I am not a reader. I buy books like "The Joy of Cooking" and "The Idiot's Guide to HTML," but only once ever three, four, maybe five years do I pick up a work of fiction and get lost in it. I attribute this to my inability to focus on one thing at a time. Mind's always racing, constantly anywhere else but where it should be.

However, I have a very worn and marked up copy of Charles Bukowski's "Love Is A Dog From Hell" anthology on my bedside table. I adore the dirty old man and underline passages that I connect with. His poems are mostly about women and booze and the beauty and despair of both. He writes with such eloquence even when the words themselves are dirty, and his metaphors are devastatingly lovely. I often quote the line "She's mad but she's magic; there's no lie in her fire" from the poem titled "an almost made up poem."

***

Modest Mouse sings:

Woke up this morning and it seemed to me,
that every night turns out to be
A little more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read.
But God who'd wanna be?
God who'd wanna be such an asshole?
God who'd wanna be?
God who'd wanna be such an asshole?

And I'm like, lay off the man. He just called it like he saw it. I don't think of Bukowski as an asshole at all; I see him as a brilliant artist who was in love with his vices, and who was a victim of his own circumstances like everyone else. I guess I find myself relating to that.

In terms of the song, it's a typical Modest Mouse ditty with plucky guitars and choral or echoing vocals at times, and a vocal melody that seems to dance atop the slightly reggae-laced rhythm. It features one of my favorite MM lyrics: "I can't make it to your wedding, but I'm sure I'll be at your wake." Brock, that's kind of an asshole thing to say. Touché.