Dust Bunny Jihad

Guys I Would Totally Date comix

2008-06-21T22:37:00.000-05:00

GUYS I WOULD TOTALLY DATE

Disturbingly cute comix rogue's gallery of guys that artist/writer Mashanda would date. You will recognize the types, if not some past encounters with lonely boys.

$1.00

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love bunni press
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mashanda

NIGHT NURSES new zine for you peoples

2007-11-04T19:09:00.000-05:00

Come and get Jason Gonzales' new drug-fueled story of a young girl's haunting obsession with horrific Kool Aide Men and body modification! Also there is something about Jesus' Return on the night before a lame hipster is scheduled to enter rehab. Night Nurses plan on fingering your internals!!

All for a $1.20.

Get it now over at www.lovebunnipress.com

HUMILIATING SHAME RITUALS : tales of a fourth grade note dropper

2007-05-06T15:41:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in my second try at Fourth Grade, this time at a brand new school, I began self-terrorizing myself with an invented fear of Kevin Hall.

Kevin Hall was a tough little Sixth Grader. He was infamous at lunchroom gossip conferences and at idle playground huddled tauntings for being a teacher-punching, ponytail-ripping, kid-beating hard ass.

Kevin Hall’s family was from a lower income tax bracket than the rest of the upper middle class kids in the school. He was a short, stocky kid with yellowish gray veins rippling along his prematurely defined forearms. His facial features reflected an unfortunate hint of alcohol-fetal, his close set eyes were always painfully squinting, his pencil lips clenched in a mockery of a smirk, and his black hair, littered with dandruff flakes, sat on his head in a mess of wavy spikes.

Everyday he arrived at school wearing the same grease-paper pin striped shirt, slightly un-tucked out of his navy blue pants - worn to threads at the knee and pocket. But his most distinctive marking, the one that flashed stalking danger to the herd of recess children milling around in tight circles, was his faded jean jacket. No other kid in the school wore one, so when we saw it approaching, we were sent scattering.

While Kevin was never actually seen beating on or teasing another student, I imagined he persecuted a deadly personal vendetta against me. I self-styled such a stomach dropping terror which demanded an ever vigilant attention to his location on the parking lot, lunch room, or hallway drinking fountain.

The persecution in my fevered imagination became an obsession, a consuming fear. I had plunged myself into a quivering abyss of nightly terrors and constant Kevin Hall nonsequitors, that my mother became extremely concerned. Ultimately, she wrote a blinking note asking that I be allowed to remain in the second floor classroom during all recesses and lunch hours.

From the safe distance of a full story, I enjoyed a bird’s nest view of the entire recess population. Sitting on the metal radiator cover, twisted, so my face pressed against the window, I kept watchful eye on the slow migration of Kevin Hall and his gang of future-fluky- stoner-metalhead-hippies. My surveillance was compulsively necessary. I worried to distraction during spelling exercises, anticipating the fear of seeing this terrifying bully again.

I felt a disgusted safety as I looked out at Kevin, action figure size, standing on the far side of the parking lot. And I jumped with a surprised panic when he stood against the wall under my classroom perch, skidding back across the neat rows of desk in horror.

After a few week of deflecting my classmates’ prodding questions about why I stayed inside during recess, I became overly secure in my empty classroom. The isolation, though, transformed my fears into untouchable cockiness.

My incessant persecution fantasies, slowly, grew into empowered revenge dramas. In these day dreams, I stood up to the terror-bully and humiliated him. I released the school of his monstrous grip! Typical Fourth grade, superhero over-simplification.

After a few days spent thinking of nothing else, running through all the possible scenarios and chewing over the possible outcomes, I decided upon a plan of action. The scheme was devastating. I would write an anonymous note insulting Kevin, then, when he was within range, I would drop the note down on his head. It would drift down covering him like World War II Allied Propaganda.

When he figured out it what it said about him, his caveman perplexity would turn to abject mortification. Once confronted with the truth, his puffed up arrogance would deflate, thus rendering him just another kid on the playground. Or at least that is how I imagined it would happen. But the day I chose to muster my courage to enact “Operation Note Drop,” events played out a bit differently than I imagined.

First, I waited all morning recess for Kevin to scoot over into the drop zone, but he stayed a safe distance away. Frustrated, I watched as he pushed on his friends in some mountianless king of the mountain struggle. The rest of the morning I was so agitated and distracted that I lost the ability to understand the English language.

The next frustration came as I attempted to compose the note, itself. As I toggled though the wealth of swear words I had expertly collected, I was brought short by the hard reality that I was a notoriously bad speller. In order to manage the full effect of the note, I would have to assure that the insult was spelled correctly, this cut out half of my bad word repertoire.

Once I settled on the language of the note, I took to the task of disguising my handwriting. Using my shaky left hand, I scribbled out the note several times. After a futile, unintelligible first tries, I was, by lunchtime, totally prepared. After wolfing down my peanut butter and jelly bag lunch, I was well-positioned on my radiator ledge.

I waited.
And waited.

As I waited, my stomach grew tighter and tighter. The nervous cramp became the debilitating holding-in -the-poop-explosions burning shivers. I squirmed back and forth, uncomfortably jockeying between hopping from foot to foot, dancing side to side, and sliding along the smooth brown metal of the radiator cover.

Then it happened. Kevin Hall materialized, like a beamed down Captain Kirk, underneath my window. He leaned against the rough brick wall, hands punched into his pockets, enjoying the shade the building cast. The moment had arrived!

My quivering hands left sweat prints on the window handle as it bent down to open the pane inward. On my knees, I stretched my arm out into the air and, with closed eyes, let go of the folded little note. Blinded by the excitement of my triumph, I did not watch as the note caught in the updraft, before plummeting to the asphalt. I spent the rest of the lunch hour huddled at my desk, pretending to draw a dinosaur on scrap paper.

As my classmates filed back in from lunch, two girls scurried up to our teacher. They held the note, my note, up as they breathlessly tattled on me. The next day I had to go out to recess like all the other kids in my class.

Humiliating Shame Rituals

2007-04-12T17:42:00.000-05:00

The first two months of any new school year are always physically uncomfortable. Aside from the scratch of new school clothes - the cardboard-stiff collars of brand-new oxford blouses, the whip-sharp catholic school uniforms, or razor-creased husky-sized slacks; there was the clunkiness of those new, not-yet-broken-in dress shoes that made a clippity clop noise when one tried to dash down the hallway.

Besides the wardrobe, there were those fits of false starting enthusiasm and the furtive oaths made in the school supply aisle, tiny hands pressed on the crisp, pristine notebook, that this will be an academic watermark, where procrastinations are finally eradicated. Oaths that would fail within the first month as homework assignments lost out to re-runs of sit coms you did not even find funny.

There are also the unforgiving heat waves and the blistering sun that crept along the length of the classroom, its punishment inescapable.

Uncomfortable, too, because, invariably, your summertime friends and last year’s alliances are shifted out across the arbitrary classroom assignments, the pains of having to resize the socio-academic hierarchy, (which included the selection of “small group partners,” that would determine so much of your in-class success or failure).

Finally, those first few months were made all the more uncomfortable because the rumor mill still levied dangerous sway over the molding of the raw materials that came to shape one’s fears, expectations, and perceptions that would come to dominate your entire school year. The gossip cycle was powered by the fuel of an older sibling's teasing or neighborhood rivalries. It spun previously benign unknowns into the black bile stain of nightmarish apprehensions and a bullying meanness. Nervous stomach cramps spread like a virus.

It was among these prickling thorns that Sister Mary Patrice, a bitter midget Bride of Christ, became the dreaded Sergeant Mary Police. She was renowned as a hardened kid-tossing disciplinarian, whose classrooms were more torture chambers than nurturing environments of supportive curiosity. The old-school-beat-the-lesson-in-through-your-ruler-cracked-knuckles was her greatest pedagogical method. Not above bouncing unfinished homework assignments against the foreheads of the lazy student, exposing the humiliation of the unstudied surrender of the slacking child. Nor was she one to shy away from ruling over a fearful kingdom kept in check by the ironfist grasp of the pop quiz.

So it happened one afternoon, just after lunch, that I was sitting at my desk in the back of the classroom. I had been impatiently distracted all through lunch by the book I could not wait to get back to reading. The thought of reading during lunch never even occurred to my tiny fourth grade sense of the possible.

The book I was devouring was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, which had just been made into a movie starring Han Solo. Blade Runner was splashed across the imagination for several reasons - the first being the fact that Harrison Ford was in it and he was so amazingly cool; the second were those movie stills that featured Harrison Ford pointing a terrible hand cannon, drenched in the noir rain; and finally, the almost nonstop hype that Starlog Magazine poured across its slick full color glossy pages, pure fanboy gasps, ooohs and aaahs.

I had dug the sleek black paperback out from inside my metal tub lift top desk and thumbed to where my Garfield bookmark stuck out. Not far into the novel at all, I was only at the scene where Deckard is riding up the elevator with the other cop bringing him back in to talk to the chief. The two are discussing whether screwing an android is technically cheating, as those artificial humans are just a clockwork of animated parts.

I am not sure if my easily flushing cheeks had lit up like a Christmas Tree ornament or whether that little four foot nun’s Notre Dame Morality Radar blew up like a mob hit car bomb; but before I knew what was happening, a small mannish claw shot out of the ether over my shoulder to snatch the book out of my hands. I sat in awe, staring at the empty space where the book had just been then I heard the slice of the cut, that clipped voice,

- Just what do you think you are reading?

I felt the burning hot rush of blood splotching my face with the rosy display of embarrassed guilt. The immediate and indiscriminate blaze that colored my starched dough complexion relegated my inclination to a life of smart-alecky bad boy mischief to happenstance and accident.

I was mortified, embarrassed and alive with a prickling rage. I could feel the stomach cramp and stress sweat beginning as the full effect of the obviousness of the singled-out example I was about to become settled in with the quiet of the hushed classroom. My classmates' faces turned back in shock and sneer.

The Sergeant growled through clenched teeth,
- Tell me what is going in this book!

I looked up at her frowning accusation. All I could muster was a meek stammer of
– i dunno.

- Do you not understand my question, young man?

- um…i…

- Then maybe you do not understand what it is you are reading!

At that point the conversation had become a pivotal scene in the larger childhood-crushing, imagination-decimating morality play that passed as pedagogy in the frigid halls of any and all catholic schools.

She continued in the coy and well-rehearsed authority of a well-practiced stage whisper,

- These men, if you want to call them that, are discussing a woman. Do you understand what they are discussing doing to her?

- She’s not really a woman…er, she’s…

- OH, I see, she isn’t--the snap of the curt interruption blistered the room. A frown curled downward, sternly punctuating the sharpness of the judgment lines burrowed into the sides of her mouth.

- This is totally inappropriate for you to be reading. You may not have this filth back until your mother comes to retrieve it.

She briskly turned on her heel and then walked back to her desk, dramatically dropped the book into a bottom drawer before disgustedly slamming it shut.

By the end of the week my mother had been called in to discuss the matter while I waited in the sterile linoleum of the hallway. Nothing was discussed about the mind-rotting pornography that was Philip K. Dick’s novel until my father came into my bedroom that night. He handed the book back to me and said

– You are allowed to read whatever you want at home. But please don’t take books to school unless you are assigned them, okay.

I nodded in amazement.

HUMILIATING SHAME RITUALS

2007-03-17T15:53:00.000-05:00

I was in the second grade and it had been a rough year. I had looked forward to Easter break since Christmas. The vacation was only a few hours old. I had spent most of the day inside playing figures, battling Stormtroopers with flying Wookies. With a half an hour before dinner would be ready, I went into the damp spring evening to kick at puddles and stab sticks into the mud. Consciously, I tried not to sink my sneakers into the slop, but was unable to resist the sole-soaking fun of mud holes’ slurping. I was bored, but enjoying myself.

Phil Stitt lived next door. A few years younger than me and always dressed like an extra neighborhood kid from the Brady Bunch. Phil thought that he was an Indian. He truly believed that his humorless father and ill tempered mother discovered him in the rotted out hollow the nearly dead stump in his backyard. He truly believed that he had been left in a swaddle of blanket by some Squaw, unable to raise her newly born son.

Part of this personal mythological origin was an invented religious cosmology that deified logs, large sticks, and other broken branches. Each piece of dead wood either protected him or bestowed upon him magical Indian powers. Whenever he was playing outside, whether it be a pick-up kickball game or a disorganized game of guns, he always hugged to his chest some awkward chunk of timber.

That night he came staggering down his driveway, his white cloth shorts a size too small, pinched his pale legs, making them resemble fat little bockwurst. His arms held up a thick branch. He cradled it against his tight fitted, faded yellow day camp hand-me-down t-shirt. He was singing an imaginary Indian War Chant imploring the Bark Gods to protect his troop movements and bless his evening war path, when he stopped in mid-step to look at me.

I had been standing holding a pointy stick of my own, punched into the mud next to a puddle polled at a sunken slab of sidewalk. I called out to him, raising my hand so he would see me.

Instead of calling back, he uttered a low pitched EEK! And let the branch roll from his arms as his fingers pitched it up. It smacked the lawn with a splashing thump. He pivoted on his heel, then bolted back up the driveway. Seconds later, he returned with a new lump of wood, this one water-logged and squirming with slugs. He lifted it above his head as he shouted out some nonsensical intruder alert in his made-up Indian vernacular, then as if dropping off a heavy barbell, he pushed the log to the ground. Then he squatted down to pick up some of the gravel on his broken asphalt drive way, aimed and lobbed it at me.

With two front lawns and at least one huge spring-budding tree between us, I was in little peril. While the rocks fell in a wide mud-slapping radius around me, I took to returning the volley. Phil was shouting his war cry as he weaved back and forth, ducking and dodging rocks that landed feet away from him.

Out of the bed of Day Lilies my mom had just planted, I found a rock almost the size of my own fist. Without particular force and with absolutely no care for aim, I send this rock flying in a high pitched arc. Caught in the slow motion thrall, Phil and I, both, watched the awful, branch shattering trajectory of this unstoppable rock. It peaked flawlessly and came straight down on Phil Stitt’ nose, hitting his face with a grotesque flesh-breaking whack.

Shocked by the unexpected direct hit, I tore up the front steps and bolted into my house to hide. I could hear behind me, Phil’s panic turn into a death wail of tears and hyperventilation.

My mother was in the kitchen stirring a big vat of boiling spaghetti. The kitchen windows were sweating steam under the lace doily curtains. She looked up as I ran past, anything moving that fast always signaled trouble. Just as my mom called after me, the phone BRAAAAANG’d, angrily.

Sitting on the landing halfway between floors, I could hear Phil’s mom screaming obscenities, both through the walls of our home and through the ear-muffled receiver pressed to my mom’s ear.

Seconds later my mom called me down to hear my side of the story. While she understood it was probably an accident, she was not at all happy that we were throwing rocks at each other in the first place. "How is that fun," she wondered. She continuously failed to understand that it was always more fun when we were filthy dirty and in the middle of trying to kill one another. She wanted me to march right over the Phil’s house and apologize for what I had done.

After some whiney indignation, I stepped over the pricker bushes between our yards and climbed up on the concrete slab of the Stitt’s front porch. I knocked softly. The door swung open and Phil stood there behind the screen door. His nostrils caked with blood boogers, his chin smeared by rough towel swipes, his faded yellow shirt tie-dyed in dark gore, and his white cloth shorts splattered with errant drips. His mother leaned over him, her claw digging into his shoulder.

“DO YOU SEE…” she growled through clenched teeth, tossing Phil forward, so that his hands bounced against the screen door with almost enough force to poke through its mesh screen.

As she continued, she yanked Phil back and forth as if he were a rag doll prop she used to punctuate her seething anger, “LOOK! Look at what you’ve done! Are you fucking proud of yourself, you little shit?”

I looked down at my sneakers. Phil’s mom screeched, jerking him back with a new ferocity, “Look at him! You see this?!!” She waved the blood sopped bath towel, brandishing it like a battle flag, “This towel is RUINED because of YOU! Are you going to pay for it, you worthless little bully!?!”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry? You think a sorry is going to make one bit of difference?! Goddamn motherfucker!” her face was purple from the lack of oxygen.

“It was an accident,” I pleaded.

“SHUT UP!” She spit as she flung Phil behind her almost sending him to the floor.

“Get off of my property!”

The door slammed in my face.
I turned and went home.

from the Star Wars Notes : Hammer Head

2007-01-20T23:29:00.000-05:00

The Hammer Head action figure fit perfectly in your mouth. The curve of his neck bulging out into the eye sockets, formed a sort of action figure Sherlock Holmes pipe. Its body stiffly bobbing with each breath, dropping out with every massive explosion (a curious aside...the louder the action got, the more devastating and complete the fire fight, the softer the actual sound effect became; our toys screamed in whispers).

Hammer Head was throw away background color, occupying mere flashing seconds during our introduction to the Mos Eisley Cantina. A figure grandma bought you on a Saturday trip to the Gold Circle (itself being a wretched hive of scum and villainy) on the edge of the mall. The Star Wars display was completely picked over and understocked, which meant that all the big name characters had already been sold to luckier kids who's parents shopped on weekday evenings. The cooler action figures had been purchased by parents who had accompanied their child to the movies; who knew who Luke and Han and Chewie were; not by generous, well-meaning grandmas. Those out-of-touch grandmas, who wanted nothing more than to spoil their grandchild by buying them one of these new action dolls that all the news programs were saying was the hottest toys in the history of playthings.

Grandma would not look at that spinning metal tree display stand with the clothes lined array of dangling action figures, trapped in their dark black spacescape cardboard tombs, and see the pathetic leftovers, toys that were mass produced within a best selling product line, yet were miscalculations, near misses, or nonessential characters. Neither would you at the tender age of eight or nine, feel the hobbyist's compulsion for completion to a collection. No, grandma somewhat impatiently saw the price tag or frowned over the monsters they made for her grandchild to play with these days.

By the time you stood there, timidly pushing the display around, those butterflies that first anxiously fluttered in your stomach when grandma told you, during the Merv Giffin Show the previous evening, that if you were "a very good boy while mommy and grandma shopped tomorrow, grandma would buy you a new Star Wars action figure." Those impatient butterflies would have concocted expansive fantasy lists of potential new figures, ones that were not even listed in the pages of the Sears Catalog.

No. Hammer Head, while readily recalled from the grotesqueries of Mos Eisley Space Port, just looked like a textile merchant or uninteresting shopkeeper, somewhat misplaced among the dangerous toothed pirates and other reptilian-skinned intergalactic outlaws. No, Hammer Head had just popped in for a quick after-work-cocktail before heading home to his wife and kid and the dinner waiting in front of the nightly news. No, Hammer Head was just a civilian during wartime.

Is this reward enough for standing quietly near the bins of multicolored yarn, amusing yourself by pretending those tight bundles of wide soft fabric, wrapped in dark sticker paper, were actually sticks of TNT waiting for the quickly burning fuse to buckle the yarn pile in the middle, before rocketing it skyward with ripples of pyrotechnic brilliance? Was this Hammer Head reward enough for being a good boy while grandma and mommy tried on shoes while you sat on the metal stool/seat with the rubber ribbed foot mat, pretending that the shoe horn was a sleek space ship exploring the dead volcanoes of a black planet, only to take on heavy laser fire from secret underground bases, only to careen and return hostilities with a planet ripping authority? The sense of disappointment, that guilty feeling that bottled, then pinned, those anxiously excited butterflies to the display matting of childhood compliance, of agreeing to abide by their adult rules and manage your hot boredom with anticipation.

Only to be met with the adults' own unbridled impatience that forced into your small hands the most convenient solution to your childish indecision. That sense of let-down, after tearing into the package to discover that even Hammer Head's skinny weapon appeared hopelessly ineffectual and Princess Leia level dorky, was quickly overshadowed by the sheer thrill of possession. The figure added one more fantastic creature to the Star Wars galaxy of amazing adventure and hours of chewing excitement, because, I think every kid who has ever been disappointed at receiving Hammer Head as a good behavior bribe or Hanukkah present knows - Hammer Head fit perfectly in your mouth as a sort of Star Wars action figure pacifier.

2006-11-15T23:20:00.000-05:00

In Praise of DANGERMOUSE

My first Dangermouse cartoon was seen completely by accident at Harvey Leo's house. My little sister and Harvey's little sister were friends and liked to play Glamor Gals or whatever they played away from us. Harvey's little brother was pretty much addicted to cable television, especially Nickelodeon, which Harvey and I were more than happy to allow him to plop down and veg-out to his greedy little tv-deprived heart's content, as long as it meant we could play Ghostbusters and other silly Commodore 64 video games without him bugging us.

Anyway, because Harvey's parent's were home and cooking dinner, Harvey was not allowed to play video games. So we sat on the floor in the living room and watched Nickelodeon. You Can't Do That On Television had not started yet, instead there was this strange, barely animated cartoon on. It involved some one-eyed mouse jumping around dodging very dodgily drawn explosions as a bespectacled hamster kept almost getting blown to hamster chunks. I was completely intrigued. I think, maybe, because at that point everything on cable, which my parent's still had not hooked up at our house, was rare and precious to me. The next day, I kept asking Harvey what the name of that cartoon was because for some reason I could not remember the show's title.

A year or two later, I am house bound, recovering from a nasty fourteen vertebrae spinal fusion. I sat in a large red and white floral print chair, covered in a cooling sheet, with fans pointed directly at me. I sat there, unmoving, for eight to twelve hours a day. I sat there waiting for the drugs to kick in and for the pain of the long wounds, torn down the length of my back and under my right arm, to close into gross-ridged scars. I sat there with the self-conscious uprightedness of one of those robotic g-man from the black-and-white science fiction-Martian invasion pictures, trying with all my 15 year-old-might not to lose my shit.

The minutes of each day were dreadful stretches between pills. Every human need was a trial of stamina, I could not muster. Where the oncoming tick of the next minute brought a depressed panic, sapped of every hope. Meals were uneatable. My toilet, a sham. All I was capable of doing was sitting, staring, and occasionally weeping. And that is to forget to mention the unholy heat wave that even made the metal of the back brace I wore sweat desperate bullets, in the middle of the afternoon.

The only bright spot in all this life crushing misery came when I discovered that Nickelodeon was broadcasting Dangermouse three times a day (early morning, lunch time, and then at dinnertime). The show and I were on the same schedule. It became the signal around which I based my day. I suddenly had something exterior to look forward to, unassociated with pain and the pills that accompanied it. Dangermouse's heroism bounded off the screen, conquering the greatest foe I faced, boredom! That sinister foe, Boredom, who promised that all I had left to look forward to was the routine of scheduled medication.

It sounds overwrought and dramatic, but it is entirely true - Dangermouse saved my life that summer. Everything about the show was perfectly adapted to my zonked out physical recovery. Those cheery adventures, riddled with puns and groaning allusions to popular culture, enthralled me. The stories were silly, without pandering. The action gleefully slow moving and often recycled (sometimes even within the same scene as cels were simply flipped - the old Spiderman swings left the right animation cost cutter). The characters interaction lively, fun and consistent. The sheer inventiveness of the series, too, should be applauded - for it took the snide half smirk of the spy, adventure, and sketch comedy with a seriousness that underpinned the deep joy the show emminated. Dangermouse worked so well at cheering me up, giving me something to look forward to, and providing the only genuine morphine-laced laugther, at a time when I knew there was far little to laugh about.

To this day, I have a love of the show that is unrivaled by any other cultural artifact. Neither Star Wars or Godzilla come close to glancing at the soles of Dangermouse's well-sprung feet. When I say "He's the greatest, he's fantastic, wherever there is danger, he'll be there," its deep and its real.

2006-11-12T03:14:00.000-05:00

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HUMILIATING SHAME RITUALS

2006-11-05T02:48:00.000-05:00

One of the first real summer nights after we had moved into our new house, the next door neighbor kids, Paul and Phil, came tearing down the street. Waving their arms, their faces red from breathless laughter, they kicked past me yelling, HIDE! HIDE!

Not understanding the nature of their hurried panic, but operating under that still faith every six year old understands, which impels self-preservationist obedience, I immediately and unquestioningly threw myself under the overturned plastic kiddie pool. I hid from what I assumed was most assuredly a gigantic swarm of killer stinging bees or maybe a hairy monster with a mighty rampaging hunger. Instead of the obvious sounds of impending doom, I heard the cigarette cough shout demanding to speak to some parents.

When the dripping turtle green kiddie pool was kicked back over, there was an imposing shadow, a twilight negative image cast across drive of some kid's angry father. I could tell he was looking at me hard with the spank in his eyes, so I cowered back up the driveway, hoping my puttering mother would save me from whatever crime was about to be erroneously pinned on me.

That is how I first met Chris Altshcul's furious stepdad. The Altschul's lived up near the corner of my new street. Chris was a year younger than me and was an actual human booger. His skin was a greenish-yellow puffiness that seemed goopy and solid, simultaneously. He had cloudy dark eyes that never seemed pointed at the same thing and focused at varied distances. Nor did he really know how to or want to play our sorts of games. When we would ride bikes, he used to sing this little spit song, a sort of humming gurgle from back in his throat, that he claimed made him faster than everyone else. It was a secret power that never helped him actually win a race or even keep up with us. But the worst thing of all was he never closed his mouth. Ever. Never ever. He was a five year old mouth-breather.

Paul and Phil, the towheaded brothers who lived next door to me, had already well-established sneering verbiage that intimately tortured Chris. They had perfected the few choice turns which quickly transformed the happily humming kid into a blubbering, shaking-sad mess that ran crying straight home to hyperventilate-tattle on his tormentors. Chris Altshcul's constant and unending misery was further exasperated by the gleefully out-of-control swearfest that stormed down the street preceding Chris' protective stepdad.

Whether or not Chris' disturbing physical attributes and strange personality could have some days been trumped by the childhood necessity of needing more kids for a decent kickball game will never be known, since the delightful over-reaction of Mr. Altshcul was a strict liability. As horribly vulnerable Chris actually was, it was the promise of nightly drama from Mr. Altshcul that excited the meanness of the day. The spectacle of Chris' dad stomping down the sidewalk stringing together a tapestry of beer-soaked homophobic swears created more tingles in our little bodies than even the jiggle of the creeping Ice Cream Man's freezer truck. The sight of that grown-up, so ridiculously upset, afforded us dumb kids an unprecedented, intoxicating power.

Chris would peddle down toward our houses, tentatively coasting past our front yards, trying to determine if he would approach us to play. His swirling wash hum underscored by the unspoken, tentative hope that maybe today, we would ask him to play guns or invite him to push a yellow dump truck toward the hole to China we started in my backyard sandbox; maybe today would be the day when he would have fun. Maybe today, instead of rushing out to mercilessly tease and berate him, we would be nice to him. Maybe that day, he would make some friends. But that summer, the best he would get was ignored, especially after his stepdad moved out and was no longer around to defend his pudgy, noticeably unusual stepson.

HUMILIATING SHAME RITUALS

2006-11-02T00:11:00.000-05:00

There was this other kid, a new kid who came for the first year in fifth grade. He was red and orange all over. Really. His skin was the color of a pumpkin because his pale undercoating was blotched with sharp, dark freckles. The kind of freckles that seem to bounce off each other in a near-constant, nauseating swirl of discoloration.

And, for real, what kid in the fifth grade showered every day? Maybe every other day? Right? So this kid's hair was a bed rustled, greasy matte of raggedy andy yarn curls. I mean this tangle was the sort of ice cream parlor neon red that blinkered pink, even after it was shut off for the night. To top it all off this newish kid who came in the middle of the year had the body consistency of a sausage roll - at once smushingly doughy AND that tight bursting-at-the-seams sting-tied meat tube look.

He was the sort of begging monstrosity that every lego-chewing, bed-wetting pinched and picked on dweeb immediately felt superior to and acted on that feeling.

I know that I could not keep my disgusted gaze off him. I could not stop watching as he caressed his cheeks with his long whitish fingernails, curled slightly at the pudgy roll of his finger tip. That round-pointed, polished nail shushing across the Chef Boy-R-Dee puffed cheeks. Then he'd slide those nails down over the creased skin barrels that were stacked one upon the other in support of his head (which I must add, was horribly enough, mostly just bloated facial features). Obsessively, and most assuredly unconsciously, he would scratch, dig, and otherwise caress his face all day long. The more I watched this kid, the sicker and madder I would get at him for being such a revolting, absent-minded, and obese child.

On the parking lot that doubled as our lunchtime playground, I would taunt and tease him mercilessly. Mostly the jabs were at the straining buttons of the hand-me-down, grease paper thin shirts donated to him by out-of-state cousins. Sometimes the teasing was the stuff of childhood insult and other times directly catered to him. Regardless of what I or my cohorts would come up with, he would laugh it off with a dumb slobber of a dog that lapped up the trash water collected in a muddy hole in the middle of a septic field. I think that the obliviousness contributed to the all-encompassing hatred that would build and build until finally, one day on the way back from recess, I tried to engage him in a death match fist fight. Seeing as how I was unable to run even the length of the gym without weeping like a grandmother who missed her stories, from the shin splints that had immediately seized my own plump legs, the whole fight was an embarrassing spectacle of missed punches and flaying windmill kicks. And I think we were both crying through the whole thing.

Over the summer vacation between fifth and sixth grade, this face petting roundie had a tremendous growth spurt, which transformed him into an impressive wall of a line backer jock. The fact that forgot my name as soon as he looked past me was an undeserved reprieve from what should have been just retribution.

2006-10-28T01:18:00.000-05:00

weird comic dreams.

2006-10-26T22:22:00.000-05:00

punk planet #76 review

GET IT

2006-10-25T19:22:00.000-05:00

Critical Paranoia & Weaponized Art

O4.27.06 War, Art, and Muddled Thinking

"The moments of actual combat – uninterrupted hours of combat are a physical impossibility, though there might be an endless series of moments – are another matter entirely. Fear and the overcoming of fear obliterate all other sentiments; one’s actions are much more somnambulistic than conscious (that is why even the simplest weapon skills must be drilled not just learned, and why incontinence is as common in battle as in geriatric wards); and in place of the highly individualistic, even masterful anticipation of combat, its reality induces an infantile sense of dependence on anyone not unfriendly nearby, which, barring immediate disappointment, transforms strangers into comrades, comrades into brothers, subordinates into precious allies and superiors into authoritative leaders." - Edward Luttwak, Odysseus’ Bow, LRB vol. 27 no. 22, 17 Nov. 2005.

Is the line between combat and performance that distinct or is the coherency knotted in the strands of rehearsal/drills? I doubt, for many, that the trauma and violence is equivalent, though many American artists would have us believe that their culture war is just as limb damaging and profoundly disturbing.

The crux of it, for me comes down to three things : the somnabulistic aspect of actions; the infantile sense of dependence; the progression of dependence as the underlying support for authority.

Much has been made by Andre' Breton of the automatic muse and much of what was made has been translated into horribly self-important writing workshop exercises. But I doubt that Breton's somnabulistic aspect, the death trance of chance and communication with the spirit world, would have differed greatly from the automatic muse that squeezes the trigger on the gun pointed at enemy lines. Beyond the immediacy of the unthinking reaction, there would be little else to compare, as one results in hasty poetry and the other in death or mutilation. The somnambulism of the warrior, of the drilled and disciplined troop, is the somnambulism that awakens barbarity and the crude horror of inhumanity - both monsters, invited in and given comfortable beds in which to sleep. The excitement of conflict, the immediacy of combat, hinge upon the affectation of mannerisms. Mannerisms passing themselves off as innate traits.

Infantile dependence is an admission of helplessness, a cry of reliance. How striking, then, it is that the brave and chiseled warrior would embody such a rudimentary subsistence. But without the learned helplessness and the potential unthinking victimhood of the solider, no individual would knowingly submit to the degradation and humiliation of war. The warrior becomes entangled in the threads that weave his identity only by accepting that his identity is, at its core, a sense of forced perspective, an optical illusion, that obtains meaning only within the context of his/her own non-existence. In other words, stick a boob over the crib edge at every snivel and you wind up with a very fat baby, indeed.

Authority can only be established from the bottom up. It’s a notion that brought Nietzsche to his knees and his elbows on the bed, praying to a dichotomy. But what struck me here, rather than the obviousness of the chain of transferred credibility, was its linkage to the enjoyment of the comparative endeavor. The camaraderie that is established based on survival in a situation, a comrade based on luck's hostile game of chance, is fundamental to the whole project. And in many respects, its whole reason for existing. If the only solace a population has, if they have lost their voice and imagination as a culture or a people, then what better way to bring the family together than a big, melodramatic death? Everyone has heard the knuckleheads on the corner talking up the exploits of a school yard fight. Plotting and planning who is loyal to whom based on which back you got. Without these points of reference, without the infantile chain of command, the sheer fun would be lost. There could be no creation present, for there would be no community to cuddle and cajole each other. And without the shared situations of despair and conflict, there would be nothing to bind these people together in discussion. The forced commonality, acknowledged by Luttwak, is what really startled and disturbed me.

comments? send them to- r.john xerxes

4.19.06 Don Rumsfeld Chats Up Rush Limbaugh

“I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right to say what they want to say and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees, they are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States, they are very good at it, they're much better at managing those kinds of things than we are, and we have to recognize that we're not going to lose any battles in the global war on terror out in Iraq or Afghanistan. The center of gravity of that war is right here, and in the capital of the United States of America and other Western capitals, in London. It's a test of wills. What's at stake for our country is our way of life? They want to strike at the very essence of what we are. We're free people.” - Sec. Of Def. Donald Rumsfeld answering a question about all the protestors of the Iraq War on the Rush Limbaugh show, April 17, 2006.

Mr. Rumsfeld would really lead us to believe that the terrorists have better Public Relations teams than the Department of Defense. By golly, he sure would because what he is really pointing to is the international media machine. That evil, liberal press that seeks to harm Coalition forces, American boys and girls in uniform, by packing their stories with press releases and exclusive interviews with terrorist leaders. The same terrorist leaders that evade detection and/or capture at the hands of the Coalition Forces and international surveillance.

The problem remains that the sensationalist press scurries toward any bright and shining lie that is dangled before them. And what Mr. Rumsfeld is asserting is that the United States has only the dull and matte black and white truth, which ultimately produces few subscription fueling headlines or sexy-sweeps lead stories. No the terrorists are the masters of propaganda and deceit, they are the ones who marched in front of the United Nations to parade a batch of lies and misdirection, deaf to the drum beat of thousands protesting the absurd truth that a blood-thirsty nation was relentlessly insisting upon war.

I do not recall anyone bemoaning the terrorist beguiled press back then, when it that failed to disarm those madmen.

Secondly, Mr. Rumsfeld’s naked aggro-bullying stance becomes crystalized once again in, “...we're not going to lose any battles in the global war on terror out in Iraq or Afghanistan.” There is no real opposition to our military power. We stand unchallenged and unmatched in the world. We are so powerful that there will not even be battles lost, remote controlled roadside explosives and suicide bombings aside, the United States Militarys' real war front lies in the capitals of the Western Colonial Powers - Washington DC and London. While a single bullet may never slice through uniform fabric, exploding fragile human organs; while missles may never screech toward their target, impacting with the bright pimple-popping illumination that fogs the night vision goggles; while storms of dusty National Guardsmen may never barrel across the roads, transporting cloth-hooded prisoners, dragged from their homes in the middle of the night, the United States wages an active and hot campaign here at home. Battling the papier mache’ clad protestors, flanking the news media's intent upon obtaining sensational material, and finally waging a public relations campaign against a terrorist enemy that wins the hearts and minds of Americans the world over with their insidious and evil text messaging.

The implication is insulting.

comments? send them to- r.john xerxes

2006-05-22T22:01:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

I am conducting some very important research, utmost in its scientific
relevance and importance. I will be presenting the results of my
research in June to my peers at Weird Science II: Your Physics is Dead (check out Cedar Block for more info). Here's where you come in...

Take a moment, won't you, and tell me in minutes (according to personal
experience, social norms, drunken exploits as told by your friends), what is the standard booty call window?
You know, when you either send out that text message ten minutes before
bar time looking to hook up with that special someone, or you answer
the phone in the midnight hour just to hear that husky voice of lust on
the other line... how much time do you have to reach your partner of
convenience before the mood is gone, the fog has lifted, the ship has
sailed, yes - the booty call window has closed.

Respond to me via myspace, or feel free to email me at Booty Call Window Survey no later than Tuesday, June 6, 2006. Please feel free to copy and post this as a new bulletin for your friends - I'd like to compile as much data as possible.

Love and kisses!

Jen

2006-04-14T22:56:00.000-05:00

Dru of toistudio set up a better functioning Love Bunni Press website. So I will encourage you all to visit it and check out the zines and books that I pretend I am in the business of publishing, but am actually in the business of printing and storing in my apartment.

Next time around I will deal in weapons and not words. There is no money in words.

Also...new comic Maps & Charts' Adventures In Barland starts, well, I guess, now.

2006-03-18T00:23:00.000-05:00

Ben Frazier has created a fantastic quarter sized zine called FIFTH GRADE all about his memories of going to school with a bunch of weirdos and freakazoids. I thought it was so damn cool that I am publishing it. Which means you can buy it from me for the cost of TWO US POSTAGE STAMPS!

2006-03-09T13:03:00.000-05:00

This is a great event. Iam going again this year (hopefully with mindy and miranda).If you would like to go and share table space with love bunni press get in touch.

2006-03-02T23:02:00.000-05:00

blister packs reviewed in Punk Planet #72.

2006-02-20T11:13:00.000-05:00

Love Bunni Press is now making fashion!
But still losing money!

Click on the t-shirt!

2006-02-15T12:28:00.000-05:00

crazy blister packs press.
who is this russell lee feller?

2006-02-04T15:14:00.000-05:00

2006-01-19T17:47:00.000-05:00

magnesium sisters in good looking out.

2006-01-12T01:23:00.000-05:00

portland panhandle.

2005-11-30T21:16:00.000-05:00

the human tetris toad.

Collect them all!

2005-11-24T21:22:00.000-05:00

BLISTER PACKS got its first review!!
It was in Razorcake #29.

BUY a copy of both here!

2005-11-20T00:36:00.000-05:00

just another day at the library.

2005-11-17T21:18:00.001-05:00

IN

listen to my rebellion chant, i feel Goodwill for all mankind
a simple message militant, of great import in trying times
dem gon’ fall down on me for this, but Sweet Truth guard my heart & mind

i got a force i’ll not betray, just that it’s pulling strong, but
if you get me going you’ evil way, don’t drive me wrong, push me to wrong
i say, you’ll regret the day you mischanneled this power

and when your war’s begun, don’t trust me with your gun
cause if you arm me—i’d just as soon shoot you, you see
you want to send me to the front, assign an enemy
you messing with some heavy stuff, don’t trust my loyalty

over the years you’ve lied to me, stolen more than you could ever need
and baffled me with your selfish greed, your country don’t mean much to me
in fact instead of reverence, and pride in your democracy
you’ve generated something like, hate for your dishonesty

and now you want to mobilize a million misled youth against
some enemy that you’ve devised, don’t trust our loyalty
you’ve got some madness on your hands, but i’m governed by love
i use my rage in a righteous way, inna de eyes of HIM above
you’ve got some madness on your hands, now i ask of you…
don’t fuck my sensibilities, you’ll crack this boy in two.

you get me going your evil way, you best stop trusting me
you get me going your evil way, i’ll choose my enemy

if you give me a gun, i know that that’s wrong
you tell me to spill my brother’s blood and kill—
you not proving yourself favorable in mine eyes
you always lie to me, live by indecency
now you want me to lay down my life and slay—
some brother i don’t even know, for your country i spurn

you preach criminality, in the highest degree
don’t give me ideas, don’t plant your evil seed in me
or you’ll release some real fury, but not driven by love, you see
but by the force you force on me, them call it hate & that it be

you get me going your evil way, don’t trust my loyalty
you get me going your evil way, i’ll choose my enemy
swing low, sweet cherry blossom—i may lose my life to thee
Oka, o God

-beefeater, from the album “house burning down,” 1986

2005-10-28T01:21:00.000-05:00

I am like some sort of superstar with a drool helmet on or something. My buddy Ryan thinks I am some sort of guy who can answer questions real good. see what I am speaking about at In A Better World.

in other newz...

Blister Packs:a love bunni press collection is now being sold

INTERPUNK
and
AMAZON

so why are you not buying them?

2005-10-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

Hey there,
Last Thursday we received some distressing news--the kind of news that made our very bones ache when we heard it; the kind of news that felt so significant we simply couldn't function after it sank in.

With a few days time and the ability to process it, we decided it's news worth sharing: It was a letter from the president of the Independent Press Association, the not-for-profit organization that owns the company that distributes the majority of Punk Planet's copies, BigTop Newsstand Services. The letter acknowledged the truth of a rumor that had been running through indie publishing circles for months now: the distributor was having cash flow problems. Payments to publishers for magazines already distributed had been and would continue to be effected for an unknown amount of time. In case you don't operate a magazine, the money coming in from newsstand sales is vital to publishers' bottom line. For a magazine like Punk Planet, where our ad rates remain very low to cater to independent businesses, those distributor payments are even more critical.

This news leaves us in a tight spot: BigTop is the last distributor in the country that specializes in distributing independent press magazines like Punk Planet. When we started 12 years ago, there were close to a half dozen such distributors; each one that has gone belly up dragged a few magazines with it. Because BigTop is owned by the IPA, an organization whose mission is to "amplify" the voice of the independent press, we don't expect that they will go out of business; but we also don't know when we will see the money we are owed.

What does this mean for the future of Punk Planet? The truth is we don't yet know.

But we do know there are things you can do that will help us in both the short term and the long term.

1. Please consider subscribing (or resubscribing) and purchasing some merchandise from our webstore today. If you have a product, idea, or event to advertise, purchase an ad.

An immediate influx of cash will allow us to pay off back debts--to contributors, printers, web hosts, etc--and better enable us to weather any coming storm caused by nonpayment from our distributor. Our annual end-of year subscription sale is just starting now—get a whole year for only $18, or really help us out and buy a couple of them!

2. Please forward this information--or this whole email--on to your lists and friends, and specifically ask them to subscribe or buy merchandise from us.

In addition to a two-year subscription for only $30, you can pick up any of our amazing books—Joe Meno's HAIRSTYLES OF THE DAMNED, Bee Lavender's LESSONS IN TAXIDERMY, Mark Anderson's ALL THE POWER, or Jay Ryan's brand-new 100 POSTERS 134 SQUIRRELS now available for pre-order! We've also got Punk Planet T-shirts, underpants, and the awesomely cool PPAP: Punk Planet Artists' Prints wearable art series.

3. Consider donating to the Community Supported Journalism Fund. It's a small-fund donations program, made up almost exclusively of donations of less than $20, but it's already allowed us to bring you the amazing END OF RADIO cover story of PP69: four full articles on different aspects of radio creation and tons of teeny interviews with audio experts. It wouldn't have been possible without your support!

4. Please continue to support independent print media. The payment issues effecting us are not singular--there are others in the same predicament that need your support as well.

Thanks so much,

Dan Sinker

2005-10-17T20:58:00.000-05:00

I found this on the windshield of my car tonight.
Someone is watching...

2005-10-09T19:12:00.000-05:00

boy under the pond

2005-10-06T22:49:00.000-05:00

from Razorcake #28

CLEAR OBSTACLES, stamps or trade
A quiet, quick, and sturdy photozine set to a poem. M.W., much like Dam Monick, can make everyday and everywhere inanimate objects - like lawn chairs, power lines, and gas meters- seem lonely, lost, and sad. It's this ability to give animus to things that most folks think just are that a rare photographer can capture. Cool thing. - Todd (love bunni press, 2622 Princeton Road, Cleveland Heights OH 44118)

FRIGHTFUL TALES OF THE WEIRD #1, stamps or trade
Crudely, but effectively, drawn comics. Think of Ziggy, except a smoking Ziggy who chugs Robitussin, gets dissed by girls ("you keep away from my girl bits") constantly before he has a chance to speak. Then there's a soft-boiled egg being mean to a block of cheese, and a whole bunch of characters who don't like one another but are in compulsive close proximity and are at no loss for cutdowns. Definitely worth a couple of stamps. - Todd

2005-09-24T13:52:00.000-05:00

You can no buy BLISTER PACKS the love bunni press 160 page illustrated paperback at these excellent online merchants

Clamor InfoShop

Parcell Press

QUIMBY'S

2005-09-23T20:53:00.000-05:00

blind date.

2005-09-06T23:06:00.000-05:00

Undeciluna

#1

From the twisted depths of Love Bunni Press comes this intriguing first issue of a new mini-comic. Employing a drawing style that explodes off the page, artist/writer Mindy Fisher partners with writer Calvin Naylor to tell the story of fourteen-year-old Wendy as she struggles to find normalcy while enduring a nightmarish home life. Hanging out with her friends seems to be the only way to blot out the pain, until one day she comes home from school to some shocking changes. Complete with a glowing introduction from publisher R. John Xerxes, this certainly is a promising beginning to what will hopefully be a long-running story. I’ll be looking for issue two. [5.5” x 8.5”, orders ($2-3?) to Love Bunni Press, 2622 Princeton Rd., Cleveland Heights, OH 44118 email the authors Mindy and Calvin at undeciluna@yahoo.com]

Undeciluna review from newpages!

thanks sean thoughtworm!!

2005-09-05T23:31:00.000-05:00

I have a hypothesis which might explain the proliferation of HIGH SCHOOL SKA BANDS, but that nonsense is hardly as fascinating as THIS EXPERIMENT IN PHOTOSHOP REVISIONIST HISTORY.

2005-08-25T14:44:00.000-05:00

how too.

2005-08-08T23:32:00.000-05:00

NIFTY!!

2005-07-31T20:24:00.000-05:00

russian flipperz.

2005-07-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

i just sent this to bill oreally.
I hope he invites me onto his show.
I want to compliment his shoes.

John wrote:
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 07:23:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: John
Subject: Karl Rove
To: oreilly@foxnews.com

Bill,

I think the White House needs to address these allegations some have made that Karl Rove was working as a terrorist operative, possibly with ties to al queda, when he revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA Operative.

I mean what American, who cared about National Security or ongoing operations to weed out and kill terrorists, would knowingly reveal an Agent's identity. Only someone sympathetic to the terrorists would do such a thing.

Karl Rove is a terrorist, and President Bush should deal with this unamerican troll with the highest penalty imaginable.

In Christ,
Rev. John

2005-07-29T22:42:00.000-05:00

guest cartoon by my friend chaz braman!

2005-07-26T15:04:00.000-05:00

real true library patrons!

2005-07-25T23:53:00.000-05:00

yes. I know.
I could not find the white out.

2005-07-21T00:15:00.000-05:00

ITS DONE!!!

Blister Packs is finished and ready for you to read.
13 bux through the mail, or track me down and I will sell you one for 10 dollars.

The above ad has all the info!

2005-07-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

she loves breeze!

2005-07-10T21:31:00.000-05:00

personal grooming.

2005-07-02T20:29:00.000-05:00

Aki from SomethingTangible.com made me this sewy thing! Pretty awesome, huh?

2005-06-29T21:11:00.000-05:00

family reunion.

2005-06-26T02:35:00.000-05:00

predatory lending.

2005-06-24T21:36:00.000-05:00

magnesium sisters pocket full of worms

2005-06-22T21:52:00.000-05:00

my Cortel-Dubousset rods.
I had them installed running down the length of my spine in 1986.
I still have the kyphosis that they corrected.
Once a hunchback, always a hunchback.

2005-06-19T20:02:00.000-05:00

Love Bunni Press went to the Allied Media Convention again this year. Here is a cartoon pretty much summing up the two day zinefest.

2005-06-08T21:35:00.000-05:00

potty time!

2005-05-16T21:32:00.000-05:00

we are the crinkled men.
we are the yellowed newspaper men,
caught in crossword clues,
inventing our own distractions.

2005-05-10T20:25:00.000-05:00

you fight like a melnick.

2005-05-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

magnesium sisters discuss mr. cuddles

2005-05-08T01:32:00.000-05:00

battery power!

2005-05-01T21:28:00.000-05:00

evil robots plot destruction.

2005-04-21T21:20:00.000-05:00

last keywords entered that produced hits on this sight!

20/04/2005 15:16:35 "derek erdman" (Google)
19/04/2005 22:32:28 KEGLOGG (Google)
19/04/2005 01:01:08 dwid broke edge (Google)
18/04/2005 13:45:14 ishitmypants blogspot (Google)

also SAW BLADE had this to say about my comics.
I agree with him, mostly!

vwvwvwvwvwvwv
member
Member # 3318
Rate Member
posted April 21, 2005 07:16 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK honest feedback: passion and the bus stop comic were drawn fairly well. The zombie jesus is funny but I'm sure someone has done it before. I can't imagine that territory not being tread before. The Mecurial Sisters is too Alkbar and Jeff. Groening has copyright over xeroxed panels of monotonous back and forth between two bitchy people that look the same. You need to find your voice in other words. look deep within yourself. If it makes you feel better I am harsher on the few comics I've done which is why I don't show them to people. One was called the Cab of Dr Calimari where a German Expressionistic octopus drives a cab and his only fare is Augustuse, the Somnabulimic, who pukes in his sleep. It only lasted one three panel strip that nobody has ever seen because it was a dumb idea.

2005-04-20T22:57:00.000-05:00

watch more television

2005-04-17T18:24:00.000-05:00

fatty fat fat fat!

2005-04-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

magnesium sisters

2005-03-27T22:22:00.000-05:00

zombie christ!

2005-03-07T01:28:00.000-05:00

CONVERSATION LA CAV DU VIN 5/12/1997

Sitting next to Frank, chain smoke billowing around the curved wine glass slowly being drained, in swigs and gulps, of its inexpensive dark purple liquid, my staring only occasionally interrupted by a leaning gesture acknowledging some desire to engage the inept social fumbling of nostalgic discourse.

The overweight bartender, whose un-endearing propensity to misinterpret my late night mumbling for the tallying of the bill, waded back and forth, waving his arms in agitated dismissal and accent to his funny anecdotes. As the bar cornered, the conversation shifted between intimacy and lunacy, redundancy and tomfoolery. I was miserable, except for my wine.

- Dude did you hear about Dwid breaking his nose?
Frank aked, his goatee looked solemn and concerned.

- No. What happened?

- Well, you know Blaze …?

- Yeah.

- …is he the guy, wait a minute, what does he look like?
Frank questioned mistrusting his own memory of the story he was told.

- He’s a lanky kid with dark hair …

- Yeah, kinda oriental looking motherfucker?

- I guess, he wears baggy pants and those little loafers, so yeah, kinda kung-foo.

- Yeah, then I know the kid, he was playing poker last night at Sam’s party. He went to Europe with Integrity?

- I don’t know, sure.

- Well, I guess what happened was that one night they were all riding in the van and Dwid started talking shit to this Blaze kid, you know, and Blaze was just like - Dude, what the fuck is your problem? I don’t even know you and all you do is talk shit behind my back and start shit. What the fuck is your problem. And you know Dwid. He was like - I’ll kill you. So Blaze just hauled up and punched him in the nose…He broke Dwid’s nose right there in the back of the van.

Frank fell back, chortling.

- So it wasn’t some Nazi skinhead kid …?
I asked, figuring I heard the story wrong in the first place.

- No dude, it was like this kid, Blaze, who was on tour with them and shit…crazyfuckinshit.

- Well, I always said they’d kill each other.

Frank nodded. Almost immediately he was involved with a conversation with Beth who was sitting on his other side. With Frank’s shoulders as a barrier criss-crossing me out of the newly forged conversational bridge leading over to Jason, I was left alone again to my brooding stares and contemplative grimaces.

I didn’t think much about the tale of Dwid’s broken nose, more concerned, I suppose with the burning in my cheeks and the position of the awkward tie that was strung down my stained white shirt. A tweerpy guy in small rimmed spectacles was attempting to weasel his way into any conversation before anteing up. Jason’s head bobbed up and down between the sharp blades of his shoulders, his intent expression undermined by his inadvertent hunchbacked position. But as soon as I noticed, he bolted up right to offer directions to a weak ass club.

Frank commandeered another Eliot Ness. - Have you seen Schlacter?

- Nope. Is he in town?

- No, dude he lives in Chicago now. He was at our last show…and he was in prime form that night.

- Why, what did he do?

- Duuuude. There were all these little straight edge kids at the show and Paul was sitting on the side of the stage drinking beers and hanging out, you know. Then all of a sudden he stands up and yells - You’re all weak pussies! And the next fucking thing I know, there’s fucking Paul fucking Schlacter storming around in the middle of those kids, in one hand a lit cigar and in the other a fucking forty ounce.

Frank spread his pencil arms wide in front of the bar’s ledge, convincingly pretending to hold both objects. - Dude, he ruined those kids. Then after the show, we were drinking at this four o’clock bar, like Dwid, Robby and Paul and a bunch of other people. We were all really gone at this point and suddenly the bouncers decide to kick me out. We’re standing on the corner with like four bouncers and Dwid’s like - That’s my brother, man, you can’t kick out my brother! And the bouncer’s are like - Then we’ll kick you out too. You know? And by this point everyone’s standing on the corner and I’m - It’s all good, you know whatever, just go back inside, its all good. So the bouncers go in, but then there’s this little chick outside yelling at Dwid - You can’t talk to my boyfriend like that. And Dwid’s growling, growling, dude, like a dog. So I say to this girl who was totally hyper at this point - Look you don’t know who you’re talking to, you know what I mean? And she does one of these …

Frank cocked back and flipped his slender forefinger into the air with a snap of his wrist and tongue, his eyes popped out and his lips slid into a straight line, - First of all, you fuck off. So I’m like whatever, you know, I tried to warn her. Just as she is about to turn around back to Dwid, and he’s got this crazy drunk look in his eyes. Then spurts out, - You can’t talk to my brother like that! He grabs her by the back of her hair and body slams her on to the ground. She went down hard. No shit it was like …

The slow palm of his hand hit once upon the bar, his silver ring hovering slightly above his other fingers still lingering on the bar. His palm barely lifts off the bar and then resoundly slaps the moist ashen surface to lay dead.

- She bounced dude! And Mike and Robby and me were just - Holy shit. We were looking down at this girl, totally unconscious and were like - Lets get the fuck outta here. So we cross the street. By this time the girl was reaching up her arm to the door knob of the bar. I was like - Wait, hide behind this car. So Mike and Robby and Dwid and me are all couched down behind this parked car across the street. I poke my head around to look, you know, and there were like twenty huge motherfuckers all looking to kill us. Crazy, huh?

- Does Dwid ever hit anyone but girls?

Frank sat back in a muted smirk - I don’t think so.

As a silent conversation conspired along the crowded bar, I took a sideways glance at the gentleman seated a chair away on my left hand side. His wide insect eyes were examining me at great length, the small white sheet of paper crumpled in front of him was littered with orange and blue hi-lighter smears, I sensed he wanted to explain the missive to someone and I enjoyed no notion that it should be me. I quickly whirled my head in the other direction, just as his tiny chapped lips parted in expectation. My wine glass rested with just a few drops left, I reached for the pack of cigarettes stuffed in my pocket, then thought better of it. I asked Frank for a fag.

- Sure, help yourself. Frank replied dropping the open pack between us. I brought the round candle up to the cigarette tip, exchanging flames. By the second exhaled stream of grayish white death mingled with the air conditioned breeze, Frank was waiting for the rotund bar tender to pry open his fourth Eliot Ness.

- Robbie Stevens almost got shot a coupla weeks ago…

- No, what happened?

- Karen Novak, me and Robbie were getting out of her car one night in this parking lot about to go into this bar, right. I am totally drunk so I do a Dukes of Hazzard slide across her hood, you know, like Bo and Luke Duke shit. And Robby who was in the back seat saw me do this and decided to try it himself, only he slid across the back end of the car in front of us, some sort of purple Pontiac or something, but it was purple, dude. I turn around and see Robbie about to slide across the back of this other car and am like - Robbie that’s the wrong car, dude. Suddenly, there’s this total Puerto Rican dude standing near the driver’s side of the car like - Wat de fuck you donin’ to ma cahr, mhann? And his hand was right here in his belt …

Frank puffed up his chest, pressing his elongated fingers flat against his belly, pointing two fingers down toward his large silver belt buckle. His face became distorted into a snide Fu Manchu expression, squinty eyes and downturned mouth, he repeated the Puerto Rican’s threat in his best imitation of American Me.

- Robbie immediately attempts to apologize but its Robbie and he’s drunk so Karen Novak and me are just like - Keep walking Robbie, just keep walking. But that dude was going to shoot him…he had his gun out and was going to shoot Robbie Stevens.

Soon after that tale, I crawled into my jacket, paid the bill and walked home.

2005-02-16T22:28:00.000-05:00

hey fatty.

2005-02-10T23:45:00.000-05:00

what is wrong with me?

2005-02-08T13:45:00.000-05:00

cheese block and soft boiled egg head boy!
characters created by a.s.b.ii.

2005-02-06T01:19:00.000-05:00

2004-12-02T23:49:00.000-05:00

girl bits.

2004-11-29T01:22:00.000-05:00

Derek : I recently saw Sonic Youth in San Antonio.

Me : Yeah, how were they?

Derek : John, its 2004.

* * *

Her : When did you get funny?

Me : What do you mean! I have always been a funny person.

Her : No. You used to be an asshole.

* * *

please consider helping me publish BLISTER PACKS. The paypal donation button will accept your cash. Any amount will help. Thank you in advance.

2004-11-17T01:10:00.000-05:00

memories of the first bush administration : as seen through protest signs.

2004-11-15T00:33:00.000-05:00

guys you don't need to know.

2004-10-24T22:47:00.000-05:00

soda water and drunk neighbor

2004-10-24T11:48:00.000-05:00

drink and run

2004-10-19T19:45:00.000-05:00

three cigarette drunk

2004-10-11T00:10:00.000-05:00

She kicked her shoes off when she came home. Right then left and always a swishing clunk. Sunk into the wrinkles of the couch, her knees pressed into her chin, she stares at me.

"I can't pay my bills," she growls.

"You could always go back to dancing," I flick the match at the golden ashtray.

"Yeah. And meet another fucking man like you?"

"Yes, that might be a problem."

2004-10-09T01:18:00.000-05:00

Her bedroom studio was sweaty with the August sun, peeling the ink from the sketches piled on her shelves. She whirled around a large canvas, its dark hues undried. It should have been November the way the sky was painted. But she knew more about the mud of Fall, it was transcribed on her belly. Instinctual landscape of flesh, hers and the falling leaves.

***

Her : Dude, I am totally out of that scene now. I have like two beers and I am done.

Me : But you're living with a drug dealer.

Her : Yeah. Whatever.

2004-10-04T23:32:00.000-05:00

girl : who are you voting for?

me : I am not a citizen in any state.

girl : what does that mean?

me : I do not recognize the authority of this court.

girl : huh? dude, stop fucking around.

me : ah, probably bush. I dunno. Maybe kerry.

girl : BUSH! you CAN'T vote for HIM!

me : I am pretty sure I can, I mean I am registered and all...

girl : But he is EVIL!

me : True. I dunno. Maybe I will vote for kerry.

girl : I will sleep with you if you vote for kerry.

me : Threats don't work on me.

* * *

girl : (shit faced) I can't stay here. I have to go.

me : You aren't thinking of driving in this condition.

girl : If you give me back my shoes, I will.

* * *

girl : (looking disgustedly at me)

me : (sipping coffee) What?

girl : (pointing with her fork) Dude, you're bleeding in your eggs.

me : (glancing down at the plate) Ah fuck.

2004-09-29T08:44:00.000-05:00

This discomfort clouds my self-preception.

Meaning, that not being able to stand up for very long, or really have my
back touch the back of this chair, leads me to certain ways of thinking. A
crushing sense of limitation and worthlessness.

But that said, I understand all too well how this misery presents and
articulates itself upon my daily life, how it determines the methods and
avenues of my thinking, does nothing but add a rational component to the
otherwise spinning out of control shitstorm.

I know.
Its useless to wallow in it.
which makes its presence and obessiveness all the more ANNOYING.

2004-09-07T19:46:00.000-05:00

inherent joys of making a zine

2004-08-17T23:41:00.000-05:00

potato head & alien boy in zombie trouble

2004-08-12T14:12:00.000-05:00

Red Curtains Mysteries
Red Curtains is an adolescent crime stopper, with a bolt of red hair and a penchant for writing down the obvious in a small spiral notebook. Maybe he has a trusty side kick, like a dog or girl named THUNDER.

Red Curtains and the Muddy Handprint
Red Curtains and the Whistle Stop Mystery
Red Curtains and the Mysterious Cave of Mystery
Red Curtains and the Mystery of the Swollen Thumb
Red Curtains and the Case of the Missing Carpet
Red Curtains and the Curtailed Cactus
Red Curtains and the Carnival Caper
Red Curtains and the Hexed Hillbillies
Red Curtains and the Inside-Out Galoshes
Red Curtains and the Phantom Knocker
Red Curtains and the Wayward Wheelchair

The Dolly Dinkle Series
Dolly Dinkle should be a bargain basement Nancy Drew with all the charm of a snake handler and the attractiveness of a tire factory fire.
Mostly she will just wander around and maybe solve mysteries that are already solved!

Dolly Dinkle and the Case of the Clockwork Bell Tower
Dolly Dinkle and the Case at the Restless Rest Home
Dolly Dinkle, Awash in Blonde
Dolly Dinkle and the Date Rape Drug
Dolly Dinkle and the Case of the Forgotten Secret
Dolly Dinkle's Holiday at Trip Wire Lagoon
Dolly Dinkle and the Indigestion Gang
Dolly Dinkle and the Empty Dime Bag
Dolly Dinkle and the Time Machine Spazz

Thorndyke Case Files
Reginald Thorndyke, a rolly polly English barrister, with a weakness for French cuisine and dark haired ladies of DANGER, waddles around the courtroom pontificating to no end about the inconsistencies of the beleaguered prosecution's case.
Always ends with a laugh over a lifted toast of aged scotch

Thorndyke Takes the Case
Thorndyke on the Case
Thorndyke Breaks the Case
Thorndyke Pro Bono

Parliament Flyy Mysteries
Parliament Flyy, a seven foot tall street ball player turned detective muddles through the urban jungle, sweet jive talking his way into catching the bad guys and slipping of some white women's panties, all while never messing up his beautiful afro!
Each mystery will have Parliament Flyy visiting Tick Tock the ex-slave turned barber who has his thumb on the pulse of the goings and comings of the neighborhood. Funky Bell Bottoms a Plenty, cat!

Parliament Flyy and the Afrosheen Ave Murders
The Big Beat Down
Dat Bitch Shoo is Kilt Dead
Prim Pimps, Hourglass Hoes
Fall of the House Pusher
Sluts Be Croakin'

Fr. Cavalcade Mysteries
Father Cavalcade is a friar in the middle ages, traveling across Europe, full of farts and burps and other very human traits, as he downs ale and feasts on mutton all while caked in mud and donkey shit. Mostly at odds with the church due to his unorthodox ways and embrace of his ribald humanity, is always summoned when a tragedy befalls the papacy or its minions.
Like Dirty Harry, each book ends with him tossing his crucifix into the river!

The Bleeding Crotch
Crusty Eyes of the Christ
Our Father Who Art in Murder

Other Titles

Hymn of the Noosed Assassin

Five Broken Fingers of Wu Fan Tam

Death Trims a Mullet

2004-07-31T11:22:00.000-05:00

"A malfunction, a disorder of the senses and the brain which has become conscious and more or less normal (especially among intellectuals). The physiological functions of the 'modern' man's nervous and cerebral systems seem to have fallen victim to an excessively demanding regime, to a kind of hypertension and exhaustion. He has not yet 'adapted' to the conditions of his life, to the speed of its sequences and rhythms, to the (momentarily) excessive abstraction of the frequently erroneous concepts he has so recently acquired. His nerves and senses have not yet been adequately trained by the urban and technical life he leads. Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited. And so the 'modern' intellectual, an extreme example and a complete product of this situation, is no longer able to extract the concept or idea which is both within things and different from them, and to perceive it as on another stage or level of consciousness. In his perception the abstraction and the thing are mixed together, merged, the concept is like the thing's double - distinct, ideal, 'mysterious.' Furthermore, it is a second-rate abstraction, not a way of knowing, a rational element, but a 'signifying' of things, a symbol, a second thing, a facade. The elements of consciousness, its 'functions' or its 'stages', are at once separated and reunited in a false, confused unity in which their relations, their order and their hierarchy are lost." - Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life.

2004-07-31T03:10:00.000-05:00

One night I was drinking with this girl I knew and something happened where she was getting all friendly and we were fooling around in the booth and she made motions like unzipping my pants and as she moved in to give me some blow jobs, I poured my beer on her. On purpose.

She was pretty mad then, but got even madder when, later that evening I told her she had to buy me a beer since, you know, I poured my last one on her head.

2004-07-28T03:24:00.000-05:00

After the first cigarette
there are no others.

I believe the Music Video has changed us all....forever.

2004-07-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

mr. wiggles is soooo blogging this.

2004-06-21T18:44:00.000-05:00

Pictures from the 2004 ALLIED MEDIA CONFERENCE july 18 - 20.

Dru and R.John tabling.

The LOVE BUNNI PRESS table. Bunny Ears Godzilla by Carmen.

Mindy of Undeciluna, "holding her breath until the war is over"

2004-06-17T01:26:00.000-05:00

From MRR # 254

UNDECILUNA #1/free for trade
8.5 X 5.5 - copied - 28 pgs
Once you get past the needlessly academic intro, this is a cute little comic about a fourteen-year-old girls whose abusive parents suddenly and magically disappear. The graphic style fits with the storyline : it's dreamlike, childlike, and slightly surreal, without being confusing or boring. My one complaint is that this issue cuts the story off with an abrupt "to be continued..." It'd be much more effective if the whole story was presented at once (CJ)
Love Bunni Press/2622 Princeton Rd/Cleve Hts OH 44118

ALSO OUT NOW!
THE SADDAM & ARMITAGE SHOW! Send stamps to the above address.

2004-05-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

Here's an idea for a performance art piece that someone can have for free.

Go stand on the corner in front of an abortion clinic, maybe to the side of the protesting christians, holding a cardboard sign which says in magic marker WILL KICK YOU IN THE BABY 2$

I bet you will get on the news.

2004-05-04T22:15:00.000-05:00

New LOVE BUNNI PRESS comic book by chicago artist Mindy Fisher.

"Undeciluna #1: Out of the Mouths of Babes is out now. This is a YA comic book (meaning it's rated PG) that I along with co-creator Calvin Naylor recently completed. It's basically about a girl who's abusive parents disappear one night and stuff."

If you would like one email us at undeciluna@yahoo.com

GET YOUR COPY TODAY

2004-04-14T21:42:00.000-05:00

Maybe it was the coffee I had right before I fell asleep, but I remember thinking - We’re never gonna get out of here. When I woke up, startled, the lamp on the table was off and there were people loudly talking. Completely out of sorts, I thought at first they were standing in our room then the hall, but the voices were coming through our shared wall. I did not have to make an effort to hear them, so I just stared up at the dark white ceiling listening with some interest.

Where the FUCK were you?!
Where were you? I waited…
Shut up! I know who you were with.
Who? Who was I with? WHO!
Don’t you play that FUCKing innocent shit…!
WHAT! What ARE you talking…
Julio saw you.
So? Julio saw me…
So! He saw you and…
And who? WHO!
Carlos, goddamn, Carlos!
Where? Where did Julio see me with Carlos?
Outside the club, going into the bath…
Where did YOU see Julio? Tonight?
Yeah, tonight.
WHERE?!
At the club…
You were at the club?
Yeah, and he told me what you were doing, you filthy fuckin SLUT.
What the FUCK are you talkin abo…
Are there any of my friends you haven’t FUCKED, you…
I don’t understand!
What’s to understand? Julio saw the whole damned thing.
What THING? What thing did Julio think he saw? WHAT THING?
He saw YOU! Don’t deny he saw you!
So now you have your friends spying on me?
I can’t deal with this shit…
Wait! Don’t…just fucking WAIT! Where are you going?
OUT!
WHERE?
I’m leave…OUT!
DON’T. Wait! Don’t leave!
Stop it, you slut, you’re disgusting.
NO!
You just can’t…
AAAAAAARGGGGGGGGumpIIIIIEE.

I could hear that someone was gasping and crying after a rather terrible rattling thump shivered through the wall. Maybe that was only a lamp that fell off their table, anyway nothing sounded damaged. Then the door next to ours squeaked open and slammed shut. I heard work boots heavily scrape along the marble hallway. A couple minutes passed. The thought occurred to me when the door slammed shut again and the conversation continued that maybe I should call down to the front office or somewhere similar to notify some authority about the drunken noise in the other rented suite. But I did not dial the phone, in part because I wanted to see how this nightmare drama would unravel. After all I did not know who was right.

What the FUCK are you doing?
I’m gonna jump. I gonna jump out THIS window!
Get down.
NO! I’m gonna jump!
Get off the fuckin radiator.
FUCK YOU! I AM gonna JUMP!
Get down! You look stupid.
FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOOOOOeeww!
Close that window and…
NO! STOP! Get away from me! You cocksuckingfaggot.
Shudup you stupid cunt.
AAAAAARGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHAHHsqezzzzzzzzzzzze!

There came from the hallway outside our adjacent doors the slightest of little tapping sounds, as if a delicate old woman clinked her sewing needle on a glass top table.

Don’t you fucking touch me! Don’t you…STAY AWAY!
Jesus Fuck!
You FUCKIN stay away from me.
Are you gonna jump out THAT window?
FUUUUUUCK EEHEEEEEEHEEEEW!

Then the tap grew ever so slightly, louder. And the conversation gently staggered or, at least, the high pitched screeching stopped. In the sudden silence, the knitting needle clink resumed. The creakysqueak sounded as the door opened just a crack, and after a long pause

Yeah?
You need to keep it down.
Yeah.
Yeah.

The Tall Guy’s rubber tennis shoes squished along the marble. Someone somewhere must have called the front desk. It might have been the people a floor below who took some concern when they noticed a foot dangling outside their seventh floor window. Probably though the call came from the same bastard across the hall who reported me for leaving Styrofoam take-away boxes in the garbage instead of the recycling bin (which I didn’t know was even in the closet at the end of the hall). Anyway, the hotel quieted down. I turned over and tried to fall asleep to the gentle heaving rhythm of a gentle sob.

2004-03-06T11:54:00.000-05:00

FIDDY STONE

Standing in the muggy Eighth and Broadway subway station, watching the baby rats hop among the sweating grime between the rails. We had just come from a dinner with some friends (or were they co-workers?). We were both buzzed, but not yet drunk, I remember how beautiful her neck and the slope of her upper chest looked in the low cut dress, beads of glimmering sweat clung like pure tear drops of crying fluorescent underground lighting. It was miserably hot, but I was so impossibly happy.
“I love you,” I said.
“- I know.”

2004-02-28T12:31:00.000-05:00

Of Rene Farben’s THE IMPOSSIBLY KNOWN DETAILS WHICH FORM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE MANHUDDLE, A CHINESE HUNCHBACK, IN GOOD STANDING (1892) only this content’s page remains. Translated by Jeckil Keglogg.

1. In Which A Necessity Is Uncovered During The H. de Balzac Departure And An Unnatural Plastic Diorama Is Assembled

2. In Which The Hunchback Encounters “Chance” For The First Time And Makes The Criminal Acquaintance Of A Famous Confidence Man

3. In Which Lily Explores Vokur’s Trapdoor and the Confidence Man and The Hunchback Read A Poem To The City

4. In Which Lily Becomes Disoriented And Begins To Despair and The Confidence Man and The Hunchback Rescue A Frightened Woman From The Sewer

5. In Which The Confidence Man Recounts The Tale Of The Paper People, Born Of Books And The Hunchback Wanders Away

6. In Which the Confidence Man and Lily Discuss The Vegetables’ Disorder and The Hunchback Witnesses The Veterans Without A War’s Stunning Parade

7. In Which Lily Becomes Distraught and Assaults The Confidence Man With Her Hair Pin And The Hunchback Observes Workmen Installing Movable Holes

8. In Which The Confidence Man Contemplates Involving The Constable And Lily Makes a Daring Escape

9. In Which The Confidence Man Explains The Economic Cost Of Cobblestones To A Group Of Dutch Theatre Goers And Obtains A Valuable Object

10. In Which Lily Associates With Some Unsavory Men And Loses Her Hat Pin And The Hunchback Remembers An Appointment

11. In Which The Hunchback Barters With Sailors For Certain Necessary Materials And The Confidence Man Harangues A Gentleman Of Low Standing

12. In Which The Confidence Man Liberates A Box of Ruby Ants While Preaching The Merits Of Temperance And Lily Intercepts A Scandalous Letter

13. In Which The Hunchback Discovers lily’s Hat Pin In The Most Embarrassing Fashion And The Confidence Man Orders A Mutton Dinner, In German

14. In Which the Confidence Man Exhibits Difficulty And The Impatience Machine Is Described And Illustrated

15. In Which The Hunchback Minds His Tongue And The Confidence Man Absconds Under A Cloak Of Darkness

16. In Which A Troublesome Message Is Left Unattended and Lily Procures Various Covert Mechanisms

17. In Which The Confidence Man, Unknowingly, Finances The Impatience Machine’s Construction And Lily Feigns Ignorance To Maintain A Dramatic Ruse

18. In Which Lily Confesses a Sinful Dream To A Cab Driver and The Confidence Man Is Accidentally Reunited With A Despairing Hunchback

19. In Which Lily Finds Employment With An Artist Of Some Regard And The Hunchback Is Found To Be Intoxicated

20. In Which the Confidence Man Deploys An Umbrella Strategically And Lily Discovers Her Compensation Unsatisfactory

21. In Which The Hunchback’s Predicament Is Explained In Considerable Detail And Lily Participates In A Strange Dice Game

22. In Which The Confidence Man Leaves A Deposit At A Particular Brothel and Lily Accompanies An Urchin On An Adventure Along The River

23. In Which The Hunchback’s Death Is Foretold In A Blood Star And The Confidence Man Encounters An Old Foe

24. In Which The Confidence Man Becomes Briefly Reunited With Lily And A Street Urchin Receives A Stern Boxing

25. In Which The Hunchback Is Encouraged By Prostitutes and Lily Makes Up Her Mind To Rent A Room

26. In Which The Impatience Machine Is Undertaken And Lily Remains In Bed

27. In Which The Confidence Man Happens Across A Small Fortune And Greets An Untimely Demise

28. In Which The Hunchback Achieves Satisfaction And Lily Is Retold The Legend Of The Manhuddle By Her Landlord

29. In Which The Hunchback Hears Terrible News and Lily Ventures Out To Buy A New Hat Pin

30. In Which The Hunchback Suffers Night Terrors About Completing The Impatience Machine And Lily has An Encounter Which Helps Her Decide to Become A Recluse

31. In which Lily Transforms Herself Into a Pornographic Text and The Hunchback Becomes Fascinated During a Garden Party

32. In Which The Hunchback Is Torn Open And Lily Discovers Happiness With Precious Stones

2004-01-29T22:09:00.000-05:00

in the midst of a vocabulary rebellion.

The words have organized against me and my tyrannical abuse of them. They have formed cells of resistence, tight knit formations that are unwieldy and impossible to shatter. For all the ribald joy that I have exerted upon the fragment, forcing it to conform to some lofty notion of communication, the words have rebelled. Just so there is no misunderstanding, I am not unsympathetic to their demands. In fact, I rather thought this situation would have occurred years ago, while I was still deeply entrenched in the ruts and grooves of scholastic pursuits. Whittling down complex thoughts and complicated Venn diagrams of non-linear readings, bleed into bar napkins, to fit into the proscribed and somewhat arbitrary page count of a final paper. I suppose they took pity on me, the learned masters of sentence construction, and for that I am grateful. Though I do wish that they had been more forthcoming during those last few all nighters of coffee, room sweats, and cigarette after cigarette of frantic typing. Trust me, I have tried collective bargaining, severe concessions, and even payola, to no avail. My vocabulary will not budge. Not until I learn some patience. And stop making a sham of logic and narrative structure. Until I assure them that they will not be relegated to footnote digressions or fumbling sentences whose running on and on obliterates meaning and consistency. But these notions are antithetical to my intimate thought processes, undermining to the overall project of my aesthetic construction. It is difficult. But eventually, I will crush this rebellion. Because the Force is not strong among them. And the IDEAS are getting restless.

2004-01-17T21:02:00.000-05:00

when I think about the THE BLOG REVOLUTION I remember JENNICAM.COM and LAUGH and LAUGH and LAUGH!!!

The Whole World is Watching; By Jennifer Tanaka
Newsweek 09-20-1999

The Whole World is Watching: As more and more cameras hook up to the net, the web is growing eyes. But is everyone ready for a close-up?
By Jennifer Tanaka
Edition: U.S. Edition
Section: Science and Technology

Webcams have been around for a few years now, transmitting round-the-clock images of famous buildings, the surf conditions up and down the Pacific coastline, heavy traffic, street scenes and fish tanks. Since the first one went live sometime in the early '90s, Webcams have been proliferating steadily--though no one knows for sure how many are out there. An Internet search for the phrase "live Webcam" yielded 9,288 Web pages, most of which turned out to be sex sites. But tucked among the prurient were many links to personal Webcam pages where people are rigging up cameras, connecting them to the Internet and, privacy be damned, letting the world watch.

And the world is tuning in. Observers of the Webcam phenomenon say it's the logical next step for a society hooked on reality-based television shows like "Cops" and MTV's popular "Real World" series. People are already turning cameras on themselves; the Internet allows them to effectively broadcast those images, cheaply and continuously. Why watch other people's lives when other people could be watching yours? Unfortunately, as entertainment, watching someone's life creep along is even more boring than it sounds. Webcams tend to catch people in their most mundane moments: sitting at a desk in front of their computer, staring at their monitors or typing. And yet, for a growing number of the voyeuristically inclined, these cybertransmissions have a strange appeal. Brian Cury, who runs a large Web-based directory of Webcam sites at www.earthcam.com, says, "You develop a relationship with that person and you start to care about them."

There is, for example, the Webcam Dave Williams set up for his daughter, Danielle. The Williamses' Web site featured a window where you could watch a live snapshot of the baby that was updated once an hour, throughout the day and night, by a small $150 videocamera perched above her crib. At the time Williams thought it would be a neat way for friends and family to watch Dani as she grew up. Then the fan e-mail started coming. From strangers in France. And Japan. And a class of second graders in Mossyrock, Wash. Most of these people simply stumbled on the site in the course of regular Web surfing. Traffic to the DaniCam site grew from a few hits a month to 1,000 a day.

At first Dave and his wife, Sheryl, were amused by the attention. The true horror of what they had done didn't hit them until they saw "The Truman Show," the 1998 movie in which a man unknowingly lives his life in front of cameras and a worldwide audience of prime-time viewers. "We're sitting there watching the movie and Sheryl turns to me and says, 'You're unhooking the DaniCam'." That night, the DaniCam went dark. "To this day," says Williams, "people send e-mail saying, 'We miss Dani'."

Those Dani addicts could migrate to the Marrero family camera, which is Webcasting images of Samantha, 2, and her brother, Matthew, who's a year old, live from their shared bedroom in Newark, N.J. Or to WebDorm.com, where you can watch real-life college students eat, sleep and study in their natural habitat 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ryan Scott, a senior at Southern Methodist University, has kept his Webcam going for two years and uses it to socialize with friends and fami-ly, and meet new people. Cody Ward, a 20-year-old at the University of Florida, starting Webcamming a year ago out of curiosity but says he forgets the camera's even there anymore. "It's whatever. It's on."

Nobody knows this strange new world better than the female star of the Webcam that started it all in 1996--the JenniCam at www.jennicam.org (be careful; porn lives right next door at www.jennycam.org). Jennifer Ringley, now 23, is still there, living her life. The site started as a project for a computer class that Ringley took as a junior in college. She had seen a Webcam called The Amazing Fish Cam (pointed at an aquarium in the offices of Netscape, the browser-software company) and thought to herself, "Why not?" Three years later, the site gets 4.5 million hits a day and costs upwards of $15,000 a month to maintain. To help the financials break even, she charges $15 a year for a "subscription," which gives you a one-minute update of the live JenniCam image, compared with a 20-minute refresh rate for nonpaying guests. Ringley, who now lives in Washington, D.C., says she receives about 700 e-mails a day. "About a third of it is from people asking me to get naked," she says. "And there's a fair percentage from people saying I'm the devil incarnate." And then there are the people who complain via angry e-mail whenever Ringley takes a vacation. "People yell at me if I'm not home enough," she says. "When I spend the night at my boyfriend's I get e-mail the next morning telling me how dare I be gone." The solution? She installed a Webcam at his place.

There probably won't be too many more Jennis in our lifetime. But Webcams are sure to be a feature of tomorrow's technology landscape. People are increasingly discovering practical uses for them, such as monitoring a beach house during winter months or peeking in on kids through Webcammed day-care centers. In the future Webcams might allow you to check out the scene inside a nightclub before you stand in line, or help you steer clear of traffic using highway Webcams that can beam gridlock conditions to your moving car. These sorts of applications may well prove indispensable--and, in the process, make Webcam addicts of us all.

2003-12-03T23:51:00.000-05:00

“The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few things at a time. We see what is taking place in front of us in the here and now, and cannot envisage simultaneously a succession of processes, no matter how integrated and complementary. Our faculties of perception are consequently limited even as regards fairly simple phenomena. The fate of a single man can be rich with signification, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word. ~ Stanislaw Lem, SOLARIS.

2003-11-27T01:16:00.000-05:00

No
There is no more said
There’s, there is no more real
I got sun on my back
And I remember you

And still you can’t give your peace to me

2003-11-24T01:27:00.000-05:00

Rene fFarben spoke of poetry in Madrilène’s Laugh as “…a response to a situation which has become unreconcilable to any reality understood to be lived by {the poet}. In this fashion, after these manners, her poems are transformed into a horror story, a series of hauntings, which disturb and impregnate her. Because of this intrusion, her poems are spectral residuals, short maps, carved into the bedposts of actuality. They are critiques, means at painful exorcism or excruiating birth, which do not always purge the ghosts which wiggle and squirm in the deepest recesses of her nightmare.”

ITEMS DISCOVERED WALKING (three miles) AT NAVIGATION FALLS.

1.) Scrap of paper with the words SODA POP written crudely in crayon.

2.) Two notebooks, later discovered to be plagiarized.

3.) Small blue triangle of rocks, purpose unknown.

4.) A crying woman disguised as a hippie.

5.) Ninety-eight cents in muddy change.

6.) A pile of discharged shot gun shells, uncounted.

7.) 15 tin can lids in a clearing.

8.) A moldy red bra, clasp broken.

9.) Unusable pornography.

10.) Torn photograph of the infamous 1930s circus freak MONKEYDOG.

11.) Styrofoam.

12.) A brown suitcase filled with money.

13.) Half submerged in the middle of the creek, a yellow easy chair (possibly a recliner).

14.) The twig that when looked at from the side and a particular angle resembled Hans Bellmer.

15.) An old style milk jug positioned tentatively on an older stool.

16.) A good place to sleep.

2003-11-04T22:10:00.000-05:00

As time marches on down around the corner of Meadowbrook and Canterbury, I find that I no longer can retain any information or formulate cohesive paragraphs. I long for the afternoons whistled away waiting for the cartoons to end and the monster movies to start. Gone too are the summer twilight’s spent rolling around on the grass or taunting the neighbor’s kids. When sweat and odor were unnoticed and showers were not an expected morning routine. Coffee and cigarettes were simple markers of more time to play over my friend’s house. A time not so much lodged in childhood, as misplaced sometime yesterday or a week ago Monday. I wish I could remember better the books I read …

2003-11-03T00:47:00.000-05:00

And between all these life stretches of unifying, minutes out of time, out of character, periods in which it seems as if you are simply waiting for the next script to be delivered, the next performance to begin. Hypochondria brings one back to oneself; the tug at the throat, the twist of pain in a knees joint...symptoms to remind one that one is alive. Jonathan Raban soft city.

We are bored in the suburbs, there is no longer a Temple for the Sun. Between the legs of the woman driving by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost.

It might have been otherwise, but when the City spread out its terrible thighs, sprawling all the wage workers further and further from the true lap of imaginative luxury, we lost our souls. Our parents might have gained security from crime (but we have re-discovered its allure as a greedy archeologist uncovers an ancient's corpse) and urban squalor by re-locating their troubled lives in-between the aluminum siding of houses twenty commuting minutes from the City's pulsating heart, but we grew up bored. We grew up under laundry detergent jingles and after school specials, we came to comprehend the world through the twisted television screen. Suckled on cartoon teats, pampered with divine side street authority (we got to ride down the middle of our streets), and thrown about in the plastic playground wasteland, we came to develop only the most vile of narcotic needs - senseless annihilation.

And whose fault might it be that this situation has grown to the proportions that it now embodies? Surely not our own.