I have no real animus toward this dude--in fact, I'd all but forgotten about him--though I'm a little pissed that he linked to every single goddamned review of Lunar Park but mine, a review that is actually pretty easy to find when you use this thing called Google and waaaay better than Steve Almond's.

You think my blog's trifling, Clarke? Is that why you don't link to me? Why don't you whip out your uniques and let's compare. I know I'll measure up: I'm still rolling in hits from that chick-lit brouhahahahahahaha. But anyhow, I ain't askin' for a link, because that is wrong, and that is what we've learned today.

Another thing I've learned today: The times, they are a-changin'. In one of Clarke's posts, he meticulously catalogs the rather unfriendly reaction to his lecture at Bennington, which included a passage from American Psycho. People stormed out and later wrote angry letters, saying this was disrespectful to women who'd been brutalized, raped, &c.

Is this the same Bennington I attended? It can't possibly be. We all read--and mostly hated, but that's neither here nor there--Ellis' oeuvre before our first day of classes. It was the only orientation requirement other than the diaphragm fitting, as I recall. And Jesus, at a Bukowski memorial reading (this was the day after he died, I think) my boyfriend at the time read some short story about a guy who fucks a little girl until she dies because he's so turned on by her ruffled panties. (I don't know the title because, as Barbara Bush says, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? Besides, Peter Sotos does it better.) People applauded. This can't be the same school where the favorite campus band performed wearing tighty-whiteys with giant bloodstains on them. People were so adamantly un-PC at Bennington (at a time when PC was de rigeur on most campuses) that it shocked me. Perhaps they're only now getting it.**

I've forgotten where I was going with this. Right. So, here's an mp3, because I love you all, except for Jaime Clarke, and even him just a little bit: Pretty Vacant, as performed by The Delltones.

*She told me this last week while we shared a jar of moonshine and practiced knife-throwing in her backyard.
**Which is not to say we were behind the times. NOOOOO. We were sooo tooootally avant-garde, all into 80s music and coke, so we toooootally beat MisShapes by, like, 12 years.