Your very profound intellectual discussion intrigues. I feel compelled to add a great block of quoted text to the dialogue.

"The worms will continue to burrow into the flesh until bones bleach in the sun, my friends. Until bones bleach in the goddamn rotting sun. Anuses are rent open in a Baghdad bazaar. Corpulent businessmen snort kif and cut fingers off at the knuckle. a dark wind blows from the west. The man-child slurps the yellow marrow of infection from boils in a beggar boy's back. Molloch is pleased. The Nazarene and Mohammed exit stage left to a flatulent chorus of whoopee cushions. Somewhere, a pregnant sow is slaughtered and its offal is buried in the sand. Pity the ballsac torn from its owner and sewn into a coin purse of the rich. Relish the sighs of swollen bellies torn steaming to the sun as moorish cock rips into infidel intestines. Tremble in the sight of Molloch's eye. Curtain falls, end Act II." ~ Horus Perineum

Long Live Johnny Cash~

Glad to see Pitcher quoting someone else and not boring us with his drivvle. A man that pees sitting down has been broken.
A great man died today. I desire to have the gumption to accomplish what the Man in Black did at age 71. The American IV is one of my favorites at the moments. I never realized what a good song Personal Jesus was/is until I heard Cash sing it.
'Course, The Man Comes Around is the best song on the album in my humble opinion. Heaven is going to be a hoppin' place tonight.

"The Man Comes Around" is indeed the best song on an otherwise spotty record. "The virgins all are trimming their wicks." I don't even know what he was thinking there but I love it.

Why Rick Rubin convinced him to sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on the same album I'll never know.

Later, John.

CK

As for Marquez, I'm glad someone else thought so. I recall last year Jefferson & I had a joint show at a mutual friend's house--a house concert, if you will (and you will, goddammit). The house was immaculate when we arrived. A few hours in, I went into the bathroom and was surprised to find the toilet seat besmirched with dried up piss droppings. Gave me a chance to berate my otherwise kind and considerate fans. Who wants to wipe up other people's bodily fluids? Not me. & don't ask me to sleep in the wet spot either.

Marquez is brilliant, but I haven't read Cholera. 100 Years of Solitude made me weep. Now my Spanish class makes me weep. It's all the same in my head.

And I'm looking forward to the death of Araffat.
Whether he's vaporized by a bomb or bleeds to death from a gut shot I would just like to see him die. He is an evil man that has been allow to suck air to long. An if some Palestinians are taken with him good riddance. Isreal has lived with their cancer long enough. It's about time they remove it. Hopefully they remove a large margine to insure it does not return.
And Pitcher, Hemingway would have thought you were ridiculous using words like quite, rather perhaps. Hate to beat a dead horse but if you look up to this guy, perhaps you would act in such a way that he would respect. And notice that it doesn't sound pretentious when I use the word. I think it may have something to do with standing up when peeing. John, deciding who to free and who to blame.

actually, i would say that hemingway's placing a rifle in his mouth and pulling the trigger is more a sign of a broken man than sitting down while urinating. as for mr. cash, may he find melody and truth wherever he has gone~

It wasn't a rifle, it was a shotgun. There is a world of difference. Sitting down to pee (as a man) blowing your head off with a shotgun, hard arguement as to which one is more broken.

in the creation of fiction, which is preferable? to write stories based on one's own life and experiences, as it is most accessible and immediate? or to bar this, and force the imagination to function outside the constrains of real life? what are the pros and cons of each? how do we put our passions and beliefs in a foreign dress? ourselves in stranger's bodies?

somehow, i think my favorite description on the ballot is for kurt e. 'tachikaze' rightmyer. below his name it reads "middleweight sumo wrestler." good thing they wrote middleweight, for a featherweight, or heavyweight sumo wrestler would never get my vote, but this guy.....though i can't get the "custom denture manufacturer" out of my head either.

i once read an interview with tom robbins, where he stated plainly that the only good fiction, the only true fiction, comes from invention; which i believed {and was quite intimidated by} at the age of 23, but i've since concluded that i disagree. i think it depends wholeheartedly on the author, for there have been many examples of brilliance with both approaches.

Dave---I would say that the greatest novels spring from the imagination. This is our gift to the planet, after all. The imagination is boundless and free to soar. A writer has the ability to go anywhere, be anyone, feel anything in their minds. In their lives they are bound to the earth. What you infuse into that imagination are your emotions, your truth, but most literature pulled from the shelf of experience is masturbation. Most, I say. Some transcends, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is still not The Illiad.

True, Hemingway isn't Homer. But what is? It's still amazing to me than an animated character had the gumption to write a book as grandiose as the Iliad. But alas, I digress.

The human experience is where all great literature comes from--even if the actual plotted experiences aren't taken from real life the emotional content (or some zygote of the emotional content) certainly is.