...VEGENAISE IS PEOPLE...EVERYBODY KNOWS...PRE-APOCALYPSE...goat brains...

Les Claypool and the Holy Bible

2008-03-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the Bible lately.
Not for any religious reason -- I'm agnostic -- but, as Hunter S Thompson so eloquently wrote in the preface to his Generation of Swine, for the awesome beauty and power of the language, and (my own reason here) for the absolutely wild, violent, phantasmagoric visions and events depicted and described. I guess it's the Bible-as-literature approach. I also didn't realize that many movies I enjoyed got their titles from the ol' Good Book -- There Will Be Blood (Exodus 7:19) and Children of Men (Daniel 2:38). The Bible is big, it's bold, it's imaginative, it's chock full of hallucination, violence, sex, weird scenes from the desert.
I was just reading Daniel about a flying goat that comes out of nowhere and attacks a multi-horned sheep:

And as I was considering, suddenly a male goat came from the west, across the surface of the whole earth, without touching the ground; and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes.
Then he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing beside the river, and ran at him with furious power. (Dan 8:5-6) (Gideons version)

There are also emphasized (italicized) words that don't seem to make sense why they are italicized; as if someone speaking puts the wrong accent on a syllable or phrase. The Bible is full of such cryptic emphases and off-kilter rhythm.
There's also an Iron Man, like the Black Sabbath song, Dan 2:32-33.
Violent words and images:

you shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made an ash heap (Dan 2:5).

But also beautiful analogy:

like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. (Dan 2:35)

The zoo grows...

2008-03-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

Got a new member of the fambly.

A lone male Betta fish.

Red, graceful, beautiful.

Lethal -- to another lone male Betta fish.

Cheap and easy.

But I have this desire, I will be honest with you, to put a mirror up to the tank.

...to introduce another male Betta into the tank.

Thunderdome.

We'll see.

Dark furtive curious things swirl around in my soul.

I will be honest with you. I won't lie.

I'm not too concerned with my "carbon footprint." Not too concerned with conventional morality. Not too concerned with the mores of society. Not too concerned with altruism, Christianity, do-gooding, saving the earth, making a difference. Ain't too concerned with preventing the apocalypse, and especially the post-apocalypse. Ain't too concerned 'bout the herd. There will always be a herd. Be it bovine, swine, buffalo, sheep, human.

Ain't too concerned with authority figures. I've had run-ins with two different ones lately and they're both the same. All bark, no bite. Pufferfish. Homeland Insecurity. They've only reinforced my anarchism.

Filipinos are warm, mellow, loving, happy-go-lucky people who welcome complete strangers into their homes as intimate loved ones. What do you need? Here, have my pants.

And Filipinos love blood sports.

Horse fighting, cockfighting, boxing, poverty, porn, prostitution, smoking, greasy food, drinking, karaoke.

Hermit crabs on tropical shores.

The world is truly and deeply beautiful sometimes.

thinking aloud on anarchy, apocalypse, and venison

2008-03-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

I've been wrestling with something for awhile.

(Well, a great many things, but I will focus it to one thing here.) That thing is how to reconcile, if possible (and it may not be), my anarchist-leaning worldview with an apocalyptic event on earth. By this I mean: as an anarchist, I believe in a world devoid of ultimately-powerful government(s) that hold paternalistic authority over its "children" citizens. I believe in true freedom, not just the feel-good phantom freedom of democracy. I believe in punk: put as tersely possible: thinking for oneself. I believe that a world in which 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth and power while the remaining 99% -- the overwhelming majority, if we want to be democratic about it -- quibbles over the remaining 10% is deeply out of whack. I believe that a government such as the United States', in which upwards of 50% of the budget is spent on military while a mere fraction is spent on alternative energies and fuels, has its priorities deeply and perhaps irrevocably misaligned. I also believe that people get the kind of government they deserve, and it is high time to rouse the American people from the complacent and uncritical slumber they have been enjoying for far too long. I believe Abe Lincoln was right when he warned against the advent of corporations; I believe Eisenhower was right when he warned against the trinity of military-government-big business. I believe we have largely failed to listen to either men, and are living, at least in the US, in a theocratic monarchy edging slowly toward a totalitarian police state, a frog sitting in slowly boiling water, while we stand in line at the supermarket distracted by the petty and ultimately meaningless dramas happening to our beloved celebrities. I believe both the political right wing and left wing have failed us, that we have lost our way.

That said, one event that largely "solves" the above problems is an apocalyptic event -- nuclear war, massive weather disaster, pandemic plague, peak oil worst case scenario, asteroid impact, etc (you know, the disaster movies we know and love) -- because such an event wipes clean the slate, creating a tabula rasa, a decimation of the former world (with all its problems and goodnesses). When the power goes down, so does the World Wide Web. When the government goes down, anarchy replaces it. (I'm tired of reiterating this, but it bears repeating: anarchy is NOT chaos, bloodshed, looting, destruction, rape, pillage, horror, etc. This is the "scared of anarchy" interpretation, the pop interpretation, the misinterpretation we've been fed by the very people and forces who wish to quiet the anarchist spirit. Anarchy, literally, is lack of structure, lack of authority, without ruler -- at least structure and authority and rulers as we've come to know them and live under them, ever since the days of the Greek polis. Government as we've come to know has meant a small group of pampered, powerful, wealthy and elite governing a massive population of the unpowerful, unpampered, unwealthy and ordinary. What anarchy is is mutual cooperation, self-regulation, self-reliance, DIY, evolution, self-defense, ground-up rather than top-down decision making. Agrarianism. Hell, it's whatever the fuck you want it to be, within reason and (self-created) limits. It is not a hippy commune but it shares certain features and ideals. Anarchy is off the grid, off the media, off taxes. It is perhaps a more brutish, ugly, shorter-lifespan scenario, but a far more honest one. I can only urge one to read up on the long history of anarchy and how it has largely been straw-manned over time.)

A global, or even local, apocalyptic event produces anarchy: quickly, devastatingly, thoroughly. And, yes, there are elements of extreme danger and human depravity: in the absence of a government, you will see things like rape, murder, torture, looting, might-makes-right, etc. (Not that we don't have these things now, sometimes even government-sponsored, mind you!) But you will also see the positive side of freedom, rebuilding, reorganization, renewal, the phoenix rising from the ashes of the old, corrupt, abused and abusive world. A great leveling can take place; the caste system that exists in every culture, whether openly or acknowledged or not, comes crumbling down. Sure, despots and dictators rise and flourish in such environments, but they do so anyway and often with the help, support, and resources of government. The post-apocalypse we are so fascinated with in literature, film, music, etc, is a fairly open playing field of possibility, re-creation, restructuring, cleansing, and improvement-via-destruction-of-the-old.

Consider a recent article in Time mag on representations of post-apocalypse scenarios in pop entertainment:

Watching [Will] Smith in I am Legend as he romps through a Manhattan blessedly free of people, you try to remember that he's supposed to be mourning the death of humanity, but it's damned hard. He's playing golf and driving a sports car. He's picking corn and hunting deer -- he's eating locally! The apocalypse is an epic tragedy, but it's also a fantasy of cleansing and regeneration wherein everything inessential and inauthentic is swept away so that we can build afresh among the ruins. ("Apocalypse New" by Lev Grossman, Time, Jan 28, 2008, p. 111-113)

The writer goes on to call this scenario "a convenient untruth." But is it? Consider the source -- Time magazine, one of the major media sources for the world. Grossman calls the "epic tragedy" of a cleansed, regenerating post-apocalypse a "fantasy." But isn't it up to us whether it's fantasy or reality? And why is it necessarily only fantasy? Grossman is in essence defending the current (pre-apocalypse?) world and its superiority, while patronizingly telling us to enjoy our fantastic post-apocalyptic movies, books, music. I find it dismissive and somewhat ill-informed.

The world I see, you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You climb the wrist-thick vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of the ruins of a superhighway.

- "Tyler Durden" in Fight Club

Now, here is the rub, my dilemma: I, of course, don't want misery, death, injury, dislocation, confusion, anxiety, ultraviolence, etc, to come to my loved ones, friends, and humanity as a whole. But I do believe in anarchy, and the/an apocalypse = "instant anarchy", in most cases. In many places, many countries, anarchy has led to misery. Look at Somalia, which has lacked a government for some 13 or 14 years, and is just a mess. The 60-year ongoing civil war in Burma. It seems as if humans almost need that powerful authoritarian figure such as government to keep themselves from killing themselves. But government also creates massive misery. The corruption in Filipino government and the widespread poverty of the country. Atrocities committed against Palestinians by the Israeli government/military. The US's questionable, ill-executed, and bloody occupation of Iraq (world's 3rd largest source of oil reserves, by the way). So, which is better: misery under government or misery because of no government?

All I am saying is there is a way of thinking, being, doing, and living "anarchy" that goes beyond these either/or, false dilemma, polar extremes. Don't look at the world as what has happened, what is possible or impossible. One cannot deny a Somalia, a Philippines, an Iraq, a Burma. But anarchy, to me, is largely about the freedom of imagination, the human mind, and the interaction between it and the physical world. I am not saying to become a Pollyanna dreamer. I am not saying "imagine." I am not saying "give peace a chance." I am a realist who takes frequent sidetrips into the dark forests of pessimism, cynicism, misanthropy, nihilism even. But anarchy is a way, by not being any particular way. It is vague and open-ended, and intentionally so. It is ill-defined. Again, intentionally so. It can jump disciplines, from political anarchy to the "epistemological anarchy" of a philosopher like Paul Feyerabend. Hell, I even imagine "fusion" cuisine as "culinary anarchy." (Trying to lighten up a heavy topic, here, folks.)

But still I wrestle with a desire for real, actual anarchy with the non-desire to have the world undergo a painful and traumatic apocalyptic event that leads to a post-apocalypse. I don't know how to reconcile this. I welcome feedback.

May we continue to try and concur with Hemingway that this is a fine world worth fighting for.

don't be deceived by the pretty pretty flowers

2008-03-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

I live
under
a sky
of angels

Bullet proof
vest of
all my
dangers

I've been
deceived
by all the flowers

God Lives Underwater, "Vapors", Life in the So-Called Space Age

Bob Hoskins' ballsack

2008-03-20T22:46:00.001-07:00

Saw Doomsday tonight. Paid full price. Totally worth it. Director of The Descent and featuring one of the hottest actresses walking this planet, Rhona Mitra. More nods to The Road Warrior than you can shake a flaming torch to. Hyperviolent, anarchistic, cannibalistic, stylistic, titty-rific, Gimp fun. They are totally marketing the film wrong. It should say FROM THE DIRECTOR OF 'THE DESCENT'. It should have a big picture of sexy Rhona Mitra holding a decapitated man head. It should be presented in Smell-O-Rama so you can smell cooked human flesh, the nauseating smell of viral blistering people, burning tire rubber, cigarette smoke, blood, Bob Hoskins' ballsack, and Rhona Mitra's sweaty crotch.

the abortion (of a fictional project)

2008-03-19T22:20:00.001-07:00

I had planned to shoot a short film about a gnome on turtleback leaving the forest looking for something, but I couldn't figure out what he was looking for, and I couldn't figure out the camera's video toggle, and I ended up drunk, hacking at some poor exposed treeroot with a handax, and with the gnome & turtle melting and smoking and disappearing in the campfire, and that's just fine.

The pie was good.

Big ol' fuckin' hermit crab in da house

2008-03-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

I'm so behind on shit. Taxes, unpacking from last weekend's camping, laundry, etc.
But we got a new hermit crab & the thing is disturbingly large. We got glow in the dark sand. I think the other little crabs are shitting their shells scared of this overgrown mutant beast hermit krab.
I wonder if it's a gentle giant, like Schuyler Feekes (last on right). Maybe the 2 resident crabs know the new guy. When we bought him (?) he was just in the corner of the tank and the other crabs were hiding underneath a fake log. I gave the crabs a piece of orange as a treat, some purple cabbage, and a piece of goat meat.
I was thinking of mixing animals in the tank to try and get a fight going. Put a mouse in there, a frog, Chihuahua, something like that. Like that awesome book Food Chain. Go intentionally for discord rather than harmony and peace. I mean, hell, people, Harmony Korine has a lovely first name but the man and his work are the farthest things from harmony.

Two strange womenfolk, jury duty, bad beef, and droogs

2008-03-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

I had jury duty today but got out of it on economic/personal hardship, which is 100% true. I also went to jury duty with bedhead bordering on an afro, an Amish facial hair style (goatee but no mustache), "11:15" in black marker on one hand and a large bandaid on the other (camping mishap), and two long rubber bands linked together holding my too-loose pants up because all my belts keep disappearing. (Belt thieves? Belt thief gnomes?) So my pants were too high. I'm sure both the defense and prosecution had no problem excusing me. I didn't want to be there anyway. As a philosopher I can never belief anything "beyond a reasonable doubt", because doubt seems to me very reasonable, and I have no f-ing idea what "truth" is. I really don't. And that's me being honest. Honesty and truth can be quite different.

As one of my female coworkers was leaving for the day she said goodbye to herself, then me, adding "I'm going to go home and kick my cat."
"Kick your cat?"
"Kick my cat."
"In the head, or in the ribs?"
"Kidneys."
"Ciao."
"Hasta la vista, baby."

Which reminded me of a woman riding her bicycle in my apartment complex the other night (well, not my apartment complex, I don't own it -- Borat: King of the apartment complex! King of the apartment complex! 615 square feet of regal, royal splendor! etc). The woman was fiddling with her bike by the mail boxes as I was rooting around in the trunk of my car looking for a can of soup. Then she remounted and rode away, saying to me, "I'm old, I'm drunk, and I talk to myself." Exact quote. Shit you not. I laughed and wished her well.
Couldn't find the soup though.

Hey, how about this new Funny Games movie? Looks rrrreeeeeaaaaaaallllll fucked up. Like A Clockwork Orange for a new age. 2 droogies instead of 4, but hey, whatever works. I was just watching Michael Pitt in The Hawk is Dying. That Pitt kid chooses some good movies -- Bully, Hedwig & his Angry Inch. He likes acting in f**ked up movies, don't he? Funny Games -- 2 normal looking white kids who are psychopaths. The Columbine Generation. The Snappers. Goin' postal. Took a wrong turn somewhere. They're out there. They walk, live, breathe among us.

Well, on a happier note, happy Vernal Equinox, y'all.

true that, Gener

2008-03-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

But little is known
by those who aren't
alone

Ween, "Alone", The Pod, Shimmy-Disc Records

ghosts

2008-03-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

Some good new musics blown my way lately; not necessarily the newest hottest flavor of the week-month stuff, but new to me. Therefore, new. Rare outtake tracks from Ween's Mollusk sessions that are awesome; and I wonder how long I would have been in the dark about Nine Inch Nails' intriguing, totally instrumental, four volume collection of ambient sounds, Ghosts I-IV, only five dollars for 36 songs, had they not so kindly emailed me about the release. The Ween stuff was free. The cost of music is coming down as the middleman is eliminated and all the bloated fees that accrue are challenged by the listening masses, who have more access to artists directly these days and can access things at the simple click of a mouse. We are truly living in two worlds, the physical and cyber. The old physical world is losing out on many a front, although the cyber world is ultimately dependent on the physical world for its very existence -- coal-powered energy, oil energy, energy of any sort to allow the Web to be.

I am struck by some of the stuff on the new Nine Inch Nails and how similar it is to the musics I have made these past few years, albeit NIN's higher fidelity and greater electronic influence. I tend toward "snippet songs", sometimes on the repetitive or longish side, usually devoid of lyrics but conveying some kind of general mood or internal landscape. Sometimes I string English words together, when inspired. Music is its own language so I really see no difference between "instrumental" songs and songs with lyrics, because the human voice is an instrument, although a frequently ugly one. Sometimes it's better just to leave it out completely, let its absence be its presence, as I think NIN have done on Ghosts I-IV. I guess it is the specific songs that mix the electronic robot beat with the Old World stringed instruments that connect my mind to my own musical outputs. I've made many a song with the ol' battered, stripped-down, bloody (literally), dead string banjo and the Froot Loops computer program. Sometimes words don't do life justice and I'm glad Trent Reznor & company have gotten to that (this) point. I recommend Ghosts I-IV with headphones -- there are some good pans and cross-fades and little head tricks the ol' emo OG clone troopers provide.

Hell, I can and can't keep up with this brave new digital world we live in. Perhaps the effect of being a Generation Xer. Halfway. Caught. Neither here nor there. I like analog records, whiskey that's been patiently aged for 8 years or more, chopping wood by hand, enduring some age-old existential angst, slo-mo porn, postapocalyptica. But I like the thrill of the new, the shock of the new, the ease of the new. Hyperlinks. The quickness. Clownstep. Terrorcore. 4. Watching The Matrix Reloaded in French. I speak no French.

Fuck it. I'm going camping.

for me gravestone

2008-03-12T19:13:00.000-07:00

I have been a stranger in a foreign land

Exodus 2:22

minds

2008-03-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

I've been "surfing" the Web a lot lately. Maybe because I don't have TV. But I like the Web better: it's interactive, raw, chaotic, an open forum. & I love how I start one place in cyberspace and end up somewhere completely different -- drift -- even though I'm still right here in front of the monitor. Tonight I stumbled upon some great rare Ween songs, not even sure how I got there, and then ended up looking at photos of a dilapidated, postapocalyptic, on-its-last-legs bizarre theme park in Egypt. If TV is a surreal hallucination (which it is), then cyberspace is like interacting with a strange, massive, fragmented yet linked, energy-dependent mind. Flipping channels seems linear, clunky, and ultimately up to the producers of TV shows what you see. On the Web there is a kind of anarchy, a lack of filters. Inhibitions are dissolved as people share things with total strangers they would never reveal to close, loved ones. People are more willing to be "confrontational" and bicker with each other, because it's not happening in person. And the paradox remains that someone on the Web is alone in physical reality, almost isolated and shut off from the world sitting in front of a computer monitor, but online they are in this rich, dense, populous world, and interacting intimately with it. And the way you can log on looking for one thing and end up somewhere totally different -- and not really know how you got there -- blows my mind. The Web is like a conversation with someone that drifts and goes on tangents, parenthetical places, footnotes, wild disconnected shifts. Or like the animal mind, flowing as it does somewhat of its own accord and somewhat in our control. There is more intelligence online (even though there are plenty of dumb and ignorant people online) than just melting in front of a TV in the flickering glow. Look up where the word "avatar" comes from. See, I am here online "now" but it's late and my physical body needs to rest.

No teeth? No problem.

2008-03-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

On my lunch break I went to a discount store to get some cheap snacks for an upcoming camping trip. There were some goofy-acting hobos on the sidewalk huddled around a shopping cart, two women and a bearded man. I noticed the sidewalk below them was littered with some kind of nut or bag snack or junk food. They were all sharing the food from the container, sticking their grubby hands in, talking and eating at the same time. The man had no teeth and he was chewing on the foodstuff (Fiddle Faddle? Poppycock?) happily as it fell out of his mouth. Quite a surreal sight.

I am more apt to donate money to the homeless when they do a little something for the coins. I once gladly gave some change to a Berkeley streetpunk because he played me a little jig on a pennywhistle, reading the sheetmusic. When the homeless do something creative or inventive or clever, it isn't just a handout, it's an exchange of pocket change for spectacle, amusement, entertainment. They're more like buskers than aggressively-panhandling homeless folks then. I think they feel better too that they earned the money rather than just being given it because of their shitty situation. But I suppose you have to be somewhat clean and reputable and not flat-out shit-crazy to be a street performer rather than a bum. Street performers can be eccentric or different but not certifiable, schizophrenic, or smelly to high heaven. I once saw an old hobo shaking crap out of his pantleg in Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, and didn't know if he was doing some kind of Tom Green-esque performance art, or just shaking shit out of his pantleg. Turned out to be the latter. But I was almost tempted to throw him some coin for his "performance."

I'm all for social shake-ups, well-dressed bowler hat-wearing screaming Japanese men, pranks, flashmobs, anything that knocks us out of our linear, rational, socially acceptable trajectory to ruffle a few feathers. I mean, hell, it's why we leave our domiciles in the first place. You never know what's gonna happen out there. But, please, homelessfolk, don't be aggressive and follow me into a store where I'll get some change from my purchase (San Francisco style). Do something creative, give people a little chuckle. You have time on your hands -- come up with something. You may be livin' on Fiddle Faddle, fountainwater and jugwine, but it doesn't mean you can't be the sad clown of life bolting down the beach while pissing, chasing seagulls, and yelling about Husserl's phenomenology, now does it?

(PS: Hey kids -- wanna feel really weird and goofy without doing that dangerous self-strangulation cheap at-home high thing (Space Monkey, I believe it's called), huffing Scotchgard, or robotripping on cough syrup? Just say "Fiddle Faddle" a bunch of times until it becomes meaningless, absurd, and bizarre. Or watch The Matrix Reloaded with French voice-overs without you knowing/speaking a word of French, as I did this evening! What the hell is going on?! Love it!)

A Sunday Thumper

2008-03-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

A Thumper came by today, dressed smart with a tie and all, going door to door like a fucking salesman. If the person wasn't home he slipped an invitation to a Sock Hop for Jesus or some shit into the door. I pretended to not be home. The invitation had a picture of Jesus looking all mopey and hopeless, with a crown of thorns piercing his bleeding head. Think about it, people: if I went door to door putting a picture of a 1/2 naked man who'd been tortured and about to die in people's doors, they'd arrest me, right? Is that something children should randomly find and see? Why is it OK to do if you're in the Jesus Club? Why? Why, goddammit, why? If you think about it, it sounds insane to go door to door with that kind of image; it sounds like the actions of a lunatic.

Take me down

2008-03-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

Woke up, the hangover index was not too high. Some male bro conversation in the parking lot involving lots of HELLAs and DUDEs. Went outside to retrieve my car from the street and park it in my shaded spot. Walked down the middle of the parking lot street like a high noon gunslinger. A giant, massive, obnoxious white monster truck pulled into the complex, twelve feet off the ground, blasting "Paradise City" by Guns N' Roses [sic]. Out on the street, bordering suburbia, a woman was working on the little brick ivy garden in her front yard. She had a massive ass, a white girl with a black ass (wgwaba). Everything is big and overfed in Amerika. Obscene, swollen, hydrocephalic. The woman's son came out to help her with some handheld cutting device. More noise.
Shit, it cuts right through the brick.
Really?
Yeah, but this is woodbrick.
I parked the car and walked back. Waved at my hot stoner downstairs neighbor as she was leaving, a tight yellow shirt, asspants and those ridiculous oversized sunglasses.
In the tennis court two white males were pitching a baseball back and forth as hard as they could. Slap thumps in their mitt romneys, like beating a cow with a bullwhip.
Where was I?
David Lynch calls it Dumbland.
What was I?
Water, gas, tubes and fluids, dead hair dead skin dead nails, eyestalks connected to a brain, empty spaces, tattooed skin, itchy back, formidable penis, cephalopod ballsack, goatee, teeth, involuntary muscles heartbeat thoughts, nerve endings. Quiv'rin' jelly brain vagina legs. Well, no vagina had I. The vagina had left the building.
When was I?
Now? Now was already gone, fleeting, fleeing like one of those slippery rubber waterdicks you get at the carnival.
How was I?
Competitive sperm.
Why was I?
Still not sure after 34 years.
Who was I?
No idea.

Ronald McDystopia (Swiss Family Robitussin)

2008-03-04T18:13:00.000-08:00

One day when I was getting my glasses fixed at Walmart Vision Center, I looked at the store without them and I realised that I couldn't see where it ended in two directions. Now this is partially because I'm near-sighted and will eventually become all but blind, but it is also because the place is so darn big. Now it got me thinking "what if Walmart went on forever, what if they put apartment buildings in them, people would never have to leave." So I began to envision a world dominated entirely by Walmart.

Imagine a world where Walmart is allowed to ignore any rules banning monopolies, and then it spreads its corporation and its interests until it controls much of the world. The Walmarts themselves gain built in apartments, restaurants, small factories, and eventually become largely self-sufficient indoor communities, many of which grow so large that they connect onto other nearby Walmarts, forming enormous cities. After time they take on a sort of surreal quality, growing so large that they need their own small police forces and militias to maintain order. Eventually all other business are replaced by Walmart and they are able to raise prices without any sort of limit because they are the only show in town.

This causes most of the world to sink below the poverty line. Several rebel groups, thinking that the management of Walmart is the root of their problems, assault the main headquarters and slay the board of directors, along with everyone else involved in the management of Walmart.

This causes the utter collapse of civilized society, but because much of the processes by which Walmart runs is automated and autonomous, the essential fall of civilization seems to barely effect them at all. Eventually the colossal miles-wide Walmarts are one of the last bastions of civilization. They are runs by machines and staffed by robots. The aisles are inhabited by scavengers and bandits. Some people evolve to live among the ceiling supports, others take to the vast rooftop expanses, still others follow the way of the Smiling One. Most simply wander the aisles searching for what they need to survive.

I found this by Googling "anarchism post-apocalypse" and thought it was pretty clever and cool. Worth a re-post. I fixed up some of the spelling errors but otherwise it's unchanged. Evidently it was written by Lord of the Ninth, who resides in the denatured-yet-named-after-nature suburb of Malsheem, Nessus in the Nine Hells of Baator.
Source = http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=92543&page=1&pp=30
Apparently some online group of cyber-Dungeons & Dragoners.
It's a good story idea and I'm sure we'll be seeing it as a feature film soon starring the ghost of Heath Ledger, some actress with 3 names in her name, and featuring a throbbing soundtrack by the latest overloud drums compressed guitar angsty neo nu metal supergroups. No, I'm in a bad mood, being sarcastic, if handled right it could be a cool thing. Hell, Cormac McCarthy's The Road became an Opah Wimfrey book pick. Post-apocalyptic is the new pirates. The new cool.
I avoided Walmart for many a year, may have even been a decade or coon's age, but went recently and it wasn't so bad. Not as evil as leftists make it out to be. Sure, evil, but what isn't evil? Walmart has a former Sierra Club President working for them, and they are going to start selling electric cars. They aren't 100% evil, only 99%. I saved some money and got some 1/2way decent camping stuff. There was a pellet pistol gun on sale for 4 dollars that I was going to get but it was locked up and it's sometimes a nightmare finding an employee to help. But I could go another decade without going there. I do like the Ronald McDonald statue sitting on a bench inside the store; if you juxtaposed RM with the postapocalyptic scenario by Lord of the Ninth it's a rather surreal, compelling mental image of ol' RM lounging frozen on a bench with a shit-eating grin in a dystopic Walmart scavenged horrific wasteland. Love it.

Er, I'm lovin' it.

Layin' low in 'Luma after a run-in with one of Rohnert ("The Friendly City") Park's finest reactionary rent-a-cops

2008-03-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

I live next to an abandoned computer manufacturing plant which will remain nameless, but it is one of the big ones. There is a group trying to convert the empty buildings into a living community off the grid and fully powered by its own rooftop solar array. I wish them luck, but the old rent-a-cop who patrols the place in a beat-up white car can go to hell.

I won't go into the gory details, but I was driving around the spacious empty parking lots of the place with my son in his carseat in the back and my dad out visiting from the great state of New Jersey also in the back. For fun I took the car around some lightposts (not crashing into them like Patrick Autrey did one time) to test the handling (which I knew was good) and drove up a large sidewalk (there are really no people about, the place being abandoned and all). As I was backing down, this little beat up white car zoomed up and stopped in back of me, blocking me. An old white dude with ugly black Navy tattoos on his arms started yelling at me about child endangerment and "doin' fuckin' hookers" in the parking lot with a child in the back seat. Guess he meant driving in a circular motion by "hookers". But what a hypocrite assclown: if he's so concerned about my son in the back (who was totally fine and enjoying the drive), why is this high blood pressure no sense of humor Ernest Borgnine dickhead swearing in front of a 4 year old? This guy was no MENSA member, believe me. Then, which just solidified what a prick this guy was, he called on his own personal cellphone (he doesn't even have a walkie-talkie) the real cops (The Friendly City's finest) to "call me in" and get my license plate #. "For what?!" I yelled at him. I wasn't trespassing, because the place is open to people using its sports field, and there's the solar village and a karate place there too. I wasn't breaking any law at all.
This guy was just power-tripping and flexing his muscle. He said "Go home" and followed me out in his stupid little car (probably his own) to run me out of town like he was Sheriff Hackman or something. Homeland InSecurity at its finest.

The funny thing is that I planted a sign on top of a small hill in the abandoned area. So, as our fake Commander in Chief says, "Mission accomplished." My laugh is the last, buddy. Go back to your stupid job and jerking off behind the trees.

I drove down to Petaluma to lay low (since I was so scared & shaken by this rent-a-prick's authority and power), getting a sandwich and canoli at an Italian eatery which will remain nameless. I'm tight with the people who own and run it, and told them about the experience with Ossifer Dickwad, and they told me I just had to say the word and they'd pay a little visit to him while he's sleeping and leave his pet dog's head in his bed for him. I thanked them, told him I could handle this closet homosexual by myself, and enjoyed my food.
This rent-an-asshole should watch himself. He might find an arrow in his neck when he least expects it. Or his piece of shit car on fire. Or a steel pellet from a wrist rocket heading his way. I'm a good dad and no one rushes to judgment about me endangering my son when my son is the most important thing in the world to me. It's slander, libel, bullshit. Say the truth about me -- asshole sometimes, insane genius, bad husband, whatever -- but no one's calling me a bad, unsafe dad. They do and I'll burn their house down, kill their family, kill all their pets, kill all their friends, kill all their friends' pets, and eat a corndog at all the funerals while laughing hysterically and then later pissing on the graves.

Hey, Mr. Uptight Hypocritical Rent-a-Cop Douchebag:

Pink eye (on my leg)

2008-02-27T19:56:00.000-08:00

For some reason today I stopped when a homeless man flagged me down in the Grocery Outlet parking lot, Santa Rosa. I had some time to kill before a 12:30 showing of Be Kind Rewind. Despite my lapses into misanthropy, I have been feeling lately like it's good to connect with fellow human beings sometimes, hear what's going on in their lives, share what's going on in yours, realize the we're-all-in-this-togetherness of the world. And it's true that everyone is fighting some kind of battle, or multiple battles, with the world, others, or themselves. Compassion, tolerance, and the principle of charity (a critical thinking/philosophy term that basically means the benefit of the doubt) are things to keep in mind.

So this obviously off-kilter homeless old guy approaches me, and I don't remember his first words, but it was not an aggressive request for a handout. (Although at some point in our strange conversation he did ask, and I gave him four pennies which was honestly all I had not counting some quarters I desperately needed to do some much-needed overflowing laundry.) He wanted to connect physically with me, so offered a knuckled fist, the "potato" handshake as I learned from Les Claypool it's called, where you don't shake hands but connect knuckles. I was relieved. He was dirty, of course, but also had some kind of eye problem that I hoped wasn't a monster case of pinkeye. He explained without my asking that he'd been in a fight in San Francisco and gotten the deeply bloodshot black eye surrounded by swollen purple flesh. But he broke the other guy's legs. Then he laughed and said he was kidding.
He was wearing a purple suitcoat that was sun-faded and covered in some kind of hair (dog?). Jeans, a T shirt. He was holding two paper cups one in the other filled with what looked like cheap beer. I knew if I listened and engaged him I wouldn't get rid of him. But he had a sense of humor, was off his rocker from life and drink, and for some reason I found myself having a mad and darkly humorous talk with him.

He was a Navy Seal, got the GI Bill and two degrees. He had "a team of lawyers" suing the Santa Rosa PD for how they treated him. He then shifted gears abruptly and asked if I would be his best man for his wedding.
When's the happy day? I asked.
Summer, oh I don't know. March 17th. Saint Patrick's Day, he slurred.
Oh, shit, I got called for jury duty that exact day. I'm sorry. (I was telling the truth.)
He placed his cup on the trunk of my car and lounged against it. Oh shit, I thought, he's making himself at home on my car. We talked for awhile longer, mostly him doing the talking, and I told him it was nice meeting him, I wished him luck, but I had to go.
Luck has nothing to do with it, he said. It's skill.
Good point, I concurred.
Young man, he said, are you Irish?
I'm Scottish and Irish, I said proudly (quoting a Jerky Boys phone prank). (I'm Dutch, Scandinavian, and English.)
Then he told me all his ethnicities and genetic homelands, in one slurred, long Germanesque word that was kinda like: I'mScottishIrishGermanFrenshhAmeriganBlackfootInneeann.
I got in the car and locked all the doors with a button. He was at my window lightly rapping a dirty finger. I cracked it a bit.
God bless you, young man.
I rolled it down a bit and potatoed him again. God bless you, sir. Now, listen, you have your beverage? Good. Don't forget about your stuff on the sidewalk. (No shopping cart but some luggage and whoknowswhat.)
I carefully pulled out and waved to him. He was already onto the next person, regaling them with tales of his Navy Seal days, team of lawyers, and ethnicities.
I would have liked to have videotaped him when he was talking with me, or at least gotten an exact transcript of his talk. He had told me about his family, how he had served his country, gotten educated. He believed in God. He just wanted someone to talk to. Even if some of his talk was the ecstatic truth, his heart seemed in the right place. He wasn't nonsensical, didn't seem schizophrenic, wasn't dangerous or unpredictable. He was enjoying his beer in the sun on a summery day in late February. He panhandled, but he took the time to get to know you, and you him. He had a certain integrity, dignity, and respect about him, and a respect for others. I was glad I took the time to learn a little about him rather than just ignoring him or escaping, even though I was eager to wash my hands.
This isn't some hobo-with-the-heart-of-gold after school special bs, but he was a character who was interesting, living a dangerous life, and despite his homelessness and fucked up appearance and whatever problems, mental or otherwise, he had, had a certain life about him that many "normal", gainfully employed, pillar-of-the-community taxpaying people lacked.

I love A Clockwork Orange in a big way, but I didn't consider this nameless guy a "filthy old drunkie" that I had condescending contempt and violence for. We are probably altogether too judgmental of others, myself a bad offender, when everyone is wrestling with their own lot in life and the complexities of being human. This guy was fucking druuuunk at eleven a.m., but why not? Does time really matter? So he was a little eager for the cocktail hour (at 4 p.m.). So what. He was trying to dress in a somewhat respectable manner with the purple blazer. I toast him.

Fare thee well.

my dog barks...sometimes

2008-02-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

Awesome article about Cleveland, Ohio's last remaining wild dog pack. Gets you thinking. (You have to type the URL in manually; the link is acting jerky for some reason.)

Jeff Moore of Cleveland, Ohio, writes:

For those of you who would like to find out more about the actual wild dogs that chased me while I was on my bike the past two summers here in Cleveland, here's a wonderful story that just came out two days ago in a local publication. Just go to www.freetimes.com and click on the cover story: "Wild at Heart: On the Trail of the Last Pack of Dogs in Cleveland."

Happy wintering!

10 things I love about the world

2008-02-20T17:01:00.000-08:00

1. How crows rummage around in littered food-trash and eat what they like. How they hide it, fight over it, caw and scream, and eat just about anything. I love scavengers. (I am one.)
2. The little whirlpool-tornado of water (and air?) that forms in my bathtub drain when I pull the plug after a nice bath.
3. My son Jasper, his sense of wonder, innocence, and imagination. (He was just telling me about "the elf that ate too much meat, farted on everybody, ate all the meat in the world...plus one goat.")
4. The Russian film 4.
5. My magical Christmastime of 2007, when Tom Waits held the door for me at Barnes & Noble, downtown Santa Rosa, in the beautiful cold electric dusk.
6. The album covers for Black Sabbath's first album and Paranoid.
7. The sand piled in the corners of the rooms of the abandoned buildings in Namibia, Africa in the film The King is Alive (Dogme 95).
8. My memories. Even the embarrassing, painful, and forgotten ones. Without memory we are greatly fucked up creatures.
9. Certain Willard's Canteen songs; the ones where the magic was flowing, the fidelity is just right (not too hi-fi, not too low), and all the dripping oog coalesced in a golden moment, with hints of darkness in the goldenness.
10. Philosophy, for being at least so bold or foolish to try and make sense of sentient existence.

Matt Pamatmat Delirious

2008-02-18T08:55:00.000-08:00

Ah, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. I rant & rave too much. I gotta calm down. Realize The Oneness of all things: an animal caught in a steel trap is the same as a beautiful bunch of Gerber daisies. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter hanging on the cross is the same as an orgasm. Nuclear Winter is Nuclear Winter Wonderland. A hairy scrotum is the same as chimpanzee infanticide cannibalism. A wildfire is the same as a fat man rowing a boat down a river. Ernest Borgnine is the same as Hassan i Sabbah.

Two positive things:

1. Whilst at the swimming pool yesterday, I noticed a strange object in the super frigid water. Hard to tell what it was, especially with the Cartesian effect that distorts objects underwater. A turd? A slice of a turd? A rock? A slice of sausage? Then I realized with a small joy in my heart that it was a MINI HAMBURGER. You know those little ones they give out when they give out free food? With little buns? Or maybe charge like a nickel for 'em? (Nickel burger riot.)

This is what I got when I looked for a "mini hamburger" image on the Infernet. The Infraweb is such a strange place. But no stranger, I suppose, than physical reality. Not sure what two fat people in front of a wonderfully dilapidated house have to do, if anything, with mini burgers. Maybe they ate some mini burgers or there are mini burgers in the house or woods beyond.

2. I found a Bob Log III song called "Clap Your Tits" that features 2 whores clapping their breasts in rhythm to the song's beat. It's the greatest thing ever. Bob Log III is the greatest thing ever. The man likes boobs in his scotch, shit on his leg, and wearing a helmet.

Who doesn't? Who among us?

What is UP with people?

2008-02-17T15:59:00.001-08:00

A scarecrow-y lookin' lady in downtown Santa Rosa asked me this afternoon if I had a dollar for her "for the bus." She was smoking a fancy cigarette. I looked her right in the eyes and said "Nope." And kept walking. 1. Spend your money on the bus rather than your cigarettes. Jesus. 2. Don't lie to me about bus fare. Be honest if you're going to panhandle. Tell me the money's for crack, booze, heroin. At least you're being honest. 3. If you have zero money, what good is taking the bus going to do you? You'll be just as poor wherever you get off the bus. 4. Ask for a more humble amount, like change, fifteen cents, a quarter. A whole dollar for a total stranger lying to me while smoking a fancy cigarette? Fuck you. I hope you die on the street on a cold cold winter night and some dog pisses on your face.

An Asian mom at the Super Buffet was getting ice cream for her son (8 or so), who had one whole arm down his pants in the back. I don't think he was fingering the hole, but he just kept his arm down there -- you could see his ass. And the mom did nothing. And it's a fucking BUFFET. That'll kid'll be touching stuff -- FOOD. I wanted to manhandle the mom, force her jaw open, and pour ice cream into her mouth til she choked. Then tell the kid to mind his manners and go wash his hands and arms. Some parents are so goddamn lazy and passive and weak it's ridiculous. DON'T HAVE CHILDREN UNLESS YOU ARE ACTIVELY GOING TO PARENT THEM. YOU HAVE TO BE THE BAD GUY SOMETIMES. DO YOUR FUCKING JOB AND TEACH YOUR SON WHAT TO DO AND NOT DO IN PUBLIC. AND AROUND FOOD FOR FUCK'S SAKE. In some countries that little fucker'd get his arm hacked clean off for pulling that shit.

QUEST FOR BONG. I live in an apartment complex largely dominated, or so it feels, by Millennial Generation college students. Thursday - Saturday nights are big party nights and they hoot and holler til 2 a.m. or so. I did the same thing when I was in college, so I usually let them be. But this morning some girl was shout-talking with a friend across the complex trying to get a "bong or pipe." For all the world to hear. And the other girl said "You anorexic 'ho', you never eat anything." 1. Don't broadcast yer business to the whole world. This isn't Amsterdam. Get up off yer ass and go find, buy, or -- how's this for initiative -- MAKE a pot-smoking device...which leads to 2. You can easily smoke weed from a common apple. You can easily make a pipe or bong from household items. You can bake pot in food or make pot-butter. When we were college-age and needed a pot-smoking tool, we didn't shout like upset babies for someone to solve our problems. We did something about it. We improvised. We MacGyvered. What's up with the Millennial Generation? I'll tell you: they're too sheltered and taken care of by vicarious parents. It's not so much the Millennials' fault as the parents. Again, the parents are softies. Gen X's parents put Gen X in front of the TV for latch-key supervision. But at least we learned how to fend for ourselves, in general. Being left alone will do that. I never give houseplants quite enough water or sun or fertilizer, and I never give pets quite enough food or water or inside time. Because CREATURES NEED TO STRUGGLE A LITTLE. Struggling makes you strong; pain makes you real. Mollycoddling youngins won't do 'em any good. People are way too used to (post)modern society: supermarkets, gas stations, police protection, fire departments, Uncle Sam, maintained roads, lawyers, weather reports, etc. What if these things go away? Nuclear war. Pandemic disease. Freshwater shortage. Peak oil. Global warming. Economic depression. Etc. Etc. It doesn't take much. As good ol' Werner Herzog said, civilization is a thin ice, quite easy to shatter, and underneath is a whole ocean of cold wild water. Can the Millennials survive without text messaging, home heating, their cars, their hovering parents, cell phones, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, etc? Can they make fire without matches or lighters? Can they hunt animals? Can they defend themselves? Can they survive The Shit? Hike, hide, get out of the cities, hoof it, use a gun, butcher an animal, hotwire a car, put someone in a hammerlock hold?

Let's hope so. Because evolution is always, always at work.

check out my musics at low low prices

2008-02-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

Imagine (Goddess Bunny Remix)

2008-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

Imagine a world of Goddess Bunnies

It’s easy if you try

It stares at the camera

A disturbing look in its eyes

Imagine all the Goddess Bunnies

Tap dancing in the sun

Imagine there’s no explanation

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to explain this strange creature

We found on YouTube

Imagine all the viewers

Laughing so hard their anuses bleed

You may say that I’m Rubber Johnny

But I’m not

I hope someday you’ll tap dance in the sun

And the little Chihuahua’ll lick its own nose

Imagine no clown adorning Goddess Bunny’s head

I wonder if you can

No need for Goddess Bunny to say anything

30 Goddess Bunnies doing the Can-Can

Imagine it’s all Goddess Bunnies

Walking like Frankenstein’s monster all over the world

You may say that I’m Rubber Johnny

But my head is normal sized

I hope someday Goddess Bunny’ll tap dance on my patio

And the Chihuahua’ll lick Rubber Johnny’s mutant toes

a peek inside me dark turgid throbbing heart

2008-02-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

I don’t quite think you fully understand the dynamics of how men are raised w/ regard to emotions and expression, some of the shit I experienced growing up, and the multi faceted onion-like complexity of my personality. (Hell, I don't understand it either.) Some of it is like a hermit crab, outer shell w/ a soft vulnerable inside. Multiple selves and no one true self. Iron Maiden nailed it with "Wasted Years" before they ran for the hills with a Powerslave at 2 minutes to midnight.

I think this quote about Harry Crews somewhat applies to me as well: "God bless Harry Crews, America's best writer. He'll break your heart but he'll always bring you love. They just don't make 'em like this anymore." (Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth)

I break hearts but I also have love. The duality of man. A peace sign button on my war helmet but also the inscription “born to kill.” I’m not going along sheep-like w/ the herd. I’m not PC. I’ll cut a goat’s throat and drink the blood, but then not kill a stray moth that wandered into the house. I’ll release it outside. You know this, you know me. You’ve seen this. I don’t know what’s so wrong with how I’m wired. I think there’s a certain honesty about it. Maybe I’m not in touch w/ my inner Chihuahua but I’m in touch w/ my inner simian. Like a chimp, not a bonobo. I’m a vicious cannibal, but also capable of great tenderness and debilitating moments of compassion, and fragility, and uncertainty.

a day in the life

2008-02-08T18:50:00.001-08:00

I got bit by a fucking sheep today. The fucker drew blood. Craziest thing. Last thing I thought might happen today.
My son & I were at Train Town in Sonoma, CA, taking a spin on the 3-cylinder diesel-powered little scale train, and it made its requisite stop at the petting zoo on the 10 acres that is Train Town. I had some popcorn in my hand from a bag of 'corn my son & I were munching, and I was distracted by this big fat white goat with long satanic horns it was using to itch itself, when all of the sudden this sheep bum rushed me, reaching its neck over the fence and grabbing the popcorn and biting down on my middle finger. Now I see why you feed livestock with an open palm. I wanted to punch the fucking thing in its pea-brained head. Maybe I'll sneak into Train Town in the dead of night during the off season and kill that sheep. Cut off its head and impale said head on a branch. Blood streaked down the bark. If I did that during the busy season I would traumatize children for life. But why not. Life = trauma, anyway.
Am I making terrorist threats? You betcha.
No sheep bites the Reverend Master Matt Pamatmat without a swift and brutal retribution. I'll bite that sheep back with my bare teeth, right on the jugular. After I have my way with the sheep and its cute little rump. I might take a run at the llama, too, with its magnificent dreadlocks that are good for holding onto, and which give Roky Erickson's dreadlock a run for the money!

Jame Gum

2008-02-06T17:57:00.000-08:00

I love jerky, especially when you get a chunk that you cannot chew. It like meat gum.

-- Todd Lay
February 6, 2008

a little refreshment rant

2008-02-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

Strawberry TANG rules. Those astronauts knew the good stuff. They don't send dummies up into space. (Except dogs, chimps, and earthworms.)
This is regular (orange) TANG.
This is good stuff for your post-apocalyptic survival kit.
'Cause you know some type of Big One is comin' down the pike!
Listen to me now and hear me later. The Big One is gonna wipe out all these skinny tight pants moppy haired semi-emo boys these days. They won't last a second. Girly men. De-evolution. They're more like squealing teenage girls than boys. It just makes me sad. My son's gonna know how to slit a goat's throat without wasting a drop of blood, but he's also gonna be sensitive, compassionate, and able to talk with you easily about preSocratic philosophy. And he's not gonna grow up to be one of these lost, soulless boys you see these days with tight pants and emaciated legs and mop hair. He's gonna slit their throats in the post-apocalypse. How are parents, especially dads, these days letting their sons dress and act like this? Has our PC culture wiped out any testosterone or semblance of good ol' fashioned toughness? You can't tell the difference between the girls and boys. The boys look like Eurofags. They'll blow away in the first strong wind, fall down if you yell at them. Where is humanity going? Christ pissing down his legs on the cross, we need a Big One to jumpstart/restart humanity back onto track. We need more Moistboyz. More Harry Crews. Hell, even that Cuban fag writer Reinaldo Arenas survived Cuba and is tougher than most. It was only AIDS before we knew much about AIDS that took him down. Are American boys wasting away? Turning into stylish wispsy idiots? We're too soft, too mollycoddled, too taken care of by governments, too PC, too used to a supply of cheap crude oil to power the world. You know what happens when you get used to things.

Things change.

a little crab reverie

2008-02-02T13:06:00.000-08:00

My three hermit crabs just burrow deep in the forest substrate bedding of their cage and hibernate/sleep?/cogitate/do nothing for days on end. Is this normal? Are they dying? Are they depressed? Do they miss the pet store we got them from? They haven't eaten the grapes or coconut, or hermit crab pellet food I got them. They don't go in the water. They don't move around or change shells. They don't fight with each other or climb on the coconut shells. They don't try to escape. Where is their life, their sense of rebellion, their fight? Did buying them and moving them from the pet score fuck them up in fatal and deep ways? Are they suffering, like I am, and we all are, psychological wounds that we don't understand? Did the pet store employee with pretty eyes and an ugly mouth who smelled like cigarette smoke and wore a small gold crucifix break up a family of hermit crabs? Do the crabs feel like they're in Treblinka, Auschwitz, Dachau perhaps? Is their faux-tropical environment just a cheap sham, a depressing simulation, more a prison fishbowl than a place to live and be? Do they miss the pounding surf of a Jamaican tidepool, the threat of predation, the scream of seagull, the random treat of a washed up fish carcass or dead body to feast upon? Are they, like the little girl in that scene in Kids where she rejects the gift of stolen fruit, saying Fuck you, Matt, and your coconut and grape pieces. We'd rather starve, we'd rather die. But the pet store is a bad simulation of Herzogian wild nature too. Is this just the crabs' way, their silence and inactivity, their brooding monkline isolation, their hermitage?
Am I gonna have to cook these fuckers up in a little pan of butter and fresh garlic?
Do they have locked-in syndrome? Are they Sloth Crabs? Have there ever been hermit crabs in space, aboard shuttle missions? Do I have to take them out into the rain and step on them on the concrete, for that satisfying but later remorseful crunch of shell and soft crabflesh?
There, there is some movement in the tank. Is the one with the green shell waving to me? Do hermit crabs communicate telepathically? Will I have to return them to wild nature one day, to their freedom? God damn us all! What should I do? Or should I do nothing? Was Diogenes of Sinope a human hermit crab, with his barrel he lived in and his lamp and his diet of onions?
These are some high maintenance crabs. More high maintenance than the Shrek Chia Pet even. I don't know if I can handle it. There, there. One is humping an empty shell. Good. Maybe this is good. There! It's trying to climb, to scale, to escape! Yes! That's the fucking spirit, Deckard! Fight! Fuck! Feed! Flee! Don't just burrow and fantasize. There the green one goes, I forget its name, Hermick, Lermick, Kermick, it's moving around in the empty bowl of a coconut shell fragment. Go get the red one! Hermit crab battle! Blood sport! Like cockfighting, pit bull fighting, cage fighting! THUNDERDOME! 3 CRABS ENTER, 1 CRAB LEAVES. Chant it over and over, a mantra soothing. Start slow, quiet, and build it up, louder and faster. A fucking hermit crab Thunderdome. It's the greatest show on earth. I'll make big money on this. My financial worries will be over, just like that. I'll take this show on the road, Hermit Crab Thunderdome, come see it, don't miss it, one time only, city by city, night by night, traverse the country -- hell the globe -- with this. Prize fighter hermit crabs. High drama. The room blue with smoke, drunken gambling, fights, fortunes lost and won, a barker on a cheap mic, the place where life is happening, going down. It'll be the Next Big Thing. Everyone will have hermit crab fever, from hipsters to yuppies to hippies to punks to the developmentally disabled! Yes! I have found my calling! God hates us all! No one here gets out alive! A little Ludwig Van! 1 2 3 4! Pick it up! Alright, it's alright!

dispatch from an apartment in a master-planned bedroom community on a rainy afternoon during the later part of the Bush II years

2008-01-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

Dispatch from The Fiendly City. Emerald City apartments. Feels like a minimum security prison. Lifeless. Millennial generation college students. We're all in our cubes in a giant simian hive. The fluorescent light in the small laundry room doesn't work so I do my laundry in the dark, guessing at what buttons to push. The dryer eats my quarters and doesn't dry my clothes. No one has introduced them self to me; this place lacks community, it seems. I know it takes time. My only friend is a cross eyed cat who is skittish yet curious of me. My son and I bought 3 hermit crabs and they are the most boring pet ever. They burrow into the dirt in their plastic cage and hide from the world. They hide twice, once within their shells and again in the dirt. I don't fully blame them. I hide sometimes too, pull the curtains (as Grandaddy said), bolt the door, and hide in the closet with my bb gun. Til I am ready to deal with The World again. Recharge. Hibernate. Rejuvenate. Or just get bored enough in the closet to want to go into The World and see what's going on.

My fridge is classic poor bastard bachelor pad Eurotrash. I have a half-gnawed porksteak on a disposable plate. 1/3 of a coconut. Strawberry jelly in little plastic containers I took from a cafe. Hazelnut coffee creamer. Milk for my son. A lone piece of string cheese. Not much else. Overpriced grapes from Chile; Pepto Bismol. A lot of white space, too much energy keeping too few things cool. I'm not complaining, however. It is more than many, many people have.

At times I feel a strange joy. In between the confusion, black depression, and worry about money. I listen to Iron Maiden's Killers. Melvins; Corrosion of Conformity; Thrones. Especially Thrones. Joe Preston's mad music is somehow helping me through this thing. I make music in the laundry-nook-converted-into-the-new-Willard's-Canteen-superstudio. I gnaw porksteak like an ape. I watch movies. Take a bath. Try to get friendly with the blue-eyed ring tail cat. I enjoy time with my son, his exuberance and challenges and thoughts, 4-year old thoughts and words. I do feel a little like I live in a depressing lower-middle class apartment complex in Russia. It has rained incessantly this winter. I get every virus that goes around. I try to rouse the hermit crabs but they burrow deeper. People try to rouse me but I burrow deeper. We are all in our shells. Death is the Great Molting. Game over.
Might as well enjoy the strange journey there, as much as possible. Life's intriguing. I'll give it that at the very least. I'm not bellyaching; I have it better than millions. The world's a fucking miserable beautiful place.

check this out

2008-01-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.skookumsscribbles.blogspot.com/

A former cow orker of mine who does great impressions, and has some great stories of giant college roommates, retarded people craving vending machine vittles, and close friends who have invented their own personal worlds inhabited by a plethora of unique, fictional entities.

Splendid Beasts, Splendid Beats

2008-01-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

I found a place to live. It shall be the birthplace of new musics by Willard's Canteen and hopefully the place where I'll fornicate with a crosseyed Japanese college student in the Lambda sorority who'll bring her beta fish to fight with my beta fish -- to the death.
I'm doing final things in the ol' house, filling the fridge with things I realized will be my last items until beginning the proverbial new chapter in The Friendly City. I bought some meats at the supermarket for the simple bizarreness of them: blue prawns previously frozen, huge fuckers in the styro dish w/ the meat-diaper and plastic wrapping, and a handwritten label on them saying they hail from "New Caledonia." Where the farts is New Caledonia? It sounds like a place erected by survivors of some cataclysmic apocalypse.
I also bought sliced beef heart for 89 cents. I considered eating it raw but my fear of belly trouble (or worse) kept me from it. Perhaps I'll play w/ the blue prawns, do a puppet show with them on thin long sharp skewers for my son. Make tacos or a quesadillya outta the mutilated beef heart.
I look at the prawns and heart slices and think, Jahesus, I go a little insane sometimes, don't I?
But I already knew that, because I felt it in the store when I bought the items in the first place, muttering to myself and poking boneless and bone-in cattle steaks, lamb shanks, Cube steaks, and net-caught rump roast. It was all I could do to suppress extending my arms out in front of the meat department and saying in a booming Moses-esque voice: "SPLENDID BEASTS!"
Anyway, I'll keep y'all posted. If you're a crosseyed hot Japanese sorority sister, 18 or over, drop me a line. I like a little meat on th' bone; dark 'n' chubby is cool with me. I like a little philosophizin', a little fermented beverage, a little action, a little beta fish bloodsport.

Who doesn't?

Help me somebody

2007-12-01T16:18:00.001-08:00

My wife left me just before Halloween and I just found out I have sixty days to move. I lost a wife and an awesome house in the country in a month and a 1/2. Jahesus. Life's curve balls comin' my way. What will I lose next? A limb? The cats? My job? My mind?
The Buddhists are right: attachment to things leads to misery.

I will miss the house. Have lived here nearly a decade.
Schuyler and Todd and I lugged an antique piano in the house and I loved playing it until my wife wanted the piano gone, a decision I regret agreeing to. I made 17 Willard's Canteen albums, most full lengths and a few double albums and EPs, in this house. I wrote a 60,000 word novel in the house. I made my son in the house and brought him home from the hospital to the house. I've buried dead pets in the backyard. I fell out of the walnut tree in the backyard and thought I broke my tailbone. Ate figs from the fig tree, blackberries from the blackberry entanglements, vegetables from the garden. Brewed beer. Bought a new couch, declining the Scotch-Guard protective coating they could spray on it, and the first day having the couch opened a bottle of unintentionally fermented hot sauce and it sprayed all over the couch, ceiling, walls. Painted three murals on my son's bedroom wall: Curious George in the jungle eating a banana; dinosaurs; and finally Peter Pan fighting Captain Hook in Neverland. Have to paint over it.
Came home to the house one day and saw a small boy (not my son) with a spooky, enlarged, hydrocephalic head standing in the doorway of my bedroom. He disappeared as quickly as I saw him, and I must have been pale, shaky, having seen a ghost. There have been other ghostly incidents.
Ate whole king crab in the kitchen with vinegar, clarified butter, on old newspapers. Threw up a bunch of times in the bathroom sink or shower, hungover. Had wonderful dreams and terrifying nightmares in the bedroom. Sat on the porch with a tumbler of bourbon and played my banjo as night fell.
If anyone knows of a good place to live, email me. yepmatt@hotmail.com

The Doppelganger

2007-11-16T19:37:00.000-08:00

It had fallen dark. I was walking across campus when I realized, with a certain mild panic, that I had to shit -- profusely, profoundly, and (most of all) urgently. I also had to contend with the rush hour freeway traffic and pick my son up before his preschool closed in 1/2 an hour. It was looking ugly.
Like a chess game, there are always options. Human behavior runs a spectrum of possible behavioral decisions. I could find a shitter and be late picking my son up, but I really couldn't be late. And could I find a shitter so easily? Maybe it would go away rather than grow more urgent. I decided to hit the freeway and pick him up and have a nice crap at his daycare.
As I was driving in a heightened state of urgency, I looked at the empty carpool lane as I patiently drove in the moving, but full, freeway. The carpool lane would go quicker, but it was risky. There were CHiPs on the roadside ticketing motorists or helping poor broke-down motherfuckers.
As I drove I constructed a doppelganger out of one of my sweatshirts in the back seat, stuffed with other coats and clothing I had randomly in my car. The sweatshirt had a hood, so I put my son's tan vest in the hood like a face. I filled out the arms and torso of the dummy and tried to kind of position "him" so it looked like he was napping, but that he was a real person and I was justified in using the carpool lane. I positioned "his" seatbelt without shitting myself, and I started laughing at the absurdity of the situation, this strange puppet riding copilot. I laughed so hard and realized I would make it to my son's school in time, so I didn't need the doppelganger.
The urgency to defecate waned.
I made it in time and picked him; went home and enjoyed a good primal poop.

and here it is

2007-11-05T21:25:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of ugliness lately but my boss told me something beautiful today, that she'd witnessed a bunch of foxes take down and murder a baby deer.

Ninny Culture

2007-10-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

I live in a Ninny Culture.
I don't know if it's how things are where you live, but I live in northern CA, a "blue" county within a "blue" state, leaning to the left about as far as one can lean, and now and then I just chuckle at how seriously people take themselves and their political agendas. But it's also disappointing how fragile and flabby people have become. Not physically flabby, but flabby in their souls.
I went to a meeting for work today which was all about staff making the transition from one building to another. And not the physical-logistical transition, but the emotional one -- even though the buildings being newly occupied are state-of-the-art, hi-tech, and brand spanking new. I work in a tiny office in a "temporary" building that has been "temporary" for forty years. I don't mind it at all. But I certainly won't mind moving into a newer building, either. I don't need to spend an afternoon processing my feelings about the move (as some people seemed to feel the need to). What about the days when employees were suddenly, and almost violently (in a psychic way), relocated and disrupted due to the needs of the employer (or military brat families)? I mean, I work with people who work in offices and classrooms -- not slaughterhouses, not dirty jobs, not shantytown markets in filthy slums. I was really embarrassed to be part of the "transition meeting" -- to see how emotionally sheltered workers have become, how accustomed to the good life. I mean, a whole 2 hour meeting devoted to the emotional stress of change (even though it's to a newer, nicer building)? C'mon. Just c'mon. It's not that stressful if you look at the big picture. Living in Iraq right now is stressful. Darfur, Afghanistan, the funky side of Dublin, Ireland even. That's stressful.

And then there was the woman I saw at the parking lot checkpoint. She was on foot, clutching a jar of water (only the best water, of course, I'm sure) -- no plastic-bottled water, chromosomal mutation -- and talking with the worker in the little parking lot checkpoint hut. A huge old motorhome was idling at the checkpoint, and the water-clutching woman said "I can't handle the fumes." It's exactly that sentiment that makes me sick and misanthropic, and constitutes Ninny Culture: "I can't handle." People have gotten so used to political correctness, euphemism, litigation culture (suing at the drop of a hat), and a feeling of entitlement that I wonder how they would survive a world like the one depicted in The Road Warrior. (Which is one of the more realistic dystopic sci-fi scenarios, as it deals with peak oil.)

Are these Ninnies Homo sapiens? I don't think our proto-human ancestors struggled and endured what they endured to evolve into these weak, pc, litigating, complaining, euphemism-abusing, fume-phobic, emotionally coddled Ninnies. I'm not saying for us to be brutish and insensitive and unthinking, but for Pete's sake, it's gone too far. Especially on this Left Coast in this neo-hippy area I live in. Where's the toughness, the thick skin, the honesty, the best of the old school? Where are the men like Larry Brown, Harry Crews, William Gay, Lemmy of Motorhead, Schopenhauer? The women like the woman from band L7 who took out her tampon onstage and threw it at the crowd? What have we become? And are we ready for the potentially disastrous and dystopic 21st century? Have people become so sheltered and sensitive that they don't know how to fight, to make fire without matches, how to hunt, to shit in the woods, to endure, survive? Are we so used to this oil-created and oil/coal-powered world that we'll go into shock when it's gone?

2007-10-05T16:05:00.001-07:00

that's a tasty jerky recipe

2007-09-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

Matt Pamatmat’s Olde Style Hessian Smoked Power Jerky

A few slabs of thinly-sliced beef meat (carne asada or something comparable) (feel free to experiment with other meats as long as you know how they generally tend to cook)
Red or white wine, whiskey, or complex darker beer
Honey, sugar (I like Sugar in the Raw), or molasses
Spices (salt, pepper, chili powder, Old Bay, seasoned salt, sea salt, etc – up to you)

I like to make this when I go camping. These little shits, when ready, are tasty, I tell you. I made this the first time with no recipe, from some supermarket carne asada, alcohol at hand, spices at hand, and some honey and Sugar in the Raw from the coffee kiosk (you know, in those little packets) when we were camping in Mendocino County, CA.

Take the thin-sliced meat or cut some raw meat into thin, but not too thin, slices, and marinate it in some red wine, spices, and sweetener for at least an hour. Mix all together and let sit so the meat absorbs the liquid. Meanwhile, over an open woodfire, rig up a system to hang the wet marinated meat on so it is cooked not by the fire’s flames but by the smoke drifting upward. Toss the used marinade in the fire and position the meat. (The meat should be one to two feet away from the top of the flames.) Monitor the meat and make sure it is getting smoke-cooked evenly and without burning. Smoking time depends on the type of wood (this also affects the taste) and intensity of fire, but I found that about 1 ½ - two hours was needed to cook the meat and produce the desired “jerky” effect. Let cool and enjoy. Due to the wine, spices, and smoking, this meat keeps well if the temperature isn’t too hot. You should have a simple yet lovely jerky with a smoky sweet flavor and freshness uncharacteristic of many store-bought jerkeys. It’s very primitive but surprisingly good.

666

2007-09-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

Hey everbody,

I just ordered Hate Songs in E Minor
by Fudge Tunnel!
On audiocassette!

open letter to humanity

2007-09-14T14:32:00.000-07:00

Dear fellow Homo sapiens,

I would like to talk with you about some things that have been weighing on my mind lately, and which will certainly shape the 21st century. I recently heard Richard Heinberg speak at Santa Rosa Junior College. Heinberg is a foremost expert on peak oil (oil = cheap transportation), peak coal (electricity), peak natural gas (home heating), etc -- basically, peak energy: running out of the planet's non-renewable resources sometime between now and 2040 or 2050 or so. Heinberg's talk was called "After Fossil Fuels" and he simply presented the facts and statistics about the collision course humanity is on: a steady decrease (leading to inevitable depletion) in the amount of energy we have to power the steady increase in population and developing nations (India, China, etc). This simultaneous depletion of resources and uncontrolled human growth is a recipe for global disaster: human suffering, economic collapse, and resource wars (countries fighting internally, and with each other, over dwindling energy sources). (Read the news, it's already happening: Sudan, Iraq, Alaska, Nigeria, etc.)

Although An Inconvenient Truth was an important film that reached a large mainstream audience, I wish a documentary like Who Killed the Electric Car?, A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, or even "apocalypse fiction" films like the French film Time of the Wolf had gotten similar mass exposure, because I feel the issue of energy depletion (and its potential worldwide catastrophic consequences) overshadows global warming. (Keep in mind the earth has experienced radical climatic shifts many times, for example cyclic ice ages. Although events like Hurricane Katrina and polar bears floating confusedly on ice rafts are disturbing, no one ever said Nature was kind. There are even upsides to global warming, such as spurring evolution, and preventing another ice age.)

Peak oil (a general term for Global Energy Depletion) sets the stage for future resource wars, environmental catastrophe (such as mining coal by destroying mountaintops), economic collapse, starvation, disorder, and a whole host of "ripple effects" (disease, unrest, human-to-human brutality, etc) -- because our current modern/postmodern world is absolutely built -- and dependent -- upon cheap oil. It's an eerie feeling to know this, but walk around in a world where most people are oblivious, text-messaging their hearts out and not realizing how thin the veneer of civilization is, how easily it can shatter like thin ice.

So, I am asking that you raise your own, and others', awareness by checking out some of the resources (pun intended) below and learning about peak oil before it slaps us all in the face, hard. If we do not address it, it will certainly address us, and all those "apocalypse fiction" films we love so much will not be science-fiction but science-nonfiction.

Although I think that the energy-transitioning/energy-starved world of the 21st century is a natural outcome of building developed nations upon a (ultimately exhaustable) supply of cheap oil (from the 1800s to the present), I am deeply ashamed of the absolute mess that I and my recent ancestors are handing my son and his generation, the challenges that lie ahead for future generations who will have to think about energy in novel and difficult ways.

Thank you for your time and work on this important issue, and please check out some or all of the items below:

...on the web:

www.richardheinberg.com

www.solarliving.org

www.postcarbon.org

...the films (a sampling; all or most on Netflix):

The Mad Max Trilogy (Mad Max; The Road Warrior; Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) (societal breakdown, oil depletion, war, new barbarism, methane as an alternative energy)

Time of the Wolf (Le Temps du Loup) (unknown reason for massive societal breakdown; infant mortality skyrockets; rape; lack of fresh water; lack of law enforcement; intense competition over resources; a collective state of shock; meat scarcity)

Right at Your Door ("dirty bombs", terrorism attacks on U.S. cities)

Blade Runner (human cloning; urban nightmare; overpopulation; extinction of animal species)

eXistenZ (insanity and social breakdown caused by breaking with reality due to bio-engineered manipulation of reality via high-tech cyborg "video" gaming)

Alien (deep space mining operations of other planets to gain resources the earth has run out of)

Silent Running (earth's last remaining forest protected on spaceship as earth becomes nature-less, homogenized hell)

The End of August at the Hotel Ozone (massive war reduces human population and returns humanity -- mostly women -- to a hunting & gathering tribe of brutes) (warning: contains scenes of actual human-to-animal violence; not for the squeamish, but an amazing film)

Children of Men (hopeless society in which women are no longer fertile and reproductive; this film is absolutely amazing in its execution and detail, and is both haunting and deeply human...please check out the excellent commentary by philosopher Slavoj Zizek in the special features)

A Boy and His Dog (the best thing Don Johnson's ever done; post-apocalyptic desert future)

Waterworld (this movie is "The Road Warrior" set on the water in a global-warming future of near-landless oceans)

I have not yet seen Resident Evil: Apocalypse (opens Sept 21) but I know it portrays a future dystopic Las Vegas overtaken by the sands. (Can't vouch for it, but it looks interesting.)

I could go on and on with movies, but that'll get you started....

...the books (a sampling):

Good News by Edward Abbey. (Abbey says the "good news" is that industrial, oil-driven society collapses upon itself and people return to pastoral, agrarian anarchist lifestyles. The first chapter is absolutely amazing in prophecizing our current news headlines, given that Abbey published the book 27 years ago.)

Any book in the Postmodern Encounters series (Icon Books): brilliant, short books that mix philosophical theory with popular culture (such as Heidegger, Habermas, and the Mobile Phone; or Donna Haraway and GM Foods; or Ecology and the End of Postmodernity). These books do a great job explaining the complex, fast-paced, radically changing world(s) we are living in; however, I do not know if a single book in the series deals with peak oil, which it should.

The graphic novel Hard Boiled (by Frank Miller, author of Sin City and 300) -- Miller's vision of an overpopulated, apathetic, nihilistic, urban nightmare future came out in the 1990s and is looking more and more prophetic as we move into the early part of the 21st century.

Sorry to deliver such a bleak email, but I think the 21st century will be the litmus test of future human survival on the grand scale we've grown to, and the more prepared we are for it, physically and mentally, the less daunting it will be to switch over from the good ol' days of SUVs, cheap gas, affluent lifestyles, high technology, and overall low-worry, happy lives, to the potential worlds depicted in some of the films above...

When I look at how beautiful my 4-year old son is, and how potentially ugly and brutal the next 100 years could be, it weighs on my heart. I think the problems are too great and multi-faceted to really fix or solve, but innovative thinking, preparation, hard work, teamwork, and compassion can go a long way. Although I am personally refraining from voting in any 2008 election because I do not trust the machinery (or people behind the machinery) that counts our votes, it is probably wise, if you do vote, to vote for the candidate with the best, strongest, most intelligent and realistic energy policy. For everything, I mean everything in our lives, sits upon the foundation of our energy source(s). Or lack thereof.

Best,

Matthew Pamatmat, MA

top ten films of all time (no pertikular otter)

2007-09-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

Quest for Fire
4
Right at Your Door
eXistenZ
The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)
Apocalypse Now
Trans
Altered States
The Gleaners and I
Calvaire

Runner-up:

Rescue from Gilligan's Island
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
Cabin Boy

see this movie now

2007-08-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.rightatyourdoormovie.co.uk/

A beautiful, surreal, brutal, amazing "little" movie that unfortunately will not get seen by as many people as need to. It works on so many levels, is brilliantly written and executed, and captures something so essential about existence, connection, and (post)modern life in the Age of Terror.

time for some fictional album names!

2007-08-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

The EmphysemaTic 20th Century
Chinese Food Makes Me Go Poo-Poo
Oyster Mutant Carbon Buckyball Blues
Eatin' a Ribeye Under a Bare Dying Lightbulb (Hanging Forlornly From the Ceiling)

more to come!...

somebody stop me, I'm on a roll

2007-07-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

more fictional band names:

Cornsilk Terrorwig
Bill Bixby & the Bananamilks
Hopalong Fuckwhistle
Jimbo Freakymeats & His Jugular Orchestra
The Ol' Quiv'rin' Stumps
Cake Creatures
The Dreams of Schopenhauer's Poodle
The Vigorous Ejaculations [known by fans as The Vigorous Ejacs]
Wheezing Cabbie & the Liquor Moccasins
"Jungle" Jimmy Dimsun & the Malarial Feverbeat Alliance
HR Geiger & the Bartertown Embargo
Ancient Dungball
Sneaky Teatime & the Hot Bags of Gold
Wheelie-Poppin' Pope
Goblin Cook
Pink Fjord
Grandpa's Tentacles [or known to fans as Grandpa's Testicles]
The Squalid Dignitaries
Creak of Swinging Doors and the Spittoon Ping
The Jesse Boardman Cockslap

more real & unreal band names

2007-07-23T21:01:00.001-07:00

Now thats I think about it, 5 top band names are too few, with so many great bands out there and great band names. Here's some more good (actual) ones:

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Revolting Cocks
Sandy Duncan's Eye
Meat Puppets
George Harrison (not the Beatle but a Japanese hardcore band)
Moistboyz
Lica Sto
Saber-Toothed Zombie
Almighty Senators
Morph Beats
Wooden Shjips [not a typo!]
Negativland
Ye Olde Buttfuck [this one should really be in the top 5 &/or top 10...]
RKL (Rich Kids on LSD)
godheadSilo [loud 2-man band who were very precise about how band name is spelled]
When People Were Shorter and Lived By the Water
Cro-Mags
Dumpster Juice
Corrosion of Conformity
Intronaut
Dark Nugget*

* a band that formed at my high school back in the day and played at least one gig (at said school)

Fictional band names (all copyright 2007) (...apologies if these bands exist):

1 Frosted Biped
2 Evil Twinkle
3 Roasted Foot
4 Loose Pussies from Way Back When
5 Hey Weirdo This Food is for the Magicians' Convention and You Don't Look Like a Magician
6 The Sun-Bleached Bones
7 Ogres Suck the Marrow from the Children's Bones
8 Chewbaccalaureate Degree
9 Guatemalan Deathsquad Picnic (GDP) [I imagine this as a punk band]
10 Hey, Assmonkey! [this is a line from the godawful Bigfoot movie Abominable]
11 Cube Steak for the Sex Slave
12 Ghost Forest of Planet Bimbo
13 Flies On My Dick (Ween tribute band)
14 Satanic Ghosts & Wilford Brimley's Oats
15 Recalcitrant Rumrunners of Rangoon
16 You Goddamned Son of a Bitch (Revolting Cocks tribute band)
17 Ass Masters of the Mekong
18 Richard B. Cheney Tells the (Ecstatic) Truth About 9/11
19 Emeril Lagasse is a Drunk Violent Bastard
20 Bass-slappin' Midgets of Montana
21 Apple Maggots
22 Bubblin' Forearm
23 Return to the Island of the Battle for the Cities of the World Beneath the Planets of the Ape-headed Ones
24 A Sunday Lynching
25 Charms of Luck for Chadwick (CLC)
26 Hominoid Nutsack
27 Dead Man's Hat
28 Girls Gone Rabid
29 Hindu Holyman Hamburger Craving
30 Rapscallion of the High Seas
31 Postapocalyptic Parade
32 Stanislaw Lemonade Stand
33 Peter Pan Troglodytes
34 Let's Marry in the Abattoir, Darling; Reverend Matt Pamatmat Will Officiate
35 Steven Tyler of Aerosmith is the Missing Link Betwixt Ape and Man

I think my personal faves are #s 5 & 11 & 22!
Yours?

band names

2007-07-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

Top 5 (actual) band names in no particular order

1. Kreamy 'Lectric Santa
2. The Abominable Iron Sloth
3. Raft of Dead Monkeys
4. The Seagull Screams Kiss Her! Kiss Her!
5. Millions of Dead Cops (MDC*)

*can stand for other things as well

Damn dirty pinhead

2007-07-17T17:02:00.001-07:00

There is a pinhead that hangs out at the supermarket shopping center. He's a well-meaning enough fellow, but he smells funny and is overly friendly, with a proclivity for tickling people. Whenever he is in the supermarket I quicken my pace to avoid him, hoping he doesn't appear around the corner of some aisle with his close-set eyes and tongue hanging out, wanting to get close and tickle me. Perhaps though it is good he is there, for without him I tend to wander through the supermarket over-leisurely, purchasing odd products and thinking too hard about the deconstructive meanings behind cereal packaging, bunches of bananas, kids' yogurts. I hate the supermarket but am fascinated with and by it. I hate the naked horror of the checkout, one's items on the mechanical, worn-out black conveyor belt for everyone to see, imprint in their minds, and judge me by. I hate the narrowness of the checkout, the claustrophobia of it, standing in line, in queue. Small talk from the checkers scanning yet another load of stuff, bored out of their fucking minds. The stuff on the belt is one's self, what one will eat and later excrete. The supermarket is too bright, garish, full of the silent frozen terror of plastic-wrapped meat parts and the slow, jellyfish-like drift of old ladies grasping coupons in their bony powdered hands, their eyes scanning prices and items like carrion looking for the next roadkill meal. Ah, to be the pinhead, a reduced-size brain, the simple pleasure of tickling, nothing to do all day but harass people at the supermarket. In the evening, return to the developmentally disabled group home, have a group meal and slather the food with ranch dressing, fire up the bong, go to sleep with the headphones on, sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

Day 2

2007-07-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

Some people live in the mall. Some people live in a lightbulb. Some people live in the zoo. Some people live in the bathtub. Some people live in a spooky place.

This was my son's take on things when we were (re)painting his room and got in a minor disagreement about how exactly to paint the Peter Pan-themed mural replacing the existent dinosaur one. I told Jasper some children didn't have nice rooms of their own, they lived on the street. Hence his reply, italicized above.

We went to a pirate parade this morning, since pirates are a nation- if not world-wide all the rage trend right now. It was fun. I don't want to darken people's enjoyment of the olden days of pirates by drawing connections to the current piracy going on in Iraq, a piracy taking the form of Halliburton Inc., Bechtel Inc., the U.S. military and government (Inc.), war profiteers, mercenaries, etc. Patriotic piracy. Bomb their ass, take their gas. It's just interesting that 3 big pirate movies came out in the same time span as our interesting and questionable occupation of Iraq.

I showed my son how to pump gas when we re-fueled the car. Then we came back to the house and painted some primer over the current mural in order to paint the new one. He got some good hands-on training with both pumping the gas and doing the painting.

I went to Fiji, when I was a dad.

We went to the supermarket for some supplies and my son told a checker who is fond of him that on a recent camping trip he pooped in the woods. Took a nap back at home, a wonderful nap, then woke up groggy and watched raked clouds drift high and slow in the sky.
For dinner my son ate 5 pieces of pepper bacon and taped one to the bathtub wall for later.

Day 1

2007-07-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

Took my son out to the Russian River with some friends of ours, a peaceful, sparsely populated little spot. Beautiful day. The water was shallow and my son loved wading and walking around in it, gradually building up his bravery and going where the water ran deeper and colder. He had playmates and they spent a lot of time finding, appreciating, exchanging, and skipping river stones.

When it was time to go, we passed a strange family having a bbq in the bbq area who had a blow-up sex doll (male) lying next to a tree. I wasn't sure what to make of this doll and the fact that there were children in the family. Was it what they used as an inflatable raft in the river? Was it a pinata? The sex doll was Caucasian and had a fake hairy chest and genitalia. Fully inflated and just lying on its back under a tree, watching the leaves sway gently.

Back at home I made my son a waffle, his favorite, and as we were eating and talking he told me one of his many imaginative and surreal creation stories about how he came into being.

I was eaten by a wolf when I was little, when I was a yo-yo. Mommy and Daddy were apes. I went inside the wolf and then came out the wolf and I was 2. The wolf was sick; I cut the wolf and killed it.

I love his self-explanations for how he came into this world. They are as bizarre and exciting as the world itself.
I cooked us dinner later, steak just the way I like it (crispy and spicy on the outside, juicy pink inside), carrot coins, and ramen noodles with Thai peanut sauce. We watched a Disney film and stayed up late past his bedtime. He fell asleep quickly and I watched a little of the dystopic and violent, yet oddly G-rated, sci-fi film Silent Running.

Sara Bir's spooky-beautiful lil remix of the "score!" post of 6 July:

2007-07-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

Drank six beers while watching Gummo, plus saw flies slowly dissolve in the tiny jaws of a plant out of the corner of my eye.

score!

2007-07-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

Grocery Outlet does it again! Found Gummo, brand new factory sealed, for $1.99 VHS! Got a six-pack for $3.99 and a Venus flytrap to catch the flies that come in our house since we live next to cows and goats and sheep. Flies on my dick.

brave new world

2007-07-04T15:49:00.001-07:00

Life is no longer postmodern, it's post-Bob Barker!

Twist o' lime with your cane liquor?

2007-07-01T19:08:00.001-07:00

Just wanna give a quick shout-out to my fellow New Jersey-born homie G. Danzig!

http://www.ezsite.bz/files/puritan_b/1._20Twist_20Of_20Cain_1_.mp3

the crunchy snacking floating world

2007-06-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

My new favorite website. I bought some chips for 99 cents at a Korean Baptist grocery store for my son but he didn't like them. I did. My wife described them as Cap'n Crunch* meets Funyuns. I checked out the website and it is apparently a magical land full of cuteness, animals, Japanese people, and curly snack chips. I was kind of hoping for some cool music with the site, but maybe I have to toggle it on. However, I have no idea what any of the text says, so I fear clicking on things because I might buy something in yen that will cost big bucks American. There is something soothing about the world of the site, especially since it is silent; the "floating world" of Japanese culture mixed with kid-targeted snack madness.

http://www.meiji.co.jp/sweets/snack/karl/

* who I understand is now not "only" a Captain but has been promoted to an Admiral. Congrats, Adm'ral Crunch!

yup

2007-06-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

a sandwich I did like

2007-06-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

Ever seen the documentary Sandwiches That You Will Like? It makes the viewer hungry for sandwiches. I had a sandwich today in Santa Rosa, California, that would be worthy of documentary attention.
I went to "Cafe Hip" -- with its awful name and all -- to simply get some coffee, but as I was paying for an iced coffee, I noticed a chalkboard listing foodstuffs they had, and, surprisingly (for a dime-a-dozen coffee joint) it was all Indian food: samosas, a chicken tikka masala sandwich, etc. The prices were reasonable and I realized God damn it, I am a tad hungered. There was only one employee in the place, the owner, who had been in cyberland on a laptop before I entered the dark, naturally-lit establishment. I ordered the sandwich in addition to the coffee and he asked instantly if it was OK that the sandwich was on white bread. Absolutely OK, I reassured him. An Indian sandwich on white bread? It sounded hideously kinky!
He made it, handing it to me reluctantly to go. "Please eat it quickly," he advised, "for it has a lot of gravy on it. If you wait...it will get soggy." He adjusted the top on my iced coffee cup, told me it was Ethiopian coffee (find me skull of Hailee Selassie, I), and said, "Once again: please eat it with the quickness." I reassured him I would, and left. I unwrapped the traditional white butcher paper, awkwardly cradling the iced coffee, and ate the strange Indian Wonderbread sandwich as I crossed the street. The meat and sauce ("gravy") were definitely Indian, but the bread was white as whitebread gets. It was like Lemmy of Motorhead's favorite sandwich (bacon on whitebread, nothing else but bourbon to wash it down) mixed with Indian. Strange and delightful, light and fluffy, yet spicy and traditional. I'd never had such a fusion sandwich. I walked across campus and had it devoured before the maker's Cinderella-esque deadline. I spilled some on my shirt by accident. A memorable sandwich.

Fatal Härvest

2007-06-07T19:47:00.001-07:00

Check out another "band" I'm in, Fatal Härvest.

www.myspace.com/fatalharvest

dinnertime @ the Pamatmat table

2007-06-03T17:45:00.001-07:00

We were eating our Sunday supper and discussing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; myself, my wife, and our 3 year old son.

SON: I like the part where he rolls over!
WIFE: He was just joking!
SON: He was just kidding!
HUSBAND: He's a jokester!
SON: He's a funny guy!
HUSBAND: He's a rabble-rouser!
SON: He's a eyeball!
HUSBAND: He's a pulsating hemorrhoidal polyp!

(Son runs away.)

Demonspeak

2007-06-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

Ate lunch at the ol' Fresh Choice in suburbia. In the back of the restaurant were two men eating and speaking a strange language I couldn't figure out. Were they speaking backward? Had I somehow entered into some fictional David Lynch world made nonfiction? The men were grunting and growling. Were they demons, ogres, goblins, imps? Devolutionaries? Dutch coffeeshop casualties?
My wife informed me they were "hearing impaired" -- or, in strictest PC parlance: "hearing challenged" -- deaf. They had a wonderful and enigmatic dialect.
Fresh Choice doesn't use Oreos, they use Hydrox. I loaded up a freshly washed little black dish with Hydrox fragments and a big ol' dollop of whipped cream ("Everyone knows whipped cream isn't whipped cream unless it's from cows whipped with whips" -- Willy Wonka) and a slice of pineapple. Hydrox are tasty little lard bombs. Those little shits went well with the whip cream. I was thinking about a third helping when my wife got me the hell out of there.
Back at home I put my son down for a nap and went in my favorite place: a sleeping bag I've turned inside-out so the nylon is on the inside, cool and soft. I used a pillow from the couch and stretched out.
Soon I was veering between waking life and dream in that wonderful, strange netherworld between the two, a synaesthesia no man's land. Hydrox-fueled dreams swam past.
When I woke, foggy and heavy-headed and bloodshot-eyed, I was impressed once again by how bright the world is. Bright and violent and how interesting it all is to be sure.

Nielzine

2007-05-27T16:42:00.000-07:00

Good ol' Nielzine has gone and done it again.
Try and get yous one of his latest issues, #30, which contains a six-song CD by yours truly, Willard's Canteen, called Six Grinds from The Goat. Nielzine has hid his issues in various Sonoma County public locations.
Nielzine.
26 limited edition CDs featuring the thunder jams© of Willard's Canteen.

facts?

2007-05-24T22:24:00.000-07:00

some interesting facts (?) about Aphex Twin/Richard D. James:

lives in a bank, owns a tank
early inventor of "acid" music
has done so many/so much drugs that attention span is significantly altered (shorter attention span than used to have)
Alarm Will Sound covered a number of Aphex Twin songs acoustically -- an ambitious and successful project
performed live with two dancers in bunny suits onstage
experiences, or has experienced, synaesthesia (blending of the senses)
like Kierkegaard, has various pseudonyms/alter egos
compared Ambient Works Volume II to standing in a power station on acid
has built, and been electrocuted by, own synthesizers and electronic music equipment
lived on an English commune
is not a household name but has made a lot of money from cult status
has named songs after scientific equations and computer viruses
has bad handwriting
would like some milk from the milkman's wife's tits

on BBQing

2007-05-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

My wife wanted a fancy propane-fueled barbeque, so I acquiesed and grew to like the machine, which I secretly referred to as "The Beast." Three burners plus a side burner (which I always thought of, perhaps from watching "C Dub" (CW) on TV -- the country-western camp cook/chef -- as the place to heat up the beans), big ol' propane tank, had to assemble the fucker myself, level it out next to the house, you got the byoutan pro-pan all that shit?

There is something ancient and honorable and tasty and just plain right about BBQing meat and other foods. It's hard to control the flames, the food gets charred/burnt, the food ends up super-cooked or under-cooked, etc, etc.... But isn't this how we as early humans first began cooking our kills? Over a burning fire of dead wood. Hard to control the flame. Overcooked, undercooked food, charred and blackened. But there is nothing like grillmarks, like BBQd food. It is simple, lightly spiced, sometimes marinated for hours and sometimes not at all...

BBQ is so good that Ed Abbey refuted Descartes by saying that he (Abbey) didn't know anything for certain except the rib and beer in his hands. And Abbey is right; more so than Descartes.

Freeze-dried, vacuum-sealed, dehydrated space food is probably the antithesis of good ol' BBQ. BBQ is earthly, earthy, primal, simple yet elegant, honest. And honesty is important in this post-postmodern early 21st century we're living in.

Linguistically-speaking, I have heard (whether this is true or not) that "barbeque" has one of the most variations in spelling of any word. (BarBQ, BBQ, barbeque, bar-b-q...say it/spell it enough and it becomes a nonsensical absurd word....)

crude awakening

2007-05-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

I have not seen An Inconvenient Truth. I am probably one of the few people who hasn't. This is not due to a difference of opinion with AIT's perspective; I just am not crazy about Al Gore and haven't gotten around to seeing it. However, I did rent a documentary from Netflix that blew me away and which has haunted me since viewing. It runs along similar lines as AIT but focuses on our oil-driven world running out of oil, and how this may be an even larger crisis than global warming. (Or, more accurately, the triple threat trinity of global warming, peak oil, and massive population growth (India, China, etc) is creating a powder keg ready to blow up into national and international crisis.)
The documentary is called A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, and I highly recommend viewing it. For a long time I have felt that, within my lifetime, I would probably see some cataclysmic paradigm shift in the culture I grew up and live in (an oil-dependent culture) -- some apocalyptic event that would create a shift toward the dystopic and post-apocalyptic world depicted in many sci-fi films such as Time of the Wolf, 12 Monkeys, Mad Max 1 & 2, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, Testament, The Day After, End of August at the Hotel Ozone, A Boy and His Dog, etc. The list goes on and on. Blade Runner, Soylent Green, The Trigger Effect, etc. Peak oil -- running out of a nonrenewable, precious resource that has fueled humanity's prosperity and growth in the 20th century -- is just one of many situations that could bring on a chaotic, return-to-barbarism, devastating apocalypse. I highly recommend A Crude Awakening, as well as the following website which is run by one of the people interviewed in the film:

www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

The 9

2007-05-12T09:06:00.001-07:00

The 9
(things to do before I die)

• Stay in, or visit, an ice hotel.
• Own a goat (or work/volunteer on a goat farm/zoo/slaughterhouse).
• Try to get my novel published.
• Release a Willard’s Canteen record on vinyl.
• Own a “talking” African parrot.
• Make a sibling for my son.
• Read more about anthropology/take more anthro classes.
• Go to Amsterdam. Visit our Snoep family planetarium.
• Get Samosa Man© video game made.

Cosbee Gremlinz

2007-05-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

soon

2007-05-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

"Man, one down side is that fact that I will start bleeding soon."

-- "overheard" on the Internet after doing a Google search

Werner Herzog ate his shoe

2007-05-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

The following is a pretty-much-vertabim reply to my son when he didn't want to put his shoes on. In no way am I making light of physical disability or substandard living.

MATT (to son): You know, son, in some parts of the world, children don't have any shoes. They have to walk around barefoot. In the snow. Some children don't have feet. Some don't even have legs. They crawl their torsos around in the snow. They are so thirsty they eat the snow.

(My wife was trying not to laugh so hard at this point that I started laughing too. My son put his shoes on. We weren't laughing at people but at the absurdity of my parenting.)

and another thing

2007-05-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

Related to my rant about the questionableness of some of the environmental movement, I saw a bumper sticker that read "Good planets are hard to find" with a picture of our current home, ol' planet Earth. Isn't judging a planet "good" (as I assume opposed to its binary opposite, a "bad" planet) a moral judgment, and an anthropocentric one at that? Who is the planet good for? Humanity, because we live here as opposed to elsewhere in the great universe? And doesn't the bumper sticker, perhaps inadvertently, put down all the other planets, which have not given rise to life (at least as far as we know), for their inhospitability to our particular brand of existence (carbon-based life forms, etc)?
I read an article not long ago about surface sand dunes carved by the wind of a distant planet -- Neptune, if I recall correctly -- and how similar to Earthly sand dunes Neptune's were. There was something achingly and eerily beautiful about the article, about rhythmic, patterned sand dunes on a planet nothing lives on. Is Neptune a "bad" planet because we don't live there, and nothing seems to live there? Poor Pluto -- not even a planet anymore -- but a huge ball of ice at the far cold reaches of space, demoted from planethood and put down on a hominid's bumper sticker. A double whammy for what is surely a beautiful and "good" planet in its own way.
The "Good planets" bumper sticker represents a silly and ill-thought-out hippy mentality that spreads like a virus to knee-jerk do-gooders who find in the Earth the cause of all causes. But our Earth has plenty of "bad" features to throw into question the bumper sticker's designation of planetary goodness. For one, allergies. Why would man be allergic to his environment? It makes no sense. (What is the upside to allergy misery? Is there one? Most disabilities or human "defects" have an upside (an Asian/Native American intolerance for alcohol helps prevent alcoholism; anemia helps prevent iron poisoning, etc)). Whether we are intelligently "designed" by a creator god, or shaped by evolutionary forces, allergies alone speak to both design and evolution as poor and incompetent culprits behind existence. The bottom line is seasonal misery for the allergy sufferer. Schopenhauer wins the debate.
Sure, I understand the well-meaning sentiment behind the "Good planets" bumper sticker, but I would never put one on my car, however much I loved the Earth. If we befoul the Earth, our only current home, then there were reasons for doing so (not saying they are/were good reasons -- profit-mindedness, capitalism, ignorance, industry, desperation, short-sightedness, etc), and we must let the chips fall where they may. There is a certain manifest-ness to it, a certain tone of destiny. Humanity may be hard-wired or hell-bent on doing ourselves in (and many other creatures in the process). But, again, life goes on even after species die out and environmental havoc-destruction-mayhem takes place. The Earth really doesn't "care."
The winds still blow, whether in utopia or the post-apocalyptic dystopia.

burbling beast

2007-04-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

changed the epileptic car's battery
kept an eye on the roast
fell asleep for how long?
time dilation panic
read the newspaper
(don't usually read the paper):
lethal injection guru;
man stabbed at taco truck;
pit bull fight ended with bullets;
failed truffle pigs slaughtered and eaten.

nap reset my body's electrical system
felt better afterward
but how long did I sleep?
seconds, minutes, hours?

kept an eye on the roast
burbling away
made coffee: filter, scoops, water
flipped the switch,
walked away,
went online.
later, checked the coffee machine: not plugged in

everything's been misfiring
since the original misfire of chemicals and electricity
in the primordial adobo

down the Drive

2007-04-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

I watched Mulholland Drive on TV last night. Edited all to hell of course to keep Davey Lynch's weird ideas from corrupting the children and general populace. I came into the film 1/2 way through. The picture quality was bad and they kept running this all-caps note across the top of the screen that the 10 o'clock news would be seen at 10:30 instead, after the film. This was the same all-caps ticker that announced breaking news, disasters, assassinations, viral outbreaks, refinery accidents, loose pit bulls, etc. It was as if the TV station had to reassure the viewing public that the linear, rational, sensible news would indeed run after Lynch's nightmarish movie. Please do not be alarmed by tonight's film, ladies and gents -- your favorite, trusted newsanchors WILL return after the film. Normality will resume. We will uphold normality -- after the film.

Oddly enough, this being the umpteenth time I've seen M.D., I (for some reason) understood it a little better this time around (despite it being chopped up with editing and commercials). Maybe the pure repetition of viewings eventually allows a glimpse into the film's inner world, a world that makes a sort of sense on its own terms. The transition to the news after the artificially sped-up credits was jarring, the garish lights of the news studio illuminating the trusted newsman. But while the movie was on, for a fleeting and ineffable moment, I understood a head-scratcher of a film in some kind of nonlinear and dream-logic way. It's amazing how simply altering the sequential timeframe of a film -- changing that normal flow of time we become accustomed to, and which society reinforces as right/normal/correct -- can mess with the viewers' heads. (On a related note, I had a similar experience while watching Total Recall on the Spanish-language channel, overdubbed in Spanish. It made more "sense" as a film that way than in its original English.)

histamine overdrive

2007-04-26T21:20:00.000-07:00

I got slammed today with seasonal allergies, hay fever. I checked weather.com and the tree pollen (oak) and weed pollen were high, the grass pollen moderate. I usually suffer early in the season and do better as the spring wears on into summer. But allergies suck and I envy those who have been blessed with a life free of them. Also, being under attack by pollen and allergens has got me thinking about the environmental movement and modernist movements to "save" or "heal" or be "friendly to" the earth-planet-environment-nature.
(Excuse me while I blow my constantly-running nose.)
Although I don't lean so far to the right that I agree with an anti-environmentalist stance, I do question the beliefs of my nature-worshipping, far-left neighbors here in northern CA. We talk about "earth-friendly" products, but is the earth being friendly to me in lacing the air with pollen spore that causes misery in allergy sufferers? Is "friendly" even a word that should be used seriously in talking about nature? Nature in a pre-civilization and non-human world is based around murder. Creatures kill and eat other creatures. Some are made marvelously for the task -- the cheetah, the shark, the scorpion. Even the seemingly innocuous or cute plant life like ficus, or "breath-takingly beautiful" marine life like coral strangle, crowd out, and overtake other life forms. Weather is unfriendly, even murderously brutal; from the smallest virus to the largest animal, everything has in it the potential for self-defense, and murder. I'm not sure what defense sheep have. Except running away maybe. And this says nothing of human nature, which has its own special brand of brutality and unfriendliness. Although I agree with not shitting where one eats and befouling our environment, I don't think being "earth-friendly" is the key to the environmental predicament we're in, when nature cooly and even coldly is apathetic to our friendliness, and doles out the opposite of friendliness on a daily basis. It's not that the intentions of environmentalism are wrong, it's just that certain language -- such as "friendly" -- and certain (modernist, utopian) ideas do not belong in the world and tend to cloud (pun intended) our thinking about the place in which we dwell...and which produced us.
This latter aspect is the kicker. Surely humanity is the most dangerous animal, highly destructive to Others and to ourselves -- but from whence did we come? From where? From the earth. If it says anything about us that we're a nihilistic and self-threatening species, it says something too about the context we exist in and emerged from: the dark earth. And I think on some level, "saving" the earth or "healing" the earth are laughable concepts and movements. The earth is a violent and ever-changing and tumultuous place. Creatures rise up, live, and wink out of existence (no matter what the cause). This has been going on for millions of years. Look at a rose. Fragrant, beautiful, seemingly gentle. Look at the thorns. There is nothing gentle about nature at all. Kindness is possible, but kindness is not the same as gentleness.
I have heard that the antidote to (environmental) despair is action. (I.e. utopian-minded modernism/environmentalism/etc.) This is but one course. Giving up, accepting a/the nihilistic trajectory, and viewing the situation from different angles are also antidotes. When I accepted that the future -- my son's world -- is fucked, I felt a whole lot better about things. I still try and consume as little energy as possible, eat humane and organic foods, walk instead of drive, recycle, donate, etc. But it's not my life's work and calling. The earth is misunderstood in environmentalism, and treated with a kind of condescension and kid gloves that are off the mark. The earth is strong yet sensitive, and as fierce as the beasts it has birthed.

portal explorers

2007-04-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

http://secure.giantrobot.com/images/art/apak/02_apak.jpg

I read about this art show in the good ol' SF Weekly. Check out the paintings -- it's an alluring little world they've created. I could romp around in there for awhile.

http://www.gr-sf.com/artshows.php

some thoughts and notes on "Grindhouse"

2007-04-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

(here be plot spoilers)

1. Grindhouse is a thoroughly postmodern film, in the way "that postmodern film is governed by 'nostalgia' or la mode retro ('retrospective styling')" (Woods, Beginning Postmodernism, quoting Jameson). The film's double-feature approach, previews (spelled "prevue" in the film) for non-existent films, and other humorous late '70s/early '80s cinematic randomalia (goofy warning trailers and an ad for a restaurant) simultaneously pay homage to, and make fun of, a "movement," grindhouse, that didn't know it was creating a movement in the moment. Grindhouse is heavily analog, at least in its styling, with beat-up film, speaker crackle, and reels of the movie that go missing or, in Rodriguez's Planet Terror, (pretend to) implode. (Tarantino's entry, Death Proof, is noticeably and strangely "cleaner" than Rodriguez's.) Grindhouse is nostalgic not only to the films that inspired it, but the medium those films came on originally. Ironically, the film might not have been possible without digital effects and CGI (mentioned in the plot of Death Proof) -- especially Planet Terror. But with a film released in 2007 that harkens back to, say, 1977, weird anachronisms get created.

2. Anachronisms abound: besides the contradiction of an analog-looking film being made with digital effects, there are parts of the film that suggest what would be considered flaws in any other film but for Grindhouse. (Because the films that comprise Grindhouse are not only postmodern but intentionally bad, they escape criticism that is reserved for "serious" films striving for accuracy.) For instance, most noticeably, a jukebox in Death Proof plays 45 rpm records while a main character text messages her boyfriend on her BlackBerry. (I live down the road from an old roadhouse restaurant built in 1859 that only recently "upgraded" to a digital jukebox.) Sure, it's possible that a bar jukebox could (still) play records, but in making a postmodern film like Death Proof, the viewer experiences a peculiar sense of temporal confusion in the admixture of analog and digital and the "mash-up" of the historical with the present. This is present in Terror Planet too -- which resembles a John Carpenter-esque, late '70s/early '80s zombie/doomsday film -- in how Rose McGowan's character has a digitally-grafted machine gun on her leg, an effect that, to be truly retro, would have to be created non-digitally. (John Carpenter is perhaps a key influence to Grindhouse, in the way that Carpenter's films tend to be either really good (Dark Star, The Thing, Halloween, They Live, Starman) or really bad (Ghosts of Mars, Escape from L.A., Big Trouble in Little China). Someone once said that every other Carpenter film is a stinker. Grindhouse walks this line, with the benefit of viewing grindhouse retrospectively and being a postmodern spoof film, of being ambivalently bad/good.)

3. Grindhouse's mixture of the retro-spoof-homage with its "own" merits and credentials (by making fun of somewhat bad movies, Rodriguez/Tarantino have made two good movies) creates what Baudrillard (or maybe even Herzog) might call a "hyper-real" film. "[T]he real has been produced by the model." (Woods). If the "real" is Grindhouse and the model is a grindhouse double feature of the day, then the resultant blur is more-real-than-real. (Similar somewhat to Herzog's notion of "ecstatic truth" attained through the fabrication, stylization, and fictionalization of nonfiction.)

the bleat

2007-04-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

It came at almost regular intervals, transitioning me from the sleeping world to the waking, the low animal sound of an unknown creature. Like a distress beacon bleating from deep space or a whale communicating across great distances undersea, it was a short, almost laconic groan somewhere close. I was laying in a sleeping bag in the living room and could feel the sun warming the bag and my exposed face. I turned my face to the sunlight, filtered through the dusty windows, and smiled wearily. The bleat sounded every thirty seconds or so.
I knew that sometimes, across the street in the sheep pasture, sheep died and were eaten by vultures. Slowly a carcass turned to a lone, wind-whipped ribcage sitting on a decaying carpet of fur and gristly viscera. The vultures left very little. Grass poked up. I wondered if the sound I was hearing was a sick sheep or other domesticated animal. There were also goats and cows around.
Sunday was a perfect day for this to happen. The world itself bleated on this holy day of rest, changed from the original Biblical Sabbath of Saturday to Sunday somewhere along the line of history. On Sunday millions of people went to church, where they considered a man crucified and groaning in agony at probably fairly regular intervals like the unknown sound I was hearing. It was the perfect way to wake up on a Sunday. A day that resonated with a peculiar stillness. Both a dread and a peace hung in the air. Jesus wept. Grass poked up.

duct-taped world

2007-04-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

It is Saturday and it is raining and I am sitting in the living room looking out the window at the rain coarsing down a strip of duct tape that once held a piece of the house's gutter onto the roof. I'm drinking hazelnut coffee out of a ridiculous ceramic cup I bought at an old grimy casino in Las Vegas. There are scanty women on the cup, four Aryan blondes and one redhead and one Nubian. Long hair, topless, wearing thongs. Long legs and high heels. The cup is handpainted, and as I sip the coffee (flavored with blueberry syrup) I wonder about the person or persons who painted this cup, wonder specifically what they are doing at this moment, as I gaze out the window at the rain dripping off the tape strip. I am wondering about what my next job in life will be. The cup-painter(s) had to paint the gaudy cup for money, and may or may not have realized how absurd a job it is to paint a cup such as I clutch in my hand. Perhaps the cup painter was a great artist but had to resort to making gaudy sexual souvenir cups which were dried, packed, shipped, unpacked, and then sold at the old casino's bar (as I remember, it came filled with beer). I'm sitting at the end of our ol' blue couch, supported by the back pillow and armrest, wondering if my back will begin to hurt today, and if so, how much. Listening to the steady ambient drizzle of precipitation. The plastic goose watches out the window also with its lifeless eyes. The cats sleep. My son with his abundance of energy busies himself making things, engineering, thinking, constructing, finding uses for things no one would have thought of, exploring his world, the physics of things. Stringing kite string across the length of the house so a red plastic hammer can be hung from it. Building a pirate ship with just an old tom drum and a small ship's steering wheel. Telling stories about castles, how Darth Vader is made of wood, Chewbacca's blue lightsaber. In a young person, the nonfictional and the imaginative are learning how to interact, trump each other, provide escape, create a world-view. Hell, in someone of any age this is happening.
I drink the coffee fast, as I always have, take another look at the earth-bound rain sluicing down the dirty old battered piece of duct tape, and rise. I am making this up as I go along, this life, my small and perhaps significant place in it. My son talks about all of us being covered in flowers. I think of graves; someone else thinks of American Beauty; someone else thinks of a dusty fragrant festival in a poverty-enraptured town in India, flower petals. My son is eating spiders, or so he says. I don't remember Chewbacca ever having a blue lightsaber, but in my mind I see him clearly, swinging one around and decapitating soldiers of the Dark Side. In imagination almost anything is possible. Chewbacca and a leprechaun can ride a unicorn to utopia.

Population Reduction

2007-04-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

Saw two bands at Annie's Social Club in San Fran last night that gave me hope not only in music, but in humanity itself.
The first band, POPULATION REDUCTION, was a 2-piece thrash band who didn't take themselves or anything too seriously, but were seriously good musicians. They had great song titles/concepts like (I may be paraphrasing here) "Doing Bongrips in the Tomb of the Undead" (about smoking pot and zombies) and "Sausage Factory Showdown." The guitarist-singer-comedian frontman delivered between-song banter in a deadpan, calm, airline captain voice and was funny as hell. (After the show, I asked the drummer if they had any merch and he said "We haven't gotten it out of the car yet. We're kinda unorganized." I kept checking the merch table for some POPULATION REDUCTION merch of some kind, but to no avail. It was kinda awesome that the duo just said fuck it, and didn't try to promote themselves, unlike most bands who promote themselves at every opportunity and corner. (My own 1 man band, WILLARD'S CANTEEN, included.) P.R. just watched the next bands and sipped beer.) I liked them instantly. Tight, talented musicianship, humor, and fast, heavy riffage with barefoot double-bass drum action. Next to my wedding day and the day my son was born, it was the greatest moment of my life. I knew I wasn't the only one feelin' it: nearby, a guy with a faux-fur vest and 1980s neon-colored glasses was spazzing out in bliss to the Tenacious D-meets-Ween of thrash metal that is P.R.
Next up was VOETSEK, a 4-piece (drums, vocals, guitar, bass) who played spirited thrash. The drummer also drums for DEADFALL and is a very animated, amusing guy to watch, strong on charisma and talent. The funny thing is that the (female) bassist (playing a BC Rich "Bitch" bass) is, by day, a high school teacher. Fronted by a woman, this band rocked harder than many stinky long-haired all-male thrash bands. The guitarist's amp went out at one point and the band never missed a beat, which is incredible at the intensity and speed they play at.
I began to get thrashed-out after that and wasn't really feelin' the next band, so bounced outta there.

the future?

2007-04-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

Lawd I was born a ramblin man

2007-04-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

Growing up bicoastal, there are things I love and hate about both the East and West coasts. As a child of divorced parents, I am already split and conflicted, at war with my own bad damn self.
The West coast, if I can generalize a little, is sunnier, newer, more wide open, more diverse, more open-minded, more expensive (gas, food, housing), something of a scam/not what it's made out to be. We get fucked on housing and gas prices.
The East is older, more historical, dramatically seasonal, grimy, more socially conservative, cheaper (houses with yards, attics, basements, multiple stories for the price), snarl-lier, more set in its ways.
I can't decide where to be. That's why I want to live in a college town in the deep south.
I visited the (B)east coast for spring break and drank too much. My dad's bottle of Maker's Mark, something beyond our means, was too tempting, along with access to rich, sweet, tasty East Coast beers I can't get in CA. Especially Dogfish Head ales. For a little kitten-cat, my dad's adopted cat sure made a big ol' stink. Sweet cat though. Looked you right in the eyes. I like that in a creature.

baboons

2007-04-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

Be kind to yourself, throw yourself a punch
Snort a bunch of diamond dust
and watch The Brady Bunch

Eat yourself some olives
Eat yourself some hog
Eat yourself, like Knut Hamsun
Eat some dingo dog

Watch out for the barbed wire
Watch out for the moon
Watch out for the pickle juice
Watch out for baboons

a post-nap manifesto

2007-03-29T16:47:00.000-07:00

The history of the world is one of decapitated human heads rolling and being trampled underneath the hooves of horses ridden by thunder raiders. Make no mistake about it: the world was, is, and perhaps always will be a violent place, and we are of that world, from it. Mass graves make for pretty wildflowers. The Buddhists are right: there is a certain oneness to the admixture of love and fear that is intertwined in our daily ritual. The ritual is survival, and the world is a game that the Creator God has wandered away from, distracted, bored with us simians. Our primate soul is one born of violence, bloody-faced, hairy, and dirty, no matter how we dress it up in fanciness, technology, or delusion. While we recoil at atrocious displays of human-on-human brutality or depravity, we bat no eyes while sinking the blade into the pig, or goat, or water buffalo's neck. The Mongolian Empire was the greatest empire ever, sweeping the land on horseback and surviving nomadically on meat, blood, and yogurt butter. Space dust indeed makes beautiful things -- flowers, rainbows, attractive people -- but it is also the stuff of the universe responsible for genocide, serial killers, and common misery. Suburban yuppies sink special knives into soft cheese, sipping wine and listening to easy sounds while ghetto-dwellers eke out an existence in a megaslum.

Sunday

2007-03-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

I am currently enjoying a low point in life.
My employer laid me off due to low student enrollment (and hence low funds, downsizing, and restructuring) at the school I was working at.
Being married is taking a lot of work.
Being a parent is taking a lot of work.
I fell out of a tree trying to rescue a tangled kite, and my tailbone, neck, and entire back hurt like hell. The earth is not soft and accomodating, but rocky, slippery, and unforgiving.
As a pre-Scientologist Beck once sung, back when he was having them (and having them good): "Today has been a fucked-up day."
Play the banjo, stomp the floor, and howl.

Bohemian Best Of lost track

2007-03-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a Best Of that didn't make the final cut of the 2007 Best Of the North Bay paper (analog/print version). It did make the Boho cyber version at
http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/03.21.07/food-writers-picks-0712.html

(scroll down to bottom, read, and then write the editor about how Pamatmat once wrote about important things -- ghettos, Herzog, Heidegger, exotic meat -- but now writes about porn on the road, and Bigfoot)

Best Place to See Bigfoot in the North Bay

by Matt Pamatmat

Science and history tell us that Gigantopithecus, a tall, massive superape who left behind only some of its teeth, may be the catalyst behind the enduring belief in Bigfoot. One would think the best place to hunt for ol’ Bigfoot might be Armstrong Woods in Guerneville, but an effigy of the mythic beast was seen recently on a box of “SAC Squash” squash at Pacific Market, in the wholesome vanilla suburb of Rohnert Park. The box had a crudely drawn rendering of Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, but grocery worker David didn’t know anything further about the mysterious vegetable company. He did report, however, that he had heard strange howling noises in the back loading dock area of the store, and that some of his produce had huge, unexplained bite marks out of them. He shrugged and told me all he knew was that the squash originally came from Mexico before being boxed in the “SAC Squash” boxes by a distributor. My journalistic training led me to deduce that SAC Squash might be grown in Sacramento, but I decided against an investigative jaunt to Mexican soil out of dread fear of the goat-sucker, chupacabra. If you don’t spot Bigfoot or a likeness at Pacific Market, grab a few prosciutto-stuffed peppers marinated in oil and a local microbrew, and call it a day.

Pacific Market, 901 Golf Course Drive, Rohnert Park. (707) 585-9643. Open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday.

a wild goat chase (porny backroads)

2007-03-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

I was tipped off by one of my many informants, who shall remain nameless, that he had been riding his bike in the bucolic, scenic backroads of Sonoma and Marin counties and coming across pages and pages of pornography littered about the road, as well as empty porn DVD cases and even a fake pussy box. We were sitting at the Black Cat in Penngrove as he nursed a Coors Light and I a Shirley Temple. He thought it would make a great story for the Bohemian, so I scribbled some notes on the ol' bar napkin, then went home and pitched the story to my editor. "Either a full-blown, multi-part cover story," I told her via e-mail, "or a 100 word news brief. Nothing in between. Let's either go big with this fucker or just randomly, casually mention it. It's the Case of the Ruby Pussy. I'm an existential detective and I'm on the case. This is going to involve some hard drinking of cheap Southern whiskey, research into the world of porn, and (when sober, of course) a drive out into the countryside to try and find this stuff of which he speaks."

So one rainy Thursday morning, with my son strapped in his carseat in the backseat, we set out to find the porny backroads. I couldn't tell him what were looking for, only that it involved "a juxtaposition." He tried to say juxtaposition and almost got it right. Ah, the otherworldly green rolling hills of the North Bay, sheeps and cows and goats, smoke rising from quaint farmhouse chimneys...and roadkill, wet vultures, garbage on the roadside, and hopefully -- the holy grail -- the porn-littered areas my informant told me about.

We drove and drove down the roads I'd been told had the porn, vigilantly scanning the low ditches on the side of the roads, but to no avail. My son watched life zoom by his window as the time went by and we went down quiet rural roads with really no one or no thing about. I had to micturate, so pulled over in a safe spot and went behind a tree. Hot steam rose into the cool moist air and I noticed a dead discarded TV, its power cord snaking toward me, half-covered over by wild weeds and blackberry. There was something beautiful about it, post-apocalyptic, post-power, post-civilization, so I went back to the car and got the digital camera and snapped a picture. I then also noticed, with a bit of a start, a bony corpse of some animal -- deer? dog? -- that still had a wet rotted pelt, yellowed bones scattered about, and a perfectly clean, rain-washed skull. I took pictures of it too, but the pictures didn't do the scene justice. When we got back home I wondered why I hadn't taken the skull, which would have been cool to have and put in the yard somewhere or do something mischievious with. I guess the animal didn't seem fully broken down yet, still some lumpy nasty flesh under that rain-spattered pelt, so I didn't want to touch it or freak my son out by returning to the car with an animal skull and a big smile on my face.

What I was hoping for with the porn was a road-killed animal lying atop a spread-beaver photo -- now there's a juxtaposition. But no luck. It had been a wild goat chase, but not an altogether unfruitful one.

http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/03.21.07/recreation-writers-picks-0712.html

and scroll down a tad why don't ya

worse movie?

2007-03-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

Rescue from Gilligan's Island or Leprechaun 3

who would win?

2007-03-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Bob Barker (The Price is Right host) vs. a giant lobster.

overheard

2007-03-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

"--runnin' outta time...it's gettin' dark."

March 12, 2007
Marin County Civic Center
12:50 p.m.

"I just do what I'm told."

March 12, 2007
Northgate Mall, Marin County
1:10 p.m.

Eclipse; new writing

2007-03-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

OK, two things on that:

1. March 3rd will feature an eclipse on the (b)east coast. To commemorate the event, check out the Willard's Canteen song "Total Eclipse of the Goat" (written before the eclipse but strangely fitting):

http://www.socolive.com/module/Content/action/View/type/Artist/id/123

Click on "Total goat", and enjoy the other songs there too if you ain't heard 'em yet.

2. I should have two pieces of writing in the upcoming North Bay Bohemian Best Of issue, March 21. Free. You may have to hunt for my pieces, but that's the fun of it.

Thanks to Nielzine for the kind words about the Willard's Canteen album A Spectacular Butchery Site in the latest issue of his zine.

OK, that was 3 things on that. Cheers.

suet?

2007-03-01T22:07:00.000-08:00

I bought some food for "our" wild birds, a pale-looking brick of suet, mealy-looking stuff with pieces of corn and berry embedded in it. You place the brick inside a little cage and the birds come and eat it away until it has disappeared.
I smelled the block of suet before caging it, and wondered: What is suet, anyway? It smelled temptingly good: fatty, fruity, healthy. I wanted badly to take a bite of it, but I was afraid it looked and smelled better than it tasted (the opposite of durian fruit). I'd eaten insects and exotic foods before, snorted up Sea Monkey food, opened my mouth outside during a rain to drink the polluted skies. The suet was awfully tempting, but I backed down. I had food inside the house, human food. The birds spent their days gathering food, fighting, flying, making nests. The suet was for them.
Maybe I just wanted to be a bird, to fly over the craziness of the planet, as if in a dream.

The rain came down while the sun was out and it looked wholly surreal, some eXistential set-up, milky articial rain on some half-convincing film set. The suet was guaranteed not to melt and puddle away; indeed, despite the rain, it held its hash-brick shape in the cage, and the birds were interested.
If anyone knows about what the hell suet is, contact me.

a world of cute

2007-02-26T17:11:00.000-08:00

Hello Kitty
Hello hyena
Hello strangling ficus tree
Hello Tasmanian Devil
Hello jagged territorial murderous sea coral
Hello Great White Shark
Hello serial killer

head for the Golden Arches

2007-02-20T15:30:00.000-08:00

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (CNN) -- All Nathan Moore says he wanted to do was smoke pot and get drunk with his friends.

Killing Rex Baum was never part of the plan that day in 2004.

"It all started off as a game," Moore said.

The 15-year-old and his friends were taunting the homeless man -- throwing sticks and leaves -- after having a couple of beers with him.

No big deal, Moore says, but he's sorry for what came next.

It was a mistake, he said, a sudden primal surge that made him and his friends Luis Oyola, 16, and 17-year-old Andrew Ihrcke begin punching and kicking Baum.

"Luis says 'I'm gonna go hit him,' We're all laughing, thought he was joking around,'" but he wasn't, Moore concedes. "We just all started hitting him."

They hurled anything they could find -- rocks, bricks, even Baum's barbecue grill -- and pounded the 49-year-old with a pipe and with the baseball bat he kept at his campsite for protection.

Ihrcke smeared his own feces on Baum's face before cutting him with a knife "to see if he was alive," Moore said.

After destroying Baum's camp, the boys left the homeless man -- head wedged in his own grill -- under a piece of plastic where they hoped the "animals would eat" him.

Then, Moore says, they took off to grab a bite at McDonald's.

If it's not lost punk rockers, it's

2007-02-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

escaped prison work crew inmates. These are the things that happen in our neighborhood.

The other day, a helicopter was circling low and what seemed like directly overhead our house for a good 20-30 minutes. It was midday, I had a throat cold, and was just about to take a nap after a tiring morning wrestling one of the cats into a cat carrier for a trip to the vet. The helicopter got annoying, so I called the Sheriff's department, who told me casually, "Oh yeah, it's a police chopper; there's an escaped work crew prisoner they're looking for." He seemed eager to get me off the phone, even though the escapee (and helicopter) directly impacted where I reside. "Lock your doors and windows," he said, and hung up. (A description of the guy would have been nice.)
I secured the house and strapped on my machete. I'd chop the motherfucker's head off and toss it at the work crew's feet. That's what's known as a deterrent. We live in an altogether too wussy society. Our collective skin is growing thinner by the day and we're suing each other for looking at one another wrong. Soon we won't look each other in the eye anymore and we will have forgotten what it's like to truly speak our minds and express ourselves honestly, if un-politically correctly. I saw a movie from the French-speaking Central African Republic recently called Le Silence de la foret (lamely translated as "The Forest") in which an educated man watches a parade, smiling as he knows people want/need him to, all the while thinking how absurd the parade is: people in hot uniforms worn because they're fashionable/modern, pre-pubescent girls twirling banners who will soon enter into prostitution to those who can afford "young flesh," veterans of wars people only remember or acknowledge during a parade, a country itself with 3rd world health care (i.e., little to none) and education (i.e., little to none), and open racism (not only from whites toward blacks but French-speaking blacks toward indigenous blacks (the "pygmies")). So what was the parade for in the first place?

Anyway, I'm ranting -- I had started off talking about decapitating wayward prisoners, and somehow ended up in the Central African Republic. Life is funny like dat.

strange little boy

2007-02-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

www.lepconnie.com/pics/lep/customfigure1d.jpg

good ol' Aphex Twin

2007-02-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

Found this creepy Aphex Twin video on youtube. And I thought The Goddess Bunny was unnerving. Due to youtube's dark, crappy picture quality, this is best watched alone, late at night, in darkness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wXVnnNzob4

Triumph of the surreal

2007-02-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

The "bomb" hoax that struck several major cities in January 2007, some cities reacting in a more uptight manner than others, was the ballsiest and most brilliant pulse-check of what we have become as a society.

We are still reeling from 9/11/01 as if it were yesterday (helped along by our government's questionable response to post-9/11 existence, color-coded terror warnings, attacks on civil liberties, foreign policy, etc). We are so on edge that a souped-up Lite Brite depecting an Aqua Teen Hunger Force character flipping the bird could cause so much havoc, confusion, and anger. While I understand, to an extent, an atmosphere of "heightened security" and the desire for a safe, observant society, what the two artists behind the ad campaign/art installation did was show just how conscious Americans have become of how much they are disliked and disdained by the rest of the world (hence an angry-looking cartoon character saying "fuck you" as part of a suspicious bomb-like device could be met with so much panic and fear, i.e. terror). It also demonstrates a kind of cultural philistinism in which not just the transit worker who called in the Lite Brite in Boston, but a vast majority of America, has no idea what ATHF is, or why the Mooninite 2's prank is such a dark, illuminating joke. The joke is on us, again. We will continue to be taught dark lessons until we as a nation begin to figure things out. I am not hopeful this will happen. ATHF is subcultural and one cannot be expected to know and be abreast of everything, but it's a sorry state of things when we can't tell a true terrorist from an artist. Fear, patriotism, identity, community, dissent...these are all at play in this, the early 21st century. Ironically, both Bush and bin Laden have us right where they want us.

Major newspapers, supposedly liberal in their outlook and holding to neutral journalistic standards of nonbias, made blatant remarks about how stupid the Mooninite 2's prank was or how insensitive it was in a time of terror. It was hilarious to see these papers think out loud as they tried to convey to their readers what ATHF is, barely understanding it themselves, and make sense of these two unique individuals -- one a dreadlocked Belarussian asylum-seeker and the other a freelance video artist -- who not only openly documented and promoted their art installation/ad campaign but, in the great tradition of Fluxus-Dada-Mailart-Surrealism, refused to answer any direct questions about their being "terrorists" by only focusing on 1970s hairstyles. It added insult to injury to the confused public servants (those transit workers, cops, firefighters, etc) who have been granted hero status and who try to keep the populace safe while working under and for the same government who is making the U.S. less safe by its idiotic foreign policies and secretive, neocon administration. (Sure, the average Joe firefighters-cops-etc are heroes, but what about our political dissidents, our thinkers, our journalists who get in hot water questioning a questionable government?)

People are saying "1/31/07 Never Forget" not to mock 9/11 or endanger national security, but to show just how terrorized we have become since 9/11 -- and how a Lite Brite depicting a surreal, harmless, completely fictional tv show can strike fear in our very souls. For Christ's sake, ATHF is about a talking box of French (Freedom) fries, a talking pistachio milkshake, and a talking orb of meat living in New Jersey. Are they terrorist suspects now, too? If they are, then EVERYONE is. The Mooninite 2 will be seen two different ways by two different camps: as either freedom fighters or terrorists. This is also the case with Osama bin Laden, George W Bush, etc.

When we get terrorized we don't think straight, in fact we hardly think at all. Some publicity stunts are attention-seeking and are indeed stupid or endangering. I don't count the Mooninite 2's as one of those. For in addition to their hyping an upcoming movie, what they did was in itself performance art/installation art. If the realm of art is no longer safe and will be subject to persecution, censorship, and control, then we are in bad, bad trouble. But I am hopeful that the surreal will triumph, as it did on 1/31/07. For you can suppress and attack the surreal but it will never die.

Free the Mooninite 2

2007-02-01T10:53:00.002-08:00

These guys are brilliant and ballsy. This is the best reaction to post-9/11 life in Bush's Amerika.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/01/boston.bombscare/

Happiness is a warm comp(ilation album)

2007-01-31T19:32:00.000-08:00

Check out 2 goofy instrumental Willard's Canteen songs on the limited edition NIELZINE COMPUKELATION CD, released late January 2007 (Year of the Pig). Also features the great space-rock instrumental brotherhood Eucalyptus, and other aural talents. Available at select Sonoma County locations or by contacting:

Nielzine
POB 723
Santa Rosa, CA 95402

the juxtaposition

2007-01-29T18:02:00.000-08:00

The other morning I went to Target early before it got crazy busy. On the way in I passed a blue mailbox that I knew I would pass, so in the car in the parking lot before I passed the mailbox I secreted a small chicken bone my son had been playing with (imitating the famous man-ape scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey) in my hand and, when I passed the mailbox (fully aware of the security cameras all over Target), casually placed the little bone on the mailbox where it lists what time the mail gets picked up. After getting what I came to get from the store, I passed the mailbox again and checked my surrealist handiwork. The bone was just laying there at a slight angle on the right side. It looked great. Maybe it would shake some suburban SUV-drivin' zombie mom out of the dream she thought was her life. Maybe not. Either way it was a great juxtaposition. I could imagine someone going to mail something and hesitating (just the hesitation would be so worth it), seeing the bone sitting there dumbly, and think twice about grabbing the handle to open the mouth of the box, but then needing to mail something and so doing it. It also gave the mailbox a post-apocalyptic look, as if something cataclysmic had happened and there was no longer any mail service, any government, any structured society, etc, and this little bone had somehow, enigmatically, found its way to rest upon the battered blue mailbox.

Quote found on scrap of paper when I cleaned out my car's glovebox

2007-01-28T16:29:00.000-08:00

"In the Philippines, when they hang the meat up, it's still twitching."

Amanda P
7/12/03

Jame Gum

2007-01-25T11:32:00.001-08:00

Help! I can't tell where I am. It's dark and I can hear laughing.

-- on a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce, 1/25/07

1 question: Am I eating goofy, add-water-to-powdered-mystery-meat, psuedo-not-really-Mexican-food, or watching Silence of the Lambs?!
Jeezis!

mystical sandwich

2007-01-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

Ham
sweet roll
mus
may
pick
lettuce
Provolone

Roast beef everything
sour dough w/ 1 havarti dill

-- found inside the back cover of the book The Mystics of Islam at the Sonoma State University book drop by the bookstore, Sunday, 1/21/07