'Your Pazz & Jop albums ballot was submitted as follows:

1. Smog - A River Ain't Too Much to Love - Drag City (30)
2. Amerie - Touch - Sony Urban Music / Columbia (30)
3. WC - West Side Heavy Hitter - Vista Media (5)
4. Z-Ro - Let the Truth Be Told - Rap-a-Lot / Asylum (5)
5. Beanie Sigel - The B.Coming - Roc-a-Fella (5)
6. Seu Jorge - Cru - Wrasse (5)
7. Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask - Epitaph (5)
8. DJ Muggs vs The GZA - Grandmasters - Angeles (5)
9. Lil' Wayne - Tha Carter II - Cash Money / Universal (5)
10. Takacs Quartet - Beethoven: Late String Quartets - Decca / Universal (5)

Your Pazz & Jop singles ballot was submitted as follows:

1. Mike Jones f. Slim Thug and Paul Wall - Still Tippin' - Swishahouse / Warner Bros.
2. Amerie - 1 Thing - Sony Urban Music / Columbia
3. Z-Ro f. Devin the Dude and Juvenile - The Mule - Rap-a-Lot / Asylum
4. Tweet - Iceberg - Atlantic
5. Low - Walk Into the Sea - Sub Pop
6. Geto Boys - I Tried - Rap-a-Lot / Asylum
7. Rihanna - Pon de Replay - Def Jam
8. The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing - DFA / Astralwerks / EMI
9. Pimp C f. Z-Ro, Bun B & Twista - I'sa Playa - Rap-a-Lot / Asylum
10. Kelley Polar - Here in the Night - Environ'

'I am convinced that we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.'

- I don't have any pictures of you, I said. I'll be sad when we're not together anymore and I don't have any pictures to remember you by.

- Then I won't give you any pictures, she said, so you can't break up with me.

Now, no her, and no pictures.

I wrote little this year, most of it ephemeral even to me. But when the year is done and gone there will still be some entries I return to fondly:

- nine notes on Law and Order
- 'Some Things to Note About Robert Creeley'
- notes on Menippean satire, Pynchon's V., and two notes on satirical elements of V.
- baby steps into Adorno
- self-promotion
- artistic form of jokes, the promise of beauty

I'll return to them fondly because they'll serve as reminders of the writer I wanted to be (but did not yet prove to become, as my meager production attests), and they'll serve as places from which to begin thinking again.

What exactly do I think I would do if she did call?

'When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.'

A fall breakup, again.

A guide to Beethoven research.

'They have lost the capacity of their predecessors to do anything in common.'