أريد أن

Kreisform

2011-07-24T05:09:00.000-07:00

2011-06-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

2011-06-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

There is a door now.
Where once was the world and its distant life blood of pericol plausters there is now a fount. I'm soaking wet.

I am a wizard. I wear a hat you cannot see.

-J. Nathan Winneke

29 364/365

2011-05-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

An alarming trend

2011-04-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

This crow is a suicide bomber.

2011-02-04T06:18:00.001-08:00

2011-02-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

Germany

2010-12-26T03:18:00.000-08:00

.......

2010-11-13T07:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FhMMmqzbD8&feature=player_embedded
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/us-police-confirm-zahra-is-dead-20101113-17rhv.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/realestate/14cov.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/11/09/2010-11-09_baby_dead_after_mom_tosses_infant_into_washing_machine_launches_spin_cycle_cops.html

Please add to previous "Who is doing worse?" post

2010-10-20T13:38:00.000-07:00

Salvation Army, Lake Forest, CA

2010-10-20T02:22:00.000-07:00

just realized i have liked all the same stuff for the last 2 years. haven't really added any new interests, incorporated new ideas, focused on new things. crystal castles why earth tour not being able to figure out if i am depressed or not feeling indecisive about where to live if i should get a job if i should write about something

really need to move on to the next ____

it feels like you plow through things when you are young and then eventually will just get stuck into one mindset for your last 30-50 years of your life. this one has been going on for too long. scary

Espresso Preparation

2010-10-19T21:56:00.001-07:00

Espresso preparation is an art that demands the precision and dedication of science. I have never achieved, nor have ever seen anyone make a perfect espresso. A perfect espresso is more of a concept than an actuality.

2010-10-18T21:41:00.000-07:00

2010-10-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

I love you

2010-10-03T15:50:00.000-07:00

2010-09-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

I just bought Richard Yates. I feel very excited.

2010-09-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

sincwe we watched there will be blood and american psycho and jaws we saw how to dress like men. we wanted to be men again. great, troubled men.
so many oil men and boat men and psychopaths walking around. so many classic hair parts and shiny foreheads. so classic. we bought some clothes eventually

everyone playing dress up

shooting blanks

sweating estrogen. puffy nipples. no more body hair

little city dolls
big dumb country shiny red people

...
writing

doing events in the city

can't even get drunk right,stink right, beat the shit out of someone.

forward something notable

don't know how to do anything. cut wood. wires. pipes. space. DNA. computer. you dont know how anthing works. but you have an opinion. that counts.

there are riots today in mozambique, such a pretty place. the people were just carrying stuff from place to place, moving around, buying things, experiencing the world. fucking retards
funny or sad? forgettable? weird

probably just weird huh

what is your understanding?

i work at urban outfitters

going to go go to business school. make my penis fall off

2010-08-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

"Let your heart look
on white sea spray
and be lonely.

Love is a fool star.

You and a ring of stars
may mention my name
and then forget me.

Love is a fool star."
— Carl Sandburg

To help you understand

2010-08-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

we are dead.

In hospital

2010-08-04T12:36:00.001-07:00

In hospital 90,000 One American dies in a hospital from a medical error or a lethal infection every 6 minutes
Transport 43,443 One American killed by a traffic accident every 12 minutes
Poisoning 19,457 One American accidentally poisoned to death every 27 minutes
At home 18,048 One American killed in an accident at home every 29 minutes
Falls 17,227 One American killed in a fall every 31 minutes
Drunk driving 16,885 One American killed by a drunk driver every 31 minutes
Homicide 16,137 One American murdered every 32 minutes
Drowning 3,306 One American drowned every 159 minutes

Who is doing worse?

2010-07-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

Thorsberg Trousers

2010-07-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

Want these vintage skinny jeans REALLY bad...
I got way into the 4th century last year. Still, kinda getting over it already...

Whoever copies the little foot covers for their mediocre "label", be sure to send me a free pair.

Dyson Airblade

2010-07-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

Geberit
American Standard

Mmmmmmm

2010-07-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

4th of July

2010-07-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

Driving across the numbing hills of central Europe one more time now, one last time later. Soon all my little retards across the Atlantic Ocean will wake up and have fun for one day out of the year. Every American will go outside, drink Bud Light, eat food, possibly submerge their sickly, wasted, forgotten body in some water somewhere, use their senses and revel in their physical manifestation for a single day this year. I wish I was there for my favorite day. I will be here. Time travelling one last time. Today to the Czech Republic. Playing our last show in Europe ever.

I feel like I need to think of something, some idea to make it better. There are too many ideas. "Oh well" seems pretty good.

Today 999999 Eriks die.

Now I am Erik 1 again... whatever happened to him...

Now I am Erik 1, back in one place. Stuck into the hurtling Earth by a pin. Part of the continuous time stream. My idea about this is that it is bullshit and I will die like this and I see it coming with total clarity.

Erik 1 ceased to be able to live without Eriks 2 through 1000000 many years ago. Erik 1 will be frankensteined, supplemented with many small pieces of the usable remains of the Eriks left behind in the time limbo graves scattered throughout "idea-space".

Erik 1 will be a failed and broken character, unable to rejoin what he left, unable to express his deepest regret that he left in the first place, and filled with hate and contempt. He will be understood by no one except the chance roaming frankenstein. But they can only rot together. The rockets will reject him as the young reject the old. All the other 1s will resent him.

I don't want to get fat. I don't want to be tricked into taking the people around me seriously. I don't want to make friends with my co-workers. I don't want to listen to songs about relationships by Kate Nash again and feel compelled because my mind is dead. I don't want to know what bars are good in LA on what nights. I don't want Wurstkuche. I don't want shows. I don't want feeble city gays and their shrivelled skinny 30-something horrible women friends with dry skin looking frightened out of their sunken caved-in flinty eyes. Nooo new good restaurant. No recent college graduate guy. No nice Christian Asians. No balding dude with good taste. No vegetarians. No art. No bicycle. No friends of friends. No ugly vintage dresses on ugly girls who never got picked. No opinions!!!!!!!! No talking about your trip and your vintage camera pictures. Nooooo computer. No open mouth.

That is what I would say if I were giving up. Dying.

I'm a FUCKING ROCKET. I blast off everyday and crash down to Earth every night and get fixed in the morning.

As a rocket, I need to continue blasting off or I will die. I will blast your fucking face off if you try to interfere with my trajectory. I need people who not only live in reality inside their heads, but also don't pretend that they don't know the reality inside their head when they interact with "people" outside their head.

Go away the shocked and surprised. Go away the daunted. Go away the hurt and jealous and dumb and rehashed and feeble. Leave me alone. I want to fly with other rockets to lakes and mountains and the great cities of the Earth and the stars.

Everyone knows inside their own head the same things everyone else knows. Everyone knows reality, even if they aren't aware they know it, they feel it. Even if they've become so used to their patterns of thinking that were first erected to ignore reality, it's still lying there at the base of everything. A deep still pool.

You don't like your boyfriend. You want to get married. You're scared. You're gonna die. You don't want to have sex with someone ugly just because you're old. You want some things to be absolute and the ones you know are absolute to not be. But wishing it really hard, and then acting shocked when it doesn't happen won't change the reality. Even if everyone in the whole world is constantly shocked. Accept reality and stop acting so surprised. Blast off. Blast every single dumbfuck around you sucking you dry of life to quiet their fear's face off and look back and laugh at their scorched, shocked facial expression. Reality. Time travel. The world is your environment. Live as time changes!!!

This assumes the world is real.

I think everything is going to be ok.
I feel excited.

2010-07-03T02:23:00.000-07:00

Uh oh

2010-06-22T05:56:00.000-07:00

Oceana - Clean Head EP

2010-06-21T04:05:00.000-07:00

This is the best thing I have heard in a long time. Especially "Joy". It feels good to be so inspired and so devastated by something made by people so much younger than you. I would do another US tour if it was with Oceana and Math the band.

2010-06-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

Volgograd

2010-06-07T04:22:00.000-07:00

Astrahan

2010-06-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

2010-06-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

2010-05-13T11:50:00.001-07:00

There is a whale in trouble. It came to the harbor to get help from people. Now they untangled the nets off her flippers and she came back.

I think this is very sad and touching.

Whales are smarter than us I think. They are just more "over it".

They go swimming and sing sad songs without words. They don't even bother to try to communicate their ideas to each other cause they know it is pointless.

Dolphins are probably really annoying to whales.

What's your hobby?

2010-05-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

What do you like to do?

Using a Microscope
Weather
Astrology
Building an airplane
Taxidermy
Fly tying
Indian heritage/lore
Propeller sled
Skin Diving
Ventriloquism
Spelunking
Infrared photography
Painting
Shot-putting
Magic tricks
Scrimshaw
Karate
Boomerangs
Golf ball scavenging
Film-making
Hot-air ballooning
Cycling
Gold artifacts
Model rocketry
Eating ice-cream

What are you gonna do while you are alive?

DJ OUDY 1er

2010-05-03T21:15:00.001-07:00

This song is insane
Pretty sure I am the most advanced taste-making blog in world now.

2010-05-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

I am a person.

Last Day in Africa

2010-05-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

I am still on the continent "Africa". I flew my physical body here in a plane to play music to the people who live here, sell them clothing in person, and use my eyes see the people, animals, and plants who live here and see what they do to try to understand life more and grow as a person.

It seems like I have done another thing, again.

It seems like I have been alive for a while now.

I wish D.H. Lawrence could write a one paragraph summary of my entire life, motivations, and character so I could understand my self.

Last night I held your skull in my hands and thought about how we would both wouldn't be alive anymore one day, but we still were now. You were sleeping.

Stephen Hawking said aliens would have a mouth (to get nutrition), legs, and eyes. He should talk to my girlfriend about photosynthetic fur.

A weird thing about people is that most of them that are "bad" are bad only because they are just very, very stupid (aka a "lack of education"). Like the people in Rwanda who systematically murdered 50,000 people in a week with machetes instead of topping up their cell phone 12 times that week ("Do you accept credit cards?" "Credit card."). Or if they have Antisocial Personality Disorder. But some of them are bad because they are very smart. I guess nothing worthy of a page in a miniature book can be said about it. Besides that if you think you can "make a difference" you must be American, etc. Then again no one really cares if people get killed unless it's someone they know, and unless they know them really well it just becomes a somber restaurant conversational piece to try to get a girl or look weathered yet stoic amidst this storm called life or something.

Akon.

Some guy is sitting here at Royale Eatery wearing the exact same outfit as me writing in his diary. What a faggot.

The Skeleton Coast

2010-04-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

The Skeleton Coast

2010-04-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Swakopmund

2010-04-28T03:28:00.000-07:00

Mongu or Bust

2010-04-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Need to get to Mongu, Zambia for the Kuomboka Festival, the ceremonial migration of the Lozi king from his dry season compound at Lealui to his wet season palace at Limulunga. Wearing an elaborate Victorian ambassador's costume, the litunga is taken by a flotilla of barges down the river, with musical accompaniment and, of course, much feasting at the destination.

Taking an all day bus to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe tomorrow where we will swim in a public pool built in the 1920s and then take an overnight train from the 1950s to Victoria Falls. A first class sleeper cabin costs $16 for a 14-hour ride through a national park.

Transkei party with the Xhosa

The Wild Coast

2010-04-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

Haahahaahahah

2010-03-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

An interaction between two men

2010-03-28T04:51:00.000-07:00

Go to Africa

2010-03-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

In your face

2010-03-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

Gary Lachance's new white suit partying at a furniture store in Africa.

In your face

2010-03-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

In Your Face

2010-03-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

Too much work

2010-03-22T00:32:00.001-07:00

www.horsethebandearthtour.com

Happy/Sad Tap Tap Tap

2010-03-09T23:20:00.000-08:00

T & S

2010-03-03T11:03:00.001-08:00

In honor of my first time ever seeing Tegan and Sara live tonight I will post a picture of this cool octopus who lives very deep in the ocean:

And also a Tegan and Sara DJ Tiesto video where the entire world zooms out to reveal many alternate worlds that actually only make up DJ Tiesto's sunglasses in the end.

I love this song and video with all my heart. I wrote a separate post about how Tegan and Sara prolong certain syllables and how they look into the camera and when they close their eyes. Blast it!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

2009: A Year

2010-03-02T02:48:00.001-08:00

A lot of things happened to me in 2009 I think. I hope I do not forget them.

A night with terrible consequences a few months later in Australia.

Valentina's Lisitsa's concert in San Jose. I drove there alone.

SOUNDWAVE in Australia

Starting the tour off right. Actually, very, very wrong.

The view from our 5-STAR HOTEL

Eating food in Brisbane

Brisbane

I think this was a place called Campbelltown. There were a lot of blue mountain lorikeets going FUCKING CRAZY outside!

Matt Maly and Aleks love each other so much they are getting married

Here is a dangerous lizard

A koala sleeps for its whole life, never waking up.

This is a wombat in his habitat

This is a wallaby

This was the funniest bird I have ever seen in my life. He made that face for about 40 seconds.

B)

A dugong!

Preparing to play

Not sure if it was necessary to include this picture

This dumb bird was pissing me off.

Here is Luke Curner from England, I love him

What is this thing anyway

Very impressive background in this picture.

This post is extremely insane and probably says something regrettable about me as a person. Only the brave should continue.

Taking public transportation like normal people in Melbourne

I don't know how I did this. It seems useful.

This was without a zoom. I was REALLY THAT CLOSE!!!

This little guy is a quokka, he lives on an island near Perth. It was expensive to go there so I just took a picture of the one on the brochure.

Us + Jaguar Love in Fremantle

Stalking our waitress all day. God damn.

Very very happy.

That's the Indian Ocean. It felt remote

David Isen assimilated the Indian Ocean

For some reason this picture makes me very sad.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Plopp and Gary came down to do important business stuff.

Me and Gary Lachance at Gingergrass my favorite restaurant in the world. Not surprisingly I have a lot of good looking friends.

New press photos by Sarah P. Hamilton, links to the right

Nathan trying to get out of the skylight

Outtakes from the "lynching" session, did not go over too well with the record label...

Back to Europe for tour, May/June
We were supposed to play festivals but then didn't get offered any and still had to play the "in-between" shows we booked. HA HA HA

Oh wow Luke and Ed Edge

Supposedly England and especially Scotland are really beautiful if you get away from the people, I mean roads. I think this is the first really nice place we ever went to, The Peak District.

The Heath!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (this might not be the heath)

My future estate to the right of my head.

Daniel!

Exclusive picture of _____________ at the museum in Frankfurt

Day off in Fulda, possibly the best day of my life

Flying to Russia: Brian Grover.

Moscow outskirts reallly early in the morning. No one remembers the show in Moscow. Catching another flight to Rostov-on-Don (google maps that one)

MacAuto

I think this was the worst day of Daniel's life. He threw up in the car on the way to the airport, like 20 times on the plane, and then at the airport when we landed. This was still super early in the morning at the Rostov airport.

Luke showing off our wheels in Rostov

heh

Daniel aaahahahahahaha

Daniel

Brian looked at his shoe and there were two bees in it stinging his ankle. Then his face got really big and I gave him a Claritin. His ankle looked like a salami roll for about 2 weeks.

Daniel feeling better at our house out in the countryside that a kid built himself. David counting rubles, Luke getting surly.

Outside our house, Earth, east of the Crimean peninsula.

The next morning we flew back to Moscow, the plane almost crashed and we went through so much g-force taking off for some reason everyone on the plane almost passed out. Drove through Moscow traffic for 4 hours, and then still had to drive to Jaroslavl', 200 miles north of Moscow. We started doing that when our show started. The van was spraying gas vapor everywhere and our driver was smoking out the window going like 100 miles an hour on the paved equivalent of a dirt camping road. We were covered in gasoline. We got to the show 3 hours late. I think it was the closest to dying I have ever realized I was for a prolonged period of time.

Russian houses next to the road

Note the trail of gasoline from our decrepit van and the blurriness of the window since it is covered in gasoline.

The next day the van exploded on the way to Belarus. We got towed there with a rope in neutral for the last hour. Funny.

Minsk flats.

The next day we drove from Minsk to Chernihiv, Ukraine, passing by Chernobyl. There are like 5 cities in Belarus and none were on the way to Chernihiv so we ate at some little roadside store by a field with stray dogs. Here is Nathan eating a cucumber there.

Southern Belarus. That mountain up there is a big pile of salt.

Something was wrong with me in Ukraine mentally I think. I went ice skating in Kiev at the mall. These are the Carpathian mountains, driving through Ukraine to Budapest.

Hahaahaha, this town was very chill.

Now in Interlaken, Switzerland for Greenfield Festival. I guess we did get one.

Leaving Switzerland, near Gotthard Tunnel. This is one of the best places I have ever been to.

That's Dima our Czech driver.

Milan. This city shouldn't be included in fashion centers.

The punching game in Zilina, Slovakia. This is the best thing to do in the city.

Everyone going home from Amsterdam. I went back to Germany.

Venice for the Biennale

All I could think about was Indiana Jones

Came home for like 4 days and flew to Vancouver for 2 weeks to go through 115 hours of footage from Earth Tour with Gary and finish up 48 Hours in Ukraine.

Taking the car ferry to Vancouver Island for "camping" aaaahahahahahaha.

Tick, Gary, and Tom

"Camping"

Flew back to Sacramento and went to Lake Tahoe. This is Mono Lake, east of Sierra Nevadas.

Dodgers with Dash and Jessica

Road Trip
Me + data privacy drove to Canada through Vegas, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and then down the coast. Our minivan broke for 2 weeks of the trip. Then we ran over a dead deer and had to leave the windows open cause our exhaust pipe ripped open in 5 places. That was funny.

My old piano teacher's friend slept in a room here that smelled bad because someone got murdered and put into a hole carved out in the box spring under her mattress. It took her 3 nights to figure out what the smell was.

Colorado River, Laughlin, Nevada

I am swimming.

Arizona about 5 minutes before our minivan broke down for a week, for the first time.

Joan's house in Vegas!

I think this was the day we slept in the car in a neighborhood after they gave our car back to us finally after 5 days and it was "fixed" except it wouldn't shift out of second gear when we drove away and I was scared all night, then at 6 am it was like 140 degrees in the car so we went to Starbucks for like 10 hours.

Zion National Park

a SKINK!

This river goes through a canyon, you can walk in it all the way until the end where the canyon walls meet.

Red Rocks

Bryce Canyon

Too sunny

Too sunny

Too sunny

The Utah Prairie Dog

Swan Valley, Idaho was the purpose of the road trip. This is a house there I would write a book in.

Oh yeah our car broke again in Pocatello for another week, this rental car was sweet. It didn't need a key.

Neat terraced waterfall and the Snake River, the best river in the world.

Horny :(((((((((((((((((((((((

Trying to fish. Did not succeed

This night something very horrible happened to my brain. This was probably the worst night in my head of my life.

A nice moose with a velvety nose

Grand Tetons, Wyoming

Waterfall in Yellowstone

Haha Old Faithful

Driving back to our campsite in Grand Tetons

The expensive sign made out of marble in Pocatello

This is a Pronghorn in the Pocatello Zoo

Car "got fixed" again. Ran over the dead deer that night and picked its intestines out of the bottom of the van later in Ennis, Montana. Diarrhea sprayed out of one when I as pulling it off. We decided fuck it and went 20 miles on dirt roads to a secret hot spring in Pony, Montana.

There it is, after a mile walk where I almost stepped on two snakes.

Oh, another snake.

The snake is in the hot spring.

Butte. The potential to be the coolest city in the USA.

I think we went to the National Bison Range, Coeur d'Alene, then went to a FUCKIN DEMOLITION DERBY in the hickest shittiest corner of the US I have maybe ever seen. 100% obesity rate.

AHhahahahaha, this was actually really boring.

We went back to Vancouver for a week. No pictures taken. Seattle, Portland. Nothing.

Redwoods National Park near Crescent City, northern northern California.

This is what it looked like in there. This is one of the best places in the world too. Bigfoot definitely exists and lives here.

Running through these forests is like finding a secret level in life. The ground is so soft and you don't make any noise and everything is growing all around you. It is so quiet. It's like running in a snowstorm but green and spongy.

Crescent City, pretty brutal.

A bear climbing up a cliff!!

A dirt road along the coast the next day.

The penis tree, even bigger than Ed Edge

Eureka

Back at the practice space in LA

Catalina Island snoooooorkeling

Fate or Destiny? tour with Iwrestledabearonce
September... had to start touring for Desperate Living

The scared child, Fort Worth. Haaaahahahahaha

The Mother of All Things

Jeremiah!!!!!! a revelation

Backstage Houston

Daniel - the best drummer you could ever be lucky enough to watch (not kidding) (have seen a lot of drummers)

That girl was so awesome.

New Orleans, one of the last shows at the Darkroom ever :(

Nathan

Steven, Rickshaw, Krysta. The Tropical Isle haaaaahahahahahaha

I was sick this entire tour. T.T

Krysta spilled a pound of coke. Concerned.

Natalie went on this tour!!!!

Rudy's BBQ uuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh

Corpus Christi

Nathan

Ummmm, there was like another week of that tour and then we flew to Europe for a mini-festival tour called Never Say Die with Despised Icon, Architects, IWABO, Oceano, As Blood Runs Black, and The Ghost Inside for a month. I didn't take a single picture until the last day oops.

Venice again.

Ljubljana

Leipzig

Got some kind of sickly beard growing. Krysta and Nita from ABRB

Sam

Explosions Tour w/ Norma Jean, The Chariot, Arsonists Get All the Girls
Haha, got home from Europe, ate Thanksgiving and then went on US/Canada Tour

Seattle, El Corazon, Mac and Jacks, Gary Lachance and Tom Kuzma of Tom and Gary's Dance Party Delivery Service

GARY'S HOT SISTER, good genes in that family

Matt Maly returns. I return.

Almost ready

Early morning drive to Boise. So beautiful

Snake River, Twin Falls, Idaho

aaaahahahaha Cafe Rio

It really looked this good.

Salt Lake arrive

Best show in Salt Lake ever. Only positive experience in Salt Lake ever.

We went around Wyoming since Arsonists had flipped their van a few days earlier on black ice and took the long way to Denver.

Rockies pass

We were on the wall at the venue in Denver.

Sushi. I farted so bad here, everyone in the restaurant groaned.

2 day drive from Denver to Minneapolis.

Nebraska somewhere

Scary night drives with trucks, road moaning. Hate it.

Minneapolis

Trying to explain something important

Uh oh

Conglomerated

David Isen

hahahahaa

A good night

Really on the move tonight

Just trying to read the Bed Bath and Beyond catalog.

Interview with a gnome, Chicago

Nathan eating Lou Malnati's

Studying for the Bar

Nathan, Cleveland, trying to eat a chicken. Fell down

Happy

Sad

Churros 1 Dolar

AHAHAHAHAHAHAa fuck Indiana

Pittsburgh, possibly the best city in USA.

Living out the Flashdance fantasy

The White Triangle

Our DVD came

A famous sandwich, Pittsburgh still

Pittsburgh show.

Shelby and Plopp (PS- all the photos from this tour are by Plopp too)

Josh Scogin

Bought a toboggan somewhere. Used it once :( Erie, PA at the Panera parking lot

Describing the toboggan ride.

Oregon dawn

Drive to Montreal ugh huuuuuuge storm

White knuckling

The Kangarooster!

The last 60 miles was over snow. No tracks. Hit ice in the Montreal suburbs, saw a flipped truck with its wheels still spinning.

Did not die.

La Tulipe, Montreal. Best city in North America!

Wolf and Norma Jeans

The Chariot

Montreal show

After the show

A tooney

Leaving Montreal

2 more blizzards to drive through today. The St. Lawrence River was bruuuutal

Plopp got deported at the border. No more pictures for this tour.

New Orleans again on the way home

I got 11 new erasers

2010-03-01T22:37:00.000-08:00

I've been home for like... more than 2 months. I can't remember the last time this happened. Not that I'm saying it hasn't happened recently, I think it did. The point really is that I just cant remember. Should have blogged more.

I am a tutor, again. I teach people math and how to speak a very low level of Spanish. It is a good job. I work in San Juan Capistrano. I used to go to school there and catch lizards there. Now it is weird to drive to San Juan Capistrano again every day.

I need a typhoid booster shot and a prescription for Levaquin and Malarone and I have to make a dentist appointment and get a physical to see if I am dying of cancer.

Sometimes I feel like I can picture a future. In the sense that I exist in a spot and do routine things.

Where is everyone

I want to build a Swiss Family Robinson treehouse on an untelevised reality TV show with a nice host and hand-selected cast of smart beautiful artisans where I am the most worthless person in every aspect.

2010-02-28T23:00:00.000-08:00

2010-02-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

Do you ever feel like you are going to die soon?

Winter motif

2010-02-23T22:00:00.000-08:00

Train horns in fog + Psychedelic Furs + San Juan Capistrano

Africa

2010-02-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

I'm going to Maputo
I'm excited
<(")

...

2010-02-06T23:38:00.000-08:00

I went to a funeral today. I need to make my funeral wish list before I die. No one is allowed to say the word "Powerpoint" at my funeral, unless it is a good joke. David and Nathan will be the hosts, and if they haven't met a person or know who they are, then they can't come to the funeral. My mom can talk and read one Bible verse if she wants. No pastors can talk. If someone takes the time to make a slideshow or something then I want only the people who really know me to pick the saddest songs they know I love. And then at night everyone has to have a huge party. A party to remember for a lifetime. No leaving early. Everyone should sleep there on the floor and then feel very horrible the next day so they are incapable of doing anything. That is when they can mourn me. And then they can forget when they feel better.

There was a cool Bible verse:

As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.

I had fun.

2010-02-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

Coming home feels sad. Seeing my fucking computer. Writing thoughts for other people to read on a computer seems totally insane. Maintaining a web-advertising campaign for your self takes up too much time. I hate looking at pictures of people. It is too boring to make sure a band sucks or someone is still a loser/ugly/hot. I am not sure what to do about these problems.

Plants and Flowers

2010-02-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

I'm watching MTV for plants in las vegas. All the coolest plants are dancing and growing to this really cool music. These plants are really showing what they've got.

I see you.

2010-01-28T12:15:00.001-08:00

GREETING (SINGULAR)
Sawubona - Hello.

This greeting is an acknowledgement of having seen the other person. If you are greeted in this way, you could reply:

Yebo, sawubona - Yes, I see you.

Unjani? - How are you?

Ngiyaphila, wena usaphila? - I am well, how are you?

Kulungile - Good.

GREETING (PLURAL)

Sanibonani - I see you.

Yebo, sanibonani - Yes, I see you.

Ninjani - How are you?

Siyaphila - We are well.

Skeletons

2010-01-27T17:01:00.000-08:00

Nice Day

2010-01-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

Jury Duty

2010-01-21T23:47:00.001-08:00

I had jury duty today. I almost was on the jury for this case.
http://www.dailypilot.com/articles/2009/09/29/topstory/dpt-kuehl092909.txt

It was kind of exciting and kind of sad. The case is pretty interesting though. Gross negligence, ordinary negligence, or not guilty cause not enough evidence? I wonder what will happen. Looking at someone who killed someone wearing jail clothes and cuffs and thinking about them sitting in a chair for 5 days thinking about what will happen to them is weird. I am never texting while driving again.

Someone

2010-01-19T00:51:00.000-08:00

Charter a plane and bring me back a keg of this beer, cold.
http://kreuzbergbier.de/

This is the best beer in the world. You could substitute it for water in your life. It is the best beer that exists.

Another Blog Post

2010-01-17T23:43:00.000-08:00

Tonight
cant get excited
cant get excited
cant get excited
I saw Mary Poppins today
I wore a cool shirt

I can't listen to Bad Romance before I go to sleep anymore
I had a dream Ellen Page showed me her vagina in my elementary school multi-purpose room

The MPR

Every time Mary Poppins flew I cried and every time I cried my mom looked at me.
Then I went to Wurstkuche with my parents

oh brother

Not going to Haiti anymore

2010-01-15T01:35:00.000-08:00

I was going to go to Haiti but I looked up flights and they are kinda expensive. I did go to Kohl's though and I bought some new jeans. While I was thinking about the situation in Haiti all of a sudden my mind wandered and I started thinking about how like everyone I have seen for the last year has been wearing skinny jeans, even fat people. I think jeans fashion has to change really soon for cool people. I think girls wear high-waisted jeans now like once a week but it's not like an every day thing, plus really cool girls have been doing that for like 3 years now, you know? I was thinking about cool old mechanic guys from Oklahoma, I want to have that style next, like oil stained, thick, deep blue, real hearty, original fit jeans. So I went to Kohl's and bought some Lee jeans, regular fit, sits at the waist, regular seat and thigh, straight leg with a real deep blue wash. It will take some getting used to, probably some people who think they are fashionable will see me and think I'm totally out of touch, but you can't help that there are a lot of idiots in this world. I really believe this is the next cool type of jeans for guys to wear.

You guys

2010-01-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

There was an earthquake in Haiti. Can you believe it? I have been sending text messages all day for charity and changed my status on facebook 8 times already to help. But it's not enough. We have the power to make a difference with our computers and our amazing capacity as a culture to feel empathy. Tomorrow I am going to fly there to help out. I don't speak Chinese but I think I can still help out. I installed facebook mobile so I can liveblog from there. I hope I have service. My mom has been making Chinese food all day and every time you click this button 100 times Panda Express will send 1 to-go box of Orange Chicken to Haiti.

All it takes is one click to make a difference. But if you don't click then they won't help.

With the help of all of us remembering this even happened for a maximum of 60 hours and social networking we can help fix Port au Prince good as new!!

www.myspace.com/helphaiti

RIP Jay Reatard
The Rev
Brittany Murphy
Tiger Woods

new xiu xiu

2010-01-13T11:57:00.001-08:00

I guess the only way to get to this is by linking to Pitchfork. This is a new Xiu Xiu song off the album "Dear God, I Hate Myself".

http://pitchfork.com/news/37493-xiu-xiu-unveil-new-song-tour-crazy-poster-bloody-special-edition-of-lp/

The chorus is of this song is like insta-chills, and the third of fourth time you listen to it it's like falling out of your chair full body convulsions and choking up.

Good job Jamie!! I can't wait to hear the album.

How to fix my blackberry trackball

2010-01-12T21:40:00.000-08:00

It's about time someone starts reading this blog.

Ok so, there are two ways.
The first one is get a can of compressed air and squirt it into the ball chamber of your Blackberry smartphone. Don't tilt it or you will blow ice into your phone.

:o
That won't work if you have really fucked up.

The second one is even better. Get a hairdryer, turn it on high, blast the hot air into the ball while vigorously turning the ball in the desired direction. Rub the ball very hard. Don't put the hair dryer too close. Make sure it is only between 8 and 8.5 inches from the Blackberry at all times. You might need a friend to hold a ruler. Don't use a plastic ruler (it might melt).

When you are done with both of those put a (loaded) shotgun in your mouth and pull the trigger.

Funny

2010-01-12T15:34:00.000-08:00

Star by Jesu sounds like it could be a Blink-182 Mark song. A B-side for sure. It is in the playlist at the end.

Someone remind me

2009-12-28T17:44:00.000-08:00

To buy my airline tickets the day after plane crashes or terrorist plane attacks.

Always forget...

Getting stupid

2009-12-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

I think that I might be having increasing difficulty trying to "describe things with words" or something. Like, I am supposed to write a blog post for the band about how we are playing a show at the end of a bike ride. This seems insanely difficult. I can't even think of how to explain it or talk about the other things involved. I think that 8 years ago this would have been "fucking easy". Now I am so scared to even try that I can't try. I would rather not ever . I lost track of my thought. Writing the press release for our DVD took 5 days. I think I forgot to put in every relevant detail possible. I think the way I tried to market the DVD by describing what was on it was the worst ____ word I cannot think of possible.

Tonight I find out if I am an alcoholic. Not shaking yet.

Heh heh heh

2009-12-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

Christmas Time

2009-12-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

It's snowing, Daniel busted out the acoustic guitar, I busted out the "Piano Horn", keeping my eyes parallel to the Earth, we sang and travelled together in a van.

Feel better now

2009-12-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

It's snowing.

I have been feeling really good lately. About everything, and despite a lot of bad things that are happening to the people I love the most. Which is good timing because I finally feel in the position to be able to not be a burden on the people I love, for the first time in a long time. I haven't been writing much recently, maybe because I have a girlfriend again... I started this blog right before Danielle and I broke up, and I stopped just around the time I started dating the anonymous German detective. I guess writing things always seems stupid after you've just talked about what you were thinking to a person close to you. Or just having to place yourself so far out on the dramatic limb while looking back at your partner sitting near the trunk staring at you. Feels silly. But I think it's also because a lot of the ... I don't know, despair I felt for the last few years has quickly been slipping away. I don't feel like there's much to write about. I wanted this blog to originally be something funny and a running account of what I did, cause I could never remember. Now that seems stupid, even though I wish I would do it, I can't just sit there and type it out. So it was really became this thing to talk about frustrations I guess. And recently I haven't felt frustrated. Actually I feel like I was in a cloud for a few years, a very big cloud, trying to see things a different way because I knew the way I saw them was the most right and accurate I had seen them in my life, but was somehow not representing what I instinctively felt to be reality at the same time. But I couldn't get out of it. Every action seemed like a feeble grasp at something not even real, worthless, a farce, totally pointless and self-conscious and failing. The only emotion I could enjoy was palpable, deep sadness, because I felt that I would never feel something approaching even simple satisfaction or joy again. And I really didn't feel those feelings, much.

There are two things that happened I think. I guess I'll start with the band. We released our new album. It's good. I know it's the best and most emotionally telling thing we've ever made. And aesthetically it fits too. The artwork is 100% tied to the experiences that went into the music. The album is a true album. It is a singular, cohesive piece (although not everyone was able to see that heh). We were all satisfied more than ever before. I was so excited. We had a new label that people had heard of. The album didn't leak 4 months early. People were buzzing.

So. It came out. It sold 1765 copies the first week. Dismal. I mean, that is like really horrible. Our album that leaked 4 months early doubled that. It sounds like a lot, but when you think of all the shows we've played, how many people know, if just 1 person bought one in every mid sized city and bigger we should have done more than that. So we were really disappointed and confused and immediately knew there would be no new opportunities for us as a band. And literally that week the press stopped, emails stopped, everything stopped, it was just like radio silence. Once they smell that they can't make money off you it ends. I think Skeletonwitch and Immortal doubled and tripled us. It actually felt surreal or like a counting mistake had been made. It was just depressing, like, we are probably the only band out there who doesn't put up some bullshit facade to their fans, does things differently, and everyone goes MIA when it matters the most for us. At least that was the immediate reaction I had. In 4 days of touring we played to more than 1765 HORSE fans, in 4 cities, out of the like 300 it's possible to have good shows at in the US... so, what happened? We were sad. We had big merch orders lined up that got more than halved because of the poor sales, that we were expecting to be able to live off of for a few months, or in my case, pay straight into my credit card balance. Suddenly we realized we would be broke again because the "industry perception" of the band was so badly damaged by a shitty first week. Anyway... I guess we are a "download" band. I don't know. I actually still don't get it. I don't know why our fans, which I would consider to be a higher caliber of people than say, fans of bands who sell records, won't buy our music.

Well we went on tour and the turnouts were great. Better than we were expecting. And it continued through Europe and now on this tour. Last night we had our best show in Salt Lake City ever. Like 100 kids singing along, the previous record was probably like 8. And everyone saying "your new album is my favorite". Which is funny, cause everyone has heard it, but no one bought it. But!

It's ok. Because it finally made me be able to fall out of a gray area that I had been in for about 4 years. The big cloud. Which was... is this band my job? Am I failing at being able to simply exist on this planet? To provide for myself? For 4 years there was no good answer. There was always an if or a but or another hope. This time I knew, we made the best thing we ever made, we released it properly, we failed. We still managed to lose every prospect of being able to support ourselves financially. So, sitting in the bus in Europe I realized, this band is not my job anymore. And I am not failing at my job. And I never should have tried to make it my job or defined my success in life by thinking about this band as my living. Or maybe I should have, because I guess going so balls out with what we did made me make all the decisions that led to me being able to see the world, see people, get some form of still severely-limited scope, get jaded, be unable to have conversations with almost anyone except beautiful smart women, blah blah, that I wouldn't take back now. But... yeah. This band isn't my job and thinking of it like it was was "ruining my life". I was never so depressed. Maybe because I had never actually tried hard for something and felt I had failed, had wasted my time in a sense. Because, whatever artistic or practical view you have on life, and whatever intangible successes you have had, you still need to eat, pay for a place to live, you need money. If you borrow money constantly and think you don't need it, you still do, you're just a fucking loser. I have credit cards that ballooned again in the last 2 years. And it gets you down, losing $17,000 in two years to sustain your touring life. If you can't pay for it, you probably shouldn't be doing it. At least not year after year, hoping that the next album you won't get sued, people will buy it and you'll get some royalties, some merch orders, be able to pay it back. When you realize you can't, you failed. You take it out on your fans, they obviously like it but they stole it from you, of all bands.... But you know deep down they don't get it, how could they possibly understand the time investment, the bodily investment, the mental investment, the wear and tear, the repetition, the disillusionment, the fun, the highs, the lows, the mind-numbingness, the loss of the ability to have memories, the degradation, and how a band actually makes money? They don't know anything, just like you didn't until you had been touring for 3 years straight and you still knew next to nothing. So it doesn't make you feel any better and you know it isn't their fault, and in fact they are the only ones preventing you from being a total failure.

Thinking of the band on those terms, trying to use it as my vehicle to survive, ruined so much of it for me. And I guess to be fair it also drove me harder, but it wrecked me mentally.

Sitting in the bus in Europe I realized the only time I was really, really happy to be on tour was when it had nothing to do with my financial situation. When it was something I did in my free time. When there was no success or failure, just music and performance and seeing the world. And really everything felt like a success, even talking to a random person from 3 hours away. And trying to tour full time was the next logical and almost necessary step. But now the next necessary step is to not tour full time, to not try to "break" this band, to not think of this band as my job and to think of cities as markets and define success and failure in dollars and album sales and merch rankings on a website and myspace plays. Or else the band will die. And I'm not saying we lost sight. Those things all come with the territory when something is your job, unless you are a complete idiot. But I don't want it to be my job anymore.

I realized we have amazing supporters, a true cult, they know our stories, they know why and how we are different, they know all the misconceptions about us and that they are bullshit. Haha, now that we are known as "the coolest band in the world" and "the greatest band at touring, ever", we can sit back and pick and choose our tours. Only go to places we want to be, only work with promoters who want to work with us, only tour with bands we are in love with. On our own terms. We aren't asking anymore. We are the commodity.

So. Now that I know this band will never be my job, it feels like a huge burden was lifted off my back. I actually feel better physically. I'm able to think of this tour as a vacation and every single show is fun again. A lucky opportunity to be in every city and see people who I probably won't see as much anymore and appreciate them.

That was long.

The second thing that was much more immediate was reading a book. Probably the exact book I needed to read for years but if I had read it earlier it may have been lost on me completely. Anyway in Birmingham I was at the bookstore with my friends Aina and Hara and I felt like reading something "high school", to see if those books were worth reading when you're that young and if I would get more out of them now. So I got the Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms. I read the Great Gatsby and it was good, like a perfect novel. Whatever that means... It just felt like it. I think the things that changed since high school were that teachers focused way too much on "symbolism", they just fucking tore apart the book into these stupid simplistic metaphors. Which weren't even supposed to be metaphors (I don't think), just awesome imagery and feel. And really the book was about people and these subtle tells. Which, with that subject, I guess there's not much that can be taught in a classroom.

So I was happy with the book and then I started A Farewell to Arms, which I never read. I came in with a hatred of Hemingway because one of my favorite authors called him a poser, but I knew I hadn't read enough to back it up, so I was trying to convince myself I hated him for a good reason. Looking for flaws. The thing that drew me to the book was it said "a love story"... (I had no idea) and there was a quote- "a book completely devoid of sentimentality". I was wondering when I read it "what does that even mean?"

At the end of the book I was completely devastated. I cried so hard in my bunk and I couldn't stop. I still don't even know what was happening with me. There was the plot element, this risky journey, the love, the tragedy, the beautiful life, the perfect settings, it was almost as if you wished something this beautiful, something that would be able to create something so horrible, could all happen to you. I came out of crying feeling light.

All I could think about was the main character. How he was probably the best person I had ever thought about. He was outside of the cloud, I knew it, and I felt he had been in it. I didn't know what it was that I was drawn to. And it came almost immediately. Everything that I had spent 4 years asking myself, struggling with, always coming to the conclusion that nothing matters, but you have to live anyway... this sort of uneasy compromise. To him it was like, taken for granted, not even worth mentioning, not even thought about mentioning. It was fact. It was like, oh, yeah, the sky is blue. It was there the whole time, but never discussed or worried about or even thought about. The existential despair was not discussed. It was a given, such a given that it was not worth examining. Unlike my other favorite books where the characters basically struggle with metaphysical bullshit and come to no conclusion except doing a very good job showing how sad things can be... To him, it was an assumption. You are aware of gravity, but not thinking about it. Rarely even acknowledging it, although subjected to it constantly, it plays no part in your consciousness.

All the questions, all the pondering and despair and frustration fell away. The cloud was gone. I knew the way out. To be completely "devoid of sentimentality" in a way. To really stop thinking about it, questioning everything that simply just "is that way". It doesn't matter.

A perfect day is a perfect day.

2009-11-30T11:07:00.000-08:00

This kind of makes me like Miller Lite more

2009-11-25T20:39:00.000-08:00

2009-11-03T18:48:00.000-08:00

It has rained like 68 separate times today. The storm lacks cohesion, I give it a 5.5/10. All my clothes are soaked and hanging around me in my bunk. My entire bunk feels wet too but I think I might just be imagining it.
We have been in England for 5 days and I am happy to say I formed a little routine. Every morning I wake up at 9 and then take a 4 hour nap starting at 11. Then I get diarrhea halfway through our second song every night.
The routine is getting too comfortable. I need to shake things up a bit.
Last night we went to a little bar in Glasgow and "danced the night away". I feel like this could be the "defining moment" of an American's youth or maybe even entire life but it seems like something I wouldn't think of ever again in 60-80 days.
It is cool when someone tells you about something you did and you forgot you did it.
It is weird how things might actually be more fun to remember than to actually experience.
Here are some western culture questions I think I am struggling with:
Am I living in the past?
What does it means when I can't remember what I did the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time I was in Sheffield on the 4th time? Should I be excited about the 5th time?
If you keep making new memories instead of repeating the same ones every day, will it eventually be impossible to make yourself "do" anything?

Does anyone know the answers to these questions?
:(

Ppppppppppppp pPpppppppp pppppp pppp ppppppp ppp

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
-Nick Carraway

the chunnel

2009-10-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

I'm on a bus inside a train underwater.

My life

2009-10-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am scared

2009-10-19T03:52:00.001-07:00

I'm supposed to fly to Germany in 6 hours. I had a really horrible dream and had to get out of bed and turn on all the lights and eat something, and it's still not going away. I was in the big dark hall with a glass ceiling. It was dark cause it was night. I was watching a movie after we had played a failed show in there. In a bed. Then this invisible squat fat piggish guy with pants and human arms and hands but no torso and a pig masquerade mask came. He was very evil. I was asking everyone who it was. He was there for a while not doing much. At some point I remember violently trying to kill him. Like axing into where his head should be. I made dents in the invisible body. I shattered his mask. He got very stern with me and told me to put him back on his plateau. I put him back. He was bouncing around up there going higher and higher. There was a password that was ignorance151617 or something, someone yelled it at me. I dreamed that I woke up in the bed I was in in the dream and my mom was there and I was like wake up I had a horrible dream and woke her up but the words came up like my mouth was stuck together and I couldn't talk. My breathing was really slurpy and disturbing. She asked if I needed water and left to get it, then I was alone and still couldn't talk and dreamed that I woke up in my own bed. I got up to turn on the light but my hand was deformed and I couldn't fit it between the furniture and the wall where the switch is. Then I really woke up in my bed and went to the bathroom, shaky. My left eye was stuck together.

I went out to the kitchen and needed to read something. I saw The Mini Page and a thing about bees. I started reading "Vanishing Animals" with a picture of a bee.

In America in 2006, honeybees began abandoning their hives and disappearing. No bodies of the missing bees have been found. No one knows where they went or what happened to them.
Each year since then, there have been more of these strange disappearances. Experts say that more than one-third of all honeybees have disappeared in the United States.
One day bees would be swarming around their hives, apparently healthy. Then, all of a sudden, all the worker bees would vanish, deserting their hive, the queen, honey stores and young bees.
Other bees would avoid the deserted hives, not even trying to get the honey sitting there unguarded.
Scientists call this strange event Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.

:(
By now I felt very, very scared. Looking for the pig guy in the backyard and the dark parts of the room every time I looked up. Every hair on my body standing on end. Why was the Mini Page writing about something this horrible? I looked at the top and saw the article was by the Founding Editor. Then I read the first paragraph.

There is a big mystery in the world. Animals are disappearing, and no one knows exactly why. Bees, bats, frogs, and other amphibians are vanishing.
There are a lot of ideas about this. Experts believe the disappearances and deaths are happening for a mixture of reasons.
If so many animals are in trouble, it may mean the Earth is in trouble too.

The article only gets scarier after that. Bees are very important and so are bats and even frogs. They are also very old and mysterious. I am very scared and I don't know what to do. I don't think I want to know what the animals know. :(

1765

2009-10-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

I feel like lashing out.

Agenda

2009-10-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

It feels like there are only two things I have to do today. 1 is have diarrhea. 2 is shoot myself in the sinus cavity. Both things need to happen before we get to Palmdale
Good jacuzzi suite party last night
I don't think I have ever been sick for an entire tour. But I think it might happen.

Have yoou ever heard someone tell a joke about the swine flu?

Why don't you blog about it right now?

2009-10-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

Hey, the best food blog ever.
http://fortheloveofsrh.blogspot.com

Nnnnnnnn

2009-10-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

I wrote a blog about being bored on tour here: http://www.metalsucks.net/2009/10/08/horse-the-blog-horse-the-band-keyboardist-lord-gold-on-being-bored-on-tour/

Also I wrote a letter to Carles, I hope he responds. I figured I would just post the letter instead of writing a post about what I think. It seems weird to me that I never wrote about this before, I think, because I think it might be one of the only things I come close to "believing in".

Dear Carles,
I read your blog post about juggalos and I feel scared too. I have a question that I haven't been able to answer in my head for the last few years and I think I realized that you are the only person whose answer I would care about. The question is "Should stupid people be allowed to vote?" or "Is one obviously stupid person's opinion really worth as much as mine"? I think the answer is no, but I don't know where the cutoff would begin and how to test people. I feel like there could just be a committee and it would be totally obvious without even having to test someone, just talk to them for like 1 minute, but I don't know how to create guidelines to pick the people to be on the committee and it seems like even if the committee worked flawlessly people would think it was unfair. Also concepts that seem right to me like "No Taxation without Representation" couldn't exist anymore. It seems like maybe we all shouldn't have equal rights "just cause" and moving to a meritocracy or something might be the only way to save the world, but I think "smart" people might already be too dumb/easily offended to get that? Can you please blog about this? I really want to know what you think.

Sincerely,
Erik

There is no escape

2009-10-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

Trailer torture chamber

2009-10-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

Panda Express

2009-10-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day I have felt a little bit separated from my past life. Today I feel sort of ok.

I made a video

2009-09-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

for our new album last night, since it is hard to get people to read things, and this is it!

Disintegration

2009-09-28T03:47:00.000-07:00

I'm cleaning out the garage.. I found these official looking bundle of papers and old photos in some of my Dad's stuff. I stop and open it up. They're all death certificates of his dad's wives and his dad's citizenship certificate, some letters and photos, signed statements translated from Swedish. I felt like I was in a mystery. I saw my great grandparents for the first time. I never even met my grandparents. I think the papers were my grandpa's pile of important papers and they were sent to my dad when he died, months before I was born. My dad's mom died when he was 16. For some reason when my grandpa came here he changed his last name from Olsson to Engstrom. And he was from Monsteräs. My great grandpa was a seaman.

There was a type-written letter from my dad written to his dad dated May 19, 1980. One year and two days before my birthday. I didn't even exist for another 3 months when my dad wrote that. Tommy did and my dad was writing about him standing, playing in sand, wanting to go out in the rain. Him and my mom putting in the vegetable garden and driving his brother's camper to Cape Cod. The writing is out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald book, it's beautiful. The paper is falling apart. It's unreal. There's a part talking about Tommy and my cousin Kristin, same age, how they played together and she was so much more mature than him. He guessed "girls were faster than boys or boys were slower than girls, or both."

They didn't even know yet.

I can't stop crying. How can you just pick a moment out of a box like that? How are you allowed to 30 years later arrive in another person's hope and excitement and innocence and feel like you were looking over their shoulder in some brown room in Queens? How can any of this be real? How could it be allowed to happen, these people living, moving, writing, laughing, hoping, dying, in your hands, out of some box? That you raise someone who will never get to really know who you are?

I just don't understand how I can feel this much sadness so often. I feel like all I have accomplished in the past 5 years is the honing of my ability to feel sadness to new depths and subtleties.

I have all these shoeboxes that basically contain seasons of my life, stuff, with the season written outside. Some of them I know better than to open but they always end up getting the best of me. I go for the pictures... Then I see my eyes that still believed in something. My eyes smiling.

It's too much to have lost already.

Disintegration

2009-09-28T03:44:00.000-07:00

They didn't even know yet.

I just don't understand how I can feel this much sadness so often. I feel like all I have accomplished in the past 5 years is the honing of my ability to feel sadness to new depths and subtleties.

It's too much to have lost already.

The Purple People Eater

2009-09-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Purple People Eater is big with long yellow fur. He lives in metropolitan areas and likes to hide. His diet mainly consists of people. Besides this, little is known about the Purple People Eater.

Georgia O'Keeffe

2009-09-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

So Lifetime has this TV movie about Georgia O'Keeffe with ads everywhere. They say
"Georgia O'Keeffe
Her life was a work of art."

but they COULD HAVE said...
Georgia O'Keeffe
Her life was a work O'Fart.

Ahahahahaahahahhahahahhahahahhhahahahahhahahahahahahahhaahahahahhahahahahaha

1

2009-09-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about becoming a "wild" human recently. I learned about it from this book "The Wild Ponies of Assateague Island". I realized there are still wild horses out there, and then I understood that song. It sounds nice. I never put it together though until I was at the aquarium. There was a dolphin whose flipper had been entangled in a net while still an infant. She was rescued by marine biologists and taken to an aquarium. They justified using her to do tricks for people and living in a swimming pool by saying she couldn't possibly return to the wild, as she hadn't developed the skills needed to survive.

I think I am "ready" but not "prepared" to be a wild human. I want to regress to a point somewhere above the reptile brain but below the "most people I know" brain. At first I think I will start just by being naked all the time, getting very dirty, and running across streets hunched over kind of "determined" looking. I will eat people's cats and eventually get good at efficiently preparing them without ruining the pelt. I will make a nice coat out of them before it gets too cold. Then I will leave.

I am scared of weird bugs though and snakes and I don't really know how to do anything.

You are tame. You wouldn't bite someone unexpectedly, even to yourself.

"The seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake" - Sebastian the crab

Meta Coon

2009-09-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

Live from the Demolition Derby

2009-09-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in Northern Washington

Butte

2009-09-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

People (who matter) will soon leave the cities out of boredom. All the artists and intellectuals looking for a fulfilling life in the city will continue to find it increasingly stagnant and feel the necessity to reinvent themselves in rural areas. There is a cultural dead end of repetition and irony in cities that will soon be abandoned by people with ideas and vision. City people will move to Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana and find a new configuration of life to explore to pass the next decade of their life. Outdoor activities will be the most attractive form of recreation to the upcoming intellectual class.

I suggest that everyone who is cool in the world and bored move within the vicinity of Historic Uptown Butte, Montana as soon as possible. The city is a half-abandoned mining town that was very rich at the turn of the 20th century. The architecture is late 1800s to early 1900s gold-rush brick skyscrapers, saloons, opera houses, brothels, boarding houses, luxury hotels, clapboard shacks, and wooden residential houses built in about 10 blocks square on a hill slant overlooking a valley, next to a mined-out hill. The city is walkable with plenty of apartments above business spaces. It is central to Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and the Tetons.

The goal is to fill the Uptown with people who want a different world. A world in which men must wear hats and women must wear bodices around town, but can still drive late model cars. Where prostitution and card games are legal, drinks are cheap and stiff, steaks are fresh, organic local produce is readily available, kombucha is shipped in, espresso is better than in Italy, floors are wooden and worn, men stop at the barber every morning, cars and horses share the road. No killing, raping, or stealing. The Uptown district will be renovated by people with vision. No chain businesses. No advertisement besides paint on brick. People dress with class and put their hearts into their work. I want the uptown to be occupied completely with people of vision, so that it eventually can have its own laws within the blocks we occupy. I will be mayor.

No automatic sinks. No automatic paper towel machines.

The final condition. No one besides business owners will be allowed to occupy the city for more than 6 months. Then they go back to Swan Valley, Idaho or Ennis or Pony and work on their ranch, restoring their car, building their house, farming, teaching, whatever...

Americans have to become American again and learn how to do real things and also embrace the positive aspects of what once set their country apart from the rest of the world, the frontier spirit, and the desire to innovate and do things the best with the most freedom and creativity possible.

The fact that a city as cool as Butte, Montana is half-abandoned is very sad and also very exciting. We are all bored. We can learn to do real things and live the way we want to. The big city is dead, music is dead, , writing is dead, art is dead. Anything good happening in any of them is about how they are dead. We all know it but are too scared of the consequences of admitting it, since we are those things.

This will also work for cities in the Deep South, Appalachians, Wisconsin, Maine, and anywhere with a Main Street, like, a good one. But I get Butte. And someone should get to Tonopah, Nevada is they want to become mayor of somewhere cool.

Please don't tell anyone annoying about these ideas.

Women

2009-09-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

Regret that you are not in Butte.

Montana

2009-09-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

Oops.