My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Not sure if this is a liberal or conservative statement.

I don’t want to be a cowboy, I want to be a mythology. I like the trucks and freedom of working for myself, the digging through the garbage for treasure, the freedom that comes with choosing my jobs and my hours.

With two suitcases in hand I got on a train in Boston and rode across country heading down the steel rails into the west. It was 2001. That was part of the myth. If I can become a successful business man running a company I created I will have completed my mythology. Leave home, head west, become successful in business.

This journey I want for myself is the same journey our country took. It left home, it went west, it became extremely successful in business.

It’s the success I fear because it goes from a journey of personal freedom to a story of domination over others. Is that the highest stage of freedom – strength over others?

It’s the 4th of July birthday I have I think that makes me want to be America’s myth lived out in person. Had I been born in June or August perhaps I wouldn’t obsessed with independence and America and freedom.

Recently I was told my blog should be more political. I feel like my life choices are a political statement. I left a conservative place for a liberal place. I moved to be in a community where leaders represented my ideals. I’m supporting the beacon of hope that is San Francisco’s myth to the rest of the nation: all are welcome. People are more important than corporations. We’re trying new ideas, letting humans be more self determining.

A pal says San Francisco has become a sanctuary city for the rich. He’s leaving for the East Bay where the melting pot is boiling and not a tenancy in common that got it’s start by evicting a poor family.

So it’s time to get more political after all. I want more from my new home and I want it to lead the rest of the country. Let’s not see it become a soulless tech lab reaping profits from patented gene therapy and technology that takes farther away from human touch.

I’ll tell ya what I’d like to see. A ban on consumer plastic. Leave it for medical devices, space travel, military use, and the like. Have it tracked and disposed of as vigilantly as nuclear waste. The stuff is making consumption too easy, outsourcing cheap, and destroying the environment.

Illegal immigration is a hard one. For the most part they are working hard doing jobs most Americans won’t do. But isn’t that because they’ll do it
for less than a living wage? If all ditch diggers got paid a Union wage, a lot of people I know would do a day laborers work. Cheap labor devalues it to the point you’re better off collecting unemployment.

Health care? I’m not sure why socialism is such a bad word to Republicans. The police force is a socialist institution. How about the military? It has a nearly Communist structure. You are told where you’ll live, and what work you’ll be doing. You shouldn’t question their orders. If a Communist institution can protect freedom, why can’t a socialist institution care for the health of a democratic society?

Then there is religion. I don’t understand why Christians are so often Republicans. Would Jesus want universal health care or would he argue that the rich shouldn’t pay for the poor’s problems?

Republicans and corporations are so intertwined and if they are also so fundamentally Christian, it seems like a paradox. Wouldn’t preachers preaching the good news for modern men be chastising corporate leaders for their greed? So why do Christian Republicans celebrate their successes? Why do they want corporations to have so much freedom to make profit when the Bible warns about the evil of money, the sin of avarice and greed? Don’t they believe
it’s so hard for rich men to get into heaven and so easy for camels to get through the eye of a needle?

Democrats? the most terrible politicians there are. Double agents, liars and turn coats. A type of slum lord on the national level. Abolitionists with slaves. They claim to represent the worker, the immigrant. They stand up for nothing.

I’m waiting for the Green Revolution, where we stop being a consumer oriented society and work on becoming a sustainable species.

At the scrap metal yard an old MUNI bus sits along the fence and the bucket loader uses it like a bumper to corral the debris. He drops the big metal scoop to the ground and the tar suffers with a grinding scrape and the feather edge of the metal we’ve been throwing off the backs of our trucks at the foot of the scrap mountain adds a higher pitch to the rumble as our offerings are forced forward and the old saucepan that rolled awkwardly under a truck like a retarded escape attempt is exposed at the perimeter and bounces off the thick lip of the bucket as now it slams into lengths of water pipe filled with the chalk of forty years deposit and then the bigger items, a wire basket, a lamp, caught in the jaw and dragging, now deeper, closer to the foot of the pile are the washing machines, the water heaters, all with skin torn open by the force of the tractor pushing them into fodder for the ferrous peak.

The guy in the orange safety vest gets to talking to me about Hawaii. He went there last year and didn’t want to come back.

“It was paradise. Coconut trees. I didn’t want to come back. I’m from Nicaragua, the rain in Hawaii is just like Nicaragua. It reminded me of home, how it’s warm when it rains. It gets really warm and the smells in the air of the plants and the soil…I miss that.”

“That old MUNI bus has been there a long time huh?” I ask. It still has the same body style of the public buses on the road, so it’s not so old.

“They’ll never get rid of that, it helps them keep the pile organized.”

“Gives ‘em something to push off,” I answer.

photo posted from my iPhone
Marika came to visit. She’s moving to Portland. We went to the copper buyer this morning and learned the difference between communication and house wire. House is more money.

Old high school friend Sean Ahern is apparently trying to contact me through email from prison. I received an email from the Federal Bureau of Prisons asking if I consented to receiving correspondence from him, and agree to its being monitored. I said yes. Let’s see what happens…

Here is more info about the program, according to the link.

What is TRULINCS?

The Trust Fund Limited Inmate Computer System (TRULINCS) is a new program currently being deployed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide inmates with some limited computer access, to include the capability to send and receive electronic messages without having access to the Internet. This program is designed in part to assist in the inmate’s eventual release to the community. Electronic messaging has now become a standard form of communication within most American homes and businesses, and it can now be used to help inmates stay connected to their families. Strengthening or re-establishing family ties helps inmates improve the likelihood of a successful re-entry into the community, thus reducing the potential for recidivism.

Do inmates have access to the Internet?

No Internet access is provided.

Who funds TRULINCS?

No taxpayer dollars are used for this service. Funding is provided entirely by the Inmate Trust Fund, which is maintained by profits from inmate purchases of commissary products, telephone services, and the fees inmates pay for using TRULINCS.

Do all BOP facilities have access to TRULINCS?

No, but the list of facilities where it is available is growing, and TRULINCS is expected to be in all BOP facilities by June 2011. Ask your inmate contact about it!

photo posted from my iPhone
Why are assisted living communities always 80 degrees? And cats everywhere.

Girls were practicing routines on the track and I heard cheering and the kid who painted his car yellow all by himself in his garage – his mom was out there one day washing his wheels and rims – his car was parked and he had a Club on the steering wheel so no one would steal it. These are the type of people we tried to ban. You might find it hard to believe that your enemy’s mother would love her son that much, but you shouldn’t. When their sons are killed in action, you think that crying – the crying where they gnash their teeth and beat their chests like a bible scene – you think it is an act to prove America sucks. You’re right. They hate us more than they loved their children. They have children so we will kill them, so we will look bad. God do they hate us!
Why am I yelling? Why do I put words in your mouth? You weren’t even walking up the hill to my house today. You probably don’t have any problems with the Asian Community. You like Asians. And Afghanis. And Muslims. And Islamics. Those types.
You probably have problems with pigeons. Dairy. Sweatpants. Hot new country. What are you mad at? Why? People just wanna live!

one of the many beautiful women in the hobby of metal detecting today

It’s a pretty long peninsula. An hour drive at seventy miles an hour. Not stoppin for nuthin either. And I love my truck and she’s old so I don’t push her past 60. The left speaker is still workin and that’s the side Fisher sat on so I turned it down so I could here him talkin. He talks real quiet. He’s a shy man. Look at the facts. He is an editor. That means he likes to be behind the camera. That’s the first thing. He smokes hella weed. Hella bein a lot a lot. That’s second. Folks that smoke a lot of weed and stay in their room workin on the computer are probably shy, right? And he talks real quiet. It all adds up. I think Fisher is shy.

We were on the road to Foster City. Not quite half way down the peninsula. Foster City. A planned city. Built on wetlands. What kind of plan is that? Greg runs a metal detecting shop out of his garage down there. And that’s the whole point of Fisher and me drivin south for half an hour. We got his name off the internet. He is an authorized White’s dealer. White’s and Garret are the two biggest names in the treasure huntin industry. It was awesome, standin in the driveway on a cul de sac in a planned community and watchin a garage door rumble on it’s automatic pulley, slowly revealin a wall full of danglin electronic magnetic meters.

Equipment for dreamers. Protective dreamers. Stand offish perhaps. They have secret huntin grounds, caches of coins and jewelry hidden in boxes in their homes. Strong hunches where lost treasure may lie. But they work nine to five jobs in the government – Greg was a motorcycle cop. They have a wife, a mortgage – not a pack mule and the whole summer to head into the mountains.

Stand offish till they get to know you. Dreamers need each other, they need someone else to believe with. Someone whose eyes will light up and feed the fire. Greg saw it in us. So we stood in his garage and talked about metal detectin, and got invited to The Bay Area Searchers next meeting. A secret society of metal detector enthusiasts held in the hallowed halls of a local church function hall.

Please stay tuned for the next excitin chapter, where we meet these fellow coin shooters.

I broke up with my girlfriend two months ago and I’m in two bands and sometimes I want to quit them both and sometimes I don’t like my friends and I want to move to Australia and not have a single relationship with anyone but my pistol and my rifle.

My facebook profile doesn’t reflect any of that. I would definitely bring a laptop with that satellite internet connection if I did go to Australia. I’d sell all my furniture and have a party for all the people I’m tired of and I’d give them my books and my cds and most of my clothes and I have a bunch of plants in the house and my roommate Matty won’t remember to water them so I’ll find homes for them before I pack my bag and say “Later Dude” to the good ol’ USA.

I would pretend I was Asian so all the white people in Australia wouldn’t talk to me and I’d rent a bicycle and just start riding till I found the outback. I’d do something symbolic with my bike. Not much of it would burn so no sense lighting it on fire. The symbolic thing would be an apology for always seeing things racially.

This is one of those times when I don’t like anyone. That’s what the outback is for. I might try Nevada if I don’t get much for my furniture.

A lot of people like people. They are the ones who talk about community. Locally owned. Know your farmer. The guy in the neighborhood who sharpens your knives and your scissors in his garage. Borrowing your neighbors ladder. Saying, “Oh, whatever, I know them.” They like people. They forgive. Are tolerant. People who love people are the happiest people.

What good would it do to fly over all that ocean and get to Australia just because I was kinda cranky and didn’t want to talk? That would have been stupid! So stupid. I’ve had stronger urges to join the Marines than to move to a desert. And there would be a lot of people around, if I signed up. It’s good to talk these things through.

photo posted from my iPhone

Being in an African American community down here in New Orleans today, election day, is pretty exciting. Folks are hopeful. They care about this election. “for the first time in history we can make history,” a man selling Obama t shirts said to me.

“What if he doesn’t win, or they try to steal it from him?” I asked.

“It’s in God’s hands. If Obama is supposed to win no man can take that away from him. God will make it happen to show there is a God.”

It might not be the tightest argument. It meant something to me. Marcus was his name he had white hairs in his mustache. He told me when he was young he didnt believe in God, he only believed he could pull his 9 faster than the other guy and that made him God. Eventually prison drugs and getting shot in the head changed his mind about all that.

Marcus with some younger guys, standing in fromt of the corner store. They played me tracks from their album, raps about Obama being president. It struck me then just how much an icon could give people.

Outside the Budget Motel, Wichita, Kansas. all photos by Mark Hewko or Chirag

Today we meet Chirag, a first generation Indian motel owner’s son. What does that mean? Let’s talk to him and find out.

My Robot: You’re working on a project about your childhood, in a way. Can you describe it to us?

Chirag: It’s about independent motels in America and who’s behind the scenes. It started off when I was younger, I grew up living in a motel. It was like a living space attached to the reception and I grew up with that, going over to uncle’s houses, aunt’s houses, they all lived in motels. After being through all that, I have a huge appreciation for it. It’s a pretty fascinating story, so I wanted to do a photo documentary and interviews with all these independent motel owners that live and run these motels all over the country.

My Robot: Where was your parent’s motel?

Chirag: In New Jersey, Somerville, New Jersey, on Route 22.

My Robot: You told me earlier, what part of India your parents were from.

Chirag: They are from the state of Gujarat. All these people that own these motels in America are not only from the same state in India, but within a 150 mile radius in Gujarat.

My Robot: How is that? Why is that?

Chirag: It started in the fifties where they came over with student visas and wanted to earn a living and still save money, so they thought the best idea was to buy a property, a motel, and live and run a business in the same place. They helped each other out, whenever someone came to America they showed them the ropes till they got on their feet and it became a strong community, they become really strong, bought more motels, some bought multiple motels, some bought franchises. The community just grew and now owns 60 percent of all motels and hotels in America – including the big name franchises like Howard Johnson’s. It’s incredible to think all this came from one generation.

room keys to the left, shrine on the right, appliances above.

My Robot: So what does your project involve?

Chirag: I’ve taken two trips so far, with my friend Mark, all self funded. One was down south, concentrating on Virginia, drove from New York through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama. It was a quick trip, just a couple weeks, to see if it was a realistic project.

After that trip we took another – flew from New York into Oklahoma and spent some time in Kansas, New Mexico and west Texas. We’re gonna be leaving for another trip in a couple weeks concentrating in California, mostly northern California, where it all started in the Fifties in Sacramento and San Francisco.

My Robot: Explain more of how it started, in the case of your father.

Chirag: He came over with his student visa, getting his master’s in chemistry. He got a job but by then a couple of his friends owned motels and he thought it was a good business to get into with his plan of bringing over the rest of his family. He bought the Arch Motel and raised the family. Slowly brought over his brothers and sisters and my mom’s brothers and sisters from India. The family stayed there and also learned the ropes of the motel industry; learned how to run a motel until they got on their own feet and were ready and ventured of to their own property, mostly in the middle of the country, the Midwest, small towns of America in Kansas, Texas, Minnesota.

My Robot: How would these foreigners – wait, can I say that?

Chirag: You’re racist is my response.

My Robot: Because they were citizens at that point, right? So what I mean is first generation immigrants, from such a different culture, how would they adapt, or even find a motel to buy in the Midwest?

Chirag: Through the small knit community. Word got around that people were looking for a place, so keep an eye out for everyone. At that point they were looking for places they could afford, tiny places in the middle of no where. Places not populated by Indians.

My Robot: So how did that affect their Indian identity?

Chirag: A lot of them stayed in their own bubble. Which is to say it didn’t affect them. I think it’s changing with the new generation. They’re definitely gonna have to be a lot more open and adapt. They stayed really tight and it made them stronger. (pauses) I don’t know man, depends how you look at it. It makes the community stronger but when you go out of your small knit group you’re actually making it stronger, making it wider and more knowledge-full. Instead of the same old bullshit.

My Robot: Tell me about the photo of the Indian garden behind that one motel.

Chirag: So a lot of these motels have gardens in the back and the reason for that is when they started, well, theres two reasons. Number one, most of these people came from a farming community in Gujarat and secondly, there was no Indian grocery stores around these rural areas, so they just had a garden with their Indian vegetables and lived off that mostly.

My Robot: What are Indian vegetables?

Chirag: I’m sure you coulda got a lot of that in the stores, but I guess, all these different kinds of beans and squashes. I’m sure they’re available now, but when they started back in the 60′s, 70′s, it was harder to find this shit.

My Robot: What about getting Indian spices?

Chirag: In the early days, they brought it with them in their suitcases. Nowadays it’s available even in Safeway. But they also traded with friends, relied on the community. People made runs. Say if you’re in Liberal, Kansas in the Seventies, one person is like, “I’m going to the closest Indian store” which is in Dallas. He’d ask the whole community what they want, and make a run with his buddy to Dallas. They’d come back with a hundred pounds of Basmati rice and some mango pickle.

My Robot: So you grew up in a motel in Jersey with traditional Indian parents, now you live in San Francisco and work as a graphic designer. That’s a lot of change in one generation. How do your parents feel about this country, your change?

Chirag: They knew they were coming to a totally different environment so they knew they were going to come across change. There’s still definitely shocks with stuff my sister and I did growing up. Like me going to art school while all the other Indian kids went to business or medical school.

My Robot: Are they worried about you still?

Chirag: What parent isn’t?

My Robot: True. So what’s the next step for the project?

Chirag: The thing I’m trying to do is get some funding, get this project to a point I can bring it to a publisher and then get it out there. I don’t want to work on it my whole life, just a couple more trips.

My Robot: What I’ve seen so far looks great, and it’s a fascinating story. These iconic motels with the great neon signs and ultra-American names are by and large owned by Indians. It’s a true immigrant success story. Thanks for bringing us the news, Chirag.

Chirag: I don’t know if anyone will care, but I’m having fun.

Chirag’s other work and interests can be seen at his website, Pardon My Hindi.

Tagging? It’s the worst manifestation of the American Dream. It’s all about signing your name on something in order to claim ownership – but having no real right to do so. It’s like claiming a country other people already live in. Of course our government at least had some muscle to back up their illegitimate claim. Taggers are weak. They go to the poor, the downtrodden, (wait a minute – that’s usually what our country does too…) and write all over the poor and the downtrodden’s shit. You never see them tagging up power centers like police stations, police cars, fire departments, the mayor’s office, insanely wealthy communities, or even upper middle class areas. They are afraid. So they try to take from those who can’t fight back.

It takes more than writing your name or painting your ugly malformed line-drawing on something to really own it. Ownership involves working. Taggers like to think they are outside the system. They don’t want to work the 9 – 5. Of course, the people they target work much more than 9 – 5. Usually it is the vehicles of dirt poor cardboard and bottle recyclers they spray paint. People working hard to get out of the neighborhood the young white middle class taggers come blow up. Taggers pretend to be above the system, but they want to be President. They want power. They are evil Republicans in gutterpunk hoodies.

They have no message. It’s “Me! Me! Me!” It’s “I was here!” It’s “Look where I went!” It’s “Look what I did!” They are at a fourth grade level at best. Very few are actually making something interesting to look at. There are a few rare examples of great street artists who have inspired lazy name scrawlers across the country to spray noxious chemicals and toy-ass doodles on everything they can. Artists have a message, taggers just want to put their names on things that don’t belong to them so they won’t feel insignificant. Look at that piece of shit throw up some douche bag put on my truck and ask yourself, “Is that the next generation of art?” If it is, art sucks.

a little known part of Oakland – jingletown

After seeing George Bush lose the popular vote and still become president, and then watch him get re-elected after proving himself an idiot and a lackey, I lost faith in America and the process of democracy we call voting. With an electoral college, my vote truly did not count. It simply was a gentle breeze that could possibly sway an electoral voter.

When I read here and there about George Bush asking phone companies to turn over records and content of phone messages without a warrant, I kinda figured, “Well, they were fighting terrorism.” It was illegal for the government to ask, and illegal for the companies to comply. It went against the very Constitution of The United States which guarantees us protection against warrantless spying. Turns out the president’s office was involved in illegal monitoring before 9/11. It’s also coming to a vote TOMORROW in the Senate to grant the phone companies immunity from breaking the law and our trust as citizens. More importantly the Senate will vote whether or not we should continue to allow the Executive Office to continue to eavesdrop on all electronic communication without a warrant.

THAT IS INSANE! I didn’t think much how that would affect me when it was mentioned. What it means is one branch of the government has the right to spy without any checks or balances from the other branches of government. That’s consolidation of power, like creating a Fuhrer. As it was explained to me in this video, any member of congress who is embarrassed about any activity, illegal or completely legal, can now be quickly brought in line with the President’s wishes by blackmail. How easy would it be to find some embarrassing fact about you if I had complete access to all your credit card purchases, the content of all your emails, locations of all your phone conversations and a recording of what you said during them? For a politician who has so many different faces for different audiences, it would take about half an hour to find something to use against them. Remember, it is the House of Representatives and the Senate that make up our Congress, the body that is supposed to be a check on the power of our President.

So often I hear news about how the government works and I lose hope I didn’t realize I had. I feel very insignificant. There is really nothing we can do to stop this right? Well, there is one small hope. CALL YOUR SENATORS! YOU HAVE TWO OF THEM! TELL THEM NOT TO PASS THE “FISA BILL”! Go to eff.org and click on the top left area that says “Don’t Shred The Constitution”. There are fireworks. You can’t miss it. Then you type in your zip code and it tells you the phone number of your congresspersons. There is a script that you can read into the phone. It will take you approximately one minute to preserve some last shred of freedom. Of Democracy. This is truly important and you have today to do. They vote tomorrow. PLEASE MAKE ONE SMALL EFFORT TO BE A CITIZEN OF A DEMOCRACY!

I moved from New Hampshire where the politics go against what I believe in to a state that often (but not always) reflected my own philosophies. Both my senators (Feinstein and Boxer) are pledging to challenge this, but most Senators are going along with it. I’m going to call my senators now and thank them for having some soul. Call yours and tell them what you want. There’s no guarantee they’ll listen, but if this bill passes, so will any opportunity for you to have any influence at all with them, ever again.

A friend recenlty returned from Croatia, and brought me this school notebook. It is hard cover with ruled white pages inside. That part makes sense. But this photo is so grotesque I can’t look away. The man has stuffed his t-shirt into the front of his cut off bleached jeans, the woman is pantomiming to someone out of the shot while she holds a ball-peen hammer…it doesn’t make sense.

All’s I’ve been doing lately is scanning images and posting them here. I haven’t taken the time to write anything and it bums me out. I’m gonna stop working so much and get back to entertaining myself and who ever else comes along. It’s not just work that shuts me up though. I’m scared to write. I have an audience of friends, family and co-workers. I hardly ever write about my dick anymore. Or my balls for that matter. Or where they go and who they meet. And when was the last time I told a good story about how much I hate my boss? Or what I stole? Or how much coke I sucked up the night before? I haven’t dared to explore a fresh perspective of molestation in months. This virtual community is starting to make me feel Amish. It is time to go for freedom, to use some of the stuff our fighting men have fought and died to keep. Why set that freedom up on a shelf and just look at it? It can go bad. Screw the lid off and let the freedom genie out! Joplin said right when she said “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. I got stuff to lose, but I also have the desire to lay it all on the line, go for broke, do or die time people. Speak from the heart, and every other stop on the chakra line. Let it all out. That’s what it means to have nothing left to lose. Freedom is the moment of clarity that all the golden shackles of professional 3 horsepower blenders and Sirius radio receivers shouldn’t keep us from standing up and saying What the Fuck? and not mincing the sentiment with abbreviation. WTF? exactly. Fucking what the fuck good is that? So to all the WTF’ers out there today, lets make a promise to ourselves and take the time to let each word roll off the tongue with fullness and cherish the way you can put all that emotion into three little words. I love you for it.

Another in a long list of photo shoots I worked on. The image you will see in a magazine will make you think this is somewhere deep in the country in the middle of an apricot orchard. It’s not. It’s behind a fence in a planned golf/retirement community. Everything is fake in magazines. Only your emotional response to it is real.

Tonight the Flagpoles are playing at The Bottom of the Hill, if anyone wants to stop by and watch our progress.