The abuse of goodwill is obscene:

I ended my friendship with the person I'd known as JT LeRoy today. Sunday's New York Times piece was the final straw:

The Unmasking of JT Leroy: In Public, He's a She - New York Times

For the past few months, I'd been convinced he was a she and had privately conveyed this to a few friends and family members. However, at no point did I question that the person I'd befriended was the author of "Harold's End", "Sarah", and "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things", three books I will always love. I didn't believe someone "played" JT in public, nor did I believe someone else wrote the work. I thought my friend was deeply troubled as a result of sustained abuse, but I believed her writings were her own. I remained loyal and when she asked me to write letters on her behalf, I did, because I believed we were, in fact, friends.

We spoke on the phone today for roughly ten minutes and at no point did she conclusively answer any of my specific questions. I made it emphatically clear that I didn't believe her anymore, that I was hurt and disgusted, and that I was unambiguously ending our friendship. Then I hung up.

Undoubtedly, I'll write more about this later.

And those who misspell "Litsa" are doomed unto eternity:

This kid will incur permanent acid reflux if he reads The Believer interview with JR. If I'm going to be branded a heretic, I'm honored that it's alongside Mr. Gibbard:

Souls of Rock: Death Cab for Cutie - I Will Follow You Into the Dark

As good of a way as any to start the new year:

CNN.com - Have scientists found Mozart's skull? - Jan 3, 2006

Though "Grab Her Twat" and "Dad's Anal Adventure" would have been worse:

I've noted before that, thanks to my Black Table pieces, my name has been inadvertantly (and often humorously) linked to a number of porn sites. However, in light of today's additions, Grab Her Boob and Mom's Anal Adventure, it's worth reiterating that, no, I don't write porn and if I choose to, I'll certainly come up w/ something more erotically charged and less hurl-inducing than playground-level groping and persons' moms taking it up the ass.

Two recent faves from McSweeney's not written by me or anyone I know:

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: I Don't Know What the Big Deal About Having a Baby Is.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Bruce Springsteen Songs, If the Title More Accurately Reflected the Subject Matter.

When words are both essential and meaningless:

From CNN.com:

Koinange: Hospital scene like 'hell on earth'

African nation of Malawi battered by AIDS, drought

By Jeff Koinange
CNN

Thursday, December 1, 2005; Posted: 3:46 p.m. EST (20:46 GMT)

Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences covering news.
Jeff Koinange, CNN Africa correspondent, in Malawi.

BLANTYRE, Malawi (CNN) -- Walking into the highly restricted tuberculosis ward of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Malawi's second city of Blantyre is a lesson in humility.

To enter, you need to fill out a lot of paperwork letting the hospital know that if anything happens to you, it is not liable. This takes a couple of hours.

Once you're cleared, you get a surgeon's mask and a guide and off you go.

Our team did this recently and entered a scene that's the closest thing we've seen to hell on earth.

In bed after bed, the dead and the dying lie side-by-side. Patients stricken by advanced tuberculosis brought on by AIDS cough uncontrollably while relatives try to comfort them.

More:

CNN.com - Koinange: Hospital scene like 'hell on earth' - Dec 1, 2005

"I spend all my energy staying upright..."--N.S.

My Paste review of Nada Surf's October Seattle show went up last week. I feel compelled to note that "emotard" was changed to "emogeek", "wang" became "dork" and "shake its ass" was altered to "do something besides nod approvingly". (I fucking loved the show. These terms aren't in reference to the band.) Anyhow:

Paste Magazine :: Review :: Nada Surf, Say Hi To Your Mom :: Neumo’s, Seattle 10/19/2005 (Page 1)

From the Times of London: "Man 'cured' of HIV agrees to undergo further clinical tests"

"Man 'cured' of HIV agrees to undergo further clinical tests"
By Sam Lister, Health Correspondent

A YOUNG British man thought to be the first person to have shaken off HIV, the virus that causes Aids, is to undergo further clinical tests in the hope of a breakthrough in treating the condition.

Andrew Stimpson, 25, said yesterday that he was willing to do all he could to help to tackle the condition, after it emerged that his body had apparently rid itself of the human immunodeficiency virus.

Mr Stimpson, a Scot living in London, was found to be HIV-positive in August 2002, but 14 months later a blood test suggested that he no longer carried the virus. A further three tests confirmed the finding.

Doctors believe that this first confirmed case of ?spontaneous clearance? of HIV could offer important insights into the behaviour of the virus, and possible means of defeating it. "

More:

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online:

Mauling + ice cream + sex = readin':

My short story, "When Bears Attack", is in Rivet #14, "The Union Issue". The story's print version features an awesome graphic from Christopher Hong and the correct line breaks, but if you're short five bucks, you can read it here:

Rivet Magazine: Discover. Inquire. Repeat.

What? Who?

I'm not sure how a feature on Seattle music can viably omit Barsuk and its roster--*bullshit has been called*--but this is a fun piece nonetheless, particularly the part about the (awesome) John Richards:

Seattle Weekly: Music: A Day in the Life

If you need a (temporary) distraction from bird flu news:

My Paste Death Cab cover story is archived online now:

Paste Magazine :: Feature :: Death Cab For Cutie :: The Hardest Working Band in Show BIz (Page 1)

And--bonus!--the print-only Donner Party sidebar. Because eating people is funny:

In the new documentary, "Drive Well, Sleep Carefully", director Justin Mitchell captures Death Cab for Cutie's 2004 tour, during which the band traversed the U.S. in a well-equipped bus. While their offstage antics seem largely comprised of storytelling and shooting hoops, who knows what could happen next time? As Death Cab gets ready to hit the road again in support of their new record, Plans, Paste asked the lads and some of their indie rock co-horts: If a Donner Party type situation arises, who will you eat and why?

I think I'd probably eat Jason. He's definitely the strongest out of the four of us. He has more muscle, and probably more protein, in his body than Chris certainly does, and definitely more than Nick because Jason's taller and bigger than Nick. I'd have to eat Jason.--Ben Gibbard

I don't think any of them would dispute that if both of our bands were lost together, although I would do everything in my power to return us all to safety, in the final analysis I would be picking my teeth with their shinbones when spring came. It's hard to say whom I would eat first, because each of them has a terrible ferocity when cornered. I might let them fight it out amongst themselves at first, and wait until they'd worn each other out. I think that Nick would make the best eating. --John Roderick, The Long Winters

I'd eat Jason because Jason's muscle to fat ratio is the best.--Chris Walla

I guess I have to agree that Jason would be the last one standing. If it were up to me to decide which band member to eat first, I would volunteer myself, so that the band might have a chance to live on. ---Josh Rosenfeld, Barsuk Records co-founder

Well, I've got a big appetite and Nick's got some good hearty muscle on his bone, so I would choose Nick. Although what if I needed him alive to be on my side? I might have Chris as an appetizer instead.--Jason McGerr

I would eat whoever died of natural causes first because I couldn't kill anyone to eat them. I'm pretty sure Ben would be one of the first to go and then we'd have to eat Ben. Ben would be pretty juicy. Surviving that long requires a certain level of dedication and patience and I think Ben would be like, "You know what? Screw this whole thing. We're already screwed." He wouldn't hang on unnecessarily. I think Chris would make a very lean meal, and that's always important, so if I were watching my figure, I'd go for a leg of Chris. If I were going for really tasty, I'd go for Ben. Jason would be good, too, but I don't think he would die early on. I think Jason would be the guy who would eat us all. He would be the last man standing. He's kind of the survivor that way.--Nick Harmer

Not Walla, definitely, because you wouldn't get very far eating him. I think it would be between Ben or Nick. I think Ben would have more of a chicken flavor, whereas if you were in the mood for something like lamb, something a little more rich, Nick would be your man. So, it depends on what sort of curry you wanted to serve, chicken or lamb.--Colin Meloy, The Decemberists

Great moments in bad editing:

Here's the letter I wrote to New York Magazine:

I've interviewed JT LeRoy twice, once for Bookslut and once for Poets and
Writers. Over the past two years, we've become good friends, exchanging
hundreds of emails, blowing several hours on the phone, and spending time in person. (Note: I attended the Deitch Gallery launch for "Harold's End" last November. Your photographer, Danielle Levitt, took some test Polaroids of me, a curly-haired woman in a pink boucle coat.)

The truth is far more banal than Stephen Beachy's turgid story alleges. JT writes his own work. On numerous occasions, he's called or emailed
throughout the day with sequential drafts of stories or articles on which
he's working. He has a predilection for animated e-cards, only burns soy
candles, and loves my mom's baklava. And I've met Emily: she and JT sound
nothing alike.

In order for JT to be a hoax, he would have had to fool Vanity Fair (the
U.S. and British versions), the New York Times, BlackBook, Interview, Paper, Index, I-D, Spin, 7 X 7, Viking Press, Bloomsbury Press, Last Gasp Books, Zoetrope, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Bono, Zadie Smith, Gus Van Sant, Madonna, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Arthur Bradford, Mary Karr, Carrie Fisher, Yoko Ono, Jerry Harrison and my mom and me, among others. (Perhaps you can fool Madonna, but you can't fool my mom.)

Also, he would have to had raise several thousand dollars over the years for Dr. Terrence Owens' McAuley Institute at St. Mary's Hospital, *spontaneously and for no apparent reason.* And anyone who knows JT well knows he could never pull off a hoax. He's erudite and silly and probably a genius, but I once spent five minutes on the phone with him while he looked for stamps. He could never perpetuate fraud--not only because he's moral--but because he's totally unorganized.

Sincerely,

Litsa Dremousis
Seattle,WA

Here's what New York Mag ran this week:

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymag/letters/14960/index1.html

The Real LeRoy
Over the past two years, I’ve become friends with JT [“Who is the Real JT
LeRoy?” by Stephen Beachy, October 17]. He has a predilection for animated e-cards, burns only soy candles, and loves baklava. To be a hoax, he would’ve had to fool Vanity Fair, the New York Times, BlackBook, Interview, Paper, Index, I-D, Spin, 7X7, Viking Press, Bloomsbury Press, Last Gasp, Zoetrope, Dave Eggers, Bono, Zadie Smith, Gus Van Sant, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Arthur Bradford, Mary Karr, Carrie Fisher, Jerry Harrison, Madonna, me, and my mom. And anyway, JT could never perpetuate fraud—he’s totally disorganized.
—Litsa Dremousis, Seattle, Wash.

A New York Mag fact-checker called three times over two weeks to verify everything, and I was told twice that my "letter [was] probably going to run". I never would have agreed to let them print it, though, if I'd known they were going to alter its tone. I know they can edit for clarity, but they changed the thing's intent. The edited version is poorly written and sounds like I'm taking a swipe at JT, which I'm not doing. Obviously.

Regardless, I hope everyone is done with this inane topic. I know I am.

I will be so fucking happy when the rest of the world catches up:

The Long Winters' "Ultimatum" is #8 in Seattle:

Seattle Weekly: Music: Countdown: Oct. 26-Nov. 1, 2005

Buy the disc and/or download the title song:

The Long Winters : ultimatum

Today, it does not suck to be a Democrat:

CNN.com - Democrats force Senate into unusual closed session - Nov 1, 2005

Apparently, Stephen Beachy has time on his hands:

I hate to respond to this because it's so absurd, but I've been asked about it more than once, so here goes:

In order for JT to be a hoax, he would have had to fool Vanity Fair (the U.S. and British versions), the New York Times, BlackBook, Interview, Paper, Index, I-D, Spin, 7 X 7, Viking Press, Bloomsbury Press, Last Gasp Books, Zoetrope, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Bono, Zadie Smith, Madonna, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Arthur Bradford, Mary Karr, Carrie Fisher, Yoko Ono, Jerry Harrison and, oh yeah, my mom and me, among others. (Maybe you can fool Madonna, but you can't fool my mom.)

Also, he would have to had raise several thousand dollars over the years for Dr. Terrence Owens' Mc Auley Institute at St. Mary's Hospital, *spontaneously and for no apparent reason.*

And anyone who knows JT well knows he could never pull off a hoax. He's erudite and silly and probably a genius, but I once spent five minutes on the phone with him while he looked for stamps. He could never perpetuate fraud--not only because he's totally moral--but because he's too unorganized:

Who is JT LeRoy? The True Identity of a Great Literary Hustler

A tiny green man gave me a blintz one time:

My friend's story, "The Day the Aliens Brought Pancakes", was selected as a "Notable Story of 2004" in the new "Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005". All hail, Mr. Spitznagel:

monkeybicycle.net

Yay, Jay Tay!

My friend, the finest writer and most sartorially adept individual to come out of West Virginia, has another essay in the New York Times:

By JT LeRoy
Published: September 25, 2005

"Cheese! It's hailing cheese!" We cover our heads. Our 8-year-old, Thor, cowers beneath us - his parents, Astor and Speedie, and me, a surrogate brother, sister, wannabe parent - as we form a shield between him and the miniature cubes pounding down on us. This is France, so it was only a matter of time till the cheese blasted us; we didn't expect it at the Tour de France, though.

We arrived two days before the tour's end. It was all anyone talked about as soon as we opened our mouths and revealed our furtive identities as Americans, noticeably scarce in Paris right then. A man in the lobby of our hotel, the Monna Lisa - situated two blocks from the Champs-Elysï¿1⁄2es, where the tour would wind up - informed me as I was struggling with a map that I was there for the tour: "Ah, you are here to see your Lance win!"

"Well, we came to go to Euro Disney."

His face crumpled, he folded his paper and, in an unyielding tone, rectified my faux pas: "You mean to say, 'Disneyland Paris!'"

By the threat in his tone, I instantly capitulated. "Yes, uh, Eur - Paris of Disney. What you said." After this happened a bazillion other times, I finally got the drift that the antipathy toward outfitting Disney with the "Euro" prefix could have something to do with its being the equivalent of "Dollar Disney." I started pronouncing it "Disneyland Paris" and received no more looks of vile disgust. Well, at least not for that.

More:
Uncle Walt, Parlez-Vous Fran?ais? - New York Times

We field a hell of a rugby team, too:

Among the Believers - New York Times

Nada Surfin':

I've been listening to the promo ceaselessly since I received it in June. If Nada Surf's "The Weight is a Gift" doesn't become one of your favorite discs of 2005, well, I don't want to know you:

The Weight is a Gift by Nada Surf - New York Fall Music Preview 2005

The best summation I've read so far:

From today's New York Times:

Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street - New York Times

Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street

By DAN BARRY
Published: September 8, 2005

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.

The sight of corpses has become almost common on the mostly abandoned streets of New Orleans, as rescue and evacuation operations have taken priority over removing the dead.

Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.

Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.

Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.

That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.

Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet.

Scraggly residents emerge from waterlogged wood to say strange things, and then return into the rot. Cars drive the wrong way on the Interstate and no one cares. Fires burn, dogs scavenge, and old signs from les bons temps have been replaced with hand-scrawled threats that looters will be shot dead.

The incomprehensible has become so routine here that it tends to lull you into acceptance. On Sunday, for example, several soldiers on Jefferson Highway had guns aimed at the heads of several prostrate men suspected of breaking into an electronics store.

A car pulled right up to this tense scene and the driver leaned out his window to ask a soldier a question: "Hey, how do you get to the interstate?"

Maybe the slow acquiescence to the ghastly here - not in Baghdad, not in Rwanda, here - is rooted in the intensive news coverage of the hurricane's aftermath: floating bodies and obliterated towns equal old news. Maybe the concerns of the living far outweigh the dignity of a corpse on Union Street. Or maybe the nation is numb with post-traumatic shock.

Wandering New Orleans this week, away from news conferences and search-and-rescue squads, has granted haunting glimpses of the past, present and future, with the rare comfort found in, say, the white sheet that flaps, not in surrender but as a vow, at the corner of Poydras Street and St. Charles Avenue.

"We Shall Survive," it says, as though wishing past the battalions of bulldozers that will one day come to knock down water-corrupted neighborhoods and rearrange the Louisiana mud for the infrastructure of an altogether different New Orleans.

Here, then, the New Orleans of today, where open fire hydrants gush the last thing needed on these streets; where one of the many gag-inducing smells - that of rancid meat - is better than MapQuest in pinpointing the presence of a market; and where images of irony beg to be noticed.

The Mardi Gras beads imbedded in mud by a soldier's boot print. The "take-away" signs outside restaurants taken away. The corner kiosk shouting the Aug. 28 headline of New Orleans's Times-Picayune: "Katrina Takes Aim."

Rush hour in downtown now means pickups carrying gun-carrying men in sunglasses, S.U.V.'s loaded with out-of-town reporters hungry for action, and the occasional tank. About the only ones commuting by bus are dull-eyed suspects shuffling two-by-two from the bus-and-train terminal, which is now a makeshift jail.

Maybe some of them had helped to kick in the portal to the Williams Super Market in the once-desirable Garden District. And who could blame them if all they wanted was food in those first desperate days? The interlopers took the water, beer, cigarettes and snack food. They did not take the wine or the New Orleans postcards.

On the other side of downtown across Canal Street in the French Quarter, the most raucous and most unreal of American avenues is now little more than an empty alley with balconies.

The absence of sweetly blown jazz, of someone cooing "ma chère," of men sporting convention nametags and emitting forced guffaws - the absence of us - assaults the senses more than any smell.

Past the famous Cafe du Monde, where a slight breeze twirls the overhead fans for no one, past the statue of Joan of Arc gleaming gold, a man emerges from nothing on Royal Street. He is asked, "Where's St. Bernard Avenue?"

"Where's the ice?" he asks in return, eyes narrowed in menace. "Where's the ice? St. Bernard's is that way, but where's the ice?"

In Bywater and the surrounding neighborhoods, the severely damaged streets bear the names of saints who could not protect them. Whatever nature spared, human nature stepped up to provide a kind of democracy in destruction.

At the Whitney National Bank on St. Claude Avenue, diamond-like bits of glass spill from the crushed door, offering a view of the complementary coffee table. A large woman named Phoebe Au - "Pronounced 'Awe,' " she says - materializes to report that men had smashed it in with a truck. She fades into the neighborhood's broken brick, and a thin woman named Toni Miller materializes to correct the record.

"They used sledgehammers," she said.

Farther down St. Claude Avenue, where tanks rumble past a smoldering building, the roads are cluttered with vandalized city buses. The city parked them on the riverbank for the hurricane, after which some hoods took them for fare-free joy rides through lawless streets, and then discarded them.

On Clouet Street, where a days-old fire continues to burn where a warehouse once stood, a man on a bicycle wheels up through the smoke to introduce himself as Strangebone. The nights without power or water have been tough, especially since the police took away the gun he was carrying - "They beat me and threatened to kill me," he says - but there are benefits to this new world.

"You're able to see the stars," he says. "It's wonderful."

Today, law enforcement troops began lending muscle to Mayor C. Ray Nagin's vow to evacuate by force any residents too attached to their pieces of the toxic metropolis. They searched the streets for the likes of Strangebone, and that woman whose name sounds like Awe.

Meanwhile, back downtown, the shadows of another evening crept like spilled black water over someone's corpse.