Hey Dig. Here’s my piece for this week. I can’t look at it again, I’m too tired. I hate to be dramatic but I got hit by a car this morning.
It happened while I was departing the scene of a property transaction. I was jumping over cars and howling about supply and demand with these capitalist bastards hot on my homeless tail when stupid me went to dodge a police cruiser only to get hit by the public bus.
During the melee I bounced this laptop here off a sewer grate, along with some mouthwash I had been drinking so I could be fresh for the bridge party. What a mess. It works still but it’s real slow. It does smell pretty good.
I can’t wait to talk about this new book I’ve found, it’s called My War Gone By, I Miss It So. It’s about the hot years of the Bosnian war by a reporter named Anthony Loyd.
Loyd’s not your normal reporter. First off, he’s got a background in the British military, which makes him a bit more savvy in war zones than your average battle bear. Secondly, he’s crazy. Like, addiction-to-risk-taking crazy. Thirdly? It’s a secret. Just read it. I haven’t been this excited about a war book since Dispatches, Michael Herr’s lightning-bomb about Vietnam.
Oh, and I forgot to mention Loyd does heroin. During the tamer parts of the book. How’s that for badass? Old cranky-pants Keith Richards can shoot all the smack he wants, I’ve never seen him dive headlong into a war zone when things got too boring. Note to Richards — blow me. Your shit stinks when it’s spread out in long horizontal smears just like the rest of us.
Of course, I’ve never been to a war zone myself, but you never know. I never thought I’d see somebody step directly into a cookfire either and then Horrible Jose went ahead and did just that last night during our evening pow-wow at the camp. Oh sure, he tried to blow it off like it was all the bath salts we had been dumping in his chili, but everybody knows that bum hasn’t been right since he fell off the roof.
God, that was awful. First he trips off a roof ten stories off the ground during his first time in Philadelphia and then all the Rottweilers in the windows attack him on his way down. They say all that mauling might of saved old Jose’s life by slowing his fall, but he’s still pretty torn up about it and he flinches whenever we bark at him.
Physically My War Gone By is attractive, it’s a hardback so it doesn’t have the give that most paperbacks have. I’d say it’s an 8.5 for physical appearance. The cover is excellent. The typography is adequate. I wish there were more pictures of beautiful ladies in it, but my tentmate Edgar would probably just rip them out and eat them anyways.
OK, that’s it for now kids — scram, beat it.
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Bill Benson is the former manager of Galaxy Bowling Lanes in Decatur, Illinois. He likes to read.
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