SS NEPENTHES

Hi there, and welcome to yet another OCD piece. I forget the name of this piece, but will remember at some point in the ancient future. I might end up calling it the "SS NEPENTHES"

The other day I went sailing with my friend the Mauller. Todd, Selvi and their friend Chris were onboard as well. The last time I went sailing with the Mauller was in November and it was cold as fuck out in the ochre colored waters of the bay. We sailed way out past the Golden Gate bridge and almost sailed to the Farallon Islands. Kind of scary, considering that the Mauller's vessel is a bit old and not very well taken care of. He has one decaying flotation device on board, the sails are all ripped up, the small engine sometimes works, and the boat leaks a little bit every now and then. The Mauller performs "voyage repairs" only when in the midst of a voyage. When the boat is docked and when repairs should be made, the Mauller does not do it. He just takes the thing out every 3 months or so and discovers that something doesn't work right. He laughs a little bit and says, "I think we'll be alright." So much of the fun of sailing with the Mauller on his rickety craft is the uncertainty of what will happen. We made it back alive the other day and I didn't even get sunburned. Good. I hate being sunburned.

Timber

Hello there, and welcome to this piece entitled "Timber".
Sometimes I like to walk up a nearby minor mound of earth called Albany Hill. It is located about a 1/4 of a mile to the West of my apartment. I've been going up there lately more than ever before. It feels good to walk up the gradual slope, I guess it could be considered a "workout", but any activity where I breathe heavily for longer than 5 minutes I consider a workout. Anyway, Albany Hill's proximity to my place makes it a great little post work adventure for me.
Once upon the hill, it is littered with hundreds of non-native eucalyptus trees. These trees always look so haggard; hanging and drooping, bark splintering off the trunks, leaves littering the ground, weird gaps in the spreading foliage. So I walk along this little path on the hill and just observe things. There's a big white 1970s looking cross on the hill that lights up during the holiday season. On it is incomprehensible graffiti scrawled with stuff like "John eats big cum wads this year of the monkey" ???? There are benches up there too, some face East and Some face west. They sit high and are also covered with graffiti and have names and dates carved into them. Sometimes I'll sit on a bench and smoke a cigarette, which subsequently makes me feel like vomiting after the heart-pumping climb to the top. There is also a crazy old swing on the hill, which somebody had configured by stringing rope around a thick eucalyptus branch, and then attached it to small plank of wood in which to rest yr butt. I swing on this every time I get to the top. The swing lunges me way out over the Western half of the hill and then snaps me back, almost ramming into the tree from which it hangs. It is scary indeed, but I feel the need to do it every time I go up there.
I always seem to be myself on the hill. There are hardly any people around when I go up there during the week. I like it for this reason; I can be alone for a short time amidst a teeming pool of life below. Even though the hill is far from being "beautiful", to me there is a certain kind of beauty in its wild and overgrown state. It seems forgotten, neglected, obsolete. I read somewhere that there used to be a dynamite plant on the Western side of the hill, and the eucalyptus were planted on the hill to provide sound dampening. Those days are long gone, but Albany Hill still remains.
This piece "Timber" is a monument to the hill. Without the hill, Albany would lose all of its character, it would just blend in with all of the other East Bay suburbs. I like to think of this town as special and unique, unlike anywhere else in California. And it is, so long as the hill stands strong and the eucalyptus trees waver and shed their messy leaves in the cool Pacific breeze.

This is "Future in the World of 1 Million Yawns" I was thinking this morning, as I rose from a deep and medicated sleep, about the millions and billions of people in this world who rise from bed every morning to engage in yet another day's worth of repetition. It is amazing to me how we as people can do this every day, truly amazing. What is the motivation? Where is the reward? How do we condition ourselves to do this? Human beings are extremely versatile creatures; we can adapt to myriad situations very easily. And somewhere, deep within us all, there is a strange energy that seems to propel us through our days. I once heard that every life is made up of many very small victories, and very few large ones. This piece here is a compilation of those very small victories, hell, it is a small victory, for me at least.  

12 am 5mg

This is "12 am 5mg" Sarak had gone to NY for about a week, and my OCD started acting up pretty badly. I sat in our art room at 12 am on 5 mg of Paxil and constructed this piece. The kinetic and chaotic patterns soothed me a bit. It was a cathartic experience. I was able to vent some of my obsessive crap into making this. That's why I make this stuff -- it is soothing to focus my compulsions into something productive, even if they will just end up gathering dust in a room on Portland Ave. in Albany.

The Fabulous Mr. Happy!

This is Mr. Happy, he seems content enough, though being shaved probably wasn't very pleasant. I found this photo on a link at Yoni's website. I have to show the good people this photo, it is too sick to not care.

This is "Appearer" Sarak informed me that if this piece were reversed (right to left, insted of left to right) then it could be called "disappearer". It's all just a matter of perception anyway. Hey, didn't Sonic Youth have a song called disappearer on one of their earlier albums? Sarak, Ton Loc, do you know such things?  

The Return of Yoniferous leviathan

The above is "The Floyd Cam", alternate artwork for their Meddle album.
I had a nice conversation last night with my friend Yoni (aka Yoniferous L.) who lives in Chicago. He is a cook, and works late into the night. He used to live with me for a short time by sub-letting the room from another good friend of mine, Ton Loc (aka Lubener). During this time, we both developed a habit of hiding around the apartment a Michael Myers Halloween mask, a strange artifice that I had acquired several years back (I wore it at a party one time and it pissed some people off, funny). At any rate, we wouldn't see each other a whole lot throughout the weeks -- I had a normal 9 to 5 job and Yoni worked from about 3 pm to 1 am -- so to make up for these missing spaces, we would leave little things for each other to find when we came home. It was kind of like an absurdist play being shown over and over again. So with this big, white mask one of us would typically hide it someplace in the apartment in hopes to either frighten or amuse/bemuse the other. I put it in Yoni's closet one night and it kind of rolled out onto his chest when he opened the door, that scared him a bit. Another time, Yoni hung it from the ceiling by the front door and when I came home late one night the apartment was pitch black, and I felt this lumpy thing bounce off my face as I entered, I could barely make out the white starkness of Michael Myers -- just about scared the shit out of me. So those were fun days, absurd days, the Dadaists would be proud. Visit Yoni's website at www.drawingsbylight.com here he puts up his offerings and allows you to look into it for a while, sans Michael Myers mask.

Some Chaos...

This is "Some Chaos" Kinda ugly, huh? Well, yes, and no, 'cause there is beauty in ugliness, defects in perfection, maybe. Once I saw a film called Julian Donkey Boy, where the main character Julian (played by Spud from Trainspotting) is schizophrenic, and in one scene he recites a poem at the dinner table while his dad (played by Werner Herzog) sits in a daze as he listens to Julian spewing his nonsense. The scene went something like this:
Julian: "Morning chaos, afternoon chaos, night chaos, morning chaos, afternoon chaos, night chaos..."
Dad (W. Herzog): "I don't like this artsy-fartsy stuff, your poem is boring, Julian. I know a great story, from the film Dirty Harry. It is the part where Dirty Harry is pointing his gun at the man in the end and says to him 'Make my day, punk' and he blows him away into the water. I truly like that."
This piece kind of reminds me of something that Julian might construct while reciting his poem over and over again to himself.

Journey Into the Heart of the Beast

I was trapped in a world of make-believe for three days -- I was stuck there. I drove in the inky blackness of night across a vast highway teeming with boredom and repetition. Along the way I saw the endless brown landscape stretched for miles, the brown turned a muted orange as the sun finally set to bring in the lonely emptiness of dark. The dark came and that was that, just as black as you can imagine. The only thing hopeful was the red, flickering lights of the backs of vehicles scrambling for positions, and the occasional orange street light cutting through the musky night. A stop or two at commercial structures along the way allows the legs to stretch and the bladder to empty, but they always offer the dull nothingness and promise of nothing new; same faces, same vehicles, large families, feeding the mouths, same chain restaurants, nutrition at an all time low. Quickly jump back in to start 'er up and wonder why the fuck am I heading down this way.

Secrets Revealed at City Hall!

Lately, my work has been sending me over to the SF City Hall to check voter party affiliations. Did you know that this information is public knowledge? Well, it is, and it is really easy to obtain. Chances are if you are one of my friends, and have lived in SF within the past 5 years, and were a registered voter, then your party affiliation is listed right there in the Dept. of Elections, and I have looked at it. You are found out! No hiding from me. Well, most of you live in the East Bay anyway, so you are safe. But there are a few of you who have lived in SF, and I looked up the political party which you side with. Don't worry, though, nothing was revealed that I already knew. And to make you feel at ease, they won't allow the public to access your address and telephone number -- that is confidential. Though I'm sure a little prodding and poking would reveal that stuff too. Everything is easy to obtain these days.
So why the hell was I doing this for work? Well, when a case goes to trial a jury is selected (duh!) and all sorts of random people get called in for jury duty. Y'all know the drill, it happens to everyone. At any rate, the prospective jurors are given questionnaires to fill out. In these questionnaires they ask all sorts of questions, but they don't ask what political party you side with. So the attorneys on the case want to know as much about the jurors as possible, and both parties (defense, and plaintiff) want to know this stuff really badly. However, there is only so much you can tell from a questionnaire -- some of these things are filled out falsely too. So in the firm where I work I think they've developed a sneaky little trick to determine how the prospective jurors might sway in a case, and that is by checking their political party affiliation. I have no idea if the attorneys on the opposite side do this, but we do here, and they make it out like it is some sort of little secret trick that nobody should know. In reality this shit is very easy to get, just go down to the city hall, dept. of elections, and tell them you want to check registered voter party affiliations. They'll set you up on this little computer and have you key in the names, and voila! In no time you have yr best or worst friend's political affiliation. I typed in my sister's name and her party affiliation popped up, and she moved from SF about 6 years ago! I guess this is really no big deal, but it just seems funny to me that this is public knowledge. Everyone always keeps these things secret, nobody goes around proclaiming they are a Republican or a Democrat, or Non-Partisan, Or Green Party. It always seemed to me that asking somebody what their political affiliation is would be like asking somebody if they were gay, bi, or straight. It is only a matter of time before we have our entire lives splayed out for the world to see. But some people may want this. With all of the cell phone use and reality-based TV action these days, people are just begging to be seen. Nothing is sacred anymore, nothing is private. Girls walk around half naked with their ass cracks hanging out, and men flaunt about talking loudly while being way too overly confident. People just need to calm the fuck down, get over themselves FAST! But what am I saying? I just checked out who you may have voted for in this last election. I guess I'm no better than anyone else. Tis true, nothing is sacred. We need the old days back again.