My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Worked a photo shoot, I was a model. Not this model. They wanted me to face the wall and pretend to be peeing. So, it’s nice to be asked to model, but a little humiliating to not face the camera. Those pictures will be coming your way soon.

can anyone recognize this plant?

Part of series about life in Lewisburg Federal Prison, Pennsylvania. Written by Sean Ahern, an inmate.

They’re called “cluster headaches” and he had been diagnosed by a neurologist on the street. I, myself, was convinced that the headaches were real…many a night I was kept awake by whimpering coming from the bottom bunk. It didn’t matter what I thought though. The people who weren’t convinced were the medical staff.

The cellmate was in the process of suing the medical department for what’s called “deliberate indifference.” That means they don’t give a fuck. It seemed like a real slam dunk of a case, because, of course, they didn’t. They think like they’re told to think: you’re a scumbag junkie trying to get high. Who cares what your new rah lo gist says? You get nothing. Break your leg? Here’s an aspirin and a staph infection. Fuck you.

Hell, just last year some guy choked his cell mate to death; or damn close to it. He was hanging on to one last breath but when the nurses showed up they were more concerned with spraying him with tear gas because he wouldn’t get up. This is the dead guy I’m talking about.

So one day while my cellie is considering waterboarding to put out the fire in his head, he gets some legal mail. A big stack of it. It was his “discovery”, the papers with information on everyone you’re sueing. A lot of foreigners worked here so there were little jokes. Like you’d ask to “see the Doctor” to a physicians assistant and they’d get indignant and say “I am a doctor!” Then you’d say “No, you’re a P.A. I want to see the doctor.” Sometimes he’d scream for the cops to take you away and sometimes you could drop the punchline ‘ “In my country I’m an astronaut. I’ve been to Uranus.” Even funnier that he didn’t get the joke. Quality care.

One of the doctors was arrested for stealing narcotics from the prison pharmacy and selling them through his “private practice.” There were hypodermic syringes missing, the pill counts were low. People who were prescribed certain medications were given something similar, or nothing at all. People were complaining, having reactions, and the doctor was nowhere to be found when the FBI came to speak with him.

A troubled New England friend emailed me a few days ago:

here is a poem I wrote about you (and my singer Paul) after you (wearing only a trench coat) gave a sermon (the last line is supposed to be in italics):

THE SECOND COMING

I want money–
money for telephones.
Telephones so I can talk to the dead
at home in my spare time,
earn a little extra income
selling fire escapes in the underworld
to shady and disreputable figures
who loathe and despise me
yet must pay the price,
my price,
the only price there has ever been
for fire escapes
which don’t work anyway,
I am the first to admit
this to everyone I meet
which is why my wife left me,
which is why I have enemies who will go to any extreme
to blacken my name
and destroy my business by driving customers away
not in droves
but in ordinary taxi cabs never suspecting
that I am still their destination.

There is a roadside chapel you can drive to.
I am nailed to the wall there–
hair sprouted out past all reeling in,
spittle dripping from chin and eyes
that might roll back like the scroll of the sky
on some day of infamy postponed only
if you will listen to me.

There are a thousand things to say to the stranger
who makes the phone in the booth ring
as I walk by, like–It may seem at first
that I am not the one you hoped for.
You may need a shave, a woman,
some gravity to hold you down.

I can provide you
with all of these things.

I’ve been to Heaven and it’s no different.
The dead are risen incorruptible yet soon
pick up the same bad habits they had
when they were alive–

speeding all over drunk and lonely for how it used to be
in the beginningless garden unspoiled by charcoal
briquettes, lighter fluid, a horseman of the apocalypse
astride his riding lawn mower.

I was lonely once too, and broke
with shaking hands trying to light a Camel worried
that I’d light one of my fingers instead.

This is my last cigarette, I said this is my last
cigarette and then God‘s voice was in my throat
saying this is my last cigarette
but that’s okay.

It’s the one that will burn forever.

Now don’t expect my infirm cellmate’s mouth to open and spew forth magical flies that save the day…I’m sure he would’ve if he could – but the effort would probably kill him. His knees looked like two doorknobs were stuck on half way up his legs. His skin was blotchy like a contaminated petri dish…dull with a rubbery yellow sheen.

He was hairless except for his head, but not in a body builder fashion. It was more of a case where the hair just gave up and fell out. His liver was clearly visible from outside of his body. The hepatitis had swelled a bilious protuberance in his side that made him wince with each step he took. His “pirates dream” sunken chest was festooned with the words “Born to Raise Hell” and a big headed cartoon devil wielding a pitchfork.

The rows of desensitizing creams and pads gave the indication that his balloon knot was in the same shape as the rest of him. Bad. His worst symptom, however, was one that no one could see.

to be continued

tommy’s joynt…not bad

this tagger is quite polite

Around this time of year some of the buildings have their edges lit up at night. It looks cool. This picture is hella blurry…I was on a boat in the bay drinking champagne at the time! (Happy birthday Karoline!)

these stickers, especially the I SKI one, bring back a lot of memories for me.

this is a bag of steer manure.

i worked on a photo shoot last week. I put the sod down in the background.

I believe the year was 1998. I opened up a junk shop in a flop house. I was living the dream.

Sean Ahern, a junior in 1989, a few years before he wound up in the clink. Guess which one he is…

Mr. Ahern sent me a long letter about prison that I’m going to publish a bit at a time, since he hasn’t even finished telling the story.

Part One

“In the real world the drama is diluted, watered down, drawn out. Especially in prison. It’s a real world too and things move slow. There’s no script. No plot points. No leading lady…now of course the things you see on TV do happen. They just happen in real time with no commercials.

The drama comes. People get beaten, stabbed, extorted, raped, sometimes they overdose on drugs, commit suicide. You name it. You just don’t get to see it all. You’ll probably hear about it…lot’s of talking. There’s a story. A conflict. The beginning, the middle, the end. Drugs, money, alcohol. Sex. Always the same subject matter. It’s just like TV. Only takes longer.

I should start where it started for me. I’d gotten a new cell mate after spending a week alone in what was now dubbed “the masturbation mansion.” A title I’d earned after I spent most of that joyous week getting to know myself again.

I wasn’t thrilled when the new guy moved in. Skinny and frail he entered the cell. His property consisted of an abundance of medications that he proceeded to arrange on the top of his locker with slightly shaky hands. After I introduced myself, I left to give him a little space to get situated.

When I returned the new cell mate was squared away. The treatments to his maladies neatly arranged in rows on his locker, his clothes neatly folded on the shelf and there he sat reading from a neatly stacked pile of papers. Neat. Real neat.

“Oh,” he said, as he pushed his reading glasses back with his index finger. “Um, how’s it going?”

I told him that things were going “pretty great.” They weren’t though. I could already see this shop keeper had set up shop. The type who rarely left the cell.

I don’t get sick very often. Surprising since half of these fucking animals spit on the floor, shit on the phone, and suck the doorknobs. I guess my immune system has just built up a resistance to dirtbags who jerk off in their pants and then go around touching things.

Anyways, I’d rather suffer than deal with the medical department here. I’d seen people die here for no reason. Sick people get sicker and just waste away. Here one day and dead the next. I watched a guy die once because no one knew CPR. Well, I did, but he had a bunch of gross shit coming out of his mouth so I wasn’t about to do it.

to be continued…

Papa-sean drew this robot for me, I tried to make the font look Russian.