The short story is that I now live in Providence. The long story is written on all kinds of walls and surfaces between here and Philadelphia and as far up as Johnson VT; you can ask me about it if you run into me.

Readout of the basics follows.

WORK WORK I am presently unemployed during the day, and spend most of the morning working on this problem. I work two late shifts as the night janitor at the Cable Car cinema on the east side, where my roommate Adam works as a projectionist, and helped plug me in. If anyone needs anything done up here during the normal hours, I can be your man.

MEDIA Last week I read Harold Brodkey “First Love and Other Sorrows.” I recently finished “The Tin Drum.” I saw “Waltz with Bashir,” “The Watchmen,” “Over the Edge” (totally awesome and essential), “Fishing With John,” a night of short “private” film care of Magic Lantern at the Cable Car and a night of old film at AS220. I have seen the bands National Grid, Aids Wolf, Tinsel Teeth, US Girls (A+ and the only actually affecting live sound I’ve heard in a while – this is her on WFMU) and Chrome Jackson. I have heard six poets read at the book store and then helped at a reading of James Joyce’s The Dead which I enjoyed a lot more than when I first read it seven years ago. I have listened to about a billion new records.

FUN WORK I am learning to paint with gouache and am sketching several ideas on larger sheets of very nice paper that I will maybe paint if I get comfortable, ink otherwise.

I did a new sketchbook zine, Ospreys #9, see dogchirp.com; there’re still a few copies left in my coat pocket.

“Six Stories from Kokomo” which I wrote at VSC is going to be in the new issue of a magazine that Anna Wolfe works on, Untitled #4, coming out soonish. If my assumption is correct there will be more copies of that in existence than of all of the zines and newspapers and prints I’ve ever printed or photocopied combined, which rules in a hilarious man/mountain way.

I’m finishing a new fiction that I am going to release (aka photocopy) in rather small print on an 11×17 with a thing I was working on in January on the back; more on that as it develops.

WHAT ELSE My yard is huge, my house is drafty but beautiful, and I totally love living in PROVIDENCE and you should come and visit me if you want to, because I think you might like it here too.

#1: It was the Year of The Skaters

The Skaters – Dark Rye Bread
The Skaters – Physicalities of the Sensibilities of Ingrediential Stairways
Pacific Rat Temple Band – Tan Kim (Boa Paradise)
90210 – s/t
James Ferraro – Marble Surf
Vodka Soap – Un Chand Pyramidelier
Nirvana – Body of Consciousness/Uguiya to Jeep by Iguana Greenwave
Teotihuacan – Live Smokeshows from Inside the Ciguri Cave Hazed Diamonds with Windswept Hair

After three or four years of ambivalence toward the Skaters family, something severe ticked over in my mind sometime in February and I fell for them bigtime. The eight releases listed above constituted a basement work/neighborhood walk/long drive/crushing dawn routine that I probably ran almost a hundred times last year. The Pacific Rat Temple Band (vivid slow-marching torchlit underground worship sessions) and the 90210 (E.L.P. hanging out and playing toy instruments over an episode of Night Rider on the other side of the wall and KILLING IT) discs both easily saw three times more play than anything else during this horrendous year, a year in my many basements that very definitively belonged to James Ferraro.

#2: Utopia – Disco Jets

This came to me by way of Susy by way of Ben. In January I wrote this about it =

“This is the confusing and brilliant 70s VHS disco document from Rundgren’s band Utopia, that as the story goes, Rundgren found too embarrassing to release at the time. It’s filled with way, way over-saturated bulging-crotch leotard guitars and iron-pumping thumbs-up synths on top of ridiculously busy, crazily synched background racket. The compositions, mostly all driving and super bright (there’re covers of the national anthem and the Trek theme), are simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic – a confusing combination in the first place, but listening to them thirty years after the record’s recording in the actual future makes the effect downright weird. The particular 70s nostalgia documented here is no longer even vaguely relatable, and the 70s future vision put forth never came to pass. They wanted space travel in golden ships and they got Youtube. Who wins?”

#3: Kurt Vile – Constant Hitmaker

Killer Philadelphia space music. Favorite “songs” record of the year.

#4: Kites – Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship

I listened to this almost every day from August through October. Perfect vision and portrait of working alone in the dark. I will someday write 15,000 words about Kites and post it on a blog that is only readable deep, deep underground.

#5: Horacio Vaggione – La Maquina de Cantar

(No A-side on the upload above but whatever.) Allen came through town and played me this in January; it saw regular play in my second room at Random House through maybe March. When I heard it I posted it elsewhere online and blurbed it with this:

“The A-side and title track is a jerky electronics frowner that never hits it, but the B-side, “Ending,” is a solid night out. Too dense and endless to call prog and with way too much movement to call drone, I rock hard and completely sink into it whenever it comes on. The first eleven minutes play out a wall of endless toppling synthesizers warping urgently in on themselves. As they approach the event horizon and nearly invert completely, the fever suddenly lifts, and in the goofiest change in tone I’ve heard since Arthur Brown “Fire,” they begin to play 1970s public television fundraiser bumper music. Then that, in turn, begins to warp, decay, and zoom endlessly in on itself, like a newspaper cartoon pressed into Silly Putty and stretched into oblivion. Simultaneously heavy, cheesy, meditative and disorienting.”

#6: Michael Hurley – Live 7/17/76

I listened to this for the first time on the drive up to VSC in September and then played it pretty regularly through Thanksgiving. Lonely road folk. “Break up music.”

#7: Bone Awl – Meaningless Leaning Mess

Relentless evil on smudgy disintegrating film.

#8: Fantastic Magic – Witch Choir

Loved this especially around when we went on band tour. Lysergic and dizzying/swooping island neon folk that’s somehow still precious/tacky and weirdly grounded – like The Tower Recordings’ lost Cancun record.

#9: Blues Control – Snowday b/w Paul’s Winter Solstice

The best band of 2006 and still the best band in New York’s Christmas record. I listened to this thirteen times in a row when I got it.

#10: Kylie Manogue – Fever

I painted a lot listening to this on repeat in March, and then listened to it at Work Group in September.

Honorable mentions =

ANGELDUST / M Ax Noi Mach / Big Ocean live in Philly
ANGELDUST when Kites played at PIFAS, M Ax Noi Mach at Bobo’s and Big Ocean at INC Philly = live horrors that loudly exclaimed what it is to live in that city.  AHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH!

Ashtray Navigations – In Liquido Bravo
Ashtray Navigations – Srpls Provncl Hrbs
Generally I wasn’t too stoked on most of the stuff that came from UK drone teams this year, but these two Ashtray Nav releases hit it. In Liquido Bravo’s first track is an excellent spaghetti western slow jam and Srpls Provncl Hrbs finishes with Croak Song, which is like a tuned up version of the phase/flutter of How Can I Hand You a Diamond from Monument to British Rock, which I liked so much last year that I made a video for it.

Animal Collective/Black Dice – Wastered 12″
Man do I wish AC would go back to making slow, long metal bowl loop music with fried vocals instead of making songs.

Arthur Russell – Calling Out of Context
Played dominoes in New York with Julio and Leah listening to this. Haunting and shit-sweat karaoke vocals over sometimes groovy sometimes confusing beats.

Fennesz – Black Sea
Excellent record from my #1 of the year 2002. I haven’t spent a lot of time with it yet and don’t “love” it, but I did write this ridiculous/ecstatic thing to my brother when I first heard it: “It is like staring sunblind into a cold landscape through an elaborately frosted window, while a fire is burning behind you, someone is washing dishes in the other room, and you slowly fall asleep after eating an awesome dinner, and your mind moves through the frosted glass and explores the secret white worlds way down beneath distant frozen lakes.”

Ghostface Killah – Ironman
Ludacris – Red Light District
Most played rap records of the year.

Birchville Cat Motel – Seventh Ruined Hex
Natural Snow Buildings – Song for Laurie Bird
Pocahaunted and Robedoor – Mouth of Prayer
Honorable mention to these three high-flying repetitive guitar droners, all of which I listened to numerous times as I drove back and forth between Philly and Boston last January through March or April.

Portishead – Third
Things might have been different if this came out five years ago. Even so, I listened to it many, many times, notably with Davey and Mike on the way to Tallahassee on tour in April or May or whenever.

Bonjour from inside of the holiday echo chamber, from which I wanted to post a short notice with December updates. If you live in Northeastern Pennsylvania and want to hang out, get at me, I usually get extremely bored around 10pm. If you don’t live here but might want to email with me for a day or two, my email address is still tom//at//dogchirp//com.

Work Work = I will work for you anywhere in the United States or abroad, get in touch if you have a full time salaried job.

Fun Work = I painted/embroidered two big clothing patches this month but forgot to photograph one of them (the other is above). I started brainstorming a new video yesterday that I may or may not decide to start working on next week, if for no other reason than to goof around animating and playing with the new Flash, which I haven’t used on any personal projects yet. I am in the middle stage of putting together a critical mass of text that I am going to edit into whatever I wind up using for January 15 application deadlines; this work will likely wind up abridged across Test Patterns #3 or No Such Thing as News #3, unless someone else winds up wanting to deal with it. I have a giant pile of sketches that are going to get scanned and may or may not appear on this blog, as well as in those aforementioned print projects, and I have a design for a painting that I’m hoping to do the week after christmas.

Schedule = Planning on going to Philly this weekend, but not totally sure what the deal with that will be, then back home. Will likely be around New England for New Years, and then hopefully moving soon after that pending work options.

Last week I was in New York. I stayed with Christi some nights and Leah others. I got to hang out with Kathryn, Aaron, Julio and Jeff, and I ran into Sarah. I rode my bike all over. I did some work with Emily and Corey and I had a great lunch with Dan. I got lost in the rain while I rode to Max’s house, where I watched Futurama and ate a burger. I ate delicious sweet potato quasadillas, but I didn’t sleep too well.

Arson in the new development

Patrick and Scout

I’m not numbering this one because I feel like the cycle of my leaving camp -> going to VSC -> trying to work there -> getting home and being like “????” is over. Now I have a whole new set of things to be like “????” about (strange fires in Providence, moving to New York very soon, new total life stupidity/fugues that weren’t visible or predictable when this past numbered set began in September), so once things stabilize enough that I have an okay idea of where I’ll be from week to week, I’ll restart the numbered entry system on a schedule again.

The short “Lately” recap —>New York = I got to hang out with Emily, babysit Pearl, rode over the Williamsburg bridge for the first time, played dominoes and ate burritos and watched Ruthless People with Leah, dinner/bar with Katie and Alex, meteor shower thing with camp team, wrote a lot of emails.

In Boston = I went to the Stairwell team’s show at BU, talked to Ben, watched the new Bond, ate Redbone’s, sushi and Girardelli squares, almost played Earthopoly with Sus, drove home with Patrick super late.

Home so far = Haven’t been in the basement yet, but today nearly finished a long-outstanding painting, did the firstish round of mailouts re: darcone triangle to stores, slept a ton, played chess in real life once, played chess on the computer a lot of times.

Current plan = Back in New York by next weekend. This morning I am going to the craft store with my dad for a black friday sale. More substantial update or whatever soon.

Past life

I added the Black Dove paintings to the site. Otherwise this is a boring blog marking time entry if there ever was one. Here’s what’s up.

Since last time: In Philly I went to Halloween and saw best band ANGELDUST, went to the World Series riot on Broad Street and saw many stupid and hilarious things, hung out in the dirt at FDR and near the oil cans, and saw cops disperse a crowd that gathered to watch a six story pinata get destroyed by a wrecking ball (actually true).

Where I am: I’m home now. Tomorrow I’m voting and then driving to VSC, where I’ll be until Saturday, and then heading to New York indefinitely with the next schedule consideration of any kind being Monday of Thanksgiving weekend, when my brother gets home, and thus the latest I plan to.

What I’m working on: A new blog, a complete overhaul of the Ospreys web documentation in which I plan to upload, catalogue, and explain everything I have pertaining to the band, and more ambiently (i.e. probably not much until next week), on Test Patterns #3 and my fake catalog with Bocksel. I’m also knee deep in mailout hell, the tormented place on earth where I have to organize and send out all of my Darcone-related packages to everywhere for eternity, while meanwhile I can’t find my stapler anywhere. I’m reading Toni Morrison “Jazz”.

I feel like I need to note before I close that I’m a little sick at being back on square one re: putting in serious hours writing, but that I don’t think I’m making excuses when I say that the total upheaval and temporariness of everything in my life has made it all but impossible to set specific times and places to go and make work. May I read this in January in Vermont and immediately turn to make what I need to.

Giant pinata

Some dog looking at Mikey

For the moment, this was an acceptable way to park

Totaled SEPTA stop, smashed out Robinson, riot cops

The last few months of work-work have been extremely productive (re: especially a near-complete redo of the Mark Dion site, which I produced a ton of work for and did all of the building with Lord Whimsy art directing; a game I did some video work on for discoverychannel.com; a Flash project I produced with Hall Media crew), but as my two main, long term office projects both coincidentally end exactly as camp starts, and as our project management and workflow methods have evolved to the point that there isn’t even so much sidebar/cleanup work for me to do anymore anyway, the time to call it a wrap seemed perfect. I enjoy my final Beer Thursday at Lime Projects after the Dion install on the 20th, and what a mighty and beautiful two years it’s been. My infinite thanks and debt and permanent salutes to Laris and Kendra from every desk and city I work at from here out.

In conjunction with leaving my job, I decided it would be productive to move out of the random house and see what’s up in the world. I’ll be in Philadelphia until June 30th and then will be traveling and at camp until the end of August. After that is anyone’s guess. Feel free to contact me if you need work done; pretty much wherever you are I can come to you.

I haven’t worked on very much of public interest since band tour, other than a slow moving book/cd project that documents that move. If you want a copy of it, it’s still in development hell (which really just means done by mid-July), but you can have one for free if you get at me before I print them up. Otherwise, I’m in the middle of a fellowship application for a writing program in the fall (marking the first time I’ve drafted anything in probably four years), and am generally enjoying the early summer via bike/Men’s Group as much as possible before the hot street doldrums and mosquitos roll in and I head out.

In normal totally boring recounting of the week’s efforts news, I spent Wednesday with Lexie at the bar, Thursday in Newark airport with Susy, Friday at my old house on 43rd with Jon and the Team, Saturday with Ben and Mike at the Wiese / D. Charles Spear shows and eventually the train bridge (word to Chris Bee Mask who lives here now and gave me his new killah tape), today at the Magnet City thing downtown and then in my slippers and long weekend yawns. Tonight I’m going to see Matthew from Charlottesville’s band; I guess those kids all live up here or in Brooklyn now.

Horizon items =
- Ospreys / Robedoor / Pocahaunted / Natalie Wiseblood / Woods June 28th.
- Ospreys / Wilde Stallions C60 on wether’s new label
- New book in July before I go, as above
- I will be in New York June 11th-15th on camp/nonsense business
- One or two new website ideas, maybe for sooner, maybe for later

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At home with my dogs, February y.o.o.b.w.hz., 1808

Click here to view the embedded video.

I saw Forrest Gump for the first time last night. Bonsky used to say “seat’s taken!” all the time and I never knew where this was from. The part where he runs across America over and over was a pleasant surprise.

I had a dream the other night that I was at my gramma’s house with my cousins, standing on the old plank back porch circa I don’t even know, early 90s, standing under the tin roof where me and Maria were when we saw the bolt of lightning strike a few yards away by the pool, and we were looking out into the field. The entire dream was just this: that the field was still there. Earlier when I went into our kitchen, my heart skipped a beat and I wondered suddenly where Robyn’s old cutting board and the old shelves with all of the pots and pans had gone. Last week at my gramma’s, even though the field has been gone since I got back from camp, my disgust was fresh at the fact that the paths are gone, gone, gone. When we were in the Wissahickon yesterday, we reached a sign that read “INDIAN ->”. Since it dictated that we turn right, we stepped over it and went forward. Eventually we arrived at the foot of the above statue, placed a little over a hundred years ago on its hill. Across the river is a sign that points up the hill toward it, and even reading it the statue is hard to spot. The sign says, “According to legend,” super absurd, I know, “the Lenape chief is watching his people move west.” I’m going to build a small statue to the naked indian when I next visit home, and hope, according to the legends, that I’ll find him in some western fields and finally get to ask him about all of the things that’ve been on my mind since last time.

What can I say? Sunday is the only day that works. I had a fine conversation with Brian this afternoon while I drank my coffee and had my fake sausage and cheesy eggs. I listened to all of the radio shows and did twenty five pages in CX Cult. I have less than 75 more to go before it’s done, which means I did between 250-300 in the first month of the project, which isn’t really bad by any means but less than half of what I had planned. When this book’s done, it’ll represent the first 17% of a proposed 2000 drawings for a video I’m doing for later this fall.

I also finished installing a new patch on my jacket fashioned from a sleeve of my favorite blue button down shirt, which I had worn in all seasons of the past six years. I got it at Bryn Mawr Hospital Thrift with Zach one January afternoon of my freshman year of college, and I decided one afternoon about a month ago that I needed to retire it. I think it was the only material relic from those days still surviving in its original form in my daily life. It may be the last shirt I bought for myself, which is incredible. Little scraps of it are around my bedroom floor.

Around five I convinced myself that I needed to go to a show tonight, to see Pippi Bone Dust’s band VVLTVRE and Jared’s band RAWAR (both in caps? I don’t know). I did these four discs beforehand re: trades/gives and realized a way better way to build the CD boxes themselves.

Private Idiot #8-11

Best part of the day by far was the total paralysis that overcame me as I tried to leave the house around 7:30pm. I had my coat on, my backpack completely packed, my pant leg rolled up, my bike rebuilt and the tires pumped, and as I started to go out the door I froze in my tracks for three minutes. I walked my bike back to its starting point at the wall, went into the kitchen and had a glass of water. I drank it on the couch and thought “Do I need to leave the house,” and I kept thinking “No of course not, I can stay home and work.” This kind of sudden overwhelming agoraphobic episode hasn’t happened in about three years. Sitting on the couch, I was able to summon the energy to leave by arguing to myself that I would not allow myself to work or enjoy myself if I stayed in, because I would continue to regret not going out despite the fact that I didn’t technically need to or even particularly want to.

The ride was nice. I took my bike apart when I went to Boston whenever and hadn’t yet put it back together, re: the weather has been terrible for two weeks/I have been too busy watching Forrest Gump. Traded Jared a disc for a Wet Cement disc; gave Pippi a disc and bought one of her shirts. I got back and wasted the rest of the night, but I didn’t feel too bad about it.

At home with my dogs, February y.o.o.h.v.a.s.v., 2008

I’m not doing a great job of posting these on Sundays.

Last night me and Mike were in the middle of the usual records/beer/board games Gray House flop-out that horrendously replaced the ultra-productive December/early January videos/whiskey/drawing mode (what can I say other than that we apparently enjoy having many, many titanic godswars more than we enjoy having anything to show for our stupid days) when it started snowing and Mike decided to take the dog to the park.

Despite predictions and the observed weather that prompted the move out, There were no clouds in the sky. We stayed in the park for a frigid hour and watched the first eclipse I’ve seen in probably ten years. I remember standing in the spring night in my boy scout uniform watching Hale-Bopp and thinking, shouldn’t there be some sound or something for this? Shouldn’t there be some great clap that shatters windshields and sets off car alarms in order to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that the universe is indeed fucking gigantic, and check it out the moon is disappearing and then turning a weird red? I drank my beer and paced to keep my feet warm. Mike tried to get his dog to climb up onto the playground’s fort. Cops idled and watched us from the edge of the park – their tire tracks in the frozen mud shone in the red moonlight. The dog chewed a plastic water bottle and its crunch echoed loudly. We had a hard time setting up the board for game three when we went back inside because our hands had frozen.

Earlier, Amber bought me beer because I drove her around. This somehow seems relevant to my being able to linger in the park for an hour, play three games of godstorm and have what may or may not have been a killer Bavarian Kings-style band practice (to be decided). Even earlier, and this is only tangentially related, Davey joined us to drink 40s and plan a band tour (and play two games of godstorm).

Even earlier, Sunday, I was at my parents’ house. I riled up my baby cousins at my gramma’s, scared my brother John and played video games without thinking too hard about the big issues of the day. I beat my dad in chess twice (which feels weird, re: he used to constantly destroy me when I was 10 when we last played, and the game itself always felt like such a raw ego vs. ego Chronus/Zeus thing especially now re: our general disagreement on almost every matter in the world, not being used to having my weird family position validated by winning, feeling weird about getting older/my dad getting way older (he was only eight years older than I am now when I remember him at his youngest), etc.). I missed my brother, who is in Australia, and who I can’t call on the telephone. I watched many Hollywood movies and walked on the banks. I finished watching the Mighty Boosh and have, as ever, been drawing.

This week is almost over and I have no plans for the immediate future. Tonight I’m going to drop in on my old roommates at their show. I’m going to have band practice a couple times and work on finishing drinking the beer. I’m going to try to go to the park. And on.

Last Wednesday it was 70 degrees out and threatening rain so we went ahead and went to the Wissahickon anyway. Mike’s argument was the always compelling and strangely effective “it won’t rain if we don’t want it to.” After we ran through some hills, he pulled three ticks off of his pants, and I began to cough.

Little else happened this week. I had a fever, I drove to Boston with it, I languished there. On Sunday we went to Redbone’s after I finished coloring a shirt of Susy’s I started well over a year ago. I watched Karate Kid 3, Jurassic Park, part of Die Hard, Mysterious Skin and maybe two seasons of the Mighty Boosh on youtube.

While vibing out in my room last week, where the ground was completely covered in discarded clothes, dishes, assorted art refuse, towels, books and the rest, where the only light was from the harsh overheads or nothing, I dreamed that I went with a red tin can of gasoline to my cousin Michael’s house. He and his brother were inside lying on their stomachs watching TV while my Aunt Mary Pat and my Uncle Mike sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and eating salads. I threw the gasoline on the house’s white siding and threw the can under the tree in their back yard and set a match to it. The flame licked along under a panel until it burned in a straight line down the length of the house. I thought, I couldn’t not do this. I had to. But then I found a wet rag and went down along the line of flame, wiping it off of the house. I couldn’t do it with their garden hose because they would have heard from inside and come out, wondering why I would burn their house for nothing, with them inside, right in the afternoon. When I finished wiping out the fire I went inside to check on them and none of them looked up.

Normal readouts from the broken monitors at home: I stayed at Gray house last night and slept on the floor with Pumpkin, projects are moving along, playing music, planning a tour, the norm. At Amber’s school Nasir told me I was a good friend. This week I am catching up on many emails and tons of lost time both pretty much re: five days in the fever death bag, continuing to search for personal purpose in this stupid life, etc. I’m hoping to spend one night drinking red wine until I don’t want any more. I may visit my parents this weekend. Mike and I are meeting with Davey re: band tour.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I fell asleep at 2am on Saturday night after a fun but exhausting show and a final weary game of Godstorm with Mike and Amber. I woke up today at 10:30am but didn’t scrape up from beneath the ground until well after one. I watched the cold afternoon burn the walls in the increasingly classic home fashion: long hours drawing uncomfortable CX on the kitchen stool, black coffee, granola with milk and crushed trader joe oreos in there, Garrison Keyler like an old bell clanging in my 4th grade stomach. One night my parents came into my room while I was reading and my dad said, “Here,” and it was a clock radio. He plugged it in and tuned it to WVIA, and I listened to All That Jazz and then Echoes where I heard Nana Simopoulos “White Bird” and Mark Isham “The Woman in Gray.” Hearing even ten seconds of these goofy songs still makes me crumble into the adolescent night. While my parents and grandparents have grown younger and younger Garrison Keylor remains ancient and permanently distant.

My dad brought me the old couch on Saturday. It appears in our old family tapes and I haven’t seen it in about nine years. Fittingly, we ripped the top a little bringing it into the house, but it’s here and it’s fine. Bonsky and I rearranged the downstairs this afternoon to accommodate it, opting out of what I call “Random house classical” (tv bottom of steps, couch opposite) for a new approach, with couch where the communal computer desk was, TV where the barbi stacks were and dining room table + chairs where the old coffee table was, and bikes where the TV and beer refrigerator were. We found a punk patch dating from the Mike Straight era stapled to the wall behind the tape shelf that read “No War Between Nations / No Peace Between Classes,” featuring a dove carrying a molotov cocktail. I sprayed the walls with bleach water and wiped them with a sponge. I live here. When I say I am going home this is where I mean. My dad said to my mom, “You can never visit, you can never see it. He lives in total filth.” I look out over the back on Sunday afternoons here – behind me, out the window behind the stool – and I feel the same warmth from dead yards and bare trees that I feel at my grandparents’ house. As if my house is our old campsite in the gone woods that filled their backyard as recently as a year ago. As if when they were plowed under those tangled trees and the strange sand pits around them went underground and swam to me beneath the mud and the leaden soil, to sprout their vines beyond my window, to wind up over the fences and into the neighbors’ yards. My grampa snores with the TV and the fire turned on and my little cousins screaming and laughing. He has a dream that says, The naked indian moved to Thomas’s back yard.

My dad also brought me a lamp that he had in his and my mom’s room while I was growing up. He famously had a nightmare one night, got out of bed and, to my mother’s horror, punched it off of his night table while whimpering with wide sleeping eyes. I would convince myself every night when going to sleep that I would surely hear a burglar or kidnapper entering the house, and could wake in time to get my dad if I needed to. I slept through this and many other night episodes, but woke up once: one night with wide eyes I watched a single thin black hand part the curtains of my room from the outside enough for a head out in the dark on the roof to look in. I was paralyzed with fear and pulled the covers up above my head. In the morning I couldn’t tell if it had actually happened.

For dinner tonight I had black and white beans in olive oil with four mushrooms, an onion, four garlic cloves and a pepper all chopped in and all fried up into a delicious gray bean slop. Cook it up with cumin chili powder black pepper. Add rice and cheese when it’s done. I crushed some crackers on there and then added some hot sauce, also two pieces of toast. I cooked chicken again earlier this week with the same recipe as before but did a better job, mostly re: cooking longer on lower heat and adding stock gradually rather than all at once like a god damn idiot.

On Tuesday I start going to Amber’s school to read to two of her kids. On Friday or so I’m going to Boston. Tomorrow me, Mike and Sienna are completing the unbeatable proposal we’re working on.

Perhaps you have been reading this blog for the last seven weeks and wondering, “I wonder what he is going to do this Sunday?” Well hey, it looks like I’m writing about it right now. Megalos and home tales for Sunday January 27th for the magic year of our perfect vision and unopened eyes 2008. Less boring than the last two weeks. Pre-fold holler to my boy Jesse “The Kud” who was man enough to admit that he once read this blog.

Sunday styles were consistent. I drank black coffee and listened to A Prairie Home Companion. I drank tang. I cooked myself rapturous spiral cut pasta like so: garlic + chopped spinach + black beans in olive oil with black pepper, cumin and cayenne; throw the cooked pasta in there, crack two eggs on it, break a chunk of feta off, stir until consistent and the egg is cooked.

Earlier tonight my pizza recipe = throw a little pasta sauce on the dough but not a lot, chop an onion super fine and saute with garlic and chopped spinach and mushrooms in olive oil and black pepper, cook way down, spread out on the dough, grate some cheddar and parmesan on there, chop some olives and sun dried tomatoes to top it. Drink a beer and work some CX and listen to the bee mask tape while that monster comes together.

Both of these resulted in near drug frenzy levels of food coma. I am stoked to have finally emerged from burrito/beans and rice/pot of beans purgatory after what must have been six months of not actually cooking. It is good to be well fed and to lay on my floor watching youtube without the listlessness of a can of tuna for dinner and water for dessert. It is good to come home from the grocery store with more options than an egg sandwich.

I spent the rest of Sunday at Mike’s, where I drank two Yuengling Black and Tans. The day before, not that it matters re: the scope of this blog, but anyway I make the rules, I had the first glass of white wine I’ve enjoyed in about a year. Lenka used to give me white wine in the Christian house and we would watch American idol while I cooked chicken or fettucini alfredo or instant Indian food and Mike B’s beautiful dog would lie there with his big ears up. Mike Hall and I played two games of godstorm in which I was the greeks. We played music. We watched The Ten. I listened to Tom Waits on American Routes.

This week I’m assembling my portfolio and great statement of purpose for Sienna. We’re playing a fest on Saturday and my dad might bring me my couch. My brother is coming tomorrow. I’m going to Whimsy’s house on Wednesday. I’m on page 200 and some of CX Cult, a start I’m more than happy with, and hope to be twice as far by next week. I am going back to camp.

Here’s lookin at you kid

Private idiots #3-7

Skating

Wave caps ect

I am curious as to how it took me until the 7th entry in this series to realize that I had begun using this blog once again in a way that I said back when I decided to do the DUST project that I would no longer, i.e., doing my personal accounting on the Internet. Is this a generational or developmental problem? After twelve years on the Internet at least one and likely two entire years of my waking life must now have been spent staring into screens. Have I lost the ability to write along with my vision? Has my ability to coherently reflect become inextricably bound to the act of typing?

In any event, after a Saturday night spent basting in Wild Turkey, I spent Sunday watching the shadows move across the floor and walls and watching the green and gray winter pieces of my yard click in the wind. I ate two pieces of toast with butter, Tang and black coffee. I ate the third part of a chicken I cooked on Thursday. I ate a microwaved burrito with cheddar cheese for dinner and had two large glasses of Wild Berry Zinger made from the same tea bag. I drew all day and for some of the night. I did 20 odd pages in <i>CX Cult</i> – companion speed volume to CX Styles, CX Asylums, etc. – and drew some small lines on the larger piece that I was supposed to have completed two weeks ago that remains 100% colored but only some 20% complete.

This week I am meeting with Mike and Sienna to discuss future art, continuing to try to spend the additional time on my computer beyond the time I spend on it for everything else to book a band tour, likely submitting my camp contract to Brian and possibly going to see my brother before he leaves for Australia. We are playing a show on Friday.

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I would not have graduated college if the Internet ruled as much then as it does now.

Updated this in the morning with a couple I forgot.

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Never say die

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Moog cookbook black hole sun. Same mylar ripple effect as Tbolt pagoda / barbarian movie at a minute in.

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Moroder promo from Laris = sick vocoder part at 1:30

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Teachers

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Hi kids we’re home early

The rest of these are archival rap relatable:

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I love this track because it is the first one I remember hearing where the fact that it is a remix is a part of the song. “Dancin to this remix makes me want to step.” I want to go to Charlottesville and act like an idiot when I listen to it.

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Throw Some Ds = Valhalla of radio raps. Mike and I heard this for this first time on January 22nd 2007 in Atlanta, where we correctly assumed that their raps would be at least two months ahead of ours. We immediately realized what we had found and I for one completely flipped my shit. Video is so good.

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Gillie

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Hitler Biggie

And now on to the normal crawl, L.I.F.E. on a pixel, life on a bristle, life on a sheet: things I did, thought and ate, January 6th, year of our wonder and sorrow 2008.

While I made coffee or possibly lunch (Sunday meal plan = dinner: pasta with trader joe sausage sauce, lovely cheese, fresh onion/peppers/mushrooms; breakfast = granola + yogurt; lunch = ??; also had two glasses of tang, a sip of a root beer float, three beers), Bonsky said, “Tom, you thought it would take you twenty minutes because you have no sense of time.” We were talking about how I went to Kinko’s to make that zine up above thinking it would only take me twenty minutes to go in, print and get out, when it took upwards of two hours.

After reflecting on it (during Alphaville and Training Day mostly, both of which are terrible movies), I got to thinking that maybe the issue isn’t so much one of time lapse, but more generally of primarily storing experiences in impressionistic ways rather than in emotional or empirical ones. This seams to speak more fully to the ways I think about reading, listening to music, cooking, traveling, and so on. Not that I don’t perceive time in these things, but I do find that time (and emotional response, and empirical fact) often distorts around the more prominent forms of memory, i.e., light, color, temperature. We can talk about it maybe.

Asked for examples of my not being able to perceive time, Bonsky went on to point out that I often used to say I would be over “in a little while” and then not show up for three or more hours. I think this is more just my being socially untimely and cluttered than my not being able to understand time, but I’m including this point of his so you might form your own opinion.

At night I went to see the mighty Blues Control and everything shuddered back into place. I always know when I like bands and when I don’t, but sometimes I forget when I straight up love bands. Total jammers. Check these dudes outtttt!

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Ten years ago I was a creator on the Discworld MUD. I had just “met” Larissa Sky, while Jeremiah and I had already worked together on at least one major project. Good heavens.

Next in life = planning a tour to New Orleans and back.