My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Avery: the Ford Escort of American farming
Startin’ way back gennlemin been liable to purchase all kinds of foolish things right through the mail ‘cuz they seened it in some catalog. You kin getcherself a Ukrainian bride, hand grenades, and psychedelic mushrooms delivered right to your doorstep. Many a farmer bought hisself a plowin’ tractor from Montgumry Wards and had it shipped out in boxes to his spread. They were B.F. Avery’s, and to tractor collectors like Mr. Sunshine, they don’t count for much.

“Comparasing to Fords, Molines and the like, how can you call it a tractor if it come in the mail?”

“It don’t run, but it ain’t a fuckin’ Avery neither.” Mr. Sunshine

They hitch their dinghy’s to an old 8 cylinder out where Josh, AJ and I go shard hunting. Shard hunting. A hobby for dreamers. We look in the tidal muck hoping to find a revolutionary war button, or bullet, or coin. Mostly we find old bits of pottery, shards from a time when the water was the town dump.

Here’s one of my favorite people to visit when I go back to Portsmouth. Jimmy has a little brick building thirty feet from the railroad tracks, with giant salt piles between those tracks and a cove of tidal water. It is a beautiful spot.

Jimmy talks like he’s tired, and moves like he’s worn out, but he stops what he’s doing and talks to you, whoever you are, and will tell you about the great things that are happening in this town, and with the great people that live here.

Here’s Gram, as I call her. She is at Exeter Hospital getting a blood transfusion. I love her very much.

Graffiti from the only back alley in Portsmouth New Hampshire! (For real. Just one.) This throw up is about twenty years old, too. Outlaw Poverty was a punk band that according to MySpace formed in 1989. Thank god there is so little tagging that this is still around. This piece is an antique. It was painted before spray paint, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IT WAS BRUSHED ON!

the top photo i found on Congress Street, Portsmouth NH, in some bushes. the bottom postcard is for a new gallery opening up one block away.

oh, art. we like surfaces so much in the art world. looking cool or beautiful, seeing value in design. there is a lot about america that would reject this celebration of surface as shallowness. “fancy” is almost a bad word around here.

that photo up top was garbage because it no longer worked as well as other family photos in its ability to show the mans face clearly. someone outside the family who has no investment in preserving the mans image can appreciate the human face obscured.

there is something about layering that creates mystery in our mind. Ello Gallery’s promotion does the same. lot’s of layers, a blue filter run thinly across the top, the random design of fabric scraps over the photo. we can’t say for sure what any one thing is doing on its own.

so while art is concerned with surfaces, it also seems to be concerned with layers. next time someone says art is shallow, remind them of the deeper things going on at ello gallery, the seacoast UNDERCURRENT!

Ello’s grand opening sept 7th 6 -10 pm
110 state street portsmouth nh
ellogallery.com

Here’s a little song fresh from a New Hampshire stream.

Josh Millar on that guitar there, and yours truly talking it out. A special thanks to Ian Loch and The House of Rabbi for recording us.

Lyrics:

My name’s Tony Brackett and I love Lake Winnipasaukee.

I moved down from Center Sandwich to Laconia back in ’98 to be closer to my ice hole. Most times i only catch a hangover, but I love ice fishin’. I’d still go out if the only thing biting was fresh water clams and pepsi cans.

I’m rigged out with an Arctic Cat sled, studded track, ‘lectric start and heated handles. I tie my rod and my chum bucket to the kids red sled and haul balls out to the western tip of Rattlesnake Island where yellow perch are thick enough to spear fish.

I’m not a bobhouse kinda guy, I appreciate the wind in my eyes. ‘sides, I know what happens when those guys fish indoors. Lot’s of booze, and what we call “Ice Hookers”…that’s entrapernurial gals who come a knockin’ and offer to ‘warm you up’. They’ll cost you more than a few fish, so I just stay away from that bunch.

The Lake in the winter is the most beautiful spot on earth, and microwaved perch with a couple potatoes will keep you around a lot of years to enjoy it.

Maybe I’ll see you out there on the ice. Just stay out of my hole. I’m Tony Brackett, signin’ off from Lake Winnapausakee.

San Francisco by noon, flying over the great middle of this place, leaving a charming brick village behind, back to a place I’m always a bit nervous, back to my big pond.

Thanks everyone who comes by an reads my robot. I broke a thousand readers in august. I did once before, but that was because a sex site was somehow linked to me. My numbers went from 600 to 3500 that month.

Here’s some stats from august ’06 and august ’07 so you can see how much we’ve grown.

2006

371 unique ip address visitors (individual people)
16,945 hits (includes google and other robots, not all people)

weirdest keyphrase searches: (I can see every search that brings up a match to M.R.I.P in google and other search engines)

I keep a dog and bark myself

gay neighbor jacking off at window

2007

1061 unique ip addresses
29017 hits

weirdest keyphrase searches:

it be raining black people in robot town

digging ditches on the dark side of the moon

I didn’t write any of those sentences, but all those words appeared enough to create a match. Kind of funny…

Take a close look at this “seated liberty” dollar coin above, and then compare it to the example below. You’ll notice the addition of 13 stars around the border, which the mint added in 1838, the second year of this coin’s production. You’ll also wonder why the mint changed Lady Liberty out of her clothes. Back when U.S. coins were made out of silver, people would rework the cast image to their liking. Most of us alive today wouldn’t realize she is also sitting on a chamber pot. And that’s how this modified coin got its name: the potty dollar.

image courtesy wake forest coins

Check out this site to learn about hobo nickels, a later version of folk art coinage.