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.

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.

Let the eternal record of my blog reflect that there was a time when Sierra and Zelda and I went to the Lincoln Inn in Essex Vermont, where Sierra showed me how to box step while grizzled country/rockabilly dudes played hard and whiskey sweaty, and middle aged guys with tucked in shirts and blonde girlfriends much taller whisked briskly around the floor. I ate a burger and we talked about 2nd Life and whether Barack Obama puts his hand on his heart when he pledges allegience for the entire night. Zelda said, “George, this is Melinda.” “I’m Tom,” I said. “I’m Rachel,” she said. Later, I walked around the mountain in Johnson, the sun set black-eye blue on the mountains, and we trekked past lit trailers, through the mud of vinegar and shit-smelling cow pastures, and back down across the dilapidated bridge. At a bonfire I took off my sweaters and sat in my tshirt with dry lips and the rims of my glasses getting hot. The smoke blew up and high away from stacked palettes to fierce orange black, and beyond the streetlights on School Ave was the silver sky. On Saturday morning Leah and I left and we stopped at Father’s Restaurant, where I ate delicious fried fish and mixed berry pie in Norman Rockwell desolate green interior/gray deathmask belltoll drizzle outside, old couple sitting in another booth and not talking, and I chewed with the full, terrible awareness that I am not going to drive back up I-89 for a long time.

Now I’m in Brooklyn, where it looks like I’ll live. I watched Hackers with Cory, went for drinks with Katie and Alex, ate burgers and played dominos with Julio and his totally good men’s group, partied with Allen, Kathryn and that extended team, went to Dinner Group where I talked to Justin bald and bearded about the trains and had a staring contest with Alfe and team, and pursued employment and made burritos and yucked it up with Leah almost full time since we got here. I’ve moved my car at least four or five times. In all, it’s been such a fun and fast-moving time that I got over feeling disappointed and insane by the time I had even officially heard the status of my work in Vermont.

They’re hard steps out of the gray area and they ring out loud across many months. BOOM here’s the job I wind up with, BOOM here’s the house I live in, BOOM, it’s 2009, where am I, who am I, what am I doing, BOOM, life sucks, but amazingly, resiliently, it still somehow rules way more.

Especially boring version of the weekly lump for Sunday January 13th, year of our wonder and sorrow 2008.

In New York at the New Museum Friday saw Paper Rad “Problem Solvers,” ran into Ash and Etienne, had vegan chili fries with Susy, Crystal, AJW, Ted, Ben and Jess. At Judy’s we ate an entire piece of gouda on a baguette, drank tanguerray and found it unsatisfactory, watched dino squad and saturday night live. Met Kyle at the Lovid thing after internet talking to him last year.  Listened to the Mammal record on the train home.

The house is the house. I’m working and making packages. There isn’t much to report otherwise. I discovered “music blogs” this week and have listened to a ton of terrible synth music in pursuit of the follow-up to my love affair with that Vaggione record a few weeks back.  Good finds so far are Aktuala “Tappeto Volante,” Ed Yazijian “Six Ways To Avoid The Evil Eye,” and some Dream Syndicate jams, but otherwise nothing I flipped over and didn’t already know about.

I am working on compiling a disc of recent Ospreys fuzz from October through now, all from various Private Idiots basement styles.

I am going to buy a couch this week. What else? What else.

It doesn’t get any better than that, but if you want, you can continue on to read or sort of read about the following:

susy and hank

mike and carissa

dream house

jams

raekwon playing scrabble against mos def

At work between tasks Raekwon played “saviour” against Mos Def for like seventy points. I am updating my own blog right now, at 11:09pm, between tasks.

Semi non-story version of this weekend, more for my reference than for yours, o reader: Bus -> falafel -> bar with Allen and Mercury, the dude said to Sus re: ginger wine “Yeah it’s exceedingly sweet.” -> the dude cheers’d him with two beers and Allen thought #2 was for him but the dude said “No man I was just cheersing you.” -> saw kenzie, got Ryan’s phone number from one of his friends -> Mercury got flowers -> went back to the pod house -> late breakfast at the outpost avec Christi and Matt, the dude said to Suz re: iced tea latte “Yeah it’s exceedingly sweet.” -> everyone watched me eat oatmeal -> Dream House -> Panamanian festival -> bones and gristle in my soup, cops shut down the park -> Caribbean jawn at the Brooklyn Museum -> kid gets soaked in the fountain -> kid dribbles basketball the entire time we eat chocolate cake and lemon pie on Underhill -> pod palace night times with Christi -> long breakfast at outpost with Munira, three sides of cream cheese and tomato on everything -> Brian and everyone at the pod palace, Pearl flips off the swing -> Sus on the train -> Motion sick from the swing -> Nap -> Christi and Matt at Rob’s -> Three packs of fake burgers and one of fake dogs for the four of us -> Travis came over -> Played jams -> Rob gave me shoes -> Rob: “Burn some sage for me.” -> Travis put a tomato on a truck and me Matt and Christi all thought we were going to get in serious trouble with the bikers -> Late night at the pod with Jan and Prudence -> Early morning at Tom’s with the whole crew -> Mercury woke up singing “You say it’s your birthday” -> Got the kids with Matt -> Hilarity ensues -> Dropped the kids of with Jan -> Bus

It’s good to feel motivated to work and to feel motivated to work more when I get home. I finished the minibook with Travis and gave him an atlas with a hundred or so drawings on its first two hundred or so pages, the first in a tentative new no-deliberate-moves ouija-drawing styles jammer. He’s going to moderate that joint until January or so, and then we’ll see what’s up with it.

Movies I’ve seen since I started netflix: Down by Law / The Fast Runner / two thirds of freaks and geeks / Volver / 21 Up / El Topo / Happiness / Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Fast Runner was the only ruler (didn’t really watch it but had it on while I drew for three hours = great sound, bizarro narrative, long, long, long shots and plot slow as snow, at least three scenes fucking shocking, intense and brutal as hell, tons of face tats = I will come over and draw with you if you rent this any day of the week), followed by the first hour or so of Dracula (all long reaching and shadows and sinister smiles; second hour or two is Hannibal Lector and Neo trying to save Lydia Deetz from Ivan Korshunov, except no cannibalism, slow motion bullet dodging, animated Saturnian worms or President Harrison Ford). Let the record reflect that I wasn’t into Happiness even though I laughed a couple times or El Topo which lost me after an hour.

The Random House Curse, in which I am unable to cook anything but burritos beneath this roof, continues.

Honorable mentions for this procrastinatin’ post: how Mike got back the other week and how we went big with Portnoy and Carissa, down to needing to call in the reserves to drink the extra drinks after hanging out on the pedestrian bridge by the trains; Robyn is moving out of Random so if you want to live here you should email me, the rent is cheap and there are only a few days left to act; my brother John made it to the top of the Ransom Waterfall with me.