From: “Scott Rettberg”
To: William Gillespie
Date: Aug 17, 1998
Subject: Re: old correspondence

Dear William—

Sorry about the lassitude of our scheduling of our first official publicity event, and Paul’s missed appearance which sucks. He is owed one big one definitely by the Unknown. Me in particular. There was nothing to do at work today so, guiltlessly, I wrote material for The Unknown before leaving at 2:20 which means I have two hours to make up, but also that I wasn’t in the office for those two hours, a decision which cost me time on Wednesday, but it is strange there and downsized. The cool part is that I think my immediate coworkers at least don’t mind at all that I am using the time to write, so if I don’t have stuff to do I’m going to write till my mind goes, then leave early, but always get enough hours to make fuggin rent: landlords are evil. That is my kind of job where I am writing my own shit when I am there and leaving when I want to. It’s not bad. In fact, I think we should perhaps all have that kind of job. Full time. For the rest of our lives. For fifty dollars an hour. That is what we are worth, in this actual economy. We made about $3,000 dollars collectively this weekend, and we earned every penny of it. I’m going to save our receipts and issue a bill to the MacArthur Foundation when we’re all done with the hypertext. Here’s some text that I thought you might like—am putting all our stuff up tonight, hopefully. I need to do some watering now after I finish consuming the contents of my bowl. Chicken soup for the soul and all that.

Peace, Love and Instant Gratification through Grass Seeds in Your Community,

Scott