You’re in Trouble

A journal scrap from
Fri, March 6,2006

There are tears on my sleeves and little snot bridges between my nostrils and my lips, and sometimes also my sleeves. The body ran out of reactive functions while allocating reactions to the sovereign emotions, ‘cause really it sets the wrong tone, this pouring of tears, when Justin just drank Jon’s urine.
I’m getting the art-slave pity from Jon and Justin on today’s driving shifts. Yeah. Rewind. That’s what I said. Justin just drank Jon’s urine out of a Starbucks covered cup. He was doubling back up to navigator position to cover for me, and marveled aloud, “Ooh! I have some coffee left.” Left from his shift at the wheel two hours ago, and still warm.
Jon was sputtering something with an urgency that only hindered the warning from comprehensibly exiting his mouth. And at the same time, something surprising and immediately comprehensible entered Justin’s mouth.
“Pee Pee”, Jon latently announced to the frozen moment that briefly ensues when a man has consumed another man’s bodily fluid-- before the eruption of; laughter (Matt and me), desperate apologies (Jon), curses (Justin), and saliva/urine (also Justin).
The beat-down in Justin, whether immediate or postponed, buckled beneath the weight of more than just one more straw. The more we laughed, the more we were doomed, we knew. We laughed like it was the last we’d enjoy.

Let Down Your Skin

Just returned home from a long gypsy summer, where among fleeting things like sunburns and bronchitus, we found these images of permanence. Very honored.
These are just the handful that my camera caught. Note to self: begin a thread on the message board to archive the complete collection. Give me a minute or 500 til that's up. This is a start.

Dave Matthews: Not Even a Contender!

Our victory on Rollingstone.com must have really unravelled the post hippy's public approval rating, as he is not even present on the list of bands elligible to play the coveted extra 10 minutes at the Sacramento Warped Tour!
As you can see, we can almost almost reach the cookies on top of the fridge, and we just need a wee boost. I just voted. It takes like 21 seconds, beginning........NOW.

Thanks.
ps.
Competition ends on August 20, 2007 at 2pm (PST).

At least We're Better Than Dave Matthews at Something

Fun with Bombastic Theorizing

The newest book club discussion on The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby has a link!

You will find there, an excerpt of my thoughts, but they were from a premature post on the board. My real reflection, which went unpublished, I would like to now share.
---

Narby's book opened up a world of possibilities for me, mostly in the area of bombastic theorizing and subsequent selective investigation. For instance, I can now postulate that the Spin book club is an elite, though seemingly ragtag collection of people who have been selected by a small and covert government agency for monitoring, and the hopeful discovery of a prophesied savior of the modern world.
My first finding on the general subject of a prophesied Armageddon was the Mayan calendar, and it's abrupt end on December 21, 2012. (12/21/12) The sum of all of the single digits equals 9-- the number of lines in a nonet of poetry. (note that in music, a nonet is a composition which requires nine musicians for a performance. Hmm... music. I would set that divergence aside for later speculation.*1)
So while my estranged wife and children took a holiday to my wife's mother's house to escape my abuse by negligence and detachedness possibly but not probably having to do with a drug induced acute compulsion surrounding my recent findings, I searched volumes in search of the relevance of the nonet. Then while casually browsing cam phone video blogs on buzznet, it struck me: just as buzznet combines two words to create a new term, nonet was a term comprised of two syllables: no and net! Perhaps the bizarre cease of the Mayan calendar was caused by a worldwide internet failure.
I was fatigued, but in light of my new findings, pressed on. Defocalizing my gaze on the internet, I allowed my surroundings to steer my mind. Mariachi music wafted up the stairwell from the cleaning lady's porta-sterio cassette deck. That's it, music, the universal language! What other force than the internet could spread a web between continents, providing a means of global dialogue and understanding?! Quickly searching Al Gore, who we know "took the initiative in creating the Internet", I found exactly the link I was looking for... Jon Bon Jovi! He was recorded as remarking, "Al Gore is the smartest person I've ever met."
So the two had met. How often? On what subject did they converse? The end of the world? Possible saviors of our modern way of living?
In a popular Bon Jovi song, the lyric repeats 3 times:

Maybe I can't save the world
But as long as you believe
Maybe I can save the world

The 3 groups of 3, the nonet... it was too much to be a coincidence. Perhaps his seemingly rock cliché use of a contradiction was not contradiction, but instead JBJ disclosing that HE could not save the world, but KNEW WHO COULD, and in revealing the savior to the correct source, would himself be taking part in the earth's salvation. Could his source be Al Gore?!
I once again defocalized my thoughts. Al Gore's last name brought shivers to my spine when coupled with the thought of the demise of human life. Looking it up in a dictionary, I found the synonym "vermicious", which a childhood memory reminded me, described Roald Dahl's Knids-- a fictional species of amorphous, shape-shifting monsters that invade the Space Hotel USA from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The synonym was rich with metaphor for the Armageddon at hand. Searching the net for more on the Vermicious Knids, I came upon the final key linking the SPIN.com book club to the possible avoidance of the abrupt end of the Mayan calendar...
A myspace user by the name of "vermicious_k" yielded a google search including among 3 lines of summary, the code:
"Hey Dot how are you? I sure do love the Bon Jovi Video in your comments. ... Pastiche will be spinning Drum & Bass Hip Hop Remixes, and calming Raggae, ..." Noticing the emboldened words, it is impossible to ignore Bon Jovi, spin, dot, and calm... Bon Jovi! Spin.com!
That is where I will leave off. The above was not meant to challenge anyone's faith, but merely to serve as a cornerstone into the exploration of the theory that a true egocentric universe can coexist with the help of creative science, selective investigation, even more brashly selective theorizing. I now leave it to you to become obsessed and tie up my loose ends. Thank you for the $14 dollars via amazon.com. I'm coming down from my trip now, and am disinterested in the mess of pixels before me. I now long for the caress of a summer breeze and a bit of caramel to pleasingly excavate from a molar and savor on the base of my tongue.

-foot notes-
*1. 9 is also the number of members of the book club who initially took place in discussion of the first book, Jesus' Son, though 11 members were selected by Spin. What happened to my friend Stef Alexander of P.O.S. during that discussion? I called him to investigate possible conspiracy, and he declined comment, yet had little alibi, other than mumbled fatigue of self tour managing on the Gym Class Heroes tour. I sensed foul play.

Breeding Womb

Alternative Press wants a photo of the Oxen studio where me and Emilee make art. Emilee is in Sweden, and I am sleeping in the lounge of an overbooked bus on warped tour. Between my backpack full of cables and hard drives, and a skype chat open on my Macbook, our studio is less tangible than it is conceptual, which leaves the trick of photographing it. With our photographer friend Greg Kicmal, 2 hotel rooms' supply of bedside lamps, an 80's National Geographic coffee-table book for inspiration, and a lot of skin, we began the photo/illustration this afternoon.
Here's the reference

and our sketch. There is little more amusing than nudity accompanied by shoes and socks.

The Happening at Battery Tent

Something inexplicable happened at our signing today. Rather than textually narrating it, I scribbled a crude little animation. Mind you that there are no details withheld.