Not long ago I spent the better part of a work week reading e-mail I wrote and received between September 1997 and June 1999.

I have compulsively hung on to all my e-mail. Here is, I hazard, the first e-mail I ever received, from my dear college friend Rachel:

Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 22:35:37 CDT
From: rachel marie fumia
To: krb1
Subject: jean paul sartre and the fall of rome

dearest kenneth, i have received your messages. you are not much of a talker
but i love you anyway. jackie says hi. jackie's mailfokenneth, this is
totally fucked up for some odd reason. are those bugle boy jeans you're
wearing? love from fumi

I take David Allan Coe's taunt in "Longhaired Redneck"--"I can sing you any song Hank Williams ever wrote"--as a challenge, a program for self-improvement. I hope, someday, to be able to sing you any song Hank Williams ever wrote.

I likely will not strive to be able to sing you any song David Allan Coe ever wrote, though I sometimes catch myself humming some of "those" songs despite my best intentions. Then I shower.

Once bitten, twice shy, yes, but: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

What I just said to Ereck: "It's all about the clubfoot neonates."

I feel sad that Mister Rogers died. And it's okay to feel sad.

Fuck liberal education! Let's party you motherfuckers!

Any Madisonian knows that August 15 is when old furniture finds its way onto the curbs and sidewalks. It's moving day, all the students are moving (and a lot of other people), they're all in a tremendous hurry, and they throw everything they don't want onto the street--not least the furniture they probably picked up off the street the summer before.

I had an idea once to write a coffee table book about this phenomenon, and I took some preliminary photographs. Unfortunately, I was myself moving that August (the pictures are dated August 8, 2001), and August after that, so I haven't had enough time to do all the research I needed. But here are some preliminary images from my book, working title: The Sad Couches.

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