From the Mail Bag

We get lots of e-mail here at Crushed by Inertia. Well, okay, we get some e-mail. Most of it informs us that our penises are too small or that now is a great time for a second mortgage. But every once in a while, it's from actual people that we know who want to tell us something.

Since I began the blog, many of my friends have become sort of amateur newshounds. They'll e-mail me all kinds of articles and funny Internet whatnot. It's great, a very convenient way to keep up to date on who's getting their genitals severed this week.

Since you asked, that would be the unnamed boyfriend of Kim Tran, a 35 year old Alaska resident. After an argument leading to a break-up, Tran decided the only sane course of action was to cut off her boyfriend's penis and flush it down the toilet.

Best part of this Dallas Morning News article my friend Brooke sent me? This quote:

Kim Tran, 35, was arraigned on charges of assault, domestic violence and tampering with evidence. She remained jailed in Anchorage, with no bail set.

Tampering with evidence! I mean, that's one way of putting it. Another way would be "tampering with her boyfriend's genitals." And yet another way would be "violating every code of goodness and decency known to man."

Do the cops have a police code for something like this when it happens. "Um, yeah, we've got a 453, a perp flushed a man's penis down the toilet. Can you get a couple black-and-whites out here? And get me in touch with some water utility workers who don't gross out easy."

Water utility workers retrieved the penis, and police said surgery to reattach it was successful.

Wow, that's amazing. I'm sure it's totally good as new, and not at all freakish and monster-like. Way to go, modern science!

Our next item came to me from my good buddy Steve, who prowls the Bob Dylan websites by night looking for amusing comments by The Master. Well, he found one. Here's Bob Dylan writing in the program for his current tour about what he thinks of rock music today:

"I know there are groups at the top of the charts that are hailed as the saviours of rock'n'roll and all that, but they are amateurs. They don't know where the music comes from," he wrote, adding, “I wouldn't even think about playing music if I was born in these times... I'd probably turn to something like mathematics. That would interest me. Architecture would interest me. Something like that."

Bob Dylan, mathematician. It's got kind of a ring to it. And, much as I love Bob, he's guilty of the same offense of which I recently accused guys like Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. He's blinded by his membership in a specific generation. He doesn't know about the good bands out there, he only knows what's on MTV and the radio, and of course he doesn't like that crap. But there are guys like M. Ward, Iron and Wine and Mike Doughty (among thousands of others) who Bob could probably get into. And even if he's unable to appreciate something like Radiohead, because it's just so different from the type of music he grew up listening to, it's silly to just come out and condemn everything that came after your time.

Don't these old guys realize how much they sound like old guys? Why is it that these smart, capable, intelligent people lose all perspective once they pass their 50's?

And finally, I'm going to a bachelor party for my high school friend David, who's tying the knot this summer in Pittsburgh. So a bunch of guys, one of whom I know from high school, and I are trying to work out arrangements for next month. Half want to go to Mexico and half (including me) want to go to Palm Springs or just stay in LA. So we've been brainstorming it out over the Internet.

And I have to say, this group of people is more on top of their shit than any other group of guys I've ever hung out with. When my close LA friends and I go on a trip, we make no plans whatsoever. We sit in the car and drive in the direction we're pointed in until we reach gambling and cheap booze.

True story. My friend, let's call him K, once went on a trip to Las Vegas with his girlfriend on Valentine's Day weekend. He made no plans at all before embarking on this trip, thinking that "Las Vegas is full of hotels, right? They'll be plenty of room." Long story short, he and his lady spent a romantic evening snuggling in his car in the parking lot at Caeser's Palace.

And yet these guys are working out where we can stay, how much it will cost per person, how long of a drive it will likely be (even adding up the total drive time from the airport to LA to our final destination). Is this how most people behave? Can I really be this lazy and out of it? I think we all know the answer to that question...