this is a love letter.

everything in cycles.

i'm planning the same exact trips i planned exactly a year ago, with the same exact reservations i had exactly a year ago. i can't wait to drive through arkansas and nashville, mountains and trees at two am again, two days hungover from newold friends and lone star tallboys, night swimming in our underwear, broken hearted again and always. maybe things aren't meant to change so much after all.

my zine is close to finished, and now, when i say i'm going to move across the country, i mean it.

blackjack rough cut

to avoid the utter embarrassment of parroting dan savage myself, just pick up "skipping towards gomorrah", and save us both the time. it's a great, quick read about modernization/appropriation of the seven deadly sins in today's america. it's cute and funny, scandalous and slanderous.

but more importantly, after personally profiling small-scale gambling towns in faraway places like dubuque, and routinely losing money, night after night, at the blackjack table, savage comes across two old salts in a bar, in the middle of the day. obviously, whenever i have a question midday, i will call my dad, an old salt himself who is, inevitably (as it is assuredly 12pm somewhere), in a bar. this is just the best way to nonthreateningly approach old salts, and scrape the knowledge of time from their wiry beards. dan's old salts happened to be former blackjack dealers, willing to divulge the secrets of the table, after which dan's losing streak promptly ended and he was able to start a tab for the two men that would last them through thousands of iowa's finest low budget malt liquor libations.

now, the trick is, i once tried to gamble at a casino attached to a gas station somewhere in the gulf coast of mississippi, but they 1. did not have an atm, and 2. could not change the bill i had. this was crushing, as small time gambling has always felt like more than a calling to me, but, alas. we move on. later that summer, i was given the chance to partake in some serious slot machines in west virginia. i immediately lost ten dollars, and i was on top of the world; dumb bets are an all too beautiful thing.

combining the joint knowledge of two old salts, with my intense, intense lust for quickly losing money that i will never, never have back reels me into the fast paced, simple arithmetic glory that is blackjack. always assume the dealer has a ten down! splitting pairs! doubling down! blackjack is a sport, a sport that was made for me, and a sport that was made for me to win.