Editor's note - for the first entry on askajailbird.com, I thought I would publish Jailbird's first letter to me during this period of incarceration. He has been sentenced to a year and a half in state prison. In this letter he details his plan for a blog.
John,
First of all, dude, your letter smelled delicious. I don't know if it was you or the lady who sorts mail but I'm imagining it was you. Do you still have a beard?
This place totally blows. I'm sure you know why I'm here, it's neither here nor there. It is what it is, Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn for Sega. I'm kinda disappointed nobodys tried to rape this "SWEET THANG" yet. I'm starting to get a complex. I got the tightest pants I could from the quartermaster. Not that I really want to be raped, I mean who does am I right!? It's just nice to be wanted. If I ever do get approached about a raping I'm going on the offensive and try and rape the guy back. "I'm raping you." "NO, I'm raping YOU." Kind of like a dog chasing it's tail only there's two dogs and they're trying to put their dicks in each others ass.
Anyways, books. I got Tree Of Smoke. Awesome book. If you haven't finished it, you really should. It gets a hunfred times better through the second half. People going crazy, nobody trusts anybody, delusions, prostitutes, etc. Good shit. I'm really glad you introduced me to Denis Johnson, he's one of my top ten writers now. I'll take any book written by him. I'm especially interested in the post-apocalyptic one he wrote that starts with an F. I can't remember the name. Of course any and all books you send are appreciated. The book of his you sent me in county jail is the one I got the line I put in the Detroit Love Muscle song, "Just for me she puts on blazing rage, high-heeled shoes, fake jewels and blazing rags." Paraphrased of course.
I read a bunch of John Irving, they're really good. I also like John Updike (or Dyke or what-fucking-ever). Check out Run Rabbit Run. I was reading a lot of Sam Harris, C. Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins out on the streets but that was mainly to score with semi-hot college chicks.
The selection of books here in prison S-U-C-K-S. There's a black dude in the cell next to me whos like, "The guy with the books." I like to call him, "The guy with the suck books that have all the pages missing where folks are getting it on." Actually, I call him Chris. Weird name for a black dude, right? I asked if I could call him Lexus or Champagne but he said those were girl names and took his books back. Jokes on him, they sucked anyways.
Most of that's a lie, he does have shitty books though. He says to me, (yelling from the 6 inches his cell is away from mine.) "Hey mang, dig. I gots some Patterson, dude's out COLD, and I gots some Mary Higgins Clark, she awwight. OH, I gots some Daniel Steele (yeah he called her Danny Steele) that motherfuckers a FREAK!" He also had, in his words, a LAME book called The Count of Monte Cristo. I took that one as I'd never read it before. It was really really good. If you haven't read it you should or at least carry it around. You can probably pull some hipster tail that way. Don't carry it around in prison unless you dig wedgies in the chow line.
Okay, so let me know if this sounds like a cool idea. I was thinking of having you start a blog where I would send you an entry every couple of weeks or so detailing life in prison for a year and a half. It would be both funny and brutally honest. I'll leave nothing out. Maybe a good idea would be a question and answer section. Ask inmate 370987 or some shit. I'd answer questions about love and life from an incarcerated viewpoint. Let me know if you have ideas for topics. Racism, sissys, guards, fighting, food, etc.
Editors note - The rest of this letter is personal stuff directed to me that isn't important and wouldn't make any sense out of context.
