I.D. FLUX

spider

So I was bit by a spider two weeks ago. While my cat and I slept, some evil insect waited in a heating duct to feast on our blood. It apparently was attracted by the carbon dioxide we were breathing out. It got me on the lip, leaving a wound that wouldn't really dry up and heal. The only way to deal with this is to go spider hunting. I found an "egg" under my dresser and dust busted it's ass. Everything has a right to reproduce, but feasting on me as I dream crossed the line. Babies are probably cute, but they'll be blood suckers before you know it. Die and be buried.    

An unexpected draw back of a spider bite was that I fear everybody thought I had herpes. When I told them about a spider, some people smiled and waited a moment to see if I was sticking to that story. Like after a long pause I'd sigh and confess "I loved a women who wasn't clean." Five days after the bite I was tired and unfocused. Was my immune system fighting some poison?  Were spiders like this supposed to be killed by a frost that never came? Is this about global warning? After a net search, I learned kissing bugs were spotted in this country. Kissing bugs bite you on the lip and spread African sleeping sickness. Bed bugs bite too and you end up throwing away the mattress, rugs, curtains, pillows, and clothes. Six days after the bite my friends started worrying, because I didn't want to eat or drink beer. I was bought pints of Elliot Ness and encouraged to "not let the spider win."  If he bites me tonight, I vowed, it has some alcohol rich blood to deal with.    

I cleaned the bedroom from top to bottom, but there was too many places in this old house to hide. I tried to buy mosquito netting, because I felt like it was going back to my lip for seconds. The only place I could find it was at Amazon for $15. I didn't want to live like that. Then today I was talking on the phone with my Mom and I spotted it crawling up the wall by a warm lamp. In the middle of a conversation about illegal wire tapping I yelled, "there you are, you ugly son of a bitch. Die you sneaky freak!" I pounded it way too long with a New Yorker Magazine. I felt like things might get back to normal now, although there might be more than one.

The Means - on You Tube

imaginary girlfriend

I'm taking a beating from my job. When I roll out of bed, my ankles and lower back seems unhinged. A few hours later at corporate headquarters, I sprained my neck in such a way that I couldn't look to my left without wincing in agony. By the time I got home, I was empathizing with the elderly and wondered how I was going to end up. The highlight of my day was when I cooked the food left in the house and it tasted fantastic. I think I hit on something. In a pan, heat up extra small tater tots, a green pepper, a little celery, and some peanuts in some extra virgin olive oil. It's close to Potato O'Brien, which pan frys chunks of potatoes, peppers, and onions. Believe me, this is much better. I think I'll call it Skippy Durago. Since I could barely walk or even sit comfortable, I drank the last three beers in the fridge (a bottle of Newcastle, an Edmund Fitzgerald porter, and a can of Pasbt). Watched a little Frontline and played a little Poom. Crawled into bed and prayed my sore torso would heal.    

    Whenever I sleep on my back, I dream.  My dreams are largely what I like to call "bus stop dreams", meaning they tend to be dull and uneventful. Sometimes they take place in hangouts and neighborhoods  where I used to live and usually are distorted. The old Victorian house I lived in a decade ago had many more floors and rooms. My hometown might have ice mountains, schools in subway stations, or factories inside of volcanos. For the most part, nothing much happens at all. Since my neck was killing me and it was humid outside, I slept for two hours and then woke up for an hour all night long. At around 11pm, 2am, and 4:30am I was visited by this cute girl named Claire. We would meet at an imaginary record store with an outdoor cafe and we would have long conversations. As the night progressed, she would flash a radiant smile and flirt with me. Towards the end, we acted like we were going steady. If I didn't have to get up at 5:30, I'm sure she would of moved in. Then again, she doesn't really exist.

Imagine what Norah Ephron would do with an idea like that? By the end of the night, I bonded with her and when my alarm went off, she vanished. Who was she? She didn't morph into something else and her personality remained consistent. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out if Claire is a composite of real women or an old girlfriend in a wig. I haven't got a clue. My best guess is that she might be a girl I knew from elementary school, all grown up. Every summer, I seem to reminisce of teenage summers when all I did was to hang out with my friends and laugh. I've been contrasting that with the tired boredom I've been experiencing lately and my imagination must of conjured up a very detailed Clairebot. Either that or she's a ghost.

"Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life"     Simone Weil


The Original Onions  - I Ran

Death, Failure, & Wes Anderson

I hate to see people spoiling a good thing. The rare good thing in this culture I can appreciate, that's gets dumped on because it's not up to their standards of greatness. Keith Richards always said that everyone panned the current Stones album, saying it wasn't as good as the one five years earlier. He'd remind them that they hated that album too at the time. Orson Wells and Ed Wood had the same struggle in making films. Like Ray Charles, they all would be legends as soon as they turned into rock hard corpses. I seem to have to defend creative people all the time; explaining how they have to change and take chances to get to their next level. My views are usually drowned out by a chorus of the finicky yelling "hated it!!!" This year I've been taking bullets for Wes Anderson.

I loved The Life Aquatic more with each viewing and I was still noticing new things the fifth time. All of Anderson's elements were there: a great sound track, the perfectly realized world, the drum solo, the emotional rescues, and Bill friggin Murray. That's way more than most films have right there. I figure that Rushmore was a surprise, Royal Tenenbaums was a revelation, and now the ultra-hip crowd knows all of Anderson's tricks. The formula might run thin for some, but Life Aquatic affected me on a deep level. Steve Zissou might be a selfish, defensive, washed up joint smoking scallywag stumbling through a rough decade. Even though it's a semi-comedy, the failings of people who are all messed up inside resemble real people in my life way more than most movies. In Rushmore, Max flunks classes even though he's unconventionally talented. The Tenenbaum family all had early successes, then fell upon hard times. Zissou was a famous adventurer and now it's all going wrong. Every human makes mistakes and loses out eventually; this is rarely depicted in film so artfully and with such charm.

If you actually read the script, the Steve Zissou character seems to be in much more pain about his best friend being killed by a shark, marriage dissolving, and career ending. For anyone who remembers Bill Murray's rendition of The Razor's Edge, there was the phenomenon of Bill acting serious scenes and the audience laughed out of habit. Personally I loved that Zissou was an aging curmudgeon explorer with a rag tag team with more guts than brains. I always found that Wes included very emotional exchanges that remind me of the serene conversations at a funeral. All the pretension and attitude melts away. Life seems limited to a few years and we console each other with each passing day. Rushmore had Max living by a cemetery, writing plays on the typewriter his deceased mother gave him. Royal Tenenbaum faked that he was dying to reconnect with his family. This wasn't much of a lie because he was going to die soon enough anyway. Zissou goes through the same stuff all men go through eventually. 

It's true that Wes Anderson's characters want to recapture childhood enthusiasm and fascination. I think most people would admit that the summer seemed endless when you were eleven. Back then you can change what you want to be when you grew up from week to week. When you find yourself a heart broken adult, it's common to reminisce about how you wanted to spend your life. At some point I wanted to drive a dragster, a funny car, a submarine, and fly a helicopter. Wes mines this to great effect; this subconscious landscape is rich with meaning. Just hearing an early Stones song can take you right back. I would think anyone who read National Geographic as a kid or watched TV specials of divers with it's cheesy casio score is amused by this film.

 

The Brazilian Bowie tunes are wonderful and when Devo's Gut Feeling played, it gave me shivers. Another perfect choice. Willem Defoe and Cate Blanchett were superb and Bill Murray is still one of the coolest guys ever. I'm so happy this film was made. Rushmore involved friends, Royal Tenenbaums was about a family, and Life Aquatic had a crew. Our species has always been flawed, gregarious, and lonely. This hipster backlash happens from time to time. When Tim Burton made Ed Wood, some asked, "why should I watch a movie about a freak who made bad movies?" Because in my eyes, everyone in Hollywood are freaks who make bad movies. Ed Wood made movies so bad they became surreal. They had a madman's story, but at least he was functional. Not so strange that we couldn't relate to him. As far as Life Aquatic goes, I'm amazed how much I relate to Steve Zissou and his quest. It might not be your cup of tea though; each to his own. So watch the trailer and play with the collage machine.

Even animals take time out to play.

>}}:^})*>  Sigur Rós - Starálfur   hear the climatic song missing from the soundtrack

machine messiah

Thank's to the help of my brother, once again my Frankenstein PC is rebuilt.
Gone is the dirty keyboard and housing so loud I had to keep it on an angle to make the rumbling sounds go away. I was shocked at how cheap things got. I super fast cd burner for $40 !? Burning went from a half an hour to three minutes! I can't wait for a few days off to try out my digital multitracker and see if the demos sound better.

I'm trying to start a trend: PCs with lights and plexiglass panels. You might have wicked rims on your car, but get aload of my machine's blue glow. Yes, it is that cool.

ode to a portable terminal radiogun in hell

At work, the functional schizophrenic quit before he got fired. Not everyone can be hyper productive with a portable terminal radiogun attached to your hand all day. It's the first stage in turning the workforce into cyborgs and in the next few years it might happen to you. Think of the advantages for a corporation. Everything you process is recorded in a database, every mistake is flagged, and if you don't work fast enough you are gone.
Management is all about making you work faster and the lobby always has people filling out applications.

Typical day in 2004. While listening to the latest atrocity on NPR, I ran out of gas in the mall-ghetto district, so I had to visit an unfamiliar gas station. Some guy dressed like Don Johnson in Miami Vice tries to sell me cologne. Meanwhile an obese man in motorized cart pull up besides me and lights a cigarette. I guess he figured that since gas stations aren't blowing up everyday, he was safe. A woman in hot pants, big hoop earrings, and a tight tee shirt that says "blow pop" asked for a ride. I ask where? She said anywhere. It never occurred to me how easy it was for prostitutes to hang out at a bus stop. Just then, an old Capri pulls up with the most shiny and expensive rims I have ever seen on a car. The sterio was so loud that the boom booms actually cracked the back wind shield. Keep in mind, all this happened the same minute.

I remember how sleazy Times Square was back in the seventies, but it least it had character. This was just plain tacky. It's like the fall of the roman empire, except we are bathed in the light of a televison screen. Oh well, we had a good run. Talk about grace under pressure, I'm fighting for rent money here. Even though I've worked with the same people for a decade, I feel relief when they quit or get walked out ( by a security guard) after years of service.

I needed an escape and strolled toward the movie/pub. I walked in the middle of The Punisher, which was way bad. It was almost mystery science theater bad, but not quite entertaining enough. Along with Fast & Furious 2, SWAT, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and the Cat in the Hat: it was painful to sit through. When Hellboy started, I immediately identified with the character. He was a misplaced demon, but his attitude was just like a garbage man from the Bronx. He seemed like the icon of working class America. The bitter guy who cleans up the mess. The construction worker who builds the skyscraper your cubicle is located in. Son of the soil, salt of the earth, the backbone of America. Every guy I work with resembles him. Cheers to Hellboy, working class hero.

drink, dance, and die

depopulate
TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: de·pop·u·lat·ed, de·pop·u·lat·ing, de·pop·u·lates
To reduce sharply the population of, as by disease, war, or forcible relocation.

downsize
...down·sized, down·siz·ing, down·siz·es 1. To reduce in number or size: a corporation that downsized its personnel in response to a poor economy. 2. To dismiss or lay...

One is a military phrase the other is corporate jargon. As George Carlin proclaimed, words give you away. Changing words to to hide it's meaning, to mask it's connotations is to lie. The guy who replaced "kill" with "depopulate" is one sick excuse for a human. Although when a corporation thins the herd, it's rationalized as being what's best for the business and the stockholders. From my end, the people I see waiting at the bus stops at 5:30 a.m. live in part of town that resembles a third world shanty town. I feel just as bad for them as lost dogs, which breaks my heart to see.
Once the job goes to India and the money stops coming in, things go from bad to worse. Who will it be? The Viet Nam vet who is easily distracted. The functional schizophrenic who is painfully shy? Or maybe the 77 year old guy who's wife needs a $2000 in pills a month to stay alive? The angry conservative who wanted to end welfare as we knew it and now is applying for welfare?
Capitalism is a bitch goddess for sure.

On Saturday night my friends said we could go anywhere with one exception: they didn't need to be bummed out. It was up to me and the neatest thing within five miles was a death metal triple bill. On a whim I choose to go to Byrne's Pub (where the Irish meet). Donegal Express was playing and I remember that they had women in the band and that made it a done deal. These lonely guys needed to be nurtured, hugged, and smiled at. This pub was so Irish it had an I.R.A. poster on the wall and the pizza place next store was popping out a pie every minute. The Baltimore band was extremely positive, boisterous, and jig spinning. College girls were dancing and going wild. After a while, girl watching was a spectator sport, in the most wholesome and spiritual sense. Gone was the blasting punk and the competitive hip hop of the campus scene. The fiddler girl was dancing and the keyboard chick was singing along with the lyrics, unmiked. Their facial expressions were so disarmingly cute. The crowd couldn't help but to drink beer and grin. They were encouraged to do so. The icing on the cake was that one of my droogs quit drinking and drove us home safely. I'm pretty sure the beer was killing the toxins I've been building up all week on the job.
Learn to forget.

Dizzy listening to a robin in springtime

 

apocalyptic sunset

fun with string

Jungle Habitat

Last week I seemed to remember driving amongst wild animals. As a child I recollect Jungle Habitat, somewhere in New Jersey. One would drive into this fenced in forest area and slowly pass by exotic jungle animals. How could that of been? Who would let a family drive there station wagon into an area with dangerous African lions and baboons?  An actual lion would actually get on the hood of the car! What carnie came up with that idea and what horrible accident happened to shut the place down?  Well I've been going through an old photo album and now I have proof. 
I'm glad I didn't whip open my car door and try to pet the kitty.

UPDATE!   Due to popular demand, we started a Jungle Habitat Group at Yahoo. 
We can share stories and photos there, like this one:

UPDATE! It was real. Here's some video. Even with the soothing musak, it still looks dangerous to me. ==================================================================================== ====================================================================================