SAN ANTONIO, TX-

Fundamentals of Investing meets Tuesday nights in Room J113 at Sandra Day O’Connor High School on the east side.

Sandwiched between J111 (the scantly attended Build Your Own Drip Irrigation System) and J115 (the chockablock Flipping Properties Made Easy (despite the national housing downturn, Texas will post price gains in ‘08)), Room J113 is painted penitentiary gray except for the door and door frame, both of which are a shade I’ve heard my mother refer to as burnt sienna. Across the hall in J112 is a class tantalizingly titled Unintended Consequences.

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MILTON, FL-

1. Why We Went

A couple of Fridays ago when I got home from work, my husband Kelly said, “Matt wants us to go tubing with him tomorrow.”

Matt is Kelly’s coworker. They’ve become friends

Until Matt, I’d never seen Kelly make a new friend before. I used to think it was because he was shy, or didn’t want new friends.

Now I realize it’s because he felt like crap pretty much the whole time we lived in Utah.

Kelly was never hot on living there. And after his son Kody moved out of state, he expressed his desire to leave regularly and emphatically. I was the one who insisted we stay so long.

Now I feel sort of guilty about that.

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THE DEEP SOUTH-

It’s nearly midnight on Island Drive

lights in the trees

and all of heaven waits for me to breathe

standing on the pedals and coasting line to line

I am chased by the ghosts

the ghosts of Jesus and Evel Knievel

of cutter girls in Underdog pants

strobe lights and cotton candy

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LOS ANGELES-

And here’s some more good news:

Jonathan Evison, contributor to TheNervousBreakdown.com, has just published his debut novel, All About Lulu, which comes to us from the fine people at Soft Skull Press in New York. The movie rights have sold, the buzz is building, and critics are calling it “a viciously funny and deeply felt portrayal of a blended family and one man’s thwarted longing.”

In short, it’s a great story. And one worth sharing.

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mr. Evison about his recent life and times, and I’ve posted the transcript of our meandering conversation right here at TNB.

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BIRMINGHAM, AL -

Right. So I’m enjoying a leisurely breakfast the other morning, tapping away at a new column for Gonzo Politico over a bowl of New and Improved Old World Corn Gruel, when this god-awful beeping sound nearly caused me to dump steaming hot gruel in my lap (And, you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that: Gruel + Groin = Unbridled Obscenity).

You know the beeping sound I’m talking about. The one that indicates the backward locomotion of a freight carrying vehicle. Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

Upon further investigation, I was actually rather excited to discover the vehicle in question backing into my own driveway. I couldn’t recall having purchased any oversized consumer goods lately, so I thought maybe a large and very generous gift was aboard this vessel. A pinball machine? A trampoline? A Nordic Track home fitness system? A dune buggy? A giant chocolate Jesus sculpture?

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

How tired of thinking, how sawed off my seeing, how heard my hearing, how tasteless my tasting, how senseless my ability to smell, how unfeeling what I touch. Just the same, so easy to relearn how to think, see, hear, taste, smell, touch. It’s only a forced illusion, a child’s card trick. Yet this deception serves as a thicker pair of glasses, a re-tuned hearing aid and…an artificial brain, nose and tongue.

Rotate the crops, Kierkegaard wrote (laugh, but I have ethics; I keep the neighbors at bay and love them when they’re on the other side of the ocean). I may not believe in a god, but I know fear and trembling. They’re hobbies of sorts, the kind that irritate oneself for the want of something better to do. But if the crop is the imagination, yes, rotate it, a degree, 360 degrees, or some degree between.

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THE FUTURE -

Dear You,

If all goes well and according to plan, you (that would be me) should receive this long lost letter on your 37th birthday, ten years after I (that would be you) sent it. It’s 2008 here at the moment, June to be exact. You will turn 27 in close to three months. Exciting, I know.

It’s been a rough year so far, not in terms of terminal illnesses or deaths or deep and beleaguered sadness, but tough in the sense that the life you had planned for yourself all those years earlier isn’t exactly panning out the way you had thought it would. For one thing, your wardrobe isn’t at all what you’d envisioned it to be…so that’s mildly depressing.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Conspiracy humbuggery plagues the Internet, but not all conspiracy theories are tricky cells in the information supervirus. Via thorough research into the Barney Milleresque filing cabinets of my imagination, and from reading blogs that remind me of why I don’t document my day-to-day life, I have investigated thousands to a couple of conspiracy theories and absolutely believe everything I read when I agree with it. Therefore, I will attest that the following conspiracies are relatively factual to the best of my limited knowledge, if I remember ever having or claiming to have that knowledge.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

Recently, my mother alerted me to the fact that, as a child, I “really loved nursing.”

This information was delivered to me via text message. I was just sitting there, cuddling with my cat, Hege, and my phone beeped. For some reason, that afternoon my mother decided it was time for me to know that I loved to breastfeed.

It seems she had been looking at old photographs of me and had been reminded of my powerful need to feed by the size of my face in one picture in particular.

I sent her a text message in reply: “GROSS.”

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

The American dollar is worthless garbage.

That’s about it.

However, I suppose I must provide further details as to why I reneged on my promise to leave the country. I owe that much. Apparently, I owe everyone something. I’m pretty sure I’m collecting interest on myself. I’m definitely more interested in myself, but then, I’m a misanthrope, with four or five exceptions. As Lautreamont’s Maldoror put it, we’re breathing corpses. That’s why I smoke.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

There were few albums in my youth that had a greater impact on me than Appetite for Destruction, the seminal hard rock masterpiece from the late great Guns-n-Roses. Formed in 1985 in Los Angeles, Guns-n-Roses was helmed by Axl Rose, who himself had spent an ungodly youth in the bleak redneck wilderness of West Lafayette, Indiana. Appetite was the band’s major label debut, released in 1987, when I was twelve years old. It went on to sell 200 million copies and produced three Top 10 hits.

This was seventh grade. Suburban Indianapolis. Indianapolis is a cow town now; back then it was really a cow town. My neighborhood abutted a giant hog farm, the stench of which was unbelievable on a hot autumn day.

Hog town.

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GULF BREEZE, FL-

One day when I was still living in Utah I was in the Highland City Planning & Zoning office. As was my wont. Because I worked there.

Anyway. One of my coworkers had the radio tuned to a country station. Suddenly from it I heard:

Many’s the time I have looked in the water

And had no reflection to show

Until that moment I had no idea the Oak Ridge Boys were vampires.

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