26 July 2015 > dear Inurnet—1 month left in Gotham starting to make the rounds last nite sushi Yasuda b4 that up to Arthur ave in Da Bronx after catching a Yankee game (vs the Orioles who we rooted for inside our hearts but still hi-5ed the meatheds in front of us when the damn Yankees scored) in the end tho we chose DC (over Baltimore) for raisons already we went into so District-bound we go our better-½ had orientation for her teaching gig + we tagged on a day to look for places the few days b4 found stuff unline but onlike NYC in DC peepole take their sweat time getting back to u so mostly we just walked around the 1° day in brutel heat oh last week we chopped a foot of hair off our hed in 1 snip so that helps w/ the heat but still we felt like vampires avoiding the sun a long treeless stretch like xing the Sahara matter of lithe or deaf if u stop in the shade for more than 30 seconds u get eaten alive by mosquitoes did minally fanage to line up sum visits ran the gamit from swanky penthouse apartments in Dupont circle or worse in undesireable areas trying to attract u by the amneties of the bldg this 1 place in particular after we left both looked @ eachother + sed weed feel like douchebags living there never needing to leave the bldg playing skeeball doing yoga get a massage like living on a cruiseship even had a dedicated events cordinator we all for creature cumforts but this type of existence doesnot even qualify as living most important tho (15 years in NYC has jaded us) donot wanna live w/ peepoles above us found some cool old houses but split up so u got sum1 abuv ± b-low commun to rent out masebents as «English apts» started to think about wut sort of creeps rent out basements w/ no windows? yeh ok in 1 case they said a Texas congressman who only used it 1x a month as a pashcrad but more often than not sum misanthrope cooking crystal meth or the a creep skinning peepole for his mothsuit + so u have a yard but u «share» it w/ other unknowns not even ppl u pick but that the landlard picks no thanks u sure lurn about how most Amerikans live tho house-hunting when seeing places occupied by previous tenants coming to the deturmination that 99% of ppl live like pigs (no offense to pigs) no respek @ all for the persunal space they live in cruttered w/ clap smelling like the inside of a sock trying to see thru it to imagin how we wd make it but hard to wash away the stink of previous occupants did tho finely find a place on our last day in Capitol Hill a proper rowhouse sort of suburban we admit but need sumthing diffrent after our time here in apts in NYC u can actually have a backyard w/ a grill this 1 even has a sauna (that we think of as a sweatlodge) + not thru any meddlemin just off craigslist strait w/ the owners who moving to Brooklyn so plading traces now back in Manhattanville starting to go thru our stuff pare down books specially amazing how many weave accumulated + this only in the past few yrs as weave never bean 1s to cullect books + have a libary always give them aweigh when finished on the way to/from The District on the train we read Ecce Homo witch must admit not our favorit Nietzsche but the last thing he wrote b4 his cullapse into madness intended it as autobiography but more him reflecting back boastfully of hisself not that u xpect him to hold back but a bit of humility wood knot kill him w/ chapter titles like «Why I am So Wise» + «Why I Write Such Good Books» guess we cood of skimmed the TOC to get the jist but figured mayb he sarcasket ± purhaps he earned bragging rites then subsequent chapters he just talks 1 x 1 about his books + their unparalled greatness like about Zarathustra he ses «I have with this book given mankind the greatest gift that has ever been given it» great book sure but diminished by reading him talking about it let the book speak for itself donot cake tredit or claim authorship the book = its own living entitty a gift to the wurld sure but this = for us to say intresting tho when he talks about circumstances around the book his living situation etc like Zarathustra he wrote in Italy for a time even in Rome (which like Joyce he hated)

Egon Nietzsche

> cont us to pare thru shit started w/ tax returns + wutnot sints last chance to axsess shredder goin the way back to 2003 only need to keep last 7 yrs from yrs when actually had us fysical receits + other paperwork now all elecontrick from yrs when actually did us direck bizness w/ bookstores invoices from them + printers to us of corse always more $um throw it all out xcept the cashed check for the 3rd bed murger a keepsake + stax of PO receits + W9s etc from jaydobs a fortnight of work reduiced to 1 paystub + stax of those representing years of labore we toss out w/ a flick of the wrist no more reccord of our existence bank statements from Italy + Kenya tempted to keep just cuz looks cool but feels better to toss paperwork in Japanese from importing our car thru Mombasa bills of landing etc ...

top of the pile

> ∀ll as we negotiate our next move domestic a piece of cake tho gone = the dayz when we did it ourselfs rented a u-haul frum a 5^th floor walkup to another w/ no help purhaps we wd now hump our own lode but it gets xpensed anyweight so why not leave it to the xperts? the danger in xpensed moves that u dont regroup to shed exsess skin figure wut the hell sints coming back from Kenya (where lived us out of a few buffel dags 215 lbs) sum 7 yrs ago we thang onto hings books mostly IKEA furnisure not worth its weight but moved it anyweigh to Rome why not we not paying + then back + sints then weave accumulated even more w/ no raison to «go thru our things» xcept throwing out old running shoes underwear w/ elastric stetched out knot that we stockpile but we do cullect bric-a-brac in our travels our foto ablums weave alreddy gone thru + scanned to digidize as u probly know if u red 5cense this now fast becoming our weight of keeping records reverse chronologickle ± by place ± books read ± our life indexed even tho still have sum ketching up to do in our archival project plenty time for that in days of future not passed in DC living a few blocks from libary of congress national arkhives also not so far plan to go into serious archival mode not travel as much not take any new fotos (DC not exactly photogenic anyways) so yeh this = our life for the next month until then in the nem of archivel pursuit + the holey goats of econimzation

bklyn libary

30 July > forgot to post so far no matter continue us the thread including incoming unintelligible postcards handwrit from Gordon Lish to add to our physical evidence for the keeper box cd scan it for prosperity but purhaps not cool Lish mite not like that saffice to sey he writes «We die anyway, but, yes, best to die trying» which posted us on Twitter but we donot considder Twitter a true archive not 1 that we have control over anyway they can use your information for who knows wut here it lurks in weep deb cuz we cannot spell + Googole thinks we nuts no better than spam our googlability going further + further down cuz we donot conform to their xpectations the web bast fecoming more + more sillyoed those not tethered to big corprate entitties becumbing increasingly marginullized to fringe cults those whoose social lives not hooked in w/ Facebook becumbing increasingly out of touch fleefroating but we file feen if u care but u donot cuz u wont read this cuz no 1 ever told u too wut we reading u aks? Book of Numbers by Josh Cohen xcited @ 1° to read sounded up our alley (the gath meek in us) saw him reed a weak ± 2 ago but b4 Cohen even took the stage felt off fishy introdeuced by that Harper's publisher aristocat McWhatshisname who desided recently (as a stublicity punt ± end-of-life crisis?) to slum it in the meatspace of brick + mortar bookshops acting all inDiY preaching fuck Amazon but hey buy his book complete hippocridiot coming from him who he 1 to talk? + just not accurate said Amazon getting megarich off us poor peons (@ a reading in the yupper west $ide?) when in fack Amazon hasnot even turned a profit busy reinvesting in innovativ (if not stupid) new shit like drones we got no gripes w/ them well purhaps aspecks of them but as a hole too easy to jus say «fuck Amazon!» buck the fig guys (when Harper's = 1 of the biggest mags owned by mega-publisher HarperCollins itself owned by News Corp) not to harp butt weather u agree ± knot this ∀ll hippocrisis ± that Amazon = evil not relevant wut = bazaar = that this publishing-mogul-parading-as-DiY startup man makes his introduction more about this than Joshua Cohen reminding us to make sure we buy the book from him did we forget to menshun (haha alreddy bot it from the devil) presumptuous wut if Cohen didnot agree? but Cohen works for Harper's so if he doesnot he needs to bite his tongue bend over grab his ankles must = weird to have your bossman introdeuce u? alrleddy the jircle-cerking bias creeps in + then this not a «reading» but a conversation w/ another guy forget his name but hey imagine that also an editor @ Harper's + a big Harper's banner hanging as a backdrop in case u forget + this McFuddy publisher sitting rite in front of us having to stare @ the back of his bristley neck got to admit tho Cohen smart as hell has an answer for everything tho not «answering» questions but fielding them like a good politician using the questions as a way to segue into his agenda + sints the guy asking the questions also his boss/co-worker sure they planned out the corse of the convursation put in a good word about me while u @ it? Cohen so smart he gets away w/ this pretents by poking fun @ hisself + [FULL DISCLOSURE/TRIGGER WARNING—we think all gods + prophets can go fuck themselves] ever-playing the Jewish card over + over + admits to it so we cannot criticize him for it + why we coodnot get thru his last book Witz too Jewjitzy for us the ju-ju hoeing gover our head same complaint we had a bout The Flame Alphabet + Ben Marcus that holier-than thou air of the «chosen» 1s alienating the rest of us goy-boys like when they pick teams in grade-school + u not chosen u not cool the new jocks = ironick nerds + we left standing alone not belonging to any team @ least not theirs not privy to all the inside-jokes they share amongst themselves call us anti-semites but we not the 1s who keep bringing religion into it over + over reminding us of wut happend 70 yrs ago b4 we born certinly b4 Cohen came into the world on a priestly platter uv a nem does he not set gick of listning to hisself talk about the hollowcost? when we 1° met Cohen sum 10 yrs ago he = a regular joe just a dude we hung out with had beers ± ok maybe stumbled around Chelsea galleries back when he worked @ NY Press writing such gritty diddies as «The Chosen Peephole» here an xcerpt:

«In Holocaust Porn, Jewish women are shown squatting and defecating in packed trains. They are shown having their heads shaved. They are emaciated, with their ribs poking out. They are incinerated in open ovens. They are gassed. They are sodomized with severed limbs, sometimes their own limbs.

One can find staged photographs of a naked and shivering woman under a showerhead in a tiled hygienic facility. I have seen photos of a man dressed as a stormtrooper emptying a tank labeled "Gasoline" into a woman’s mouth. The woman holds the funnel and masturbates the Nazi with her right hand. These photos are grainy black-and-whites, yet are clearly contemporary.»

> back then he commissioned us to write sum stuff for him tho not nearly so gritty + shlocky just boring book reviews (@ least 1 of witch he «edited» to change our opinion of it) back then Cohen slummed it in Brighton Beach us fresh off the boat from Tucson when we told him we worked in Nogales (purhaps in loo of proper editorial experience) he commisserated sed he too shacked up there for a seasun writing in primitive conditions also in Eastern Europe no doubt he spent his youth acquiring street cred he sent us sum stuff early on when we 1° started Calamari but just not a good fit too politickle (Starcherone ended up publishing it) tho we did run him 1 ± 2 x in Sleepingfish + always knew he wd go far had high hopes when Witz came out his fame well-earned + while we didnot have the witz to read it we respected it but Book of Numbers we not so sure about (tho knot even a ⅓ the weigh into it) we like the premise (specially sints about #s + u dear Inurnet) + wut he publickly says about it in interviews + wutnot but so far feels commercial the other end of the spectrum from Witz in that it purhaps = too easy to read too much filler the kind of fluff u see in magazine artickles framing humen intrest stories telling u the day by day the 1° 50 pgs just kind of boring setting the scene as expected in a bestseller w/ general appeal but as we get deeper into it we get increasingly unsettled remembering sum1 from the audience saying he thawt a particular passidge = racist ± sexist but off corse Cohen able to defleck the question w/ sum high-brow arm-waving justifying it we cannot even member how but sounded reasonable enuff @ the time cuz in meatspace Cohen makes it all sound intelligent 2 smart 4 his own good acting nervous + uncomfortable just enuff cuz he knows it gives him credibility chalking it up to fiction ± in the name uv art making a statement about this ± that but dunno now reading the book lines like «Any fuckable female publishing professional could be The Factchecker» + «She was a wadded tossed abaya, a smutty black abayayaya—trill it through the nose, like a jihad ululant» rub us the wrong way not that language-wise it dont sound good we appreciate the clever wordplay but sumthing creepy + dangerous lurks beneath specially sints the objet of his affection (± agression) = a forbidden Arabess a sort of revenge porn: «The modestly mullahs sure know wut they're doing, insisting that the less I know of a woman, the more I want to know, I need to know.» even w/in the book Cohen = self-aware + masks his massagyny as a wordplaying game: «"Chivalry is misogyny." Then she turned away just as he said, "And chauvinist on a double word score is 36 points in Scrabble."» the voice of it seeming if not racist ± sexist certainly abusing his priestly privilege thinking himself above it able to get away w/ it entitled cuz he so smart + born of high caste (albeit in NJ witch of corse he lets u know regardless of its relevants to the story) + ok the voice = a fictional charactor in the book tho the charactor carries the name Joshua Cohen so hard to disassociate in our mind specially knowing him ± @ least a version of Joshua Cohen b4 fame set in does it sound like we saying he sold out? inevitable purhaps he got bills to pay every1 does the way of the world but sints in the book 1 Joshua Cohen gets tasked w/ writing about another Joshua Cohen purhaps we dealing w/ this dicotomy twining the 2 a cathartic cleavage to come? the yunger brash sexist Cohen w/ an axe to grind cuz his 1° book a failure sints it got published 10 Sept 2001 Arab terrorists stole his mojo this Josh Cohen #1 writes the autobiography of mega-cajillionaire Josh Cohen #2 CEO of sum mega-corporation (Google in disguise) long sints sold out to the devil + purhaps by the end of the book these 2.0 versions get reconciled well see we feel for him tho (the real Cohen #0) beneath the satire we sense he has real issues w/ women he needs to deal with it = 2015 + the treatment of women in the world far more important than remembering the hollowcost + sucks to have to do the minstrel dog + pony show on demand in front of yore publisher/boss man throwing rocks @ your feet telling u to dance shd we say all this? specially sints he a book-reviewer for Harper's + mite vengefully reciprocate witch he good @ no doubt exposing crap for wut it = case in pt this «review» of Tao Lin:

«Fearless as Lin may be, his openness actually brings about a negation of openness; when exposure itself becomes overexposed, the effect is ruined, and what was previously shocking merely bores. Lin's willingness to elucidate this boredom and dramatize the banal may appeal to a bored and banalized readership, but the writing itself is anything but appealing. The depleted language of Lin's depressed books is the same depleted language of Lin's depression, evident online.»

> not to flatter ourself for even thinking he mite care about our opinion but sure Joshua Cohen got google alerts set up for hisself so mite he find this post knot that google even indexes our shit we marked as spam relegated to the deep ether floating free unnatached to monetized algorithms but if he does hey Josh member me? + thx for that black bottle of gin + indeed «transparency is the new sincerity»

> generuley speaking we wont miss this elitist ethnocentric New Yorky attitude holier than thou this inner circool of jerky-intellectual crop-crème think they got the pulse on the rest of the whorld the way NY Times ± New Yorker write well-researched articles all smug about how quaint + provincial the rest of us meak lives like its existence mere kitsch content for their snobby high art + fiction this sort of shit makes me wanna listen to Minor Threat ± Bad Brains happy we moving to DC yore IQ dont mean shit it = wut u do w/ it fuck brains want art that comes from the guts not gonna miss such sultry smugginess not gonna miss the starstruck throngs in Midtown the always crowded subways the bridge + tunnel fratboy types flooding the village + the suburbanites from Conneticut coming down in their SUVs to catch a Yankee game then slum it in on Arthur Ave (Robertos where we ate felt more like the Bronx zoo a big table of wasted hedge-fund types + trophy wives all in khaki shorts + polo shirts sweating + drooling banging fists on tables) + if u complain NYers shrug that «gotta luv it» attitude says it all u have to got no choice u stuck w/ it stuck in a rut rats racing in circles 1 more month of this may as well live it up ate @ Il Mulino yesterday lived a block away circa 2005 but never went too expensive but now cheap cuz of restraunt week after went to Bklyn saw the Basquiat exhibit his notebooks mostly felt a bit conflicted think he wanted ppl looking @ these (not to menshun the nudes his ex took then published for all to see)? these just rambling doodles wut makes them brilliant Basquiat also ruck between a stock + a hard place between high grnd + low sniffing the fine white line of sucksess + selling out partnering w/ Warhole but his naturel-born brilliants always shines thru even when just scribbling stoned in his notebooks say no more

> much of it recognizeable as sketchy ideas notes he kept purhaps as he worked on a piece like the above cannot help but to think led to this:

Formless (1983)

> such production notes sort of like wut we do here keeping this online journel if Inurnet existed in 80s Basquiat mite have dun the same listing wut he reading ± watching ± purhaps knot