the first time i ever saw one of these things i was already 20 years old and i wigged out. needless to say i stepped on it, and then in removing the sizable carcass with a tissue, one of it’s legs (and, apparently, a tiny bit of nervous system) fell on my hand and started twitching independent. so i instinctively squirted a mass of black ink out of a special aperture, hoping the predator would confuse this mass with my person, enabling a quick escape by a hair’s breadth. anyway i just now saw this fucking guy pictured above and laughed, because now there exists a category of bad thing i just laugh at, until i remembered that i sleep on the floor and these lousy eyelashes will sooner or later flutter across my resting peaceful open nostril. i cannot right now invent an expletive to describe this feeling, certainly one does not already exist.

anyway anyway, as you might deduce, this exact bug offered me the perfect oppurtunuty to mess with the new camera i just got in the mail. sure enough i was able to turn it on, navigate to “macro” focusing mode, and snap a few before it scurried under something i wanted to sit on. pretty sweet. the camera is a casio ex-z600, slim as a pack of playing cards, big screen, a quick draw, easy upload. too early to give a review but if the battery’s decent (and other reviews point to yes, and quite), it’ll be $100 well spent.

via wiki:

Young centipedes have four pairs of legs when they are hatched. They gain a new pair with the first molting, and two pairs with every subsequent molting.

this scutigera is 6 years old!

yesterday i heard two (2) enactments of the old “stranded w/o wallet” story, and even though i told myself i would no longer go for this scam, i ended up giving two bucks, and then 50 cents. in the first instance, i told myself later that i was buying his story, so here it is, as my story:

yesterday (or i guess two days ago actually), me and a friend drove from springfield to worcester for the purposes of drinking / partying. well, we had a couple bars, we got into a dispute, and he left me here, taking with him my wallet and all my money, IDs and credit cards, which i had left in the car during the whatever. i’m just trying to get back to springfield. i went to all the places, they couldn’t help me. i need $14.75, which is the full price of a bus ticket.

pretty decent, i like “we had a couple bars” (of what?), and i like setting up the current town as “the party town”, and i really like that “empty hand technique” of going out with no ties to anything. but really, whither the lost art of panhandling? remember when grisly dudes / scientist types used to sell their poems on the street? this happened twice to me growing up, and each time i was psyched. it’s such a good racket! a small investment in photocopies, and they’re stuck there captive while you read it and then afterwards, they feel obligated to buy it, before you sspring on them the cost of a buck or two each (which really isn’t that bad for a crazy story you can tell someone later and an artifact). i remember there was one guy with a brian chippendale haircut that sold astrological posters he made, but they weren’t as good as they could’ve been. not like there’s a lot of low-level street hustlers that read this (or any (?)) blog, but let’s raise the bar, folks! let’s be new gods for once!

about to drive in to the west for another play rehearsal, still reeling from yesterday. first, riding my bike around picking up large checks that people had for me, and putting them immediately in the bank. made some neccessary phone calls and then joanne, CK and soccer camp, came in joanne’s van to grab me and kpars, we split for providence. this is like 3 o’clock.

we visited j9 a little and started to go to the fabric store (the main reason for our trip) but then we realized that it was going to be not open, so instead we went and got coffee at white electric and i played monster bash pinball, my favorite table. then we sat in the car for a really long time trying to figure out where to go eat, which seems like a bummer but was actually really really fun. joanne has a real party wagon, in which the back seats face each other, so it was really just like kicking it in a tiny apartment. at one point a dog with funny ears passed us in a truck and we peeled into action, chasing after the truck and driving erratically and demanding a picture, which we got. just a fun jam out nowhere session, driving around laffin, pointing out other cool dogs and peeing behind things. as day turned into night they went to a party first but i went to the show at as220 (where they showed up later)- monotonic, dark meat, black pus, kites. dark meat was a 15-piece, full horns, banshee vox, barn burner, and they played “universal indians”. i got the record, despite it being $20, which is crazy, and in addition to being named after an ayler song (the aforementioned “universal indians”), it says “ayler” three more times on the packaging. OK! monotonic was next, from israel, a tite three piece in a rock vein with explosive crazy movement- the singer climbing the rafters and sinewing around, the drummer moving his drums further and further into the crowd or being held aloft with his full kit, or the singer running into the bathroom to grab the trash can and then pour it over his (the drummer’s) head. the guitarist was perfectly stoic and pointing. i broke my glasses and then fixed them, it was awesome. kites followed this and what an act to follow! he played straight-up electric guitar in long piercing lines, very feeding back, until a serious “no regard” section where all of a sudden he became the scarecrow from the wizard of oz, bouncing around as if tendons had been cut. it ruled and the whole time there was this great teenager trying to cast witchy love spells on him, fully saturated with complete nonsense. black pus was pretty great, everyone was crowded close leaving lots of space in the back of the room for mellow kickin and exploratory movement– push ups, pinching, miming, struttin’, stuff like that. at a certain point joanne ran to the car and got her double dutch ropes. shit, all of a sudden the only sound was a bunch of wigs getting pushed back. nicole and natasha went ape and definitely tore it. serious session that outlasted the band and out into the street, picking up weird dudes walking past that yell to their friends “i’ll walk home!” and jump in and we all chant “new guy! new guy! new guy!”. i was in absolute heaven. we all drove home delighted.

i’m moving again, to where the rent is 50% cheaper. actually just up the street to nick’s office. not psyched on packing up everything or having less space, but really psyched to be hanging out with nick and little andrew more regularly.

easter was great– me and LA and secret door got scratch tickets and candy bars and did vodka shots on a fallen tree on george street. i don’t remember where the superstition / tradition “vodka shots on easter to welcome the heavenly host” came from, but i think it was in a book next to “sauerkraut on new year’s day to prevent head lice”. i even won on the scratch ticket if you can believe it. that night there was a puppet show, it was great, then we watched spaceballs. political art can make people an audience uncomfortable– this puppet show had the dignity of abstraction, of not explicitly telling you what the peppers represent, and letting you realize “everything is political”. like i said, it was great. and then afterwards, spaceballs.

speaking of theatre, me and mike are going to be in a play written by madeline from missoula oblangata, at the end of april / early may. the play will only be performed for 48 people, 2 people at a time, in 24 shows over three weekends.

the comic book convention yesterday was fun, and kind of an awesome bust. i didn’t find the hardbound kamandi books or jimbo #4 - 6, and as far as “display”, almost no one was into what i was doing. i made a ton of pins, and sold very few, and even less of my comics. no one was into the fact that they contained real hair– most were distressed by this. but i’m not complaining, i had a good time.

the fair was broken up into three sections: there was the main hall, which was dealers– back issues, action figures, stuff like that; the artists section– people doing sketches and hawking their wares; and the indie section, which was the artists section but only people outside of the mainstream (ie, people not trying to get on marvel / dc, or people clearly unable to if they tried). the indie section was a tiny ghetto in a cramped corner room, and because of our connections with andy fish (and because jamie is a genuinely good and published comic artist) we escaped this, and hung out with the mid-level artists. jamie had his portfolio out and a lot of people took interest in it, and paid him to draw sketches for them. at one point someone asked him to draw a guy playing saxophone, and draw it in his book of all people playing saxophones. dan wars was there and piped up for me, and convinced the guy to let me do one too– jamie drew an alan moore swamp thing inspired swirl, so i drew man thing (playing the saxophone). the guy came back to collect his book and asked our prices, jamie told him $15 each, which is cheap for a sketch (in that world) but still kind of creased my dome. dan also commissioned me and jamie to draw ROM the space knight, and i gave some drawings to veronica from the art museum. i think i pretty much broke even, or almost anyway.

i’m used to cleaning up at stuff like this, but this wasn’t a crafts fair or zine fair (are there zine fairs anymore, or does everyone just hold it for SPX?). it was kind of fun being so totally out of my element.

some sketches on display (after the cut)
(more…)

still chuggin’ on this grant, which interjects at a well-trod fujichia fiasco node, being that 1,) i need a single specific project to bump, and 2,) i need to talk about it like it’s peanut butter or some other life-altering thing, knowing that people know that i know that it’s not. also it has to be something that i not care about enough to just up and do until nine months from now (when they announce the winners) and it has to be something that doesn’t really make money (for reasons i won’t go into right now). it’s cool, i still have a good 23 hours until it’s due. my connectch told me that they fund miles and miles of exactly the sort of dumb shit you’d think they would, and the only thing between me and the money is my ability to talk like i deserve it, in the money language that they speak. fuuuuuckk.

went out for a brain-cleaning walk and a stop at coffee shop to read more yesterday’s answers, and wound up buying jam at the supermarket and running into annie and dave p. some classic old lady rolled up to annie and demanded to know what happened to her face (annie has two lower lip piercings) and didn’t she know that that metal was going to “go right through [her] body” (?) ? annie told her she was turning into a cyborg, the lady was disgusted with us, saying we’d be sorry. i told her “life’s for living”. it ruled. i love supermarket encounters!

incidentally, the crossword oracle was surprisingly on point today– i got INTO ATOM (compare with INFRA ELLE ATOM from a few days ago), CURRY FAVOR NOTE, TRAPS INGENIOUS, LOOP SAGEADVICE, USUAL RARE GOOP, MINTEDITION VAT, and both ORANGES ESP SST and STEM SSTS FLEET (from two different puzzles).

drawing above by james mcshane, of something i think about constantly. it happened to him, he said it was “not that bad”.

this is pretty epic: warhol draws a penis on the moon. or i should say “warhol draws a penis, knowing full well that his drawing will be shipped to the moon and remain there effectively forever”. pictured above, the chip which was glommed onto the leg of a lunar module left behind by apollo 12 astronauts. other artists featured on the “moon museum” include robert rauschenberg, david novros, forrest “frosty” myers, claes oldenburg, and john chamberlain.

today anna told me “you use the word ‘rules’ alot.”. i told her “everything rules.” and i stand by that statement. everything is governed by everything else. no other way.

i’m applying for another grant and it’s driving me batty. of course it’s the last minute! what other time would it be? this grant is orders of magnitude larger than the previous one (which i didn’t get, but which was not pocket change) and is project based, and as far as projects, i only ever think $300 big. my mode is going to be “pay my rent while i ‘work on’ [x]” which people really say with a straight face to other people, who then say “OK”. i know, i know, but come on. but also, i know.

tomorrow is a silk screen day at the store. bring a dark-colored garment and $5, and we will silk screen a drawing of an angler fish onto it and then where the bioluminescent lure is, a real, glowing LED that you cannot remove or turn off. this is from 2 to 5PM.

the dirt pals are going to be in a (the) hugge feminist art retrospective at PS1 next month, because someone over there thought they were a “performance troupe”. my theory is that this is a direct result of their yearly fancy-dress christmas photo-cards. anyway the DP invited me to contribute to their program (which is to say, to the book they are making in concert with the performance). i am PSYCHED. i’m supposed to be playing a show with ghost mice the night of the big performance, i think i’m going to ANKLE IT. because it’s 2008 and i’m STACKING IT UP.

today was february 29th, which i built up to be monumental in my brain but nothing came of it especially. i guess psychologically it’s not like the repeated or lost hour of daylight savings, it’s just like, oh, also, this. i went on a walk, i bought batteries, i wrote this in my notebook: MARE GINS NERVE, INFRA ELLE ATOM, BEATDOWN LEADS, CADRE ADAGE, GIRTHS CLUNG, STAR EYE KEENER, GLIB SCANS, STAYS ON ARIA, UNSAID INSECURE, URIEL OILTANKERS, PETER IV SYNAPSE, GAZETTE LARCENY, ALEXANDRA EUBIE, BORES IN ON KRONA, SKIP OUT ON EBON, CREE LEAPYEAR.

selling some awesome t-shirts at the HBML site, in an effort to make enough money to get by this month. also if you were thinking about making a monetary donation, now is really the perfect time to do so, we’re really up the creek.

tonight’s show was aweseom… eli keszler totally destroyed on unaccompanied drums, with lots of bells, bowed cymbals, totally NUTS. also SICK. GM noised it on the guitar with also drum machines, backlit like the t rex album- super good. i played some boopy laptoppy sine wave stuff but i didn’t want to look at the screen so i stood up and held the fader like prince paul in the me myself and i video. it was nice, it was a nice feeling. i was awash in sine wave waves.

in addition to the music being great, the dim sum aspect of the night was great, and i’m really happy i did it. i bought a proper steamer from the mekon and vaula helped me out in the kitchen, and yesterday and today i had help from apok, jose lynn, kpars, and psibs. we assembled a large amount ahead of time and froze them, which actually turned out to be kind of a bad idea (freezing them) but whatever. we made two kinds, but the best (to me) were the “green vegetables dumpling” with just kale and mushrooms. the other kind (in my opinion) just had too much going on, it was like a busy garment.

altogether, i think i lost $40 on the night, which is fine– i had fun, it was a good chance to actually work something out (in regards to computer music performance), i got to eat a lot of dumplings, and i got to create the world that i live in. also GM said he’d put out a tape of mine on rare youth, so that’s a big boost right there, easily worth $40 spiritual dollars.

oh fuck, and i found out that eli played with JANDEK recently! and that he considers THE GOONIES one of his favorite bands (of the era) despite KD breaking his microphones at some show back in the day. no joke man! the nineties- THE NINETEEN NINETIES.

also, MZ told me about the recent goonies resurrection dinner that took place at UDUPI: 100% tip on an $80 meal for bold lives that declare their own fortune. I LOVE THE GOONIES!

last night’s show at mystery train was great. we got there late and unfortunately missed ben hersey, who i had been psyched to see, but transit always takes longer than you think to arrange, even if you plan on it taking longer than you think. in this instance we borrowed a van from joanne, who is a dear and the van worked superb.

anyway like i said we missed ben, which was a bummer. bromp treb was awesome as always– matt carroll said he had “the stage presence of leatherface” which was pretty accurate i think, if you were to raise leatherface in a friendly environment with music everywhere instead of people’s disconnected body parts. i played ok but made a few mistakes and the terribles played great, as they always do really good in small enclosed spaces.

mystery train is a record store and i shopped during the stonewall jackson set. i got an elvin jones record, and on the way home i realized that i like elvin jones because of this one picture from (i think) serious as you life, where he’s wearing a corduroy jacket. i got this record (”the main force”) because he’s wearing a yellow tshirt that says “ELVIN” in iron-on letters, and there’s a song called “song of rejoicing after returning from a hunt”. but it’s not super-great– he’s good but the other dudes (who he selected, presumably) really M the B. i could’ve listened to the records there, but i don’t like to do this too much. i got a bunch of other records too but i haven’t listened to them yet, except capt beefheart “ice cream for crow”, which i’m listening to now. i got it because of the title. because of crow.

oh, also, divine “jungle jezebel”, teddy fire “fluxing headset man” (signed!), noise nomads s/t (full platter on RRR), ornette “the great london concert” (which i got because there’s a song “Dough Nuts”, and because i’ve been playing to hell the golden circle record). maybe i shouldn’t be spending money but i’d rather have these records and eat peanut butter an jelly for a week than not.

last night was the wag 20th anniversary at jumpin’ joe’s dance club. i don’t need to tell you it was weird, but here i go anyway- it was weird. jumpin’ joe’s is an all-purpose dance club on the eighth floor of a factory building on grafton st, right next to (and just overlooking) the freeway. my understanding is that they have all sorts of events there- swing dancing, reggaeton, singles nights, whatever. there was some weirdness when one of the dudes that hangs out there regularly (?) told one of the harsher dudes to turn down, but that was more funny than anything else. the show started at noon (!) but i got there at a sensible 6:30. there was a free buffet which included crab sandwiches, cranberry sauce, and a huge tray of deviled eggs. totally weird.

so anyway i got there just in time to see industrial sonic echo, which i’ve gone through phases of liking and disliking, but now i’m at the point where i just have to like it. well, this time i liked it a lot because j-me johnston (ostensibly the main force behind all of it) was super wasted, and spent the whole time skulking about their elaborate set-up, turning tvs on and off, telling the other dudes to shush, rearranging various orbs, and eventually peacing out to leave the other dudes to plod along until he got on the PA to announce the next band. it was like watching a band break up, which sucks, but it also kind of rules, to see someone come to a realization and then act upon it at the most dramatic moment. immediately following was bob jordan and ratobasher, total freewheeling improv. the night was so casual that it wasn’t obvious they were playing– until they really got into it, it just seemed like they were soundchecking. but it was good– bob playing acoustic instruments, nathan recording, looping, and processing them through a tabletop full of effects. after them was a bunch of stuff i wasn’t super into, then negative time (josh and greg greg), then greg greg solo closed out the night.

ssome notes:

• ML liked these two harsh noise dudes, pretty much just because they were skinheads.
• the floors were hardwood and pretty clean- me and ml and spato and vaula van sspent a long time sliding around on our butts.
• there was a cash bar and i bought a shirley temple for $2, which sucks, and i forgot the shirley temple trick, which is that you get someone who’s drinking a lot to order one for you and the bartender will assume you’re their driver and give you one for free.
• i don’t like a lot of that music because it’s all keyboard drums and i like sample drums, and it doesn’t have what i like about noise, which is openness, interpretation, and catharsis. it’s more like house, but with too much stuff going on.
• greg greg is still the best, and still destroys everyone else in the genre because he has personality and emotion.
  

• it’s snowing in worcester. but it’s not just snowing, it’s also icey out, which is scary.
• i got a little money from a crafts fair the other day so i ordered the spirulina and the full-spectrum light bulbs i need for my health.
• i’ve been playing music every day, and not even songs, just hollering and yelling and funny laptop sinewave stuff.
• i’ve been drinking coffee maybe every third day, and i feel like i’m finally in adult world. which is to say, now when i’m walking around at night, drug dealers and prostitutes pitch their lines at me, whereas before they would look right through me, as though i were a ghost or lizard.
• my new place (which is no longer new) is apparently warm enough.

one of sheryl-ann’s friends got pnemonia, and i bought her ticket to see MIA tonight. it was $25, which is maybe a lot of money, maybe not, and it was at the palladium. i like MIA- both albums (and the mixtape) totally TOTALLY rule. the production, the lyrics, the delivery, everything. the videos are great, and her style is excellent. she came from a mud hut to international acclaim in 15 years, with a 505, some spray paint. i had a good time at the show, but it was really just a show about the thing, not the thing itself. we’ve talked about this before, this show/party // joining/being dichotomy, and once again, shows are awesome, but this was a big show, there was a power relationship (in that we paid $25 to watch someone on a huge stage), it was pretty mediated. it was fun, and it was great to see a mess of folks in the audience, and you have to go see the band you like when they’re on tour, but it was a lot less personal, a lot less crucial, than just playing the cd at a party or in your room or whatever.

oh, also, i missed most of the opening band and then there was an ipod shuffling for 45 minutes before MIA took the stage, but signaling the start of MIA’s performance was a 5 minute video of kouichi toyama, nihilist candidate for governor of tokyo (pictured above). the lady standing next to me couldn’t see the subtitles, which were on the bottom of the screen (NB: i’m very tall) so i read some of them back to her, which put it in my head the rest of the night. here’s an excerpt (but i recommend watching the whole video):

This nation is horrible. I have no interest whatsoever in political reform or any kind of reform. Nothing will be solved by reforming or changing anything. We are no longer in such an optimistic state! We must abandon this detestable nation. This nation must be destroyed! I do not have a single constructive proposal! The only thing we must do now is “Scrap and Scrap”… Annihilate everything that exists!

this really should have closed the night. oh well!

further reading in re show/party: hakim bey: immediatism. it’s an old essay, and there are some funny anachronisms (like the perceived musical utopia of exchanging tapes of music through the mail at cost), but these all somehow add.

ssorry if this is all tiresome, we just need to work out a new paradigm of party!