further adventures at the bleeding edge of sanity and inexorable, throbbing chaos, with hummingbirds

I’m feeling very pissed off today, partially because of the recent demise of Tomatoes – I never knew his “real” name – a rather interesting fellow with the most completely brilliant and random collection of tattoos I have ever seen in the United States. I can’t claim to have known him very well, but he definitely stood out, even in a crowd like the Midnight Ridazz, even in a place like Slab City, and even in the mind of a professional deviant such as myself.

Tomatoes was a prankster, but you never felt badly if you were on the ass end of his prank. He believed in nothing, and thought death was “cool,” but embraced life like few ever do. He was a kinder, gentler sort of revolutionary; a nihilist with a heart; an ethical jackass. Throughout my adult life, I have only been involved in two violent confrontations, and Tomatoes – virtually a stranger – played a decisive role in bringing both to a close. That’s pretty weird.

I wish I could say more. I wish I had known him better. I wish I were really sad. But I’m just pissed off that someone like Tomatoes died of a fucking heroin overdose. A FUCKING HEROIN OVERDOSE. Jesus Christ, couldn’t he have at least set himself on fire or fallen out of a window or overdosed on something stupid like Magic Markers? Couldn’t he have been run over on his bicycle by a garbage truck with particularly interesting graffiti? Couldn’t he have died of some obscure, vanishingly rare disease like smallpox? An HIV-infected tattoo needle from a back alley inking of the likeness of Sarah Palin on his scrotum? And why do I even give a shit?

An excerpt from his blog:

Friday, October 09, 2009

depresion

I remain optomystical. These things, they make me remember the joys in life: not sleeping for four days, the warm feel of a five dollar machete handle as I lie in wake waiting for that oportune moment when they barge through the door and I decapitate them, thus proving to my ex-girlfriend that I’m not really scared, I’m just looking out for our safety.

Waking up in the kitchen, fully clothed clutching the machete wondering what day of the week it is and whether or not I’ve depleted the liquor store’s supply of 211.

She won’t share her drugs with me, her family hates me, and I don’t really understand how much money they invest in helicopters in Hollywood. Supposedly, they’re not really helicopters. It’s “auditory” hallucinations due to no sleep and lots of drugs.

I eat stuff though, . . . sometimes. Snickers bars, and the rolls of mini donuts coated in chocolate.

I’m scared to go outside. I go to Rite Aid a lot. Just to look at girls. and buy Natural Ice and Halloween candy that I just eat myself.

i’m not wiser, nor smarter,

nor better than you,

the twenty years between
us only
means
that i’ve
had a few more years to see

the sprawl devour the hills,
my teeth rot in my mouth,

our bodies dissolve to pus,
people disemboweling each other
amid flashy smiles,
traitors going in velvet robes,
the house getting it all in the end,
my experience fade into amber liquid and fireworks,
electronic scrap, dusty books
and the smell of a forgotten
old man.

twenty years closer
than you
to the bad breath of creation,
the stinking birthplace of life,
the beckoning maw of infinity

and twenty years farther
from the innocence
you wear like an iPod
at your beautiful, unchallenged

virginal flystrike.

it’s the uncertainty

you feel
when the ground suddenly
falls from beneath you

electric warmth,
erotic nausea, anticipation
of the new world

and your place within it

your battle scars mean nothing here
you must begin anew, and get your

heart broken
all over again.

Of historic note, the Trinity Test took place 65 years ago today. It was followed up shortly by the famous “you lose” mission over Japan. You may criticize our President, and perhaps with good reason, all you like but I, for one, and thrilled that we finally have a Commander in Chief who knows how to pronounce the word NUCLEAR, and probably even knows what the dictionary says it means.

[this post has been brought to you in association with Teiwaz and JetFuel – thanks for the inspiration.]

Word arrived today that Captain USA will be performing his latest and most spectacular stunt to date – The Flaming Burro of Freedom – here in Slab City (at or near The Range) on Independence Day. Despite the punishing summer heat of the low desert, masses will assemble to witness this unique and daring celebration of freedom of expression. In his own words,

Hello Friends! I have finally found a place where I can truly champion freedom Like only Capt USA can. I want to invite everyone I know to share my joy in finding it. I don’t expect many to join me because it truly is Hells Anvil for heat but there is a crystal clear cool canal running nearby for swimming in during the hottest part of the day. The following correspondence is with a revered slab city artist responsible for creating East Jesus which, if you’ve been to Slab City, you know, speaks for itself in capturing the mysterious fringe of freedom that whispers to us all when society seems to mean everything but. <snip>

The complete exchange between Captain USA and myself can be read here.

Ev’ryone join m’ now in this, by declaration of my pre-10am drunk, *First Ever* DO IT WRONG DAY. Paint your shoes green. Walk around with your pants around your ankles calling for Mommy. Invest half your money in a stock or ETF you fully expect to fail. Listen to a creepy far-right AM talk radio show. Leave the engine running. Pee on the kitchen floor and ask a friend to clean up after you. Eat bacon raw. Overcook the sushi. Shake up a can of warm beer vigorously before drinking it. Call your mom and tell her you’re doing these things. And email me with a report. But don’t hurt anyone and don’t destroy the environment, OK?

fucking DIED the stupid FUCK, Dennis Hopper DEAD at 74, fucking shit, he fucking DIED before I got a chance to meet him, offer him a hit off my spliff and shake his hand. I don’t even smoke pot. Fucking asshole, Dennis Hopper, went and fucking died on me, how fucking rude of him, fuck him, fucking fuck, asswipe, asshat fuckhole Dennis Hopper DEAD at 74, fuck.

Rabbitt and friend Jinni in "SoCal Gothic"

Sculptor / Cacophonist Michael Rabbitt strikes while the iron is hot and grabs a prime piece of surreal estate in the East Jesus hinterlands. Clean it up, it’s yours! The trash-ridden site pictured here was once a nice little camp with a garden, shade trees and two small trailers that got picked apart and left to rot when its former inhabitants went “on vacation” for a little too long. Hopefully soon it will once again be a pleasant, shaded camp…

An old friend and musical co-conspirator, Th. Metzger (not to be confused with the bloodsucking white supremacist douchenozzle named Tom Metzger,) got in touch with me via email for the first time in nearly a decade. I was delighted. Thom’s mind works in scary and intriguing and inspiring and depraved and scholarly and sharply analytical ways, and he was an important part of my social milieu back in the days of Health & Beauty, Screaming Vinyl, and the other spinoff musical performance art projects that loomed like an ominous gray cloud over Rochester, NY in the mid-80′s.

He told me that a lot of my friends in Rochester thought I was dead. I found this highly amusing, but kind of sad. I’m having a kind of Sixth Sense moment now, questioning my own belief that I am alive. What if I am just a wayward hungry ghost who died years ago in Oakland?

yes, this is a real .45 revolver. no, it isn't loaded. no, this is not a cry for help.

Any Rochesterians who know me are encouraged to comment here. Thanks.

HE was 44 when he first heard the voices. They could be heard, in his mind’s ear anyway, hovering in the background noise whenever an engine was running. He would turn his head to face the perceived source, and soon realize it could not possibly have come from there. Understanding the cognitive nature of this auditory “aliasing” illusion, he nevertheless decided to investigate the matter further. In other words, he asked himself what parts of his mind were generating these creepy, internal voices of Rorschachian ghosts.

THE voices sounded, for the most part, like song fragments on a transistor radio near a noisy fan – they would emerge and disappear, like odd, darting specimens in an aquarium. At times he was sure he recognized them; one was Patti Smith, another a friend from high school. There were many others that he did not recognize or never heard for long enough to foxhunt through his memory. In a dark corner, various 8-ohm loudspeakers from different technological epochs known as decades danced to the buzzing shimmy of filtered radio signals, his hallucinations dancing with them, seducing them, chiding them, turning his head this way and that, and always leaving him to his preferred silence when the last tarry fragments were evacuated from his lungs, and his metabolism had made short work of the toxins therein.

ON this particular evening, they had receded. He contemplated his [tape ends here]