i will massage your crying weiner with my hairy hands

a few weeks ago i won a free copy of shane jones's I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands. it came in the mail right before i left for LA. i have read some of it in the car. i felt a little queasy but i wasn't sure if it was because of how sickeningly beautiful the sentences were composed or because i get carsick easily reading. my favorite passage was:

'i found that the man with the moustache was living in a tent in the woods. i went into the tent and it smelled like burnt apples, cedar, and turpentine. i asked him who he was and he said he wasn't anyone because he was thin and cheap like his cottages.'

i know it has been blogged about everywhere but this is my very first chapbook and i am very proud of the pick. also i like it because i feel very liberated in a way when i think about writing after reading it. there is something i am trying to articulate here. something likes: 'yes, ok, small things make big things ok.' but that's not quite it. i don't know. maybe like 'if rain fills up a little cup outside, the cup will probably spill and then all the water will water the plants and then there will be good things.' something like that kind of. and even more, the sentences move like snakes and foxes. they are very sneaky and interesting and beautiful. i imagine that shane wrote one-liners in a notebook for years and then stringed them all together on a tiny necklace and so when you read it he slowly fits it over your head, scrapping away layers of hair and skin with it.

this is the first story.

***

i am writing this in textedit on a train somewhere between needles and los angeles. last night i got drunk on the train and i started talking loudly. i kept saying 'massaging his weiner and crying'. i would say this loudly. i think it was okay maybe. i don't know. there was a mennonite man next to me. he had his hair cut like a monk from dark ages except he didn't have a little bald spot on the crown of his head. i wanted to call him 'grandpapoolie'. i hope i did not offend him.

the other night we played a show at a house in fayetteville. i sipped on a bottle of wine while setting up and was drunk by the time i started playing. i was vaguely nervous because i was scared to fuck up and make an ass of myself. fortunately, i did exactly that. at one point my pickup fell into the guitar hole and i gave it to some people in the front to fix while i got up and yelled at everyone about a two women i saw at a shopping mall. there was a super drunk guy and he kept singing with me and giving me little yelps during my songs. everyone hated him but i really wanted to throw everything down and bear hug him.

my head hurts a lot. i am 'hung over'.

i am trying to find a camera USB cable to upload some of my pictures onto the suitcase. hopefully i will have done that by the time i post this.

i have a new EP that will be coming out soon, soon, soon. someone was supposed to design the cover art for me but they haven't come through. and if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, as they say. so each cd cover has a little something i drew. i will let everyone know when it is ready for 'release'. it will probably just be donation-based. kind of like in a radiohead-choose-your-own-price-but-not-really-because-i-don't-exactly-'get'-them way. i don't feel comfortable selling things. especially something that cost me nothing to make.

i started writing this at around 4:30 this morning. now the sun is kind of rising. i think i will watch it do so in the lounge car.