Nostalgia is fear smeared with Vaseline

We'll chance anything to destroy ourselves, but we're such chickenshits when it comes to happiness.

My brother makes great Christmas lists. I think for the most part GQ makes the lists and he sends them out, but there are generally, (amongst the over-priced gadgets, over-priced man totes, over-priced man cosmetics) some really great books. Two years ago Home Land by Sam Lipsyte made GQ's list and thus Zach's. I bought the book for Zach but as soon as the wrapping came off, I stole away with it into my room and promised to send it to him when I finished. It was hysterical, bizarre, and poignent, my favorite combination. Also, how can you not love a guy who spells wang with an h? Exaggerated pronunciation of penis words...always fun.

How much whang could a man spank in this world?

My father demurred, begged off, wasted his shot. Yes, those jazzbos spiraled into smack hells of their own devising, but not before slapping down some landmark lite wax.
"Failure of nerve," my father had once said, the words hard, soothing candy in his mouth.
"That's a good phrase for it," I said.
"I didn't make it up."
"No, but it's still good. I usually just tell myself I'm a pussy."
"Me, too," said Daddy Miner.
I knew I was in the vicinity of a serious lesson, if not about how to live life, then at least how to put some poetry into your craven retreat from it.

There are some who consider him an evolutionary cul-de-sac.


It occurs to me, Catamounts, sitting here composing this latest update, that someday, if and when the collected works of Lewis Miner ever see the light of day, some futuristic editor-type might attempt to assemble these dispatches in a certain manner, to, for example, tell a story, or else
effect some kind of thematic arrangement of interwoven leitmotifs: Work, Love, Masturbation, Gary.
This would be a grave mistake.
There are not themes, no leitmotifs. There is no story.

What's all this storytelling stuff, anyway? Stories pour out of us daily, and most of them might not unfairly be lumped under the taxonomic heading: More Boring Than Your Neighbor's Spork Collection.