those fresh white air force ones i found in the trash a few months ago have the odd effect of getting a lot more people to yell at me in the street. not the spiteful bro “fag!” yell i’m accustomed to– more the facetious/playful teen angel “ay, papi! let me get your number!” yell (which, joke or no, makes me blush a little). my best theory is that, without the shoes, i am a mere crazy person on the street, not invisible to hip hop street culture, but irrelevant. with the shoes (no laces), i am still very much a crazy person– a very tall sore thumb with an offensive (rather than defensive) mode of dress, but i am an extreme and curious outlier, making it known that i am in the conversation.

remember when missy elliot wore a code 13 t-shirt in that video? that ruled, right?

i was supposed to give a talk on saturday morning at tim houston’s school, on the topic of “fucked entrepreneurism and the CSMF model” (my title). jim gave me a ride and agreed to be “my sen dog”. well, it was an hour away, we were a little late getting started, then we got so lost and so so late that we eventually just turned tail and came home- not something i like to do but sometimes it’s what needs to be done. sorry tim, regina, jim, everyone, let’s re-plan, maybe i can come down friday and sleep over and we can watch ghostbusters or something.

saturday night there was a big party for the new stone soup building. i personally think that “stone soup” is too clichéd a name, and that they should use the address (4 king st) and call it “forking paths”, but maybe “forking” is too close to “fucking”, so what do i know anyway?. anyway there was tons of people there, it ruled.

doing some research about tigers the other day and then talking about bestiaries with james mcshane and kate schapira. bestiaries are books, classically from the middle ages, of drawings of animals of the world, often used to illustrate biblical or societal beliefs. they were drawn often with the only guidelines being physical descriptions and/or previous bestiaries, a system in which artistic idiosyncrasies and poetic turns become rapidly telephone-gamed and retranslated, then reworked into strident examples of god’s word made flesh. some gems:

• elks eat snakes by sucking them out of holes in the ground
• lions are born lifeless, life is breathed into them by other lions
• all tigers are female, and copulate with the wind
• bear cubs are born as a shapeless and eyeless lump of flesh, which the mother bear shapes into its proper form by licking it (the origin of the expression “to lick into shape”)
• as a test of the worthiness of its young, the eagle holds them up facing the sun– the birds that cannot stare into the sun and turn their eyes away are cast out of the nest.

additionally, there are a number of animals in old bestiaries whose names have been reused for modern animals, like the salamander (which lives exclusively in fire), and the basilisk (which can kill by odor, sound, or sight). the salamander is of particular importance, as it filled in a necessary gap, being the only creature to live in the element fire (animals of the earth, air and water being well spoke for). one way to look at all this is to view ancient reporters as wrong about a variety of things. another way is to say that these animals have lost a bit of their splendor, or in strictest defense of the bestiarists, that the beasts of the earth are but a reflection of man and god, and as one or both of these things change, so do the beasts of the earth.

pictured above, the cheetah, as drawn by one of my favorite artists, ben houston.

medieval bestiary online

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last night’s show was totally fun, even though i got a little overwhelmed by a ton of people in my house. jambuck played superb as always. frenching action ruled because you could hear all the lyrics (which are brilliant), and kpars sang into a hairbrush in lieu of a microphone (except for the part when she wanted to switch up the sound and sang into a bottle of dr bronner’s). also, they did a bilingual cover of “say my name”, even with the fast-rapping part in french. EPIC. as for me i had fun, played some new songs as promised, including the JJBB homage “pull the wig off my walnut or go home”. all my new songs are themed collections of funny things i heard (or thought i heard) people say, transcribed from the past four years of sketchbooks. oh, i also did a special dedication version of legendary stardust cowboy’s “standing in a trashcan thinking about you”. the best part was playing in the threshold of my room, and when things got too loud and personal (nb: things can’t really get too loud or too personal) i went in my room and kicked the door shut, still yowling and playing and with the amp still outside in the living room and on. oh, i also did a cover of marge’s wasted new year’s answering machine message, which was recently accidentally erased. this, to my ear, came out sounding like that van morrison contractual obligation album i like so much.

today at the store the pipes burst, but as the back room was beginning to flood who came in the store but strangers with plumbing expertise, who turned the water off in the basement. nothing really got wrecked, but i realize we’re not out of the storm yet. it was actually a pretty busy day at the store. james mcshane and kate showed up with their dioramas for the contest, the same james mcshane who will live forever in my mind not just because he’s a great guy who makes wonderful comics, but because he’s the guy that gave me a genesee beer at a show and told me “it has a certain genesee quoi“. god, i love that joke! anyway it’s good i’ve been getting plenty of rest because the weird busy times are certainly upon me now. tomorrow i anticipate being pretty fun and 30% fucked, but busy through and through. more news as it happens.

here’s another strategically-too-late self-defeating announcement, but i’m playing a show tonight at my house with frenching action (acoustic-style) and jimmy jamie bobby buckmaster. it’s both of their cd release shows, and i was rushing to write record and copy a new tape (first new recorded songs from me in a million years), but instead i’m going to take another week and try to have something for february 3rd (when me and jjbb are playing again at melissa & ryan’s house). i’m trying not to talk about projects before they’re finished, as that gets me into trouble sometimes, but there will be a qawalli song, albeit a short-form one (qawwali on wikipedia, also great mp3 archive). i’ll playing some new songs tonight

hey brian, work on my music video is continuing apace.

marge and i were talking about our (possibly) conflicting 2007 individual mottoes- “no drama” and “embrace the chaos”. we were try to get mel to choose a motto, and it was a real angel / devil // prudish brenda starr / sexy brenda starr shoulder scenario until she delineated a happy medium- “ride the wave”. of course, our new tenant yick perry had no place to go but outside the box and went with “candy, cigarettes, candy cigarettes”.

today a mess of people from my building worked at the artichoke food co-op on main st.. it used to be that we had one shift every other sunday, now as a building we have the whole day sunday, noon to six. the old method was to disperse the burden by getting someone different every week to cover the shift (we have all three floors of a triple decker, which is like nine people). the new mode is to deny the burden by trying to get as many of us as possible to work at once, and make sunday a party hang out day. fresssssh! so sundays come kick it! NB: we also discussed always having one of us (and only one) drunk on the job, and acting as a sort of “entertainment center” for everyone else. this is a good move right?

last week me and purtle had breakfast with mike benedetti and the snow ghost, for mike’s ongoing coffee review. mike just typed up and formatted the very rambling conversation- here it is. thanks mike!

oh, and here’s more information on the “hinkley double” mentioned briefly in the interview.

the new Incisor Soul Revue seeks horn section. real horns only, please, no $3 plastic carnival “i’m drunk” horns. must be able to hit 4 notes reliably. influences: otis redding, flipper. not a joke. must be able to play at most 6 shows a year, possibly with no practice. mission statement mix tape forthcoming. email or call.

left work (”work”) early today to go to the city meeting about the planned parenthood parking variance. PP is moving in down the street from HBML, and wanted supporters (esp. neighborhood supporters) present at the meeting in case there were dissenters. there were dissenters, there were way more supporters, there weren’t really any problems, and altogether it was kind of a funny scene. these meetings have a space for public comments but really no reason for them, as it’s pretty much just a nuts-and-bolts affair- all that really needed to be said was “is the new parking area going to be within certain guidelines?” “yes it is.” “ok.”. every time someone tried to say anything about what happens inside the building, the facilitator would say “is this about the parking?”. as an abutter, i put my valid two cents in, and afterwards people came up to me like “thanks for coming! i don’t know you were an abutter!” to which i responded with mildly racy comments. all in all a non-event, but good to go to anyway, just to keep locally active. it’s like they say you have to let the faucet drip so the pipes don’t freeze.

afterwards mike and i went to pho dakao (sp?) on park ave, a nice treat as usually hankerings for vietnamese food are satiated at the nearby da lat (with either #37 or #86). it was cool to try a new dish for once– i got #101, tofu with tomatoes and pineapple, it was super good and in the $8 - 9 zone. pineapple is such a great thing to put in a food dish. walking up to pho dakao at night, the weird lights and tinted windows make it seem like you’re walking into a video game in a movie. once inside the radio plays instrumental versions of 80s power ballads– not like the da lat, which plays cool bumpin’ vietpop. i guess the da lat is a “joint”, and the pho dakao is closer to a “restaurant”, which pretty much means the food costs $4 more and they don’t play good music. but on the other hand, pineapple is a really awesome thing to put in a delicious food item.

friday night i went to a dance party at ryan and melissa’s house and had a great time. when i got there people were “on the way” (to being completely wasted), then once they “got there” i left, which for me is the way to play (which i often need to remind myself of). a weird/nice thing about the party is that it was by and large an anthemic sing-along party, which i feel kind of reponsible for, having imported that party style to worcester (from fitchburg) some years back. this is a weird thing to say, brash even, and i don’t mean anything by it, and surely i assume no authorship or authority, it’s just funny to recognize a chain in which you serve as a link. the main difference is that, times changing, this was not a mix tape party, it was an ipod party. i’m working on my big article (for interview with a frankenstein #1000 sucka!) on the superiority of the mix tape as a dance party driver.

saturday… what happened saturday… i didn’t go to the art museum, i didn’t do a lot of things. it was rainy, i wrote a lot, i walked to the seben eleben for some soda pop, i was at the store for some reason… night came and i… damn! this is why i need to write every day! did i eat cookies with joselynn (aka jauseleum)? or was that thursday? oh, this is foolish…

anyway sunday i went and saw the body, hulk out, third death, and some other bands at summer camp (aka cinnamon cave) in providence. the body and hulk out were fun, and third death was pretty awesome (and the singer was really nice). the other bands were a lot of standing around, going through the motions, other things i don’t care about. hanging out with chip and lee was, as always, totally sweet, and we talked about pogs a lot. the quote of the night was carolynn regrading the therapeutic effects of seeing the body “i feel both energized and relaxed. i could kill someone, or i could take a really good nap.”. it was nick perry’s last night in providence (he just moved to the invented room behind my couch). he got both a good send-off, and a nice welcome from the good crowd of worcesters at the show (incl. jess and lori and eric yf– hi guys!).

of course as one day dawns another dusks, and tonight (monday night) we bid fond farewell to amanda ferris, who has to return to chicago for some bullshit until may, when she dawns anew upon us. so long, skittles!

ok, i’m thinking about it, and i’m pretty sure that (unless someone tells me otherwise) saturday i had cookies with joselynn, and the cookies were really good (i’m talking about actual cookies, this isn’t a slang term or anything). then jim tagged my house.

ug, i know, more ideas, less laundry lists.

oh, one quick question- has anybody had any problems downloading stuff (stuff i’ve posted or anything else) from archive.org?

i was pretty psyched when i got in reader’s digest a few years ago. i was even more pumped when nick and holmes were in high times. now it seems everything has been trumped because our pal pippi is going to be in fangoria in connection with the DVD release of “die you zombie bastards“, the zombie movie she stars in (also featuring hasil adkins!). big up! the dvd drops next week…

so, as you can see below, i’m starting to put up stuff for mail order, and i’m going to do it like i do the releases– write everything in the main blog and then use categories to parse it out into distinct pages. in regards to the online store, i also made a start page, mainly so that i could have a clean “fujichia.com/store” point of entry. my main question is– is it clear what’s going on and could it (or should it) be clearer (and how)? also, is there insurmountable confusion between fujichia online ordering and HBML? i know there is some sort of confusion inherent in this construction, and it’s not that confusion is always bad, but anyway where is the confusion and how bad is it?

as always, constructive criticism is welcome in the comments