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A found photograph.
“Throw away your phone.”
An albatross’ corpse, revealed to be holding a stomach full of human garbage. It died of starvation.
I rode by a potential suicide at 16th & Valencia. The man was talked down after about seven hours.
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I have trouble sleeping, contemplating the meanness of this world. I am reminded of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel the Fool.
NO WAY OUT BUT I GOTTA’ GET OUT
(in theory) Going halfway around the world and back again. Four months and counting.
I remember a time when my moral convictions were much more clear cut.
You leave the Rat Room but the Rat Room never leaves you.
Got in a brief verbal altercation with a jogger pushing a stroller in The Panhandle today. What is up with people jogging with babies?
On an unrelated topic, Atmospheric Disturbances is really good.
& another one:
I discovered my scanner had contracted some sort of strange electric disease this morning. Fluids leaking, chemical smells, etc. No more photo or drawing scans for a while I guess. Maybe I should have picked up that warranty when they offered.
Jungle Pat washes up and marries off all the animals on the continent, claws the ground, eats sand and twigs and fish off the shore.
Three days in the North Bay. First time out of SF for that long in months. I got called a ‘faggot’ on my bike in Napa. A guy at a restaurant downtown there accused me of climbing on his roof. I hadn’t been. I had been on his neighbor’s roof. Body or Brain played in Petaluma. Robert gave me a ride there. Some really shitty bros were talking about wanting to ‘bang’ a bunch of the sixteen year old girls hanging around outside The Phoenix. When I mentioned hearing this to Jakey he replied “Man, I don’t even hear conversations anymore.” Good call. At some point I watched music videos on demand using the Comcast TV service that my mom subscribes to. There was a No Age video and Millionaires video, things I had hoped were confined to the internet heap.
I cut my hand on a jagged metal can.
I gave a dog sticking it’s head out of a parked Hummer H2 some water.
I read some parts of Nexus that I like on the loading dock behind a Whole Foods.
PHOTOS
-Shoes on Ethel Porter Dr. in Napa.
-Secret crappy Graffiti on top of Nevada Bob’s in the Downtown Napa Mall.
-Body or Brain at The Phoenix in Petaluma.
-Creep Mike’s new book (taken with his camera, I forget what kind).
-Weird urinals.
-You can’t tell but Jakey’s Ked’s have American flags on them.
Hopefully I’ll make it to the Folsom Street Fair before work tomorrow.
Pretty lazy flier. Whatever. Go to the show. It will be fun.
It’s ten-forty-six in the p.m. in sunny San Francisco (at night) and most all is well. As I was riding Spitzweg (bike) through the wiggle today it occurred to me that, as time currently stands, I am pretty satisfied with life. I’ve accomplished just about every goal I’d set for myself upon moving back to the bay area. Yes a little behind schedule, but better late than never. I settled back in to a home with Nick, I got the majority of the expensive art supplies that I’ve wanted off of my wish list and in to my room, my bike is rad, my hair is long, and I’ve cultivated a mountain of jokes, stories, etc, from topics diverse as The Lone Duck to forcibly being dragged from a pubic restroom by one’s own hair, pants around ankles, cock dangling and screaming in confusion, all the meanwhile hanging on to the deep, deep, deep seeded PMA that I pretend not to have most of the time.
“Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn’t often cursed his life, who hasn’t often told himself he was the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first.”
I find that quote (Candide) impressively applicable and not so mutually exclusive to being on a boat. It, in a nutshell I think, nails my everlasting appreciation for bleak, depressing, shit-on-the-floor-of-your-own-home & “why was there no hope today?” suicide jokes.
*
I just finished a full pot of coffee and I am currently listening to Abner Jay’s voice bouncing around my room, crooning on about cocaine. The combination of the coffee in my veins and the hyperactive lyrics about blow have me a bit fragmented, so here goes, I’m gonna’ prattle about a few points of personal interest to me over the last week or so.
First off I recently stumbled across this piece, Theodore Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa, while on a voracious stint of Wikipedia-ing. The relevance to me is that it was apparently a direct influence on this painting by Winslow Homer, an artist I’ve had a base interest in since I was a child, due to the fact that a couple of his pieces have hung in my parent’s living room all my life. Connectivity is always exciting to me. It makes me feel as if the lattice of coincidence which terrifies me so can somehow be explained.
Supposedly the preparation for The Raft of the Medusa (which was uncommissioned and to be his breakout piece) took Gericault on a tour of morgues and quarters of dying hospital patients so that he my cultivate the knowledge which would aid him in selecting the appropriate color scheme. That is some ambition akin to wartime journalism. Funny (and I do mean ha-ha funny this time) how all it takes now for the title ‘artist’ is a little talk favorable review on a well read blog. Who then now is willing to invade deathbeds, stare a chicken in the eye and ask the wild questions?**
Gericault, Homer, Spitzweg (not my bike this time). These are names who embody a level of talent I cannot even fathom reaching.
Well, this one’s by Leon Golub. I’m still learning about him. American from Chicago. Sometimes used a meat cleaver to render his work. Pretty scary subject matter, but at least I can wrap my head around his techniques. I’ll track down more exciting pieces by him sometime soon.
Josh Simmons did one of the better comics in Kramer’s Ergot #7 in my opinion- Night of the Jibblers. I don’t know why I waited so long to try to track down other work by him, but I’m very happy that I finally did. THIS sounds like one of the coolest projects I’ve heard about in a while. I love madman ambition like that. It’s like if Henry Darger had an agenda.
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Oh God.
Okay. I need to sleep. Read this for laugh and this for a bummer. Both short and fantastic in their own right. Be good and goodnight.
*Quick, dumb sketch of a character who shall most likely remain undeveloped, Charles.
** Yes I did reference KoRn and Herzog in the same sentence. Yes I know how retarded that is.
