AN EMAIL IN SEVERAL PARTS, THIS TIME WITH A SPECIAL PRESENT KINDA IN THE BACK HALF

First, Tha NEWS.
Back in Chicago. It's been both stiflingly hot and reasonable, with also a massive thunderstorm that brought down a tree onto a truck a couple blocks over. Wild. I went and put my feet in the lake yesterday. Today is the return back to the two social media I follow, Facebook and Instagram. I still haven't really decided what I want to do with those two things exactly, as so many people regard them as marketing, but I genuinely use them for, y'know, communication. I genuinely missed my online friends while I was out, and I cheated a number of times, especially toward the end. It did do a remarkable job of lowering my general anxiety about the world. But it disconnected me from my peeps, and that sucked. I may end up just doing a "professional" type account for both platforms, but we'll see. I sort of like having my extremely strange Instagram being my "real" "work" Insta, largely because life is actually really boring. (My Stories feed is where it gets supremely weird.) In any case, back in the places.

Thankfully I've largely missed the Threads/Twitter/"X" drama. One thing I thought was hilarious, though, was that the only thing I can think of with the trademark "Threads" is the '80s UK "television event" of the same name that was apparently the most harrowing view of a late-20th-Century nuclear exchange that was ever put to film. (Some argue the Steve Guttenberg vehicle The Day After was more effective, but I'm not really planning on seeing either one because I already grew up in the '80s, thanks.) (And that's not to say anything about, y'know, the actual devastation forces upon the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Regardless, there's something deeply hilarious to me about our current technosuperpowers being a Millennial security/privacy pervert vs. an insecure Gen X war profiteer. And I mean "hilarious" in that "James Cameron having the fucking Terminator do a thumbs-up at the end of T2" sort of way. We're just sinking in a pit of molten iron while the most emotionally resonant thing anyone can think of doing is rebranding the death throes of capitalism.

Anyway, the ol' brain is largely in a holding pattern, but I have managed to do a couple things since getting back to town. (Hop down to HUSTLE for that. Yes, I really am burying the lede here.)

Second, INTERLUDE.


Third, CONSUMPTION.
- I've mostly been trying to catch up on Youtube I didn't watch for two and a half months.
- Haven't read or listened to a single new thing since the last go-round. I'm currently listening to an "alternative" playlist on Tidal and have many times almost typed the lyrics I heard. This is why I don't listen to music and write at the same time. Or listen to music and do anything.

Fourth, HUSTLE.
Oh here's the meat and/or potatoes.

Did you know I wrote a book that got published in 2021? I'm assuming you did. It's called A Void and Cloudless Sky, and it was published by Finishing Line Press. Their marketing has consisted of one (1) Facebook post and one (1) Instagram post on the same day. I haven't made enough sales since release to recoup Ingram/Amazon hosting. So I'm giving you a chance to grab a .pdf copy of it at this link. See, FLP doesn't own the digital rights to it: I do. They only have the print rights. So I'm just giving it to you. It is, in my opinion, way too damn expensive for what it is (a 30-page chapbook that required little more layout than copy-pasting), so fuck 'em. It's yours. From here on, everyone who signs up to the newsletter will get a free copy. The print version will still be available at The Usual Places, but the words are mine, and now they're yours.

Last time around I mentioned some readings around the release of Sobotka #10, which includes two of my poems. I have a date, location, and time now! Saturday 12th, from noon to 3pm at Four Letter Word Books and Cafe here in Chicago. If you happen to be in town, I'd love to see you! It's a party, so things will be loose. Also reading will be my Columbia peer Kaitlyn L. Palmer, whose work is indescribably sensual and absolutely in love with the experience of being human.

Lastly, I'd love for you to check out my Patreon, which is basically the thing that enables all this. (By "all this" I mean webhosting, an occasional contest entry, and/or literally putting food in my mouth.) There's levels from as little as $1 up to $50 and what you get varies, but you can get poems written just for you to your spec. Also, I'm almost caught up on the "Notes" posts, which I'd gotten a little behind on. If you want to know what the hell is going on in my brain when I write, those are the closest you'll probably get.

Finally, THE OUTRO.
One of the last things I did while I was on the farm--I mean like in the last week I was there--was learn how to play the riff to "Green Onions" by Booker T and the MGs. Now, to be fair, it was actually the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers version of "Green Onions", but it's the same song. I don't have anything special to say about it, honestly, except that I hope that whatever afterlife I end up has it as the music in the waiting room. Particularly this version, in which Duck Dunn on bass gets progressively more unhinged as they go.

Now, this might relegate me forever to "bluesdad" territory, or at least the supremely uncool person Marty McFly turned into in the 2015 segment of Back to the Future II, but if we can't enjoy something like playing along to one of the greatest pieces of pop soul music ever put to tape, then why are we even alive? What's the point, if not for "Green Onions"?