Here are some pictures of what I’ve been up to and some excerpts from recent emails describing those things.

(more…)

Ultimate slow/fast week. I’ll post my good Obama being president joke later. As of right now, it sure looks like I’m moving to New York. If you have a job lead for me, get in touch.

(more…)

Saturday night =

1) the number of times I have watched the Seventh Seal while doing work over the last eight years
2) Geno + Alice tearing each other apart all over the house forever
3) Kynar House of the Future built from the ground up
4) instances throughout history where a person cooks one giant pancake while NPR sputters and chirps away in another room (not bothered about doing a good job of making four decent and shapely pancakes, but by oneself and hungry)
5) litterboxes I have known and feared
6) cats I have been allergic to
7) neighbors I have heard through walls
8) neighbors I have seen through windows
9) cars that slowed down on Susquehanna Ave in front of my house and scared me nightly 11pm circa 1991
10) last night my brother texted me at 2:38am the following:

Ever get drunk and feel awful like u have the weight of the world on your shoulders and you cant articulate the love u have for those who are closest to you

11) fingers scored from strings
12) work all day on the couch and move upstairs to work all night on the other couch

finished inking markers poster five days after the fact, fake tour last weekend ruled, playing on Monday at big pink, working non-stop + working non-stop, haven’t been home in a week, listened to two of the Tower Recordings records today and totally felt it, lots of cleaning to do tomorrow

Caution: Cryptic

\/\ \/ \/\ \//
L.I.F.E.
“Just trying to get through the day without any incidents, and hobbies are for passing the time.”

Tirath Singh Nirmala – Bluster Cragg and Awe – “Faleaflowstream.” Thanks bro I needed that.

Bom bom, Have a nice dream

Ex-Cocaine – Keep America Mellow: None of my friends like this record and they all make fun of it when I play it. Ben Caves in Lexington managed to bro down with these dudes in Missoula and was there in the basement when they did their thing, somewhere across the smoke, and wow, someone agrees with me that this is the best hippie band. Listened to this on repeat all summer while I knocked down trees with a sawzall, sweating into dissolving t-shirts, pants giving way until I cut them off, pockets all ripped out and full of holes, mosquitos in Mike’s house hovering on my legs, piling bricks into a perfect chimneys to aerate the ground, to release ancient underground fires. Brightest saddest summerfade on flat tire bikes and concussed brains on Chestnut Street bridge, dumb riffs and drug smoke and singing the July tunes drunk on August nights. Saddest brightest most straightforward and unexpected psych beast, just like verything in my everything.

The boys took me to Poughkeepsie on Saturday, rode with them in the back seat passenger side. Michael fell asleep to the Converge record. I am starting a Mindflayer-style band called Drugdealer with the next awesome drummer who doesn’t give a shit that approaches me about it with any level of seriousness, if Jake doesn’t get on it first. I knocked some people over on an ice sheet and everything happened and happened and happened again.

Wrapping up my computer job, feels good to be near completion. Doing another one and another one. Never been so busy, too busy to set up action and wildness.

And it’s already all such old old news. Might go on tour with them for a while in May, might sing in the woods with Pink Des dudes tomorrow, what else is new / what can ever be new.

Tatter Blurts:

Sleeps ferocious while hand caresses the satin time-slip. and cares for these times. and are the mess

American mouth wonders aloud, What next, where do we go next, what do we do now.

…New year haze…

Year started with tinnitus and waves of Jersey sweat from shoving crushing shoulders and backs. The saddest $30 lesson: not 20 anymore. Couldn’t get drinks, couldn’t dance, they didn’t play Helter Skelter. There was a Nazareth video playing, which may have been a good sign.

Everything Is Always Getting Better Always. Where my year of the pig bros at?

Woke up from a dream with saliva running from my 3AM mouth. Earliest I’ve been to sleep in weeks and up from dreams before I’m usually done to begin with. I was in a bathroom of a giant hotel that was hosting Jesus Lizard and Butthole Surfers in the back by the pool. I took a break to get outside and had to wear a white sticker on my hand; I had lost the pink bracelet and my shirt. Walking out down the tiled mosaic floor behind an older man, totally drunk and wearing a ragged suit, walking very slowly. I went upstairs instead of outside. I thought the line upstairs would be shorter and it was empty. The doors were made of polished wood and the floors were clean, the toilets ivory and gold. I had diarrhea and a man looked over the top and I dove out on him, he said what’s wrong with checking to see if you needed extra toilet paper? I told him I had caught him checking to see if I had extra toilet paper earlier in a different bathroom too, and that he was following me. He said well what if I shoot you.

Earlier I had tried to throw tennis balls to my brother and my uncle waist deep in the river. I could only throw them a few feet and the tide kept carrying them back. Earlier I asked my brother if my grampa was in the mob and he said he couldn’t say I and cried. Earlier I walked on a wall past oldest trees at the furthest reaches and up through a cone mouth of wooden stakes that only opened one way, pulled myself up and was on the top of the hotel, out in the city night above everything, and a woman below said “This is all you get.”

OSPREYS tomorrow in Wilmington delaware at that jawn MOJO13. Playing with bad-weed and harshed mellows noise bro Wether, Pink Deserts doing that ugly swirl and Northern Valentine playing the “rock?” sounds.

Wilmington is only 10 minutes from south philly. You can stop to check out Jesus With the Eyes and still make it in 20. Show is at 9:30.

We jammed for an hour today – Bonsky told us to turn it down. New shit with the cello and new tricks is way nice. Incredibly psyched for tour, tell your far flung bros to check it out.

january 18 columbus cafe bourbon st
january 19-20 gambier oh kenyon college
january 21 ??? lexington area ??? anywhere between columbus and nashville – get in touch if you can help this happen
january 22 nashville chris cherry blossoms’ joint
january 23 ??? atl / athens region ??? same thing holler
january 24 columbia sc the whig with KGB graffiti bros + stoked to see k sheild after not returning his email
january 25 durham nc broad st cafe with temple of bon matin
january 26 charlottesville the tea bizarre with matthew playing drums, going to project shogun assassin and play three notes for the whole thing then fall on a sword.

All weirdness and heavy-headed… serious deja-vu in the club last night. We played a tough set, ragged by technical problems throughout, continuing curse of the p.a. = can’t get the right levels, can’t hear anything, bad feedback, emboldened by borrowed amps = falling on my face. Played an old-style guitar thing that didn’t work too well, couldn’t hear mike at all; second one was mic tricks, not bad, would’ve benefitted from the jug’s presence. Third one was key, cello on his side and I played the new march with crushed bass… in all it was nice to play and good to get difficulties sorted before heading out. Naturally we knew the dudes – recognized Wether from somewhere, knew Pink Deserts bros from the church. Jason and the Argonauts was playing on loop at the bar, saw the skeleton warriors rising up three times.

Couldn’t get out of bed this morning, woke up completely terror-domed. No food in the house but not too hungry… genghis dudes practicing new riffs downstairs all morning, probably laid in bed and listened for an hour before I finally got it together to climb down to the dirty floor. Toenails and paper room grit stuck to the bottoms of sweaty feet, a room feeding back. Dreamed I could just sleep through it all and not ever have to get out of bed, perfect stasis up there in the loft, nobody would come to check or bother, I’d never get hungry, just keep slipping in and out of sleep while the genghis dudes riff and the light comes and goes, distant smell of Clay breakfasts and drug cavern classic rock sound, carpet growing longer and thicker, buckling under my loft like a crushed caterpillar, a leech on an arm under squeezing fingers. Found Nutty Steph’s christmas pres while I was cleaning, was my late breakfast from far hills, and I was in that tower and the sun was setting again and again:

Spent the afternoon re-sorting it all, clean paper here, half-dones here, dones here. 2007 marches on and I am packing that ship. Tonight going to trade noise musics with Pink Ds, hopefully check out Jared’s band after missing it too many times. Recorded an hour yesterday, sent four emails, played and still went to bed thinking, What do I have to show for my day? Unbelievable.

Dude it’s 4AM on Christmas eve why am I up? I’m already done from having slept awfully last night and there was a time when this would be because I couldn’t wait for Christmas. It was just general anxiety. I dreamed a man was putting his thumb on my forehead and trying to impart all knowledge unto me through that finger, but he couldn’t do me this service unless I relaxed while he did. I tried to think of only the color Yellow but the yellow ideal wasn’t enough to chill me out and in dreams I shook and shook. He said if I didn’t loosen my mind his finger would go through my literal skull and I would die. A beautiful woman there cried and smiled and I cried and told her, When I finally achieve this state, I will go back to the past and find you there. Heavy bro—

It is 4AM and Christmas is underway. Midnight mass and the usual great aunts who I see only once a year.

My grandmother got my mom a hot dog roasting machine like you would see at a convenient mart.

Playing too many video games, feeling seasonally affected, blah blah. I always think I’ll get work done when I come up here but I get too put off of everything and end up awake at odd hours, red-eyeing same walls and ceilings, on the super sixteen regress through harsh Internet sunrise backed by techno drums of death. This time around I’m sleeping in the attic and that’s a welcome change but I’m still not getting anything serious done. Drew multiple pages for OSPREYS zines (big -> small joints, not eighth-sized, so actually a semi-accomplishment) but it’s all obsessive shit, tons of small lines vibrating.

I am hoping once Christmas is done I’ll settle. Saw in the mass book tonight that they call the weeks outside of Lent and Advent “Ordinary Time.” I had forgotten about that, “Ordinary Time.” See future thing about that too tired.

Tour planning is happening too. Can’t wait for Ordinary Time and driving back out. Shaping up to be a fine ride and a killer set of shows. More tomorrow live from opening my presents – got tons of work to do tomorrow afternoon after I wake up from what’s shaping up to be a long nap, will undoubtedly have more to say with a clear head.