Kill Switch

This is it. Moving-on.

My real life identity was outed in connection with my blog persona a few months back. Honest mistake. But then lawyers connected with boyfriend's divorce did roam here. And so forth . . . Most people have been very decent readers, but the 'nigerian' cons have come aboard with phish that fuck-up my stats. Grrr.

To protect the innocent and my integrity, I tried to safely edit for content and style. But it's become all pop. No story, no edge. It's no longer the raw observational writing of one cross-classed chick with a brain disease. No, it's not the positive relational device it set out to be. It was a fucking good start, though.

I bequeath to readers the rather mediocre but meaningful video "Holy Diver" by Killswitch Engage. It's the epitome of metal-meets-medieval times.




"To reincarnate, hit the 'Re-start' button"

- Uta Urban

Dicky Moe

Tom and Jerry in "Dicky Moe" or THE STATE vs Dicky Moe

In celebration of some wicked PMS, I'm posting one of the most grotesque Tom and Jerry cartoons I could find - "Dicky Moe." Better yet, I've posted a weird visual deconstruction of it that's quite good in its own right. Kind of 'bad trip' funny.

Backstory:

Moby Dick is the classic hard-to-read novel about a hubris-infected sea captain who ultimately destroys himself by becoming one with the object of his hate/desire - Moby Dick. He's obsessed with Moby, a mysterious big white whale (sshhh! it's a projection of his own ego). He tries and tries but cannot capture or kill the whale. Instead he gets himself all wrapped-up around it with the rope of his own harpoon. The big whale dives him to-death. Glub, glub.

"Dicky Moe" is the Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Gene Dietch. Deitch is responsible for the "Were-the-artists-on-LSD?" batch of episodes from the early 60's. If you've ever watched Tom and Jerry cartoons, these are the most frenetic, unsympathetic, gratuitously violent and hostile of all. Certainly some specific inspiration for itchy and scratchy.

Deitch animation is interesting too. Note sleep-deprived Tom's heavy black eyebrows which are arched in permanent agitation like all other characters, and the flat Picassoesque caricatures of human beings with their huge proboscuses and cat-hating sneers, primitive growls and 2 word sentences. Lots of humans hating-on the cat stuff. It's not right.

Interestingly, Jerry the mouse remains his usual cute self. Superego mouse.

What is THE STATE? Can't find much info. Agit-prop conception or industrial band. Someone can educate me. Anyway, it works. The person who did this did some other darkly funny weird crap if you feel like sniffing around YouTube awhile.

Brenden's last wish for Nickelsville

KOMO/CNN news

KOMO News - Dying boy's last wish "Feed the Homeless"

A little kid from Lynnwood, WA saw people in the Nickelsville tent encampment who were trying to outsurvive the Seattle chill. He wanted to do something - and he did.

This morning his wish was broadcast around the world.

He's an angel.

The Youth are Starting to Change . . . Together

Alright, alright. The last few weeks I've been bloggin' elsewhere, but it's all good. Now I've got a stack 'o stuff filled with enough observational mirth-wrath to fill a month of blank dates.

Here's a trippy video sent to me by Norm. Watch numb glammed-up kids evolving into KISS-love riot-glitter-throwin'-ever loving CHANGE making futurists.

God bless the little millenials. Generation X'ers are too cynical to pull-off a revolution on their own. This is it.

And it's cute.

And I can't get the song out of my head.

The Great Gig in the Sky

from phone cam - clicky on it for bigger pic

Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright died today at age 65. He composed the timeless "The Great Gig in the Sky" from Dark Side of the Moon.

Mike called me tonight and urged me to come to his apartment right away. As I walked in he said "do you remember the 70's album cover from 'Yessongs' ?" (I recalled some interesting squiggly tornado shapes across a vast landscape).

"Yeah, I think so. By the way, did you hear about the latest Dow Jones dump? How about that guy from Pink Floyd? "

"Look out the window. "

Every single cloud across the sky looked like a cyclone. An effect created by dark rain-filled cores falling through low-pressure bottoms, it was the epitome of a Pink Floyd album cover: photographic, conceptually provocative, disturbingly surreal.

Last night Tim and I watched the movie "Donnie Darko" (just as I had with Mike one year ago). Afterward, we interpreted the meaning of the cauldron-like cloud formations Donnie observes across the horizon as a jet engine falls out of the sky and The End of the World arrives again. This beautiful little movie almost went straight to video before it literally became a cult classic. It was overshadowed at the time of its release by a different beginning of the end - 9/11/01.

Bend your mind further with this 'Great' synch to The Wizard of Oz

Barracuda!

"Barracuda" by Heart - 1977

Yeah, "Barracuda" is unquestionably one of the best power ballads in rock history. The 'hook' is a Led Zeppelinesque gallop of guitars followed by a 3-octave leap and free-fall into Ann Wilson's fierce vocals. It's a true story about deception and greed in the music industry.

Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart are suing the Republicans for using the song "Barracuda" to trot out McCain VP select Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention. The attempt to associate "Sarah - who the fuck are you and what are you doing here - Palin" with Heart's libertine shout-out is so well-contrived and darkly ironic I can hardly stand it.

"No right no wrong
selling a song-
A name, whisper game . . .

If the real thing don't do the trick
You better make up something quick
You gonna burn burn burn burn it to the wick
Ooooooh, won't you BARRACUDA?"

Sarah Palin: women's rights annihilator, evangelical Protestant extremist, future book-burner, and by-default potential leader of the most-powerful-nation-in-the-universe-as-we-know-it. Holy fuck. Her recent big experience comes from governing a low-pop state whose economy is based almost entirely on OIL, OIL people, OIL relationships, OIL presidents . . .

Republican PR engineers are master barracudas. She's a barracuda being groomed for public consumption.



Doesn't grow very big. Edible. Tastes like tuna.

Sayonara

snow falls soundlessly
but eventually deafens all
given enough time

Ballads - Part Deux

Another post about weird ballads. Ballads are story songs.

Ouch my eye hurts. Is it glaucoma or MS or my contact lens prescription? Why must I be allergic to marijuana? I'm going to use some visual imagery to work the virtual ice-pick out of my eye (10 minutes pass). Ahhhh. That's better. I know - I'll write about story songs in pattern-matched pairs! How delightfully random . . .

The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia - Vicki Lawrence
Vicki Lawrence of The Carol Burnett Show and Mama's Family fame did this when she was a young filly. Song about a dirty sheriff who kills an innocent man and gets away with it.

I Shot the Sheriff - Bob Marley, Eric Clapton
Dirty Sheriff John shot his deputy and some hapless Rastafarian guy saw it go down. The Sheriff has to shoot him to shut him up, but the Rasta guy shoots him back in self defense. Death row for the poor mon. Bummer. (I can't confirm he's Rasta. So's in my imagination, jah).

The Night Chicago Died - Paper lace (another 70's song)
Based on Valentine's Day Massacre '29 in Chicago, or something like that. Dad's a cop. One night he's suddenly called out with the force to encounter a bloody shootout between top rival mobs. BTW the cool 'hook' in the song is the synthesized sirens and syncopated shouts. Anyway, dad comes home alive, and the mob gets the Big Irish Holiday. (That's old timey slang for when the police shut down an establishment)

Ride Captain Ride - The Blues Image
Trippy 70's song. "73 set sail that day on the San Francisco Bay. . . here's what they had to say . . . calling all around the world to a distant shore . . .we can sail our lives away and be free once more! RIDE CAPTAIN RIDE On your mystery ship!" That's hippie talk - whatever.

Here's the apocryphal true story: 73 novice young guys in sailing camp took a big sailboat into the bay when a squall rolled-in and became a major storm. The captain was below deck screwing some chick, drunk out of his gourd. The storm became an F5 situation, but the kids managed to bring the sailboat in without sinking. Huzzah.

Gordon Lightfoot - The Edmund Fitzgerald
Another true but sad story about a commercial ship, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald that got caught by a freak wave on Lake Superior and sank. 29 killed.

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
Guy falls in lust with a hot chick from a dance club. His mama told him not to womanize, and remember to wear a raincoat. Billie Jean shows-up 9 months later with a kid that looks like him. In an alternate Maury Povich TV Show universe a DNA kit proves it's not his and he becomes a superstar.

House of Pain - Faster Pussycat vs A Boy Named Sue -Johnny Cash
Two songs about a boy raised without a father.

In the first one a guy implodes from low self-esteem and a strong sense of abandonment.

In the second one, he finds his old man, explodes in a fit of rage then beats the shit out of him fair 'n square for such a downright dirty trick.

Do 'Ya Think I"m Sexy - Rod Stewart VS The Revolting Cocks
Modest young gent meets a pretty lassie at dance club. What an ideal setting for meeting new people! They excuse themselves to go fulfill their urges.

Difference between the 70's and the 90's - in the Revolting Cocks version they use a condom.

How Soon is Now - The Smiths
"I am the son and heir of a shyness that is terminally vulgar. . . you shut your mouth how can you say I go about things the wrong way? I am human and I need to be loved just like anybody else" = Morissey

This is what it really says: "When do I want to hook-up? How soon is now, man? Shyness runs in the family and I'm a freakin' mutant. HEY, you shut your fucking mouth! (takes another swig of Heineken) Where do YOU get-off telling me I'm going about it all wrong? I'm human. I exist. But no matter how how many times I come here, stand around the same goddamn nightclub all night, I leave alone" Waaaaaah. I wonder why. (Morissey rocks)

Alone Again, Naturally - Gilbert
Another maudlin 70's song. Some self-indulgent bloke reflecting on grief and loss incurred to date. Probably sharing it with his imaginary college girlfriend. I swear that's how people under 25 "connect" - (don't be fooled, it's not the sex). They light smelly purple candles, drink imported beer and eat cheetos while comparing notes on all their waah-waah horrible life history so far. They bond. Waaaaaaah. Fuck. Snore.

Ubermensch - Turbonegro
Ubermensch refers to Nietzche's superman. Ubermensch is not otherworldly man, antichrist, or something that exceeds mankind's potential. It's something more like the man-centric Christ or Superman. Maybe Satan incarnate. Evel Knievel in this case. Ok, it's not really a ballad, but I've never heard a progressivey rock song (particulary a recidivist dark rock song ) that recollects an event in a linear fashion. I don't even know what I'm saying. Ya dig?

Take a Bow - Muse
Another contemporary progressive rock song that's easier to follow: "Mr. World Leaders, you're gonna burn for your countless sins, particularly for all the lives you put at stake in the Middle East for the sake of money and oil. (Alright, maybe you won't burn-up before The Ralean overlords take over the world, but they will be very disappointed if you muck this one up too. Bad form, lads).

My eye feels better. I'm going to put this baby to bed.

RISK and Choice. I'm onto something . . .

Risk - the game of world domination and chance - was my biggest computer preoccupation in 1992. I played it on my husband's Atari ST. Black and White.

I was obsessed. It was so simple, so clean (so oldschool). I particularly loved salting continents with those pleasing little cannon icons. I made some pretty little well-organized arrays, but I totally lacked any sense of strategy. Whatever. My telekinetic powers would suffice. With a few random and risky moves I'd eventually multiply square footage captured on every continent until it was simply impossible to lose. WORLD DOMINATION. HAH! It gave me thrills to watch measly patchwork nations fall into solid blocks of blackness thats spread and grew like a global oil spill. My world domination oil spill.

In actuality, 4 out of 5 times, I got my ass kicked. It would be a sparring match that lasted about 6 seconds, about as long as a nuclear blast. With a rapid-fire CHSCK CHSCK CHSCK CHSCK sound it laid waste to my conquests flipping them all to white like ash. I don't know how computer logorithms work - especially with a 8mhz processor - but it was brutal. Still I went back again and again . . .

My husband was the game master. We split-up for awhile, but when we got back together I asked him to dig out our ole game crack. Said he'd erased our only known copy of the game a few years before. I was peeved, but I understood. We both loved it but it was a real time suck.

I had a Chinese-American friend who saw things in terms of win or lose. Get a promotion? "Hey, I win!" Virus takes out your hard drive? "Eh, I lose." I appreciated his depersonalized perspective. Probably picked-up some of his parent's Buddhist sensibilities. Hey, why romanticize it? Family of hard-working well-to-do pragmatists. He's probably fucking rich by now.

Another friends sees things in terms of lucky vs unlucky. It doesn't strike a chord with me unless I'm totally blown away by my own good fortune, 'cause it just sort of leaves me out of the equation.

Then there's the religious thing. God smiles or God smites you. If I had a dollar for every time someone suggested I read the story of Job, I'd be rich and lucky. Did I ever find that story remotely sympathetic or rational, much less comforting, when I realized I'd been handed a lump of shit to deal with? I think not.

Recently, I started to accept the "choices "thing, though. It's the current psych paradigm that we have choices we make and "own" no matter what the circumstance, no matter how dreadful. If we get tastier choices? Well, less inherent risk of suffering. If we have shitty choices that don't look like choices, but just a horrible state of affairs, well, we can consider our response a choice. It's not a mindfuck, not really.

See, point is we can own the best possible outcome no matter how choiceless it seems, or how shitty a choice it was, rather than be a victim of circumstance. It's not about being responsible for something you have no control over. And no, it's not in any way about disregarding victimization or injustice. It's about taking control of your circumstances where you can. If we go at life with a loving mindset and desire to reduce suffering and create happiness (and use our head to the best of our ability) we can be confident and empowered because we've done our best. Even when we risk making the wrong choice - or the best choice available totally bites. Ok. I get it.

I bet I could play RISK way better now, because I'm not so afraid of owning my choices. I rather relish them.

(By the way, they discontinued the ATARI ST in '93)

Jack Nicholson's UnOily Rap

In an interview with The CBC, Jack Nicholson - wickedly cool gent that he is - demonstrates his hydrogen-powered ride and raps about the upcoming Oil Crisis.

It's 1978.

Cripes. What the hell have we been doing since?

*Check-out the clear-as-glass explanation of how solar panels work!*

Using the energy of a STAR, The Sun, to power the Earth for MILLENIA? Arguments about the high cost of putting-up solar panels verus pulling-up the last oil during one human lifetime just don't fly anymore. Screw dystopia. I want shiny panels.

SHRAPNEL

In 1997, I was off-work with a bad work injury, I split-up with my husband, and dad died leaving my sister and I oddly discarded. I also felt for the first time the subtle physical licks of multiple sclerosis not-yet-diagnosed. I was ripe for a nice fantasy.

With the dark came some light. Husband gave me a nice parting gift: a computer game called Zork Nemesis. I'd played an old-fashioned text version out of M.I.T.'s mainframe some years before, but Zork Nemesis was light-years beyond it. Created in '95, it was one of the first and best games of its generation - a game played on the latest level of home computers capable of processing elaborate 3D worlds in real time.

There were beautiful, mysterious worlds filled with well-crafted challenges and tasty mystical references. There were palaces, mountainscapes, laboratories, caves, machines, waterways, gadgets, chutes, ladders, puzzles, deserts . . .all delivered with a nice dose of wit. I was an observer, a technician, a traveler, the apprentice - and eventually the hero. What a nice place to be.

And I admit the escape might have saved my life a night or two. In fact, I told my friends if I ever met the person who designed it, I'd gladly shake their hand and thank them (or something like that).

A few years later I met an electronic music DJ via a website called Groovetech. We'd chat between sets and became fast friends. He revealed that the DJ gig was a nice pastime, but he developed computer games. Here's where synchronicity rocks - It turned out, along with Nick Sagan (Carl Sagan's son), he was one of the fundamental designers of my beloved Zork. His day job since '95 has been CEO of super successful Zombie Studios, right here in Seattle.

Over the past several years, I watched Mark do what he loves to do, and absorbed everything he shared with me about the industry. He watched me face-down some major challenges and gave me a hand-up by teaching me lucrative game design skills I could build-on , despite the MS. That was a straight-up gift.

This week he's in San Diego promoting one of the projects he's built with Nick Sagan and writer Zack Sherman - a graphic novel that has good odds of becoming a feature film like Frank Miller's SIN CITY or '300. It's about a female rebel relegated to one planet to lead an army against the Empire with only her cunning and some bitchen' weapons to protect her. It's called SHRAPNEL.

I've had minimal input, but I'm in there somewhere. I'd like to think so, anyway. Right-on, dude.

FRENCH GLAM kind of day

Sebastian Tellier - Divine

I got 8 hours of sleep last night. 8 FUCKING HOURS. And my fever is gone. And the Pike Place Market didn't fuck my ears awake with their painting project at 4:45 a.m. And I'm running a nice bath accompanied by a hit of vapid electronic music with dark overtones.

My glam To-Do list:

Drop-out of school and read the book instead.
Pick up some new prescriptions and a needle-full of epinephrine just-in-case.
Do laundry. (I wear what people give me. I'm down to clown-shaped clothes).
Call my attorney.
Call my trust.
Call the film guys I've been putting off and find the rest of the tapes.
Write a bevy of emails.
Call MOTHER (makes you shiver too? I LUV borderline personalities)
Call my niece. She's my age. We connect.
Start writing my book grant.
Drop off my friend's hard-drive.
Throw-away 3 boxes of biz documents that have aged properly. Sayonara.
Warm-up the management while I curse the administration into darkness.
Drop-by my ex's and treat him like a friend until it sinks in.
Love-up my cat and clean Killer the Betta fish's bowl.
Think about planning that trip to L.A. and picking-up a used surfboard - a 6ft mini-log like my
old Velzy . . .pearl white with the rosewood stringer and box skeg . . .y'know

That's enough.

I Got a Fevah

Christopher Walken's Advice for Free Time (clicky clicky)

Alright. I'm crawling back out of my virtual sick-bay. Haven't written much lately, but the friend-now-boyfriend "outed" me here at Apesma'sLament. In rare form, I channeled a poor mans' Janice Joplin. Eh, with the evil comes the good. Or is it with the good must come the evil?

But I just can't just sit here. Things to do, people to see, tangential observations to dispense on the inquisitive and the willing. . . I'm full of piss and vinegar, enthusiastic, fucking motivated. I've got some new things to tell.

In the meantime, I've been cruising favorite sites on the internet. Here's a classic that cannot be revisited enough:

Christopher Walken on SNL - Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult 1976

Reminds me, I used to do this great Christopher Walken imitation. A few years ago I shaved my hair short in a lesbian flat-top. Little natural droop to eyelids, little jowl to the cheeks (I'm almost 40 yrs old dudes- whatever). I'm a chick, but I can channel Walken better than Janice, I think. Some other time.

But what's up with the Walken's permanent eyeliner look and the funky alliteration? A few years ago, my cinematographer buddy "MK" was in Central Park watching Christopher Walken go all Dyonisian, dancing around in circles on the lawn as he recited his lines. It's a method, but he's really like that. Superfreak. Supercool.

And now, thanks to that other enveolpe pusher, Tim "Don't-stop-saying-'Fuck'em'" Harris, we know I sound like a wah-wah barfly when I'm feelin' puny.

Americans Die Homeless, Cops Arrest Ministers, Rad Cheerleaders

Fibs

Here are the best creepy fibs I was ever told as a kid:

Age 3 - The monsters don't live in the closet, they live in that bush outside your window

Age 4 - The roots of the old willow will reach up into toilet bowl and drag your little bare butt body down into the sewer

Age 5 - Smart girls don't need babysitters

Age 6 - That's polio in the gutter and if you walk across it you'll DIE (it was old anti freeze and I walked around it for, like, 3 months)

Age 7 - My sister and her husband performed deep abdominal surgery on the cat, on the kitchen table late at night then sewed it up themselves (my cousin was full of creepy shit)

Age 8 - Tom and Jerry cartoons from the late 60's were the dark byproduct of LSD (they were kind of hyper violent and frenetic then - maybe it was PCP)

Age 9 - Cats and Skunks can make babies. Don't bring one home.

Age 10 - My best friend's uncle was Elvis Presley, and his daughter was Blair from The Facts of Life TV show. They were always hiding under her bed, so I never met 'em.

Age 11 - Strawberry leaves kill Mexican migrant worker children who ate them. (right-wing horror)

Age 12 - I was not a love child (I could count)

Age 13 - Douching prevents pregnancy (didn't believe that either, Dad)

Age 15 - Asian girls labia are horizontal (can't believe I even wondered - my friends were Asian)

Age 16 - My next stepmom was never a man; she was just in a bad car crash. (fooled a helluva lot of people)

Age 17 - My rich boyfriend never went #2. Weird elitist teen denial (can't believe I even wondered)

Age 19 - Those big black striped yellow trash cans under the freeway overpasses hold nuclear waste and country trucks collect them at night. (My husband was so deadpan that I just believed him. Ok. They were collision bumpers by the cement supports).

After that, the fibs were all transparent - or political. Even in my 30's they still try to pull the wool over my eyes . . .

The Real Truth

Good friends and mentors are pretty good at giving you the truth, especially when their ego is not involved - like telling you how well or badly someone else treats you, or about a positive change you've made, or how those jeans really make your ass look.

And truth from the mouths of babes? Of course. Pithy kids are angels in training. Once a little boy said to me "Your arm is cool and fluffy." He was referring to the thick soft scarring that envelopes my right arm. Why yes, come to think of it, it is cool and fluffy. And it does provide much comfort on hot days when I rest my head on it. I've been at peace with it for years. Kids rock.

But the greatest truths come to us in dreams. Yes, dreams are the high octane vehicle of the big esoteric message. See, I thought by age 28 I was going to be a doctor who rode a motorcycle, had a home in the city AND the country and would to elaborate performance art for intellectual kicks. Pretty cool, huh? Well, those particular goals seemed to dissipate with some quick life changes. I got sad. Dreary week-after-week I prayed and angsted then finally screamed at the Universe "What the fuck am I supposed to do NOW?!"


*Sigh* Meaning arrived in a short-order dream one night and scared me straight. There stood a frumpy 55 year-old black social worker who wore a cheap purple polyester suit and flouncy white blouse (nice stereotyping) and grayed bun pulled so far back on her head that her eyes bulged out. I froze with dread and respect as she looked me straight in the eye and said:

"DEEEEEEEDS. YA GOTTA HAVE DEEDS!!"

It took some figuring-out, but I do a lot more deeds now. And I'm active. And I do art, and I perform for groups in ways that aren't always obvious or what I expected. And I give other people good real estate investment advice while I stay pretty simple and content in a little studio sized area which I call "my pod." And I ride other people's motorcycles. Still wear my old motorcycle jacket, though. I'm ok with it.

I don't know why I thought of that. A lot is going on in my world, I guess. I feel peaceful tonight.

Rhapsody in BLUE, MAN

This is a synthesthete's dream!

Cherry Poppin', Daddy

Cherry Poppin' Daddies - "Zoot Suit Riot"


Today I spoke at the Sound Alliance coalition's Founding Assembly on behalf of the Real Change Organizing Project. It's where all sorts of organizations band together on common causes. Power in numbers. There were about 1,800 people including The Governor of Washington State and long list of people with big clout who look shorter in-person.

And I popped my public speaking cherry again!! This time it was in the "on a stage in front of a large group" cherry. I didn't choke. I didn't speed talk. I didn't hold back. I did knock-out some misty eye and a crackle in my voice. Naw it wasn't fake - you know I'm chock full of wah-wah about my grievances. Like piss, I just held it until it was time to let go.

RCOP is the advocacy action arm of the Real Change Community Paper where I help out. RCOP contributes our membership to this organization and helps support its platforms on specific issues related to housing, healthcare, human rights,worker rights, immigration rights and conservation. . . In exchange, our agenda of actively securing rights like housing for people who are homeless can be worked-into the latest big action points.

Today would have been my father's 81st birthday. A week from today is the anniversary of his death. Last year I finally accepted my status as a member of the "lower class." Tonight on June 1, 2008, I accept that I'm a "Fucking Liberal!"

I miss you, my misguided old friend. This one's for you Daddy . . .

Gall

Yesterday, I wore a t-shirt that a family member secretly sent me as a joke. It bore the image of my brother-in-law "G" in his best bare-chested mountain man pose. I call it "Gall."



When I met him 20 years ago, "G" was in the middle of "courting" my sister away from her first husband - via the chiropractors table. It was a time for a change but Dr. Love didn't stop there. I could put more in this blog to villify him, but if I'm found out (and shelter is hard to come-by) I may never have the last-resort good fortune of living with them and dodging his Captain Stabbin' style verbal advances.

You see "G" is the human embodiment of unmitigated "gall." Per Merriam-Webster's dictionary: gall (n.) - "brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and insolence"

I'm not one to say "I can thank some sonofabitch for screwing me because I'm a better person for it" OR "If we didn't have such hellish suffering, we wouldn't be able enjoy the good times" but "G" gets a micron of credit for the power of gall he has demonstrated:

His first words to me were "So is your mother really a transsexual?"

I remember very well the karate wedding he designed for himself, his karate posse in full regalia (my shy sister standing solo in her aerobics tights) and his boisterous recollection during the wedding ceremony "How we surely made a joyful noise unto the lord from our bedroom this morning!"

Newsflash! My adult niece does have DS lips (but you don't get to say it, Creep)

And one fine re-enactment for the local news: he single-handedly captured and threw down in a ravine a 17-year-old Mexican boy who'd just escaped juvie jail (I would have pissed my pants and yelled GET THIS OLD FUCKER OFF OF ME!!)

The darker bits don't get written here, but you get the idea. "G" has gall. He became a well-known athlete in his neck of the woods, roped-in my hottie sister, got himself half a house and and three-quarters of an identity. So "G" gets his money for nothing and chicks for free. My sister deserves better.

But I no longer envy his gall. I want some. Wanna use it for good, mostly.

Soooo, instead of telling him he's a fuckwad to his face, not because I don't have Gall, but because it's POINTLESS - I write it here in my diary as a spell of justification while I exploit him with his own image and stories for the amusement of myself and others.

Multiple Sclerosis is a sonofabitch disease. I've surrendered my path to professional mastery and wealth, achievable dreams and the possibility of motherhood for one big thing - a risk-filled, identity-banging joyride to god. Or whatever I can stand. This takes GALL.

Thanks dude. Go fuck yourself. Here's a t-shirt.

MAY DAY

Straight-off my wall into blogger glory.

(double-click on it for big view)

This posterized gem was crafted by artist Rene Garcia in 2003. 3 ft wide 6 ft tall glitter on plywood. Painstakingly applied glitter. The owners of Roq La Rue Gallery hand-carried her home to me wrapped in black plastic. Nice.

Compared to his other fantastic work, this piece is simple. It's eye-candy. Glam pop. But still I find it intellectually compelling . . .

Is she on a military mission? Planned bomber dive or saucy base-jump? Maybe the plane's going down in flames and she just dodged a bullet with nothing but her cool stockings and sunglasses to protect her - and one impossible chute rig (Hey, I watched "24" once. It could happen).

*Sigh* maybe it's just a nice piece-of-ass dropping into the L.A. Coliseum during halftime.

Today is May Day. Longshoremen are marching to protest The War. There's an Immigration Rights march. The list goes on in the U.S. and throughout the World.

Washington is doing massive scale terrorist drills today May 1 - May 8. The target is "Seattle". The Mayor's office says Seattle 'opted-out' of the exercise. Can they do that? Other agencies like the Washington Military National Guard and FEMA say they're going to do them at bases and factories about 50 miles outside of town. (This is all public info, BTW). I hope they aren't going to practice in-town.

Already, Tuesday morning the police closed-down streets around the Federal building where someone dumped a duffel bag at the door; marked the spot with orange safety cones. It messed up morning traffic and the news helicopter woke me up. Turned-out to be nothing. Like I said, I hope they aren't going to practice in-town.

I got no plane.

Might Like You Better If We Slept Together

WELL, a month passed and I'm back to my blog. A lot of dumb stuff happened and I needed rest from everything. So here I am again.

During this time I got my heart checked-out. Good and strong. Odd rhythm, but it's strong.

Took a leave from art school because the classes are too accelerated at 5 weeks a session. You can't possibly catch-up if you miss say 3 days. I'll hang-out at the studio and do my own stuff for awhile.

With the multiple elevator outages keeping us out of our apartments most of the night, the ceiling caving in in front of my door, and the new tenant who is a flagrant dealer with buddies in-and-out at 5 am ( and purposely transferred into this building by the managers here at el fucko Pike Market Seattle) . . .eh, I digress.

My broken foot is better and I worked-up to walking to 2 miles a day without my ass supersizing during down-time. Sweet.

And I bought my neighbor's television with part of my food money, threw on some cheap noise-cancelling headphones and WATCHED TV ALL FUCKING NIGHT LONG. I liked it. A lot. Here's some of what I discovered:

JP Patches was/is Seattle's favorite clown. Had TV show for years which I never saw because I was stuck with that freak firecrotch Bozo the Clown, in L.A. But Patches ain't no a creep clown - he's cool. He's kind of like mellow Captain Kangaroo but a little more sophisticated and wry (even a little sadistic towards the sidekick cross-dresser clown friend "Gertrude" - subtle - don't mean nothin').

70's College Channel Anthropology Videos What could be more boring at 2 a.m. than watching people watching other people in faded film clips? But it was cool! I learned how a Puerto Rican New York City cab driver "reads" people's body language and dress to predict good fares (and how to talk with both hands and mouth full of cotton while steering).

I also learned how to approach a primitive South American Indian tribe. You enter the village calmly, then walk directly to the middle where you stand frozen in war pose with a long spear. Mostly naked except for tennishoes. Make sure to have weapons, baubles and goodies to give 'em while they figure you out. Then you're a fucking god. Just like anywhere else, really.

Thank you Arts Channel for playing some relaxing weird shit overnight. Those German and English video animations of opera. Totally trippy (go to Kultur.com to score some). And ice skating ballet dancers, silent film from the20's featuring real cabaret singers and Faust stuff and priests like I see on the screen at industrial music night in the clubs.

HOUSING documentaries. Lots of them. Seattle Channel played a Mayor Nickels' sunshine-up-the-ass documentary about what the City of Seattle is doing to help nice but dumb women who make shit choices for partners that beat them then take their cash and hopeless black men who drink too much but we love 'em anyway so we'll give every one of them bitchen' apartments. Oh yeah, they're also available for dumb Mexican girls who don't feel like going to work or school. Indians too! YES I'm being deeply sarcastic *sigh*

The video made it look like Seattle has lots of nice new options for a few people they subtly framed as minority superlosers with shit judgement. It was just a colorfully painted thinly-veneered skew on the lives and mindset of a few real unrelated people who've lived their lives reluctantly and apprehensively in abject poverty - then won the lottery on a nicer-than-average filmable subsidized apartment in Seattle. My heart goes out to the people they interviewed. They made them look like grateful fuckups instead of reluctant victims with few resources in a broken system. Fucking-A . . .

Law and Order Special Victims Unit. Law and Order shows ad nauseum. My friend says it's disturbing normalization of horrific fictional crimes. Perhaps. I say we see and live with messed-up situations and messed-up people every day, ourselves. I can't even believe some of the choices I have to make, given the options. But the TV situations are mostly more than a notch or two worse than mine and they get 'handled' by smart sexy people. It's also a great escape and a subliminal shot at hope and resolution. Cindy Williams as a borderline personality Münchhausen's Syndrome killer grandma who ends up in the slammer? (Today is my mom's birthday - that episode was totally cathartic) .

No 9/11 Documentaries? Hmmmm, that's odd. Oh, of course. It's an election year .

The Dalai Lama Q&A session with Ann Curry dressed head to toe in black (and impossibly tall black bondage high heels) and Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band. Dave Matthews was weird as fuck. Never listened to his music. Is he always that weird? Like Full Metal Jacket Weird? Anyway, I was bored and confused by them but I grokked the charm and wonder of Himself. And his assistant/ translator? Totally fabulous. I was blown away watching him in action. He filled-in gaps in the conversation as though he and Dalai Lama were of one thought. No "monkey mind" there.

Where's the fun stuff, you ask? The 40 year Old Virgin (2005). That was one of the best sleeper comedies I'd seen in years. Smart and charming. That's how I like 'em.

YAAAWN. Time for bed.


Yeah, I find reality an interesting buzz to fall asleep to when better options aren't present.

"Faces of Death" the Remake

4,000 dead American men, women, parents, children, children of vets, friends, relatives, friends of friends . . .see anyone you know?


photo courtesy of The Huffington Post

Archie in a Different Class - Pulp's COMMON PEOPLE

Archie vs Pulp

Awesome. After I relax and smoke a fag, I'll go redraw some more angry "fry lines" above my head.

Bunnies and Nazis and Eggs - Surprise!

I went through a concentration camp phase when I was a kid. Happened somewhere between Little House on the Prarie and The Chronicles of Narnia. I'm not alone. Kids who are chronically abused often live-out escape internalizing fantasies that are way better or way worse.

The book that moved me most at that young age was Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop. I knew it as "The Secret Cave". It's the story of a French Catholic school that successfully hides a group of Jewish children during WW2 German occupation. The 3 best parts of that book are: 1) the secret cave 2) the climactic moment at Christmas when a tiny boy interrogated by Nazi soldiers innocently reveals his Judenkind friends as Mary and Joseph (their Jewish names would've been a dead giveaway) 3) Soldiers bribe the kids with Spanish Oranges and hard-to-get chocolate which they could hide in the cave.

Secret cave, thwarted Nazis, yummy treats? A bitchen trifecta!

Oranges and chocolate. Savored. This impressed me. I was tiny and didn't get much good food to eat, so I ate everything I could get my hands-on. Here's where my fantasy met life - and it was good:

Mom was violent, manpulative, irrational and unpredictable. Scary, yeah. But every once in awhile she did something cool. (I have her to thank for Mad Magazine, Johnson's Catalog of Novelty Gag Gifts, and 'grab bags')

One day she came home from her hospital job in a rather sunny mood. She was dragging a black hefty bag stuffed full of something about the size of me. I was wary. She smiled and said "This is all for you" (It's all for you,Damien!). Said the contents were left on the hospital floor and they weren't allowed to take them back. State Law. I thought about it a moment . . . and decided she wasn't THAT nuts and hauled the load downstairs to my room.

It was the day after Easter. I wasn't disappointed. I opened the bag to find about 90 chocolate bunnies in all different shapes and sizes. There were "Willies" and "Buddies" and a few foot-tall "Petes", vanilla lambs with wild sugar-bead eyes - those were really good, and tall solids in painted foil, female farm bunnies named "Jill" with sugar hats, and lots of solid amorphous german-style chocolate bunnies (those were eyeless and had imprinted lines for fur).

I was in heaven.

A sensitive type, I felt eating heads first was merciful but ruined a bunny's identity. So I started with the sides and feet. How nice. The lambs were weird, but vanilla was my favorite. I chewed the eyes-off then moved to the shoulders and haunches a few days at a time. Holding-back was a struggle. The solid eyeless bunnies had no personality so I ate them in little bits using a paring knife. No problem.

It took me almost a year to finish the whole bag. I kept it hidden in my bedroom closet, of course.

30 years later and I've switched to egg-shaped candies. Cadbury. Solid sugar dioramas with chicks inside. Coconut loafs. I could give a crap about chocolate bunnies but I dig the eggs. What changed? Media sensitivity? Hormones? I dunno. I still like good surprises.

Beatles Bollywood

This is what happens when I try to post something profound. And it dumps.





You get Indian Beatles.

Ballads Put a Shiver Down My Spine - Part 1

Ballads are story songs.

American Folk, Rap and Country-Western are some of the best. The 1950's and 1970's put up some good melodrama. 90's the ballads are a little heavy, but they're good too.

Here's the dark backstory on some of my favorites:

"Sweet Betsy from Pike" (old western) Go west, young man. People were DESPERATE to get out of the life-shortening squalor of East Coast industrialized cities - and find gold. So Ike crosses the Blue Mountains with his lover, Betsy, 2 yoke of oxen, tall shanghai rooster, big spotted hog, etc. Puts her through fucking HELL. Makes her crash in all sorts of inhospitable places on the cold prarie. Even pimps her drunk to strip tease for the wagon train. When they finally arrive in California, he leaves her. She says "Good-bye ya big Lummox" (Lummox, heh). Prarie life is tough. Tulee-bango-dee-die.

"The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down" - The Band, Joan Baez
When you kill something bad, sometimes you take something good down with it. C'est la vie.

"People Who've Died" - The Jim Carroll Group
With speedy punk tempo, Jim reflects on good young friends and the senseless ways they kicked-the-bucket during his heroin-wrecked youth. A great homage. Leo Di Caprio played him in "The Basketball Diaries" (Jim had a cameo as a sleezeball addict).

"Life in the Fastlane" - The Eagles' Hotel California
Brutally handsome thug meets a terminally pretty party girl and they hit the wall together. "Are ya with me?" They o.d. on coke.

"Hotel California" - The Eagles The album analogized the dark side of drugged-out scenester life in the 70's. And Hotel California, the song. Remember how "They cut it with their steely knives, but just couldn't kill the beast?" Nooo, it's not satanic verse. They were talking about serving those voracious cocaine habits. Hey, check-out the demon looking at you from behind the upstairs banister. Open the LP jacket, you paranoid coked-up freak. It's there.

Ode to Billie Joe - Bobbie Gentry Bobbie Gentry sings the part of a young girl who plays stupid during family talk around the dinner table. Apparently a local fella killed himself by jumping-off the Tallahatchie bridge. Seems he had a girl on the bridge with him the night before, though, and rumor is and they we seen dropping a small package off of it. (I think it was a stillborn baby). In the movie version, Billie Joe was turning-up queer. The sheriff and his cronies were too, but on the down-low. And they planned to keep it that way. Billie Joe's days were numbered. Self-hate sucks.

El Paso - Marty Robbins
Bad things happen in Western towns. Marty Robbins aka "nice gringo cowboy" hits on a hot tamale in an El Paso cantina. Muy delicioso! But her Mexican boyfriend shows-up and shoots him dead before he gets to first base. "One final kiss and Felina, good-bye." Marty Robbins dated a woman from my work. How obscure is that?

Timothy - The Buoys
Three boys get trapped in a mine. 2 survive the ordeal, but where's Timothy? Did they have nothing better to do in the cynical 70's than worry about CANNIBALISM?

Livin for the City - Stevie Wonder
Nice country boy leaves his nice dirt-poor family to find his future in New York. As he steps off of the bus, brothers ask him to hold something a second while they run the other way. Drugs. Country boy is collared and ends up a hardened shell-of-a-man after years in prison. Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" uses it to soundtrack Wesley Snipes famous walk to the Taj Mahal drug flophouse where he finds his messed-up brother - and a ruined young girl.

Play that Funky Music - Wild Cherry
White rocker guys stand out like a sore thumb at a small black disco. Tension rises. But they knock out the best funk of their lilly-ass rocker lives! "Play that funky music til you die, til you die". (Ooooh the drama). I've been here. I was an uppity young white girl from L.A. in a low-brow Bakersfield trade school. I was confronted by a knife-carrying, ex- gangsta moll from Detroit. I wrote her a personal containing the dirtiest, multi-stanza'd lyrical insult you ever heard. Then I held my breath and passed it to her, crossed my fingers and waited to die. It was a respect thing. We became friends and went shopping together for clothes.

Teen Angel - Mark Dinning
50's boy asks a girl to go steady with him. Their car stalls on the train tracks - and she runs back to get the bling. Found her cold body with the promise ring "clutched in her fingers tight." Hmmm. Did they have nothing better to do after the comfortable 50's than drive the fear-of-stupid into suburban teens?

Tangled Up in Blue - Bob Dylan
Self-involved asshole meets a wild girl, then marries too young in an act of youthful rebellion. They go their separate ways. Years and many women later, he runs into her in a tittie bar where she unknowningly bends down to tie his patronizing stupid shoes. He reflects, all misty-like. She's like "whatever". (That's one story arc in this beautiful piece).

Miss Otis Regrets - Cole Porter
30's high-society lady plugs her cheatin' lover and sends a polite note that she won't be able to make it to the tea social. She has a last minute engagement with the gallows. Pure class.

It Was a Good Day - Ice Cube
"It was a good day. Didn't have to use my AK" (That's a gun)
Ahhh, L.A. memories. The '92 riots, recession, gentrification and gangland. Basketball, MTV, suspicious police . . . The Goodyear Blimp flew over us and smiled on rich and poor, people of all colors alike as we tapped knuckles in a power greeting of solidarity! Yeah right. Hard rap about a rare violence-free 'Day in the Life'. South Central style. Getting real . . .

MTV Warns About a Police State

I don't care who did it. It's effective.

If you are keeping tabs on reality, and you get your info from fairly reliable sources like, uh, your grandparents (for starters) - HELLooooo! This isn't far-off.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Day 19 of not enough sleep.

I have the TV and computer drive turned-on 'round the clock. They block out the construction noise by day, and the insensitivities of the Steelhead Diner. Steelhead lets their cleaners drag furniture across the concrete floors of the building they share with my apartment, every night, between 3 and 4:30 a.m. The restaurant is a big moneymaker for Pike Market, so this will take awhile to get resolved. For now, I'm mostly living in my bed to make-up sleep and crawl-out for only the most important gigs.

Sometimes you can't change the world around you, so you have to rest. Just rest and go "inside" for a little while. Thinking it timely, last night I read Jean-Dominique Bauby's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"

Bauby was 43 years old and executive editor of Elle Magazine's French edition when he had a sudden life-sucking stroke. Just like that, he went into coma for a month then awoke completely paralyzed in what's known as a "locked-in" state. Left with only the use of one blinking eye, a well-developed sensory memory, a small army of nurses and family - and one very patient transcriber - he wrote a 28 chapter novel about this experience that sold 150,000 copies the first week it was published. He died 3 days after its release.

It only took me 45 minutes to read, but I went through the gamut of strong emotions. I was deeply moved, of course, by the beauty and the despair of his recollections. I was jealous of his support, however limiting and painful his circumstances (I'm a creep). I envied him his great cosmopolitan memories and capacity to string things together with such clarity. I felt empathy for his unwelcome helplessness and a world that had shrunken to seemingly nothing.

I don't know if I could be so tough. Will I have to be so tough? Maybe.

There are people who could find fulfillment in such a painful and limited existence without writing a book on their protracted deathbed. I asked Mike, who's a very mobile quadriplegic, if he would accept staying alive if he went into that locked-in state. He said "yeah, I would" and I believe him. He's really worked some things out.

I think I could too, except for one thing: I have a nervous system that's been through a cheese grater of years of child abuse. That didn't get me down until my brain became a minefield full of lesions. I've got to do something to smooth my feathers before I get to that place. Should things go South.

But first I have to get some sleep. Gotta get the keyed-up pain and panic and experience with social systems out-of-my-control back under some sense of control. I need a plan. Maybe write that book I've been pressed to do. First I think I'll get back to regular meditation, and continue to redirect the "fierce" inside that keeps me moving.


Book of Tao, here I come . . .

Spidey Senseless

Spiderman is my favorite superhero. I like that he's a dork. A cool down-to-earth dork. When he gets bit by a climbey radioactive spider - instead of turning into a lit-up, creepy, climbing dork, he acquires cool threads and swings around spewing silk and dork witticisms. Sounds like my type. We could do coffee.

Japanese Spiderman 1978
watch it for the music, if nothing else

Brown Recluse Man. Now that would be interesting. I got bit by a brown recluse spider when I was 15. What if I turned pooh brown with fur and had to go live in my closet or something. Hours spent in the dark, sitting very still, then suddenly THWOMP! I jump a mouse. Yay me. Hmm. Then creep under some bedcovers waiting for the next big thing. . .until someone rolls-over and crushes me.

What a rip-off. (Actually dying from the bite would have been a rip-off). Anyway, I still have the scar where I got bit and the flesh necrotized and had to be cut away. It's on my ankle, hidden in my boot.

Wow. My foot got to be Brown Recluse Man.


Still in medication-adjustment week of spotty upyours' entries. More later.

The pro slipped-it-in after Spike Lee opened his mouth. Pause.

I was looking hard for Spike Lee on Bill Maher, then accidentally came across this clip. Aside from Spike sounding kind-of faded, I didn't see what was so funny.

Heh-heh. "Pause" means "Oops - didn't mean anything homosexual by that."

God forbid, I must be some old school homo 'cause I had to look-it-up in the Urban Dictionary. High-five to that jiggy sportscaster for watching Spike's ass. Pause.

"I was looking hard for Spike Lee on Bill Maher (Real Time With Bill Maher), then accidentally came across this clip. Pause."

HEYYY, I didn't plan that! Were I a straight dude, I'd be saying "PAUSE" after every other sentence.

Whatever, phobes.