provocative raunch

i've been on a book-buying binge of late. yep, ya know, i read a bunch online and y'all know how much i advocate for blogs and e-publishing, self and otherwise, but i love the book, it's form, it's smells, it's heft and weight, how it fits in the hand. plus reading print is a different feel than reading pixels. better? i dunno, but i do get more pleasure with a book than i do with the ether.

nothing is more pleasurable than coming home from work and finding a package waiting for me. oh lord! i know what's inside because i'm the one who ordered the tomes but i still feel like a kid at christmas. i've been thinking that we are perhaps living in a post-book world. not that i think books are going to disappear or that my pleasure in books will evaporate. rather i think books will, indeed perhaps already have, become one of many different platforms writing and writers shall use. like i think there are many levels of literacy there shall be many platforms for writing with the book being one of the many.

still, this is not the death knell for the printed word. instead, the title of this post comes from a cut-line i read today in volume ii of tom brinkman's survey of mid to late 20th century pulp magazines bad mags [caveat: brinkman's website is graphic as all get-out, in other words, it ain't work safe]. PROVOCATIVE RAUNCH was printed on one of those pulp mags and i thought that this is a great title for a collection or a zine, maybe even for a volume of collaborative work. the title hits at gut-level but hints at a bit of intellectual sophistication, or sophistry, depending on your world-view and orientation. what have you. i've just been buzzing with these words in my head all day and still don't know what to do with them.

p.s.

i think i saw jim mccrary, or his doppelganger, this afternoon at the supermarket. i was in the produce section when i looked up and saw this dude looking at me as he walked past. i did a double-take because he looked just like mccrary, perhaps a bit younger, but with the same hair color and style, same build, and same type of heavy black glasses. what the hell. jim, you've got a double here in sac and next time you pass by stop and say hey, okay.