's indebtedness to a stout body, but it seems I've run the hell out of time.

Though I will say this: from a careful study of the acupuncture chart (which was gorgeously illustrated), the place I'm most frightened of catching a stray needle is the old' taint. Yes, male friends, there's an acupressure point on our respective perineums, though I didn't have a chance to ask what aches a needle so-placed is good for relieving.

Ask your boyfriends what a perineum is ladies, you'll be horrified.

And yes, it seems, Chinese -- at least so far as the chart suggests -- practice (male) circumcision. I didn't realize until I was looking at the poster on the wall there that I really have no idea about the foreskin trimming habits of far-Eastern cultures.

I left edified.

So nothing brilliant or groundbreaking, I'm afraid, but at the least, as always, I strive to be informative.

I love you all and I think I'll be writing more now. Pay for words isn't as much fun as words for their own sake. You've been warned.

Pray for Mojo.

Read the full thing here.

Milestones and Earthtones

Yes, it's got a circulation of 5000. Yes, it's a weekly paper in Nebraska. Rural Nebraska. But that tiny little paper from the geographical median of our Yankee-centric universe wants to reprint my story on Murrow, Edwards, Clooney and Moonves and why broadcast journalism sucks.

The key terms in that run-on were "reprint," "my" and "story".

That's a first.

Also, I've decided to buy more browns. Natural fibers and whatnot.

I had something to complain about, but I've forgotten it ... I'm going to blog from work tomorrow, I think. Until then me hearties, adieu.

Read the full thing here.

Meet the new blog, same as the old blog

The new, improved, far less ambitious mathematician vs philosopher is online and guess what? It's one day traffic already equals roughly 10 days worth of this blog and Mike's old blog combined.

How'd we do it, you ask? Synergy!

There's a little Baumgarten freshness on there, if you need a taste.

Read the full thing here.

Downsides

The complaining I did earlier -- about how I'm working a lot, how I'm doing editor duties without the pay or the title -- has just been placed into glaringly sharp relief.

You either do the work of an editor, and get to give yourself the assignments you want, or you are given assignments by an editor, who doesn't give a shit about what you want.

Case in point: for the winter sports issue -- a season and genre of sportage I roundly avoid -- I have been asked to write 1200 words on ski patrols.

Quoth Snatch: "What do I know about diamonds?"

I've learned my lesson sirs, I'll take the extra non-writing workload.

Read the full thing here.

Google, advocacy, misconception

This has nothing to do with me, other than being the transcriber of Colin Meloy's words. Without knowing it--certainly without planning it--the questions I asked him last Sunday would discredit the story our competing publication, 7, would run today. Read on.

Quoth 7's piece on the Decemberists:

A great artist needs an obsession ... Jeff Mangum has Anne Frank ... The Decemberists' Meloy has pirates, folklore, history, soldiers and old, fancified language ... One of the all-time coolest songs about pirates, "Shanty for the Arethusa," works as well today as it would in the 17th century: "Tell your daughters, do not walk the streets alone tonight."

Alright, remember those bolded, blue-colored terms. For the record: Jeff Mangum is Neutral Milk Hotel -- He's the whole band. The Decemberists get compared to him non-stop, especially in indie webzines. It's an atrocious comparison. Granted: Tom Bowers, the writer of the 7 piece, only makes the implicit comparison between the two.

From our interview, now:

What are the big things writers get wrong about your work?
. . . Secondly: that we sing songs about pirates, which we do not. There is not a single song that involves a pirate.

Any plans to write one?
No, no, no. [laughs] I am completely not into pirates. Pirates are Halloween costumes. I have no interest in them.

I know you hate the comparisons that get made between you guys and Neutral Milk Hotel, but you're into archetypes and collective mythos, so it's gotta be flattering to be compared to somebody who has such a . . . massive footprint in the hipster consciousness. [Jeff] Mangum is like some magnificent, absentee indie God.
I'm totally flattered, I'm not angry about it. I think it tends to be, -- it ends up being a sign of lazy journalism. Letting other people do the work for you.

I only bring this up because (1) I care about music (2) I've come to care about Spokane's music scene (3) I believe the Decemberists to be the most important show coming to Spokane this winter (though Andrew Bird is also coming, and I can't WAIT for that), for the simple reason that we're finally, FINALLY, getting a zeitgeist-y indie band who are fully on the upswing. This could mean big things for (A) the national acts that play here, which would (B) at least expose more Spokane kids to a world outside metal and top 40, which would, potentially (C) create a local scene that consists of more than bands who sound like Mudvayne, more than singer/songwriters who sound like Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz.

TO WHIT: As one of the two influential arts publications in town--who should thus be helping educate and advocate for our town and our scene--7 has written an article about a very important band that was cobbled together entirely from Google search detritus, then sprinkled with misconceptions.

How does that help us, as a community?

Read the full thing here.

Dead links tell no tales

It somehow feels more real to me when I complain by ennumeration. So here it goes, the things that are annoying me:

1. I had to beg, borrow, (administer backalley handjobs) and steal to get 2 ad-free pages for my Decemberists piece. Shouldn't be that hard. The 2 pages I got were in Arts and Culture, not Music.
2. After Colin Meloy's publicity human drug her feet on getting me an interview, I had exactly ONE day to write my article.
   
3. The Inlander has a crappy website.
4. The Decemberists piece doesn't show up on the main web page (see 2 above)
5. The Decemberists piece doesn't show up in the music section of the website (see 1 above)
6. No one going to the web page will have any idea where to find the article (see 3,4,5 above)
   
7. The transcript I promised you folks should be linked at the end of the print piece (which, as you recall is in Arts and Culture, not music, and is inaccessible from the front page). It's not.
8. Even if it were, people looking for it (I mention it at the end of the print edition of the story) wouldn't be able to find it (see 4,5).
9. There's never enough time to do anything well. I feel like everything I do is half-assed by necessity.
   
10. The thing that's annoying me most of all--at the moment--is how whiny I've gotten.
    

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's the article itself, without the kickass art Collin, Joel and I worked so hard on, and without a link to the transcript. And, now that I'm reading it with a day's distance between the article and my critical eye, it seems pretty damn choppy. Vapid. Meandering. Pat. Flowing over with cliches. Fuck.

Read the full thing here.