This journal, edited by two Purdue alums, has its second issue online. I’m not sure how long literary journals are going to make it, whether they’ll stay in print or go online or go out of business altogether, but Freight Stories does a good job with the online format. They have a handsome presentation and some good fiction.

The infamous gonzo journalist now has a documentary about him, reviewed at the Times. Looks interesting.

In Gerald, MO–a town the mayor refers to as “a meth capital of the United States”–a man impersonating a federal officer spent several months raiding homes and busting meth users. After five months, a local reporter checked up on him and discovered he was merely an out-of-work truck driver, not a federal agent. The NY Times has the full story of “Sergeant Bill.”

In compliance with the EU smoking ban, the Netherlands will be going smoke-free in July. Technically, the law bans tobacco, not marijuana, but coffee houses in Amsterdam are in a bind. Yahoo reports:

The Health Ministry says the ban will apply to cafes that sell marijuana, known as coffee shops. But this being Holland, which for centuries has experimented with social liberalism, there’s a loophole: The ban covers tobacco but not marijuana, which is technically illegal anyway.

But that still leaves coffee shops and their customers in a bind. Dutch and other European marijuana users traditionally smoke pot in fat, cone-shaped joints mixed with tobacco.

“It’s the world upside down: In other countries they look for the marijuana in the cigarette. Here they look for the cigarette in the marijuana,” said Jason den Enting, manager of coffee shop Dampkring.

Just for me, Bruce Springsteen added some dates to the end of his tour, including shows in Charleston, Richmond, and Nashville. Tickets went on sale for the Richmond show half an hour ago, and Emo and I have great seats. Fist pump, yes!

This novel, by the Norwegian Per Petterson, is a good read. It’s the first-person account of two periods in the narrator’s life: his old age, when he’s moved to a cabin by a river for peace, and a summer he spent working on a timber farm with his father in 1948. The prose has a measured patience, and there’s a lot of doubling between the two stories (the summer of the narrator’s youth versus the winter of his old age; his relationship with his parents versus his relationship with his children; his friend in childhood and his friend in old age). There’s honestly not a whole lot of plot, but the voice sustains the story, alternating between pastoral imagery and heartbreaking reflections on memory and aging. Fans of The Shipping News, or Housekeeping, or the novels of William Trevor will enjoy this book.

The comedian died of heart failure at 71. Carlin has long been my favorite comedian, and his books Brain Droppings and Napalm and Silly Putty are two of the more influential books on my life I’ve ever read. This is a sad day, indeed. Here are three classic routines.