03.31.06

This is Glenn Danzig's house. Really. And his garbage bin.

And his neighbor.

03.30.06

            I left my heart in San Francisco. And three guitars, and probably 8 pairs of shoes.

03.29.06

Mucha vavoom!

03.28.06

We saw Pete at a stop light and admired his van. We ran into him later and
got his picture next to it. He'd take $800.00.

03.27.06

In the evening when the sky turns bloody and blue
I begin to fear the coming dark. I go to the witch
doctor and he gives me magic to fight the spirits.

03.26.06

My first gay poem

I was lying in your bed, it has too many windows.
Too much sun comes in, your curtains are too thin.
So we were awake,
Our hairy legs touching. Our big-toe toenails overgrown.
A gate creaked, and I asked who was here.
“That’s Jill’s gate. Next door. Our gate sounds different.”
“How many gates can you recognize?”
You knew four, and the sound of the guys at the body shop
Pounding out dents pneumatically.

03.25.06

here's a poem from You Live Your Life As If It's Real n

Goin' Back

You know that scene where you’re back from some war
in your parents’ backyard and you’re saying what the fuck
what the fuck to your warbuddy who somehow made it
minus a few limbs, but you you’ve got all your limbs
in tact; it’s just this rattling in your brain and you try
to think of playing with marbles when you were three
but you can’t you can’t; he just wants to go back, go
back? Because see only they understand. And somebody
down the street is offing someone or is that just the
backfiring of some suburban truck, ah hell anything
beats working, right?

Yeah, what’s better than the camaraderie and the honor
and the glory and the rush of adrenalin, life or death,
but all you really want is some little flower shop,
where water and light is all the matters, but you know
it’s ridiculous not now not now, and then there’s
this urge to light a fuckin’ torch to every house,
every house on the block and watch everyone come
screaming out, and you out there like some performance
artist burning out every lie and waving a flag that says

see…see… this is what war is…this is it…

and you wanna watch it burn ‘til there’s nothing
left standing but the swingset in the backyard,
your father pushing you into that patch of blue,
nothing but clouds of white on his face and all
the stupid words mute like what his father did
and his brother and all those that came before…
and you would too…you’d burn every single house,
but your mind’s not that far gone to know
it wouldn’t change a thing, not one goddamn thing.

I think it's awesome poetry.. What if children were killed when they played war?

03.24.06

This is me in 1993. My friend Jason Landry found the picture
and sent it to me recently.

03.23.06

I wrote a song:

All my kids
Live in my balls

I'm a single dad
With a lot of boys
Living in my balls

All my boys
Go to private school
In my balls

They play on a jungle gym
On a tire swing
In my balls.

 *      *       *       *      *      *
the heart-breaking beauty will remain
when there is no heart to break for it.

           Robinson Jeffers

03.22.06

Last night it was dark, raining, and a new part of town, so I stopped at the 7-11.  Two people stood outside, like sentries one on each side of the door.

A woman, next to the waist high trash can, looked like a quick-sale prostitute off the stroll till the rain quit.

On the right, a guy with a neat beard and black hoodie, back to the wall, one foot up behind him, like a sprinter in the gate, ready to bolt.  

"Hey bud, which way to La Cienega?"

He thought it was down there, but wasn't sure.  

So I turned and looked at the woman.

"You got a car?" She asked me.

"Yeah"

"You wanna give me a ride?   There's another 7-11 on the corner, I'll take you right there."

"Not really."

I knew what would happen.   She'd ask for money, want to give me a blowjob.   Her face was puffy from chemicals.   Booze, heroin, Mountain Dew and hot dogs from this place.   Cigarettes.  The only fresh food she ate was semen.   She had red lipstick on, a bad bleach job, wearing green pants.   She didn't need to wear a skirt to let them know she was for sale.   It was on her skin.   

"I don't want to wait for a bus in this rain..." she said.

She was a traveler like me, I felt some code of honor I didn't want to acknowledge come up inside me.

"You're just going to the 7-11?   I can drop you off right there?"

So we walk to my truck and we drive.

The first thing she says is, "I got raped Saturday.   We were partying and having a good time and all of a sudden the guy attacked me.   I still got bruises on my neck."

She rolled down her collar, but I kept my eyes forward.  

"That's not a good Saturday night." I said.

A weird thing to say.

"Then another guy raped me.   I got raped twice.   The same night.   Right on Western.   You know where Western is?"

"Yeah, I think so."

I tried to picture Western.  

I was stopped in traffic while someone backed a huge tractor trailer into a parking lot.   The shops along Sunset were lit up with neon and lights and glowed in halos of rain.  

I wanted to be safe, alone, away from people that needed help.  

03.21.06

03.20.06

I am teaming up with a doll maker to make some dangerous toys.    Here is her first idea:

03.19.06

The power of America.

03.18.06

The following poem about balls was written by a man born in 1887:

Oysters

On the wide Texan and New Mexican ranches
They call them prairie oysters, but here on the Pacific coast-range,
Mountain oysters.   The spring round-up was finished,
The calves had been cut and branded and their ears notched,
And staggered with their pain up the mountain.  
A vast rose and gold sunset, very beautiful, made in April, moved overhead.   The men had gone down to the ranch-house,
But three old men remained by the dying branding-fire,
At the corral gate, Lew Clark and Gilchrist
And Onofrio the Indian; they searched the trampled
Earth by the fire, gathering the testicles of gelded bull-calves
Out of the bloody dust; they peeled and toasted them
Over the dying branding-fire and chewed them down, Grinning at each other, believing that the masculine glands
Would renew youth.

       The unhappy calves bawled in their pain and their
Mothers answered them.
The vast sunset, all colored, all earnest, all golden, withdrew a little higher
but made a fierce heart
Against the sea-line, spouting a sudden red glare like the eye of god.   The
     Old men
Chewed at their meat.

        I do not believe the testicles of bull-calves
Will make an old man young again, but if they could
What fools those old men are.   Age brings hard burdens,
But at worst cools hot blood and sets men free
From the sexual compulsion that madden youth.
Why would they dip their aging bodies again
Into that fire?  For old men death's the fire.
Let them dream beautiful death, not women's loins.

This poem by Robinson Jeffers may inspire you to read more of his work.   I like him because he built a house on the edge of the Pacific Ocean out of rocks he gathered from the shore.   He and his wife Una lived there and raised twins.   He and his wife died in this home.   I think poets are supposed to live in stone houses on the edge of oceans and write about dying -   but not with fear.  

03.17.06

The Slack Hindu submits an illustrated love story for your consideration.  Get a goood look at this handsome fella, and let him know we appreciate it :  Hey Rajeev!

03.16.06

  COMING SOON, THE BAD PROFESSOR!! (HE GOT LOST BETWEEN FINAL CUT PRO AND DREAMWEAVER)

This is the queen of donut shops.  There are two drive up windows and no indoor seats.

When you look at it in Sepia it's even better.

This is a functioning drive up window, not a
"feel good" memorial.

I bought a chocolate old fashioned
and a raised cake.  Top notch pastry.

Meanwhile in the parking lot...

His three cigarettes tells us he will be here a while.
The black streaks on the wall tell us he has been here before.

Let's give it up for Randy's Donuts in Inglewood California!

03.14.06

In Los Angeles there is a lot of opportunity for Body Work.

       
   I put these clouds here so you know what it's like to be outside.

03.12.06

Fossil in my backyard.

03.11.06

People get older and buy their kids toys.  That's how it works. 

03.10.06

      
   This is Chinatown in Los Angeles.  The year is 2006.

 
  This is a Gentleman Farmer.

Hak and the farmer ordered beef spring rolls, yellow curry and beef pho.

Then went back outside

    
To shop a little bit.

03.09.06

Here is a journal entry from July 1998:

"I stopped by Joel and Wendy's. Joel was in the attic with computers.

I am working with pens and pencils. He has unlimited tracks, can maintain pitch but speed up or slow a sample. He can sample - which in itself is so 20th century.

When this stuff is common people will be able to do so much crazy intelligence in bedrooms."

Why are we all in our bedrooms? That's why computers make me sad.

Here, have a cloud. 

03.08.06

My Robot’s name is Tomika. She collects antiques. I don’t like the clutter around the house, but she says it’s a collection, not clutter. It was a surprise to me that she would take this hobby up. She doesn’t collect old toy robots or outdated computer technology. Nothing you'd think. She enjoys hunting the swap meets for collectable tea spoons, and items from the many World’s Fairs. Things like souvenir postcards, ashtrays, and thimbles. Each World’s Fair puts its stamp on hundreds if not thousands of different items so everyone can take home a memory of the moment. Why this is important to a robot I’ll never understand. My house is nevertheless filled with them.

I built this robot to help me with the chores around the house. Yes, I wanted company, since life up here in the hills is quiet and occasionally I want more conversation than the cat provides, but a large part of the reason for having a robot is so I don’t have to cook. I just don’t want to have to do it, and if I have the money and the brains to find an alternative, I’m not gonna feel bad about it.

So my robot cooks. When she feels like it. And asks me to wash the dishes.

“Tomika, I worked all day, I just want to eat and go relax. You wa-“
She hits me. Then she bursts into tears. The hydraulic oil that greases her “eyes” starts to squirt out of different seams in her head. The pressure of her computations and analysis just causes a short term malfunction I suppose.

“You just want a slave. That’s –“

“No Tomika, that is not true. You need to stop bringing that up. Slavery was something that happened hundreds of years ago, and it was between humans. Robots can’t be slaves, alright? Do you get it?”

“You people never stopped wanting slaves. You stopped calling them slaves and called them third world people. When they didn’t work hard enough, you built robots. Why are you so selfish?”

She gets me so mad sometimes. I don’t know how to keep her from getting online and downloading this hippy revolutionary stuff. And calling herself Tomika? Not my idea. She just wants me to feel like a jerk, I think. I wanted her to be called Heather. She won’t respond to that, though. Heather sounds so easy to get along with.

03.07.06

Technology Isn't Helpling

This new town
is exciting and lonely
I scroll through my phone
but there's no one to call
who lives around the corner
so I scroll through again
confirming I still have friends.
Somewhere.
I write emails
that are longer than ever,
and send some to myself
so my mailbox doesn't say
-0-
I give myself a funny link
From jon@hotmail to
jon@gmail
so I can have a laugh.
coffee in a fistfight.
Closed sign on the library door.
Watching sex
On film
alone.

03.06.06

Desiree emailed in this comment:

"I was just browsing myrobotispregnantdotcom!

I, too, have researched evolutionary psychology theories of rape.
An interesting side note about the occurrence of rape in non-human primates...
(to my knowledge) rape has only been observed to happen between chimps when they are in captivity and under extreme duress.
Apparently, there is not a large precedence for this behavior in the new world apes.
Second interesting side note, single trait bred chickens rape. (Single trait breeding involves breeding chickens with a desirable trait together again and again)

While favorable traits are honed in these animals, undesirable side effects, like violent behavior and rape, crop up."

My response: Is it possible to say men rape because they feel captive and stressed?

03.05.06

They Knock Down Old Buildings

I had tried to be an artist for a lot of years, then settled into construction. I followed disasters.
Worked construction gangs down in L.A. rebuilding whole towns after the fires had
destroyed everything. Floods in the Midwest. Hurricane Katrina. A lot of guys did it.
What a bunch of losers.

I'd show up with a new tool belt at a site and ask for the foreman.
He'd have a nice button up shirt on and a tool-belt newer than mine, with more pouches, and
ask if I could swing a hammer. He'd promise me nine, six, fifteen an hour depending on the tragedy;
if I did good work I could come back tomorrow.

I spent a lot of years fucking around trying to make sculptures. Wanting to get into galleries
and trying to get them sold. Sometimes it doesn’t do any good to have a brain. You end up
like all the others that never had one. I worked with people that couldn’t imagine. Period.
They couldn’t have a dream. They didn’t feel one bit like me, that they had missed opportunities,
that life could have been better. Things were working for them.

They went to work, went to the bar, went home to the wife. Some of them saved up money for
something, like a snowmobile or a truck rack. But they didn’t want to learn anything. Ever. I would
go to work and wonder why I never got anything done on my own when I had eight hours to myself.
Every Saturday and Sunday. I was just a loser. One of the bad ones, one that knew it.

I wasn’t better than the guys I worked with. I was probably worse off. I hated them, and myself.
They hated me. They didn’t think about themselves. They had no problem with eating Big Macs and
drinking 48 oz. of Coke. Half of them still smoked. Camels without filters and shit like that. They
didn’t vote. I hated everything about them.

But I couldn’t lift myself out of their company for the life of me. My sculptures sat in my studio
and no one ever gave me a show. I didn’t knock on a lot of doors. I was a genius waiting to be discovered.
I told myself that, but really, in the end, I wasn’t that good. I just wanted to be.

I dated women, but something in me wouldn’t let me love them. They were always telling me they
loved me and then they would say they could tell I didn’t love them. Then they would tell me they
had to leave me, because it was never going to go anywhere for them. I can’t believe, looking back
on my life, how little ground I gained, in work and in love. And someday I’ll die, and what was the
point? No matter how solid you are, someday you’ll get old and they’ll knock you down.

03.04.06

Engineering in the Blind Spot

The water pump
loses it's seal
and water runs
from a pre-drilled
hole.
Otherwise you'd never know
the thing was blown.

03.03.06

Here you see the band Hot Chip. It's a slightly un-focused photo due to their jet lag.

The Hollywood Rumor Mill is located in downtown Burbank in a large warehouse with a green-screen, prop rooms, CG engineers, data entry clerks, and red lines to all the top news and entertainment desks across America. We can spread gossip, with carefully produced reenactments of, let’s say, the “magic bullet theory” of JFK’s assassination with comedic “proof” Cheney was the triggerman, in one of the quickest turn-around times in the rumor industry. No one does it better. Weapons of Mass Destruction can be rumored in north, east, south, and western parts of any country we assign them to. Hints and allegations are cooked up in minutes and sent via black cloud to hover over the intended target. Yes it’s a dirty business, but we love what we do.

I’m still the new guy, so I don’t get these international assignments. I was however sent out of the office today on my first location job. We needed to raise the profile of a new band from the U.K. here on a west coast tour: Hot Chip. These five gentlemen had just landed in California and needed to get a crowd out to watch them play.

Here’s what I did to help: Holding a camera and high intensity strobe lights, we photographed the band outside on a corner of Sunset Boulevard here in LA. People walk by and ask questions, we say Hot Chip, they go home and google. A buzz could be heard generating up and down Sunset, spilling onto Melrose, Vine, and Santa Monica. By 7 pm the word on the street was Hot Chip is in town to blow away jaded American ears with British synth and vocals. By 7:10 a line snaked two blocks long, filled with hipsters and their cigarettes, waiting to get in.

It isn’t often I’m blown away by a line of 4 synth’s and a drum machine, but tonight the Hollywood Rumor Mill got it right. Hot Chip put it down and no one wanted to pick it up. Drop it like it’s Hot, Chip. (I dared myself to write that.)

They played a set of songs I had never heard, and it was all beautiful, with girls up front swaying, the dreams rolling through their eyes like puffy clouds passing across a blue sky. I would recommend them to you, and I’m off work.
(The Hollywood Rumor Mill is not involved in my statement in any way)

03.02.06

Went downtown
tried to guess which flophouse
Chinaski holed up in.

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