Pain

I can't remember when it was that I stopped crying when I hurt myself. Like when I was out running around and I fell and skinned my knee and started crying, right?

Remember that? How you used to get a scrape or a cut and you'd cry? And then one day that stopped making you cry? I get a cut or a scrape now and, really, I never cry. My eyes have watered from pain. I've hurt myself and gone on an expletive-laden tirade. I've gotten all red-faced.

Sure. I've done those things. Sure.

But I don't start crying.

Unless I'm in some sort of emotional pain. If someone important to me dies. Or—and this hasn't happened in a while—when I have some sort of girl-boy breakup thing. Crying might happen there.

But not when I stub my toe. Not if I break a tooth. Not if I slip when I'm out running and my knee is skinned and my iPod goes skittering across the pavement. I don't cry then anymore.

But I was thinking, maybe I should? Maybe I should make some adjustments to my way of thinking about myself and my different kinds of pain, and maybe I'll cry when I hurt myself and never cry again when I have some sort of emotional trauma.

I think if I can change my behavior, if I can think myself into a place where I cry when I stub my toe but not when my girlfriend tells me I'm an asshole and she never ever wants to see me again, I'll be able to carry on less stressful relationships with people.

I might even stop being an asshole.

I'll just be a guy who is openly crying, full-throated crying, unashamedly crying because he cut his finger when he was quartering potatoes for potato soup. I'll just be a guy who sniffles and winces as Bactine is applied. All that.

This is a good idea, I think. I'm going to have to look into it. If I figure it all out, maybe I'll blog about it.

Until then...

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Zachary Schomburg. I will say something about him on HTMLGiant this week.

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Disintegration Loop.

Kitty

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I interviewed the amazing Lydia Millet.

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It's Mean Week at HTMLgiant.

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Last week, I discovered that The Internet Archive has the original website for my old band, the nurses. You can see the original page from 1997 there.

The nurses were a noise band. We didn't make music. We just made a big racket. And I hopped around like an idiot, screaming and yelling into a microphone.

We played live a few times. We'd play a whole bunch of noise for twenty minutes or so, and I'd scream and yell and jump around like an idiot. And I'd wear myself out. And then I'd drop the microphone and I'd go shake hands with everyone in the audience.

And then I'd go outside and walk around for a little while. We played shows almost all our shows in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In winter. So I'd go outside and it would be really cold. And my throat would be sore. I'd walk around for a couple of minutes.

And the next day, I'd get a bad cold from screaming and yelling and jumping around like an idiot until I was exhausted and hoarse, and then going outside in the cold.

Those were really good times.

I have tapes. Someday I will make mp3s of the tapes and post them.

I take back what I said. Sometimes we'd make music. Last week, I linked to a song called The Primeval Stomp. That was us. We made that. That was my friend DanDan and I who made that. (DanDan used to put together a really funny zine called Blipvert.) We made a bunch of other things, too. We made a concept album about living underground. We made a song that included phone calls we accidently picked up on a 6-band radio I got from my Dad. DanDan even made us a video game, wherein you dropped bowling balls on Morlocks.

This link has some broken links on it. "Catch" works, though.

"We Plant, we hunt" works.

DanDan's Pac-Man works.

Oh, look! The Devil! The Devil is somewhere.

There's a lot there, if you click on every link. Even some of my early creative fiction, which were all attempts to create an elaborate fake history for the band.

I used to do lots and lots of things on the internet, apparently. As Blake Butler pointed out on HTMLGiant, I am old.

Enjoy!

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More episodes of Over the Edge, the Negativland-produced radio program about which I spoke quite fondly for The Believer, are now available from their website.

Some are even free. "Complex Numbers" is very good. "Illumination" is nice and creepy. Both are solo shows—Don working his live audio mixing magic all by himself. "A Piddle Diddle Disneyland" is an incredibly good group show.

I'd love to know what others think about them. If you download one, please comment.