if you want something good for you, get some h.u.g.s.. to keep up with the competition, work has begun on my half page comics zine “synthesizer guide book on fire”.
i have a spot of grey hair in the back of my head- i used to tell people that this was where i was kicked by a mule. today i find, up near the hairline on my forehead, a small spot of discoloration (due to a scar, i imagine). the new party line: alien ray gun. in one side, out the other.
my morning (afternoon) can best be described as “schachterlian”. i eat oatmeal, i listen to aphex twin, i read an article about james watson. now i’m using the internet, listening to radiohead. will is 1/2 of bedroom techno stunners “things are looking up for mike and will”, and can be seen around providence RI sporting fujichia gear, and meeting fresh faces (twice last week, i’m told, he met like-minded nuts who recognized the sign of quality). will, i clipped the article for you.
congratulations to
punctual and lovable mensch, who called in to make a guest appearance on
his second consecutive fujichia release (he played guitar synth on (the best?) track on noise thriller). if anyone else wants to contribute a wordless noise to the noodles inc. release, make it snappy, pappy.
snow in worcester, as big as roosevelt dimes, but it’ll be good for our
lakes, rivers and brooks.
ok, noodles inc. (the hardcore dub project mentioned below) is coming along great. if anyone out there wants to be on it, i could use some wordless screams . call up the participation line and leave me some good screams and howls. all scream types are welcome, from cookie monster to bird lady to stardust cowboy. be sure and leave your name. while you’re at it, leave the other participation stuff too, it’ll take a minute, tops. 508.792.2579.
i think i want to sell my new computer. it’s really good, just not for exactly what i want to do. it’s a apple ibook g3, 500MHz 128 MB 10GB 56k DVD 12.1″ display 6 months into a 3 year compusa warantee on everything, including screen. seriously.
#1 had all these big plans to take her car off the road, work less and have more fun but it turns out she’s got a lease so she can’t do it. today was gorgeous out, we drove out west to gilbertville to put her registration back in order, passing through many other funny-named towns: new braintree, leicester, ware (#1: “their high school is called ‘ware high’!”), to name a few.
the sort of things i am likely to say: “happy birthday copernicus”, “cup o noodles”.
some words i would never say: “exclusively swalec”, “crushed linen petticoats”, “the finest mary janes”, “copper-tiled cupola”, “dave mustane”, “colderidge”, “at least i think it’s run dmc” and (in reference to the velvet underground) “many dark-haired men” (maureen tucker is and was a sandy-haired woman).
it’s true. last
week
i took a vacation of sorts (but not like i went
anywhere) and allegra mira took over for me. i kind of wanted to see what would happen if suddenly everyone realized that i had gone crazy. now i know. more or less, nothing (kevin driscoll wins a special prize for guessing exactly what jig was up, partial points to sk for asking me if i was on drugs). one thing i especially enjoyed was reading the things i disagree with, and the slander. some points:
1. i like iceberg lettuce. it’s like eating warm icicles with ranch dressing.
2. only
4 months ago i lived in the second floor of a barn, and obviously
i’m a clutterbug with a predilection for
restaurants in specific, the “caught in a fishnet” (or more
famously, the
“alligator wearing sunglasses”) look is oftentimes the sign of a bad
restaurant, but it always makes me laugh, because i know that somewhere
there is a warehouse full of “crazy crap” that sends deliveries out to new
tgi fridays. i picture the people working there, especially the night
watchmen. always, when i picture it, the stuff is in sealed, nondescript
boxes.
3. “art has to be cryptic if you want to it to say anything.”. it seems to me that to agree or disagree with this statement would be to fall into a sort of trap, the trap being the “artist as failure or success” trap or the “artist’s intent is the one true intent” trap. i would say “art has to be mysterious” period. in my book, artists aren’t tricksters trying to get inside your brain via large wooden horse- artists make things that have ramifications, and they are, at best, dimly aware of the ramifications. ps- in my opinion this holds true in a desert island scenario when artist = sole viewer so don’t even try that shit.
important things from last week: number one bought me a sound effects
record (actually a hi-fi demonstration record in disguise) called “steel
rails under thundering skies” that is all trains and storms. record is
sealed repeat sealed. chewing lots of my favorite ginseng gum (kim speed
gives me best compliment ever– re: the gum: “it’s like you! if you were
gum… kinda sweet, kinda spicy, kinda dirt-y, kinda good!”). staying up
very late (6am). listening to gorilla biscuits. really really liking
gorilla biscuits. to prov-town for chris u. bull’s straight edge revenger
“replacement killers” isotope film “la tortuga”, shown at the dirt palace
with live band accompaniment (good luck sorting that out). awesome
space-brain comics from RI dreamboat christopher. deep fried ice cream
with timbro. light outerwear season and i eat my breakfast (oatmeal,
cinnamon, cut-up apple, sugar) on the roof (at 1pm). this is new
england; i like the weather; i refuse to wait five minutes. i’m kind of
looking forward to everyone getting spring fever, as i feel like i always
have spring fever, and i enjoy everyone being on my page. i knock on
wood. sunday matt interviews me for a class, forcing me to define, clarify
and defend (which is sometimes nice, as it was today). #1 pulls through
again and makes me a cd of legendary stardust cowboy and anton maiden. the
internet pays off! preparations begin for fujichia & affiliates table at
zinetown (me and handsome matt to share a table, me and handsome matt
to dress exactly the same). working on noodles inc. (pre-lingual hardcore
punk concreté) which will drop like an elbow on square heads
pan-galactically. finally finally hms makes me that tape of the
lp.
i’m writing at an unsavorably late hour, i know, but life comes first, not computers. i hung around with nicole yesterday, and we visited another m.b. (not mary bazemore), who was smoking bowls and easing herself into her more comfortable southern accent. after much time in the dark dorm-room, with the laptop set to the tom waits playlist, mb got tired and bored and decided to flirt with someone named shy, promising a make-out session if followed to a stall in the girls’ bathroom. shy stayed there as mb danced about in a shell-pink chemise, and nicole and i began to chant, “don’t be shy! don’t be shy-shy! don’t be shy! don’t be shy-shy!” as we rollicked back and forth on the plywood table (covered in a thin, hippie “tapestry”). nicole is from manhattan and knew all the good ones. also featured were the chants, “go shy, it’s your birthday, not for real though, just for play-play” and “it’s my party, it’s my party, go shy-shy, it’s my party.” to no avail. shy remained pouting in her molded plastic chair, fixed at the center of the din, her pouty-face making a black hole which sucked all the fun out of the five-minute period…and then the playlist switched and george michael’s “freedom” came on: a real masterpiece.
this afternoon, paint-your-own-pottery time. can you believe it? i can’t. paint-your-own-pottery is a real sell-out; the watering-down of real art. i know all of this, but i went anyway. why? why did i go? there is no answer. but since everything is connected and the laws of cause and effect are in place, i decided to make a magic mug. this mug will cast the odds in my favor every time i drink tea from it. the glaze on the inside of the mug is purple, and i used the french language to decscribe my wishes - this seemed more appropriate than english. (which reminds me - i want to remix jaques brel’s “ne me quitte pas” sometime soon. who wants to sing it? please post.)
i wrote my (secret) wishes on the magic mug in blazing turquoise, with a red background - a delicious, lets-get-into-trouble kind of red. a pj harvey, bleeding-heart, wailing red. and then the rest of the mug is yellow and orange. i’m pissed that i didn’t get to have more time with my mug, but they actually charge you for time-slots in these places, and since someone else was paying, i had to surrender myself to the flow of things.
i saw lemon extract again today; she was trying to trap someone behind a door. she was very un-boisterous about it - silent about it, like the karate kid. i was jealous of whoever it was, until the person popped out, and then my fears were assuaged. i’ll not say why. lemon extract does not like sonic youth, and is uninterested in thurston and my babysitting pipedreams. she’s wearing the same jeans every time i see her, and that takes guts for someone from l.a. she contiues to sound like she has that flavorless, spiny lettuce in her mouth at all times. there are so many bizzare people around - i wonder how televison ever succeeded.
rain comes down
wind goes up
cars go by
my face is happy
- age 5
tonight, a pimps-n-hos party. last night, at the chinese restaurant, a pimps-n-hos party. why does everyone want to cast themselves in these silly pimp/ho roles? why not have a venus in furs party (a whiplash girlchild in the dark party), a hair-cutting party, or an it’s seven in the morning — party! party? last night, at the pizzaria, with mary b and the lovely rebecca, a tee-shirt read, “united we party.” i was wondering when it would come to this. united we stand, united we party, united we grill things, united we take pictures of our loved ones and use photoshop to correct the red-eye.
am i sounding like the guy from pump up the volume or am i sounding like the guy from pump up the volume?
just now - “i just came by to borrow her shotglass.” (girl who looks like nda gym teacher: hunched shoulders, swingy-limp brown bob, gold glitter shirt.) “you goin’ to pimps and hos? always the way to go. pimps and hos!” (exeunt.)
i miss my peeps.
today my friend josh and i did ear candles. all went well and i don’t think that these are a sham. if anyone wants to try them, make sure that you don’t buy them at the living earth, where they are at least three times as expensive as the ones at the west boyslston health food store. josh’s mom is a massage therapist, and she uses “goddess candles” that are shaped like the ‘venus’ of willendorf (a widely-used misnomer for that bulbous relic from the stone age).
i haven’t been able to locate which house is thurston’s, but perhaps that’s because i don’t care so much about it. the house i imagined was his turned out to belong to some old guy. nicole peered through the evergreen bushes by the window (the house sits directly by the sidewalk) and saw a baldspot - silver hair - a corner of the newspaper - a pink hand - the cuff of an oxford shirt. not him.
my aunt called this morning - she is going to a birthday ceremony at lonfellow’s grave site in cambridge, ma. she plans on doing rubbings there of the family gravestones. is this proper ettiqute or is it not? should we be showing longfellow respect for the dead? then again, for a small fee one can stand on a balcony made of two-by-fours and take pictures of the rubble in NYC. if nothing is sacred, then is this because everything is connected, or because of the catch-all look?
i’m going to write later, when there is something to write about. right now, i write simply because i’m at the computer lab to rescue my iron bracelet - exclusively swalec, only one in exsistence, designed by me. it is a ladder that curves around my wrist. it reminds me a)of higher things and b) of the first tourist in outer space, whose name eludes me - -
p.s. no news yet about the babysitting job. however, i do have upcoming plans for the western mass area. i have just been invited for a spring rowboat ride, after the smith spring break. someone wants me to “go be rich” with them. how can i say no?
i have decided that i have to trust that everything means something else. before this i was convinced that nothing meant anything else, and everything is what it is. it’s just not that way for me anymore.
mary bazemore is coming to visit. she will be bringing rebecca. when i was ten, i read the v.c. andrews “audrina” series. everyone who mattered got to wear white crushed linen petticoats and the finest mary janes and played in the copper-tiled cupola of the family mansion, until, due to respective and various (yet always perversely tragic) circumstances, each of them had to give that up and live a cinderella lifestyle. after awhile they are discovered by various men who love them for their shatteredness and complexity, and are restored to their position through these men. of course, the one written in the early eighties had a different kind of ending; the girl rescued herself.
when i first met rebecca, i thought of two things: 1) she looked like someone i didn’t want to mess with, and 2) she had the exact hair color of the original audrina, as described by v.c. andrews. it is many colors, even white. this is not the play of light on her hair, either. some is really brown, some is red, some is blond, some is white. all sheaved together, it appears to be an illuminated/ing auburn color. manic panic tries to achieve this in its “tigerlily” of the haircolor series. i think its amazing. i’d always imagined that v.c. andrews was putting me on, trying to attribute an otherworldly dimension to the original audrina, the matrilineal source of all that drama. but no, it’s for real. and you know what else? dave mustane has this color hair, as well. as i realized after knowing her for awhile.
lemon extract and i spoke at lunch today. i have not yet asked about the resin-cast aztec calendar; seeing as she hung it up after that horrible/wonderful tantrum, i thought i’d try to be sensitive about her stormier side. today she wore a tee-shirt with many dark-haired men on it. “it’s the velvet underground, and here’s lou reed himself,”she said, and her mouth sounded like she had a mouthful of something again: it always sounds like that awful plain lettuce that only dieters enjoy. what is it? oh, i cant remember. spiny lettuce, that they throw in a shredder and use at fast-food restaurants.
i watched the line of chocolate syrup dissolve as she rubbed it with the back of a steel cafeteria spoon. the cafeteria table i sit at is filled with well-intentioned girls, but i have nothing to say to them and neither does lemon extract. she just hangs out with them all because they run the latinas unidas group. i just hang out with them because whenever i sit alone, someone totally unexpected shows up. last time it was my mother, bringing “all the kinds of scented geranium they had because she couldn’t pick one.” american much?
