There's that old curse that goes may you live in interesting times, the implication being that interesting times are almost certainly terrible times. This is usually true. Weeks go by where everything is good, everyone is happy, nothing bad happens, and when its done you can't remember a fucking thing that went on. Some horrible drama occurs and decades later you can vividly recall every moment of the episode, every feeling, every sensation. Interesting times, terrible times, are often the only stories worth recounting. That's probably why so many stories involve tragedy and drama: happiness is dull. Happiness is boring. People walking around feeling satisfied just drive the rest of us crazy.
    Of course, right now just about everyone in the New York City area has an interesting story to tell.
    I'm not going to tell mine, though. I'm tired of hearing others', and tired of telling mine, especially since mine is pretty dull in that it has a happy ending for me and mine. Too many people around here don't have happy endings. Their stories are interesting. Mine are not. The fact that so many people are so eager to tell their stories about this horrible incident - or, lacking any actual stories, to tell us their generally ignorant opinions on the situation - just means that we all long to have drama in our lives. Preferably the kind where we get to walk away in one piece and shake our heads in awed wonder, dining out on the tale for years afterward.
    When I was a kid, I used to daydream about terrible things happening to me. Terminal disease. Gunshot wound to the spleen. Kidnaping. Whatever - I don't think this is too unusual, and anyway I've gotten over it. We all crave drama, probably because our ancient DNA programming expects to get the adrenaline flowing pretty often and if we just sit around laughing at sitcoms it never happens, so we have to rent Hannibal now and then and simulate the hunt. In times of extreme happiness and prosperity, a lot of people will latch onto the most minor and insignificant problems and turn them into huge dilemmas, simply to get the rush of a good tragedy - this is why, I'm convinced, rich people are such terrors. They have no problems, so they take what they can find and make them into problems.
    I don't like giving into subconscious bullshit like that, though. The good work of putting out The Inner Swine goes on, remarkably, and I have been amazed by the number of people emailing me from around the world just to make sure I'm okay. Sure, maybe a large number of these people are owed money by me, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with their instinct to contact me. The extra email traffic is a little troubling because I spend so much of my time answering or ignoring email as it is. Email management is just more shit I gotta do.

    First, I have my fans. Yes, Virginia, I have fans. They're not teenaged girls hiding in my hotel room, no, they're just mildly amused people who send me a "keep up the good work" email now and again, but they are fans nonetheless. Or at least so will I refer to them. If they're polite and sensible I'll usually take the time to respond to them, and some of them check in pretty regularly. Then there are other Zine publishers who I trade issues with or have communicated with somehow, who will send along a review of the latest issue or a question or just a profanity-filled tirade against me, all of which are fine. I always respond to these because you never know when one of these angry people is going to spark a grassroots movement against you - zine publishers being, by and large, damaged, alcoholic troublemakers, take it from me.
    Then there's SPAM. Lovely Spam. You can't escape it. From people trying to sell me printer toner to the people who get my email from bookyourownfuckinlife.org and assume I want free CDs of their band, I spend a lot of time sifting through the incoherent, badly spelled Spam.
    And what I want to know is, who in holy fuck is falling for this shit? Who downloads programs and runs them hoping to see free pornography? Who really believes that an anonymous email is going to solve their financial troubles? FOR GOD'S SAKE! My Mother knows better, and she's been dealing with email for about eight months now. Why must I suffer for the ignorance and laziness of others? The same reason I get to receive Sircam emails every week with people's personal documents, the same reason my home network gets port scanned by Code Red and Nimda zombie PCs every day. I don't know what that reason is, but I strongly suspect that it has something to do with stupidity and some terrible sin I committed in a previous life.

    Oh well. Dealing with email is necessary public relations, and an often amusing one. Besides, if I didn't have a million annoying tasks every day, how would I find material for these columns you all so obviously love? A new one next time I can summon the energy to contemplate my Epic Sense of Disappointment, kids. Until then, email me if you want.