2007.12.31.0054
the future still needs me...
...and I'm plugging back in.
It is good to have hope, and creative individuals need unreasonable enthusiasm to overcome the resistance of the uncreative majority and to sustain their own energies when years of effort have not led to attainment of their goals.
-- William Sims Bainbridge, Nanoconvergence: The Unity of Nanoscience, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science
2007.12.30.1711
dear Marilyn
Hey, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your memorial service today. Everything hurts -- my joints, my hands, my memory, my life... I got sick and just didn't feel very colorful. And I know you'd understand. Shit, you were the only one from that whole crowd who came to celebrate my birthday at Salvation Mountain last year, and that's saying a lot. You'll always be as alive as my memory of you; you just won't be there to answer the phone or drive past me on Rt. 1 by surprise anymore. And much as I really wanted to be a part of what happened today, my feeling is that it's all empty ritual. What's a celebration of your death if we weren't celebrating your life to the fullest? I hardly even celebrate my own life anymore, if you can call it that. I'm spinning my wheels, burning rubber, getting nowhere fast. Things seem to be getting worse faster than I can lower my standards. And there have been more deaths in my life lately than I can really wrap my head around.
You did good, Marilyn. You really did, and I think you knew that, too. That's all that matters in the end. I'm trying to do good, but I seem to fail at every turn, then forget what I was doing and launch another brilliant failure. When I look back I see a long showcase of misery, ineptitude, missed opportunities, bad paths, Fehlschlag. Yeah, but I keep myself optimistic and amnesiac just enough to stick my neck out one more time after I've slept off the recurring nightmare of waking up in my own bed, still just me, still nowhere, still trying. And I guess that's all that matters in the end.
2007.12.28.0127
pregnant with epiphany
there is no manual, no map, only
the breadcrumbs left
by people who should be just a bit wiser than
they really are. but a few things are clear;
the game is rigged, the end is nigh,
the world is shrinking, the dollar is toast,
and everyone dies, even dogs.the doctors all agree:
wholesome nurture until approximately age three,
then everything went wrong.without despair, there is no terror;
without hope, there would be no hopelessness.
without betrayal, where would we find our stubborn, unforgiving hatred?
there would be no tenderness
if not for the putrefaction of anger.
i wandered, drunk and armed, through the dizzy crowd hoping
someone would say the wrong words
or do just one more stupid thing with fire.there is no safer place to be
than rock bottom,
aces cracked.
2007.12.21.1637
some of my neighbors
http://www.scrapperfilm.com/scrapper.html
2007.12.13.2316
the night i lost everything
her skin
beckoned like
smooth dark
fleshtangle;the tequila was
smooth and fine.i watched the stacks
slowly disappear into the felt
as her eyes avoidedmine.
2007.12.12.1940
Rockette Bob's Grave of the Fat Liar
"Hey Charlie... still on a roll ??? easy money comming in ??? i thought about gummo and eraserhead as your favorite films. i have met a lot of people who are sick, disabled and not just quite right in the reno soup kitchen / social service enviroments and streets that i have been living in the last few years. at the church services on the slabs, i heard a lot of prayer requests for help with cancer. i seldom hear about it in reno . i was camping under the high voltage lines at salvation mtn. and got nervious after some fellow was telling me about a generator that runs off the power flying out of the lines. the sounds they make are beautifull, but i moved on. there is an art instalition for santa that i left. i called it the " grave of the fat liar ". it is across the road from the lane to the tanks. toxic dumps, cancer and eraserhead..........your shipping container and gummo make me think about violent weather and odd people. if the poles shift on the planet next year, will you be safe in your pod ??? the things flying around the slabs will not pierce the steel walls and nothing will fall on it, as there are no buildings close by. would the thing just fly around like dorthy in the " wizzard of oz" ??? ....when i met the fellow preaching at the church, i had the strange thought he was related to you. when i brought up your name, he just kinda looked the other way. many people knew you, but most said you stayed to yourself..... did you scare them with gunshots / nudity / liquor and drug behavior ???........is East Jesus compleat ??? all the things scatered around the slabs re-enforce the idea of getting rid of my material possessions. de-clutering my life would make it more simple......i have an old zippy strip on my wall where he is looking mornfull and down. he is bringing up bussines names like 1) house of cars 2) house of carpet 3) house of balls 4 ) house of liquor, on and on and on. he looks happy when he sez HOUSE OF PANCAKES. homelessness is something in the head...........empty-head-bob"
2007.12.11.1313
Rockette Bob sees East Jesus for the first time
"Hello Charlie..... i hope you are well. i am fine. i am in holtville today at the library and hot springs for a soak. i never bumped into moth. i met a lot of nice people. leonard was the first person i knew. he was at the gas station as i drove in. some guy name jim i had met at burning man was heading out of town. i was overwhelmed when i got to East Jesus. driving past the mountains of trash and wrecked vehicles i stoped and took a walk. no one was around, but a dog barked from the trailer that had been skinned. i had a total freak-out. i drove away for a few hours and calmed down. that is about the time i called you and said i was gonna go buy a rake. i went back to make a camp and meet moth. i looked into a bush and saw plastic bleach bottles and a package of un-opened paper plates. i piss in those kind of bottles and freaked out again. i was smelling an open sewer, real or immagined. i drove down to my old camp. i bet it took 24 hours to calm down. i could smell the salton sea, cow shit and human excreatment everywhere. i was not on a good trip........... they say an artist makes order out of chaos. you have done that. good art makes a reaction in the viewer. you sure did that.....three days later i went back, after the church services, to find moth. still no moth, but i looked closer this time. i had rode my bike and walked. it was a ghost town. everything was coated with dust. even your spare change was in place on a counter. kinda like you had just disappeared. it looks like some great partys went on and a lot of hard work. to see your stuff all around in various stages of decay was a mind blower. the trash of others gave a context, but knowing your stuff,it now had meaning. the dirt and water stained photo of laura dern is now burned into my mind with your East Jesus project. the dog was still barking from inside the trailer hull....i went to the store and bought beer, called your machine, went back to my camp and drank myself to sleep..........i have slept a great deal here. no power, so sun-up to sun-set is my routine. i always have night terrors, but some of the ones here were nice....you and i, and an un-named art car artist had a paying job sorting trash. we had room and board included. many others were housed in this porno theater doing the same job. bunk beds , but the beds were used 24 hrs. hot sheet living. everyone worked different shifts. 8 hrs in the cot. 16 working. the movies ran while we slept. the sound track was loud, but you could hear people jerking off. most would take their doo-rag with them and clean up before they went to the job. we slept in the same bed. you followed the un-named fellow in the bed. he would ejuculate into a one pound coffee can every shift and leave it for you as his art. you did not care for this. even though the place stunk like dried spunk you did not like the fresh spoo left for you..........i was shitting in a plastic bag while in my camp. i emptyed out my trailer and truck. i wanted to cull my stuff and work on my rig. i could not drive to the gas station for a sit down. the smell factor was getting to me again. the salton sea was blowing my way. along with my own body odors i had tearing eyes. i loaded things into my rig this morning after 4.5 days on the slabs. a cup of cofee and some time in town. i had a few hours to wait so i drove to brawley to use the library. another 4 hours there till it opened. i remembered the hot springs in holtville and now i am gonna camp here for a while..........i had another strange thought or dream. plato was the dog in the trailer. you were gonna starve him to death as art. you needed a soundtrack for East Jesus..... my dead mother was going to have sex with a speed freak mechanic while he worked cutting the roof off an old schoolbus......man, so may strange dreams....i was so paranoid when i got here, i was leaving my open blade in my pocket, ready to knife fight. everyone has been so nice.........i am gonna go soak now. thanks for listening...bob...............p.s. whats up with you ???"
2007.11.30.2129
Rick McKinney sails to East Jesus w/o water
it takes balls
to be that nowherestill kind to the old
crazy man whose
boat has been impounded yet
still feeds the kittens when he can't
even feed
himselfit's all going down
the tubes and we
all know it;but some of us can
still wring out a moment
of sunshine
from thatdry old sponge
my man: 1
oil slick: 0
2007.11.29.1303
I
"Hello.... i just wanted to let you see the bid for towing the truck. i have no cash to pay it now. i was hopefully gonna sell it on thursday. just get rid of it for gas money. i put it on uship to get an idea how much it would cost..... your movie fucked with my head last night. the trashed landscape and the bus without wheels, filled with garbage, made my dreams very vivid. i could smell the urin and see the flies around the human feces..... i was pulling compacted rope-ey sandelwood turds out of my asshole using a 3 and 4 finger scooping motion. my fully stretched asshole would not release the shit as i pulled and scooped the blonde string. corn and penuts were present, along with black spots, on the long knotty poop-cord.......................... just another night terror....... if you want the truck there, i will repay as soon as possible...................i looked into shipping containers bids, but found no bargans..........bobby"
II
"Hello Charlie....... man, i love griffy..... keno hits again. 20 cent 6 spot with a four x multiplyer for a little over 600 bucks. tonight is a drawing and tommorow also. tents of free food this weekend. free room on sunday and monday at harrahs. cheep room tomorrow night at sands............... can you get away for the weekend ??? not much to do here, but be an idiot......some fellow may buy the truck tommorow, but i just do not know.......i want to build a plastic kool-aid stage so bad. kinda like the plastic chapel and other things finley fryer did at burningman....... if the truck was loaded with items and sent to the slabs, it would be a way to start making it happen......i opened up one garage yesterday to find the tittle but was overwhelmed by the amount of things.......i often am told by people to just get rid of this crap. i am a greed-head. just walk away and the load is lighter. most of these people are street people. the well to do people just look down their noses at all the 'shit' i accumulate for my projects. the do not see any art in my madness............thanks for the offer of a loan. what to do???...........most all the hippie people i have been involved with have been scumbags just looking to get stoned and laid. rainbow people and fellow hippie artist in the rosemary ct. florida artist space fucking stole things and lied most of the time. are these the same hippies in your camp as the ones that would not leave the tanks when you wanted them???. i remember having to hide toilet paper when we had drum circles. they would walk around with dirty assholes instead of buying paper. the rainbows called them "drain" bo's. bisby was full of them. a lot of them migrated to burningman in the summer. they are scum.... i hope your camp has not been overun by this type of vermon. they call me an asshole for my view of there behavior. just get stoned, the man will burn anyway. FUCK THEM...i am an asshole......sorry about the rant, i just got carried away. i will try to be a nicer person..................................what is your schedual for your return to east jesus. is it finished, and are going to walk away??? how did moth get through the summer heat??? how do the other slabers do it ??? they had c.b.'s. do they police the camps that way???...............i just want to get out of town and start working on things. the logistics of this, make my head spin and most people have no concept. they just want the here and now to be pleasent.........thanks for listening to me. i guess i just gotta keep pluging away, but the easy fix always pops into my head..........when you gonna move back down......how many guns you got ??? canabalism, food shortages and the end of the world in over one hundred degree heat kinda scare me.......i think i will go have a beer.....please write......... bob"
III
"Hello........ glad to hear you are winning again. come on up. i can put some bread in. i will have a room on sunday and monday. the tent thing is a homeless village. not much fun in the traditional pepermill fashon. we can stay warm and sing. we can eat donuts while waiting for the next startchy meal and repent from our sins..... come on up and loan me money. i will spend it on getting the truck to east jesus. we can load things in it. carts and a piano harp that is on wheels, tools and odd things. i could use your optimisim and smarts. the stupid people here just rain on the parade.......thanks...bob"
2007.11.26.1303
life and death in the art car world
Today I received the news that the very beloved Marilyn Dreampeace drove off to the big tailgate party in the sky yesterday after several years of an unusual battle with an even more unusual type of cancer. Her disease didn't stop her, though, from living life like it was a bowl of tropical fruit salad with green M&Ms and playing the penny slots at every casino in the west after the rest of us had already gone to bed. In fact, she seemed so healthy and alive some of us were suspicious. The last time I had the pleasure of seeing her was in Santa Cruz during the ArtCar Fest, where she was looking lively and happy and as respectfully irreverent as ever. She said she liked seeing me with a full beard. Goodbye, Marilyn. You did real, real good.
Thankgiving at NIMBY - Jack Daniel's ham - too much Scotch.
Friday - word arrived that Rockette Bob's art car "Merry" aka "Rockette Bob's Pocket Rocket" was actually on its way to East Jesus aboard a car transporter. I wasn't feeling like driving there and back over the weekend, but failure to get hold of Moth or anyone else in the Slabs who could be counted on to receive the vehicle forced me to get dressed, suck in my gut, pack up the stuff from my dad destined for storage there, and drive drive drive all night long. The car arrived as scheduled, without hassles, looking very shiny and clean in the bright desert sun.
These images don't do the car justice. The detailed mosaic of the skin, which is mostly aluminum and xmas lights, is quite complex. In fact it's one of Bob's more thoroughly covered vehicles.
Will this mean Rockette Bob will follow? Stay tuned....
2007.11.17.1303
the whole Paul Addis thing
my perspective:
I. When I first met Paul in early 2001, I thought he was a REAL DOUCHEBAG. Arrogant, pushy, obnoxious. Not crazy; he seemed to be in complete control of himself. I would use words like jerk, jerkoff, asswipe, asshole, etc to describe him.
II. The second time I met him was later that same year. He was still a jerk, still a douchebag, still an obnoxious, loud-mouthed asshole. When he got in my face over something I thought was trivial, I confronted him about it. "Why are you always such an asshole?" I asked him. Suddenly he melted into something more docile, less hostile. "Oh," he began in a mildly apologetic tone, "It's just my style, I guess. Don't take it to heart." Oh, OK. Whatever. I thought he just needed to get his ass kicked real bad by someone who didn't find his "style" very amusing.
III. This is hearsay, though I believe the source to have been truthful in relaying it: Paul got into some trouble with the law ca. 2003-04 for brandishing a firearm in a threatening manner - to an off-duty police officer. This meant something like house arrest or curfew for a while, probation, and all his bangy toys being taken away.
IV. This summer, Our Little Pauly set "The Man" on fire a few days early. I have read and listened to all sorts of arguments that this was just a harmless prank. Well, it may have been a prank, and the symbolism involved may be heavily weighted, but as far as I'm concerned his act was, at the very least, a major nuisance to a large number of people, and at worst, first degree arson / hate crime. I see it as arson, which is very, very bad. Forget the symbolism and consider that Addis set fire to a 40' tall wooden sculpture covered with wax, which stood atop a 20' wooden structure, underneath which a lot of fire-sensitive and expensive equipment, displays and art were housed, during a time when no firefighting forces were exactly on standby, and where dozens if not hundreds of people in various states of chemical im/balance were milling around. Paul gets an enormous amount of publicity for this, and a lot of people seem to approve of his act of arson, like frat boys high-fiving one another over a successfully executed mass date rape.
V. Out on bail, Addis goes to Seattle to perform his little piece of Hunter S. Thompson worship. He decides that threatening a hotel clerk with a firearm is a fine idea, gets arrested again, and gets out on a puny bail.
VI. Back in San Francisco, with his fifteeen minutes of fame rapidly evaporating, Paul gets arrested for attempted arson on the steps of Grace Cathedral. No matter that the explosives he had strapped to his waist could barely blow up a lunch box - Addis is crying to the world, "Please! Please! Someone PLEASE call me on my bullshit and KICK MY ASS RIGHT NOW! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!! Play the terrorist card if you must!" He goes to jail, bail set just shy of half a million, and suddenly all his high-fiving buddies are eerily silent.
VII. About a week later, news emerges that Paul was a bad, bad boy just before his arrest. He had been stalking Sacred Heart prep school students, threatening to kill them, and even an emergency restraining order couldn't keep him from going back and harrassing faculty.
Perhaps he is mentally ill. If so, perhaps his mental illness is due in part to the sad fact that no appropriate reprimands for his misbehavior ever happened. He was on a rush, being as bad as he wanted to be, getting off on his own egotistical asininity without anyone smacking him upside the head. Someone should have kicked his ass real, real bad, a long time ago, and again as necessary. Crazy or not, Paul Addis is a world-class asshole and a criminal.
FWIW, I'm a world-class asshole too, but I don't point my guns at people (unless I intend to kill them,) I don't set other peoples' things on fire without their permission, and I don't threaten minors, religious or otherwise.
2007.11.04.1909
wasted weekend
Well, fool me once....no big deal, just a complete waste of $120, several kilos of carbon into the atmosphere, and an otherwise perfectly interesting weekend in Baysprawl (Dia de los Muertos at CMR) spent instead in that singularly illustrative garden of mental health rose bushes in Imperial County. I should have know that any attempts, however sincere, to get Moth & Co. organized enough to sit down sober and figure out the basics for an internet cafe, internet radio and website would be thwarted by the inexorable, throbbing chaos of the Slabs. I am completely wiped out from the drive; more time spent on the road than at East Jesus, two nights spent in the front seat of Mutagen in rest areas and one day missed at work. But before I bitch any more about it, it was in its own way good to at least try. And I got some face time with a few peeps, heard some surprisingly good music (for the Slabs) Friday night, fixed up the water & propane supply and picked up some of Genevieve's stuff. I will just have to be a little more circumspect about quickie trips in the future.
Rockette Bob (our faithful guardian of sanity) writes:
"PSYCHO OBSESIVE COMPULSIVE. many things inside my head. they say it is creative. just odd ideas that make me laff. in the casinos i use to page bob mreps. sperm bob. another was bob feltcher. feltching is eating sperm out of a vagina. just a laff to break the bordom. check out google psyc. terms. kinda fun to see all the names for the things we do........the movie people alway suck. monkey, monkey, here is a banana. those canadian people gave me a 100 for the dog and pony show. my dad use to get people to pay him for the chance to be in films. they would get the cuties into porno just for extra fun. at 13 i was the VICE-president for jeffe inc., robert hill and associates and a bunch of other shell corporations in hollywood. i was the one who drove when they were too fucked up. i overshot catalina island, ran out of fuel in a fog bank. that party went bad as we rocked for 4 hrs. people getting sick from the motion and fear. the coast guard found us and draged us back to avalon. i had to go to high school the next day. no wonder i am the way i am.......sorry to hear they led you on..........................bob"
2007.10.27.1721
Rockette Bob writes:
Hello Charlie.....i hope you are doing well. i am fine here in reno ........many interesting things go on here in the biggest little city. i caught my bread truck on fire this last week. i went to a wrecking yard to find another carberator and i found my decorated van in the pile of wrecked trucks. i was reading a depeck chopra book on the bus and it explained why i am to make and abandon art cars...............perhaps another cocktail-bob
And here in San Jose, my week of dwogsitting and commuting to San Francisco via Oakland comes to a close. It's been nice sleeping on a real bed, feeling my lower back muscles unclench and de-spasm, entertaining yummy company and enjoying daily immersion in furry, unconditional love. I have yet to visit the nearby Lunch Box restaurant - amazing Ethiopian cuisine in the most unassuming place you can imagine - for my traditional repast of raw kitfo.
The solder paste arrived to day and I blasted through all 75 boards in record time. Test & pack tomorrow, ship Monday. Then off again to the Archive for more Scribe-building fun a go go. The newly-hatched Open Content Alliance may be a harbinger of many, many more Scribes....
Meanwhile, back in Slab City, a good idea may actually be coming true. Several of us have wished for Slabs-wide internet access and a low-budget version of an internet café. Now there is some real support going on and peripheral interest in video documentation of same, and I have been enlisted to coordinate the technical details. So next weekend I'll be zipping down to East Jesus for a quickie.
2007.10.23.2240
Moon she's-a gettin' big. Greeting from San Jose. Not driving downtown like I was supposed. The Huck&Dancer Grandaddy passed away (ArtCar Fest is sure hard on the dads...) in Eraserheadland and I'm all looking after the store. The commute is like meditation, if you avoid the heavy traffic hours. Plato scratches the carpet, expecting it to soften, perhaps. My back is not killing me. My feet are healing. The tooth is leaving me alone for now. The nicest thing that happened to me today was an hour-long nap that simply had to be taken in that cold steel box. R6-01 is finished, and about 1/3 of the rework (mispopulated R9 and they all have to be desoldered and replaced.) Still waiting for the paste in the mail. Devolved is still lurking in the cracks and crevices, waiting for me to kill him. Indoor shooting range nearby with my name all over it. Try shooting those Smith & Wesson .500 monsters just for the broken wrist vig. My friends will just have to wait. No business like.
2007.10.19.2241
the flipside
OK, I give up. Where am I??
I vaguely recall spending a few weeks in a remote crater field outside Flagstaff. I guess I visited Arcosanti on the way home, was talking with my father about maybe attending a workshop there together....then I was home, cleaning up, getting ready for something, and these guys from TV were asking me questions.. then I drove drove drove and drank drank drank (not at the same time - that's bad - you might spill your drink) for something like three weeks all over the west with weirdly decorated cars. Ended up in a little Arizona border town across the street from a tiny little restaurant with the best burritos $3.50 can buy. Everything became blurry, everything hurt. My back ached, my kidneys burned, and I couldn't get a night's rest. I became addicted to Coca-Cola. Mercury went into retrograde and the moon slowly became half full again. Now I look down and my hands are black - I'm back in Oakland at NIMBY - no, it's San Francisco - big data center in the financial district - little green identichip card thingy for the bus - i'm making things - talking to people who seem familiar but where have I been? How many bodies have been cut up and fed to pigs? Who cracked the skulls for them? When I try to sleep I hear very loud rock music through the corrugated steel channels that line this maze of chilled, fetid air and black dust. Strange objects everywhere. Old habits returning of their own accord. I can feel someone else making all the moves for me, a friend or enemy within. I hear the TV men were all around me in East Jesus again, watching me move my mouth as I made sounds, listening to the gunfire in the wash, asking me questions that made no sense. Where was I? How am it? Was me then? Can help you? A mistake, a mistake, rewind, rewind, go back, go back.... Suddenly a warm, quiet house with animals. Machines whirring behind me, spelling out instructions I cannot understand. People dissolve, disappear. That's what they say.
2007.10.04.1300
Harlow Russell III, b.1937.12.31, d.2007.10.04
Is the moon half full or half empty?
2007.10.02.2355
It's kind of like
A present
Being unwrapped....Don't we need more water anyway?
Undoing global warming
means we all have to act
in accordance with the needs of the moment
in cooperation with each other worldwide
which basically means
we're totally fucked.See you on the other side.
The hole is deep,
The hole is bad.
The hole has cancer
of the dad.(Th. Metzger)
2007.summer
2007.winter
2006
