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[From a 2014 article by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. He's talking about how a random spam email ended up inspiring a part of his book Wolf in White Van. Later, in 2020, the album Getting Into Knives came out, and I think it inspired its artwork too.]

"It took years for me to be able to just reflexively delete spam, or filter it so that I never see it at all. I blame the spammers for this; the quality of their work took a sharp nosedive at some point. But during whatever period of the internet’s growth you’d call the early 2000s, it seemed like you’d still get some winners: things that had been typed up by a person, sent out to a bunch of email addresses they’d bought or rented for 5 or 10 bucks from the only guy who was ever going to make any money in this particular exchange. Most of them went directly, if manually, into the trash; but once in a while, there’d be one that seemed to earn, at the very least, the minute it’d take me to read it.

The one I’m remembering here was subject-lined SUPPLY OF KNIVES. [...] The subject line opened on an all-caps email that boasted, in ornate, antiquated English appealing to the reader’s more refined sensibilities, about the high quality of the knives on offer at an external website. You shouldn’t click on links in spam email. I live my life on the razor’s edge! I clicked the link.

I want to tell you about these knives: They were beautiful. They were weird. They had elaborate designs in the handles, moons or stars of wolf heads, and special grips, and a variety of points. They were made from metals whose pedigrees were described lovingly, and had been struck — smithed? wrought? — via processes I knew absolutely nothing about, but that sounded fantastic, difficult, arcane. It’s the joy of specialized language: When you’re an outsider to it, it can’t help but sound cool.

Of course this is the whole idea of any operation like this. SUPPLY OF KNIVES could well have been, and probably was, a company in Ohio who’d stumbled across an old warehouse full of knives, and knew enough about sales to describe these things in the most exotic terms they could find. I’m pretty immune to pitches: Who likes to feel like he’s being pitched? But somebody involved with SUPPLY OF KNIVES had had just enough authorial flair — that, or true faith — to caption each knife’s mysterious, blurry accompanying JPEG with a description whose constant recourse to specialized vocabularies seemed to say, “You’re not even reading this unless you already know about this sort of thing. Let us therefore speak like the fellow travelers we are.”

It was like a trade catalog for roadside bandits in need of knives.

I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that when I was a child the life of the roadside bandit seemed like a pretty romantic way to go. I looked at all these knives and read the descriptions and was just generally delighted about the whole thing, so I saved the email in a “memorable spam” folder I used to keep that had maybe two other emails in it. A few years later, Apple came out with this robotic-arm-screen iMac you never see any more, and we were long overdue for a new computer so we got that; and then, after a while, I got myself a laptop, because I was traveling all the time, and eventually both the old iMacs ended up in the basement, and they were both asleep but alive until fairly recently, as far as I knew.

But when I went to check for the email, it was gone. The old blue iMac is dead, bricked, lifeless. Searches on the term “supply of knives” on this laptop and on good old robot-arm-screen find nothing. The backup CD for the blue iMac drive is probably in a drawer around here somewhere, but that’s like saying, “The coin I had in my swim trunks’ pocket is probably somewhere in the ocean.” There is no SUPPLY OF KNIVES. There’s only the memory."

[source]

And this is the wonderful cover art of Getting Into Knives. Back cover and promo material below. Note that "Knives International" and "Knives Wordwide" are not real companies, they appear to be a callback to that elusive spam email.

#tmg #reblog #getting into knives

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#the mountain goats #tmg #god bless this song

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I’m glad jd is playing golden boy again bc I know that song is silly but it changed my brain chemistry. if we want to spend eternity in happiness we’re gonna have to watch ourselves. why wouldn’t paradise also be about the simple pleasures of those magnificent peanuts from singapore. but what paradise, if any, is so good that letting your enemies oppress you some more would be worth it. least of all one where you still have to go shopping and the shelves are lined with golden boy peanuts. most importantly, it can be done better and wearing your boots will always guarantee a good showing.

#the mountain goats #tmg #reblog #my dad liked this song and i would like to think he is eating golden boy peanuts now #in heaven #or wherever

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Up The Wolves by The Mountain Goats // Minotauro by Jordi Garriga Mora

#tmg #the mountain goats #reblog

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MUSIC ASKS these are actually pretty fucking hard but why not.

1:A song you like with a color in the title

2:A song you like with a number in the title

3:A song that reminds you of summertime

4:A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

5:A song that needs to be played LOUD

6:A song that makes you want to dance

7:A song to drive to

8:A song about drugs or alcohol

9:A song that makes you happy

10:A song that makes you sad

11:A song that you never get tired of

12:A song from your preteen years

13:One of your favorite 80’s songs

14:A song that you would love played at your wedding

15:A song that is a cover by another artist

16:One of your favorite classical songs

17:A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke

18:A song from the year that you were born

19:A song that makes you think about life

20:A song that has many meanings to you

21:A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

22:A song that moves you forward

23:A song that you think everybody should listen to

24:A song by a band you wish were still together

25:A song by an artist no longer living

26:A song that makes you want to fall in love

27:A song that breaks your heart

28:A song by an artist with a voice that you love

29:A song that you remember from your childhood

30:A song that reminds you of yourself

#reblog #not tmg #ask me :)

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Broom People by The Mountain Goats // art by Daniel Horowitz and unknown

#Tmg #reblog

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Note: This is guy singular, not guys plural. That poll will be later.

#tmg #the mountain goats #reblog

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Thank you Jon Wurster for posting this gem on your Instagram page

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Good lord! No Children has got to be about the worst song imaginable to play at a wedding

Thank you Jon Wurster for posting this gem on your Instagram page

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i hope this email finds you years down the line without a good thing to say

#the mountain goats #tmg #reblog

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Thank you Jon Wurster for posting this gem on your Instagram page

#the mountain goats #tmg #mountaingoatsposting #the memetain goats

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shout out to the tmg lyric reference named tumblrs for reminding me of songs that make me cry

#the mountain goats #reblog

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my love is like a powder keg in a corner of an empty warehouse just outside of town about to burn down. if you even care. my love is like a cuban plane flying from havana up the florida coast to the glades soviet-made. if you even care. our love is like the border between greece and albania trucks loaded down with weapons crossing over every night moon yellow and bright. if you even care.

#tmg #reblog

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White Cedar is the transgenderist song I have ever heard

"I will be made a new creature one bright day. I don't have to be afraid. Speed that day on its way. You can't tell me what my spirit tells me isn't true, can you?"

#the mountain goats #tmg #mountaingoatsposting #transgender #Spotify