February 28, 1999.

"She wants clean sheets and fresh flowers..."

- "annie dog"

A couple days ago, Dirk returned my Smashing Pumpkins CD after keeping it since the summer. At that point, I'd only listened to it a couple of times, so I didn't miss it much...besides the fact that it was a present from Scherezade & the Varsity, so I didn't have too much emotional attachment to the thing. I'm not terribly into the Pumpkins as a rule, but I really liked the "Ava Adore" single, so I was willing to accept it if no one else wanted the CD. And now that I've gone through such a torturous route to explain my possession of the CD, I'd like to state for the record that it's a really good album. Very mellow, perfect background for serious conversations by candlelight - and some of the arrangements are masterpieces of layering.

So, from all of us here at IPASOY, congratulations Billy Pumpkin! Your control-freak techniques have really done it this time.

It looks like Paris is getting back into the habit of mass mailings, perhaps as therapy until the shock of Agamemnon's departure wears off. They're very typically Parisian outpourings, full of inscrutability and endless digressions into mysticism that make little sense at the time of reading, although tidbits will often return to me later. I like them quite a bit; always have. It hurt terribly to be cut off from his writings when we were feuding 2 summers ago, because somehow they seem to be separate entity from the man himself. I guess I thought that they should continue to me without his blessing.

It was much the same thing last year after we'd "made up"...he was writing an endlessly amusing story based on the concept of Tisiphone's Angels when we had another blow up. And as I was reading his angry email on the subject, I idly wondered when he'd be finishing the next installment of the story. I suppose electronic media encourage this felling of dislocation, encourage this distance between artist & art to the audience. Just as so many people think that meat originates in plastic wrapped styrofoam trays in the supermarket, I'd begun to think that email synthesized out of the ether for my amusement.

Maybe this explains why I'm so lax about returning correspondence in a timely manner.

Well, off to ancient Greece. Wake me when the month turns, okay?