it is christmas eve

it is christmas eve

and the middle aged folks in the Walmart

are preparing to kedge.

 

there is charisma and desperation in the parking lot.

breedbates, shredded dolls, and plastic twisty-ties.

draffsacks and flashing light.

and fire.

 

and then there are the quiet folks,

telling their stories to Evan Williams,

whispering to Burnett and McCormick,

tears in their eyes,

laughing all the way up Heaven Hill

with as much chaos inside them

as the pageant permits.

 

"It is what you make of it," they say.

 

"It is whatever you want it to be."

 

 

exit 37

in

sometimes i think about how easy it would be

to violently swing the wheel to the off ramp

and veer away in the opposite direction

through the briar and the buildings,

the litany of functions and tasks,

away from everyone and everything.

 

sometimes i think about the release.

 

to try out life as a complete stranger

in a vacant town

 

and mulch my voice

into that of

an old man

 

living for nothing

 

but music

and wind.

 

L’OCCITANE En Provence GEL DOUCHE VETYVER

in ,
I was standing in my shower this morning,
standing there, leaning up against the wall,
hunched over,
feeling the heat mix the concrete in my shoulders
and the steel in my neck,
and watching the years of steam
rise off my battered mind
like a sad and sterile chimney.

I was standing there,
melting
when I reached over to grab my French shampoo...
and noticed...
that there, indented on the bottle,
was braille.

Yes, braille.
My shampoo bottle had braille on it.

I never noticed that before.
Right there over the label.
Braille.
Right there, over the French text that I could not read anyway, was braille,
something else I could not read.

I received this fancy shampoo with the purchase of a new suitcase.
It is special.
It is cheap suitcase-gift basket-shampoo.
And this whole time, I thought the label was wrinkled and old.
But it wasn't.
It was new and progressive.

I think that pretty much sums it up for me.
Do you know the old saying: "Can you see the writing on the wall?"

Well, my response to that is this:
"No. No, baby, I don't see the writing on the wall.
But I did notice the braille on the shampoo.
And just like you,
or that fucking wall,
or the swirling Universe around me...

I have no idea what it's trying to tell me.
And I sure as hell ain't learning to read French braille."

new license.

in
I lost my license a couple weeks ago and had to get another one. On the way to the tag agency I stopped by Michael's Craft Store and grabbed some stickers and stuck them on my face.



Also, if you look closely, you can see a fake bluejay peeking his head into the bottom of the photo. I should have used a cardinal, it wouldn't have blended in with my shirt so much. The lady at the tag agency was confused and reluctant to cooperate, but after I spouted off some bullshit about how "the law only requires the eyes and mouth to be unobstructed in a government issued I.D.", she agreed to take the photo. Afterwards, she xeroxed it and hung it up on their wall and I wasn't sure what to think about that. She'll probably get in trouble by her supervisor for this. Or I will.

I am very excited about getting my license renewed in a couple months. I'm thinking about changing the words on my head every time I get a new license and writing a long run-on sentence over time. As my hair disappears I'll probably be able to fit some pictures up there. Maybe even a giant exclamation mark.

Year 1: "Help"
Year 2: "Me"
Year 3: "I'm"
Year 4: "Getting"
Year 5: "Older"
Year 6: "And"
Year 7: "Crazier."

my own personal rock avalanche

in
in a flash,

and without any rational intent,
thirty thousand
boulders suddenly
leapt from my hill.

friends will tell you,
that it was an awful avalanche.

and it was.

my boulders were jagged and coarse,
each one of them,
and they busted through my brain
as if it was tissue paper.

their shadows filled every pore beneath
every eye
and in their wake,
they left nothing,
but mangled homes
and patches of crust and grit.

they crushed every nay-sayer into cinder
and they roared through the throat,
bellowing,
like ancient, rusty cellos,
taunting the deaf with false vibrations
and blinding all reason.

no village stood a chance and
everyone ran...

or at least they tried.

hands were often raised
before impact
and all teeth
were ground to powder.

the sound was unbearable.

the echoes,
heard across the valley,
were soft and unsettling

like whispers under the bed

or blasts of air
on an eardrum,

and they hinted
towards a mysterious,
confusing,
undying need.

an emotional craving.

needless to say,
my rocks were once rich and pliable earth,
and much more manageable than they are today.

honestly, i don't know why they fell.

one can only assume,
that with their aging,
and with the hardening
of their insides,
they became too heavy

and collapsed

no longer sure
of where to go
or what to be.


I Want to Kill My Doctor

So, I've been having trouble sleeping lately and decided to call my doctor to request some medication to help knock me out. A few months ago I tried a brand of sleeping medication called temazepam and it really helped a great deal, so I figured I should mention it to him.

Well, he fucked me over.

The brand name for the drug temazepam is Ristoril.

I asked my doctor for Ristoril.

Turns out he sent me Vistaril
or hydroxyzine pamoate,

which is also known as:

A FUCKING ANTIHISTAMINE FOR DOGS.

Here it is at PedMeds.Com

I took one tonight and had a raging anxiety attack.

Apparently hydroxyzine pamoate is also prescribed for humans and is non-addictive which generally translates to: This medication doesn't work and is more than likely ONLY GOOD FOR DOGS.

I hate my doctor so much right now.

I Find it Funny

The day that I started directing national television is also the day I stopped making art with substance.

Funny how that worked out.

Although I'm still making "funny" videos, the other side of my art:
the songs, the paintings, and the poetry have all but dried up for the time being.

Hopefully come November, the music will return with the winter.  I do miss Miss Misery sometimes.  She's been my muse for quite a while.  Admiral Apathy, Lady Laziness, and Colonel Comfort are not to be confused with Miss Misery.  They are the true enemies here, leading their armies to the gray places in life and molding solid, vacant, beige personalities from people once brimming with color and life.

Were you more alive yesterday than you are today?  I kind of feel that way right now.  And I don't like it one bit.

Rocklahoma 1

in
So... I am now at my new (temporary) home, Los Angeles, after a pretty hard drive.

My partner in crime, Vanessa Bonet, flew out to Oklahoma to ride back with me. Beforehand we joined my Texas friends up in Pryor, Oklahoma for the 2nd annual Rocklahoma festival which is like a hair metal version of Coachella. I have never seen more mullets, g-strings, and confederate flags in my entire life. And it was wonderful.

Rocklahoma was a breath of fresh air. For years now I've been going to art festivals and artist gatherings and Rocklahoma was the exact opposite of EVERYTHING I've ever been involved with the past decade. In fact, there is NO REASON that I should have been at Rocklahoma. And that felt great.

Here are some pictures I snapped at the festival. I love the first three in this series. I think they might be the best pictures I've ever taken.























I have a ton of pictures. I will post more in the next blog.

If this retarded thing doesn't make you happy... NOTHING will

Nicole sent this to me and I absolutely love it. It's cheesy as shit, but everything about it is perfect: the quality of the film, the subject matter, the hair, and the awful music. It all works. It makes me so friggin' happy. So freakin', friggin', fuckin' HAPPY.







Although... I will say, it would've been kinda funny if the lion just mauled the shit out of them, but I suppose that would've defeated the purpose and the message.

All in all, I give it five stars and two hundred thumbs, pointed in all directions.

My Playing Cards

So... a friend of mine is putting together a deck of custom playing cards. He wants various members of Gigsville (a large Burning Man artist community) to each create an image for the center of a single card. It was too much fun so I ended up making 3 images using photoshop, some stock images, and my digital camera.

Now I kind of want my own deck.
These turned out so awesome-weird.

(This is not my Dad, by the way)






Walmart at Midnight

I've blogged about this before... but I must say, I LOVE going to Walmart at midnight. I can't handle Walmart during the day, there's simply too much sweat, too many people, and too many BARGAINS. But at NIGHT, ahhhhh, it's a different animal entirely. All the creatures have been tranquilized and everyone appears as if they just crawled up from the bottom of the sea floor.

Tonight, I witnessed a basket full of wonderful moments. While taking a shortcut through the men's clothing section, I came across two Mexican men yelling at each other, each tugging on a single package of underwear. And in the parking lot I saw a 16 year old girl splashing around in a gross puddle of water by herself. Soon thereafter, I saw her large mother come barreling out of a mini van screaming, "DAMN IT! GET OUT OF THAT WATER, MARCI! NOW!". In the pharmaceutical section I saw a tough looking cowboy with extremely pointy boots smelling moisturizer and in the pet section I saw a clerk accidentally rip open a 50 pound bag of dog food, spill it all over the aisle, and then just walk away.

The Midnight Walmart Masquerade.

Sometimes you just have to sit back and relish the American monster. We are a nation of tubby Caligulas, and like some sick and twisted Svengali that's been staring into the mirror a bit too long, I've taught myself to enjoy watching the waterfall weave into the wastewater.

And though I may speak as if I'm separate from this creature,
lord knows I've done my share.

Heck, as much as any of us try to polish it,
we're still just one, big
rusty nail.

Granted,
when you look at it under a microscope,
some parts might be a tad rustier than others.

In my basement room... with a needle and a spoon...

I have begun my first photographic series.
I've never made a series before.
It's going to be called:
The MAGNET of CLUTTER and CHAOS.

Here's the first piece.
Somehow, a photo about clutter and chaos became the first "sexy" photo I've ever taken.

It's called:
"In My Basement Room... with a Needle and a Spoon... and a bunch of Other Crap"
It features Angela GoLightly.

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Click Thumbnail to Enlarge

Too Strange to Predict

in

They claimed that there in the woods,
among dogs of doubtful parentage,
in a club of scrub oaks,
by a pitched weather-beaten tent,
grated with buckshot,
laid the snarled remains
of his body

All the while,
under a culvert,
by the Red River,
he watched as the searchlights
fanned through the thicket,
twixt the branches and the stems,
sliding shadows across his face,
like old, familiar
prison bars

How could they have known
he had taken residence in a condemned theater
with the mongrels and the psychopaths,
learned to numb despondent thoughts,
practiced his aim,
and forged a shooting iron
from old railroad spikes

How could they have known
that he was prepared to fight back,
had been through all of it before,
knew the back roads, the bridges, the fields,
and absolutely refused to die by anyone's hand
but his own.

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