Nanotubes are so cool!

look what can be made with nanotubes!

a nanotube is a carbon structure that is a *billion times stronger than any material we now use like steel, and a *million billion times lighter in weight! so, all kinds of cool things can be made once this technology gains more momentum. the future is exciting.


*weight is estimated and probably way blown out of proportion by the author who has trouble not embellishing even the coolest of things.

ze frank

this guy is so funny.
today's episode is especially good.

Greetings and Salutations

a while back, on one of my entrepreneurial trips, i made and sold notecards. after making lots of Cute Cards designed with flowers and ladybugs, i designed a line for myself. i called it Sick Cards. above, is one of my favorites. it's nancy spungen as she was found dead from stab wounds supposedly inflicted upon her by her boyfriend sid vicious. i made it at work when i worked at the SF Weekly. my coworker, a nutty layout artist sitting next to me, leaned over, saw it and said, "you're deranged!" in a surprised and delighted voice. i took it as a compliment.

i'm not sure i'd sell many Dead Nancy Spungen Cards, but then again i never tried.

The Verdict

ding ding ding, "You will be single on August 7."

these were the last words the lawyer told me yesterday as i finished my three hour waiting session in a hallway at the courthouse. 8 months of paper/authority/lawyer/bureacracy torture and this was the moment that i have been working toward, waiting for, convinced would take a lot longer, maybe never come.

BAM! and there it was.

first, i called guy. i told him, i'll be divorced on august 7. he has waited a long time for those words too. he has been very patient with my not wanting to deal. these were words dressed up in frosting for him as well.

second, i called the Ex. "we'll be divorced on august 7th!!" i told him excitedly. he responded in like and i hung up wondering how often in history that kind of divorce exchange has happened.

i am a new girl. i feel light and free like diet lemonade.

now i just gotta get away from my work which is so filled with Roof-Building Toxic Fumes, i got an instant headache upon arrival.

xo happy weekend.

divorce school

in ten minutes i'm off to divorce school. if i have filled out my papers out correctly, i will be divorced, finally, today.

divorce for me was not a heartbreak over breaking up. divorce is a technicality. a bullshit hoop i have to jump through to go on with my life after a relationship didn't work out. the relationship ended 2.5 years ago, and we never did anything about it, not because we wanted to work things out, or thought they would work out, or were holding on to some fine thread with desperation. we took our time for one simple reason: not wanting to deal. i don't want to deal with courts, and lawyers, and paperwork SO BAD, i put it off for two years. he refused to have anything to do with it at all.

but now the day is here.

there shouldn't be any screwups in the paperwork. i went over it meticulously with two different lawyers, but the second one said the first one gave me the wrong info. who's right? which one do i trust? what if the second lawyer was wrong? how long will this go on for then? i think to myself, i would pay anything to have someone do this for me, but i can't afford a lawyer. there's a woman at my work who has been working on her divorce for a year WITH A LAWYER. so there's that. no one can really do this CI-RAP easily and reasonably. even with a couple who had no kids, no money, no possessions. i mean, even the pets were all mine.

why can't we just sign a piece of paper saying, "i want to get divorced" ? much in the same way we signed a piece of paper saying, "i want to get married" ?

because the world sucks, america is fucking lame and nothing really makes sense on such a high level of authority. i feel like i'm walking into a very dark tunnel with no flashlight today. and i'll be in there for six hours.

good thing i have a fatty at home waiting for me.

Memoria

on the day that i found the cannabis vodka, i decided to try to find my old czech friend, Becherovka, in a 750ml size. and i did. last i heard maybe 7 years ago, it was still not available in the united states. it never had been. i got to know Becherovka through my other czech friend, Karla. she regularly went to prague, back in the day, to be a movie star (her parents were bigtime czech stars in the 60s) and bring back Becher.

but i found it on Cannabis Vodka day and ordered it.

today i got it.

i notice the colors on the label have changed, but i don't let it get to me. i open it up barely believing that my college alcohol of choice, so exclusive and superior, is in my hands. i stick my nose to the bottle and take a whiff of the past. i close my eyes and feel myself in san diego. i'm 19. my best friend is this kooky blonde girl from Prague who grew up in LA. all 8 of my roommates are deadheads. we're all smokers and we all smoke in the house. people stay up every night until 2am drinking jugs of gallo burgundy, except me, i have to get up at 5am for work. i open my eyes and it goes away. i close my eyes.

and then it comes.

a bad memory. a memory i had forgotten. ohhhh, i feel it sink it. ohhh. right. hmmm.

i go back in my makeshift office, present day, and give a shot to my coworker. while i'm telling him how great my memories are of it, and how potent it is, there is a second voice saying, "what about (that). what about (that)."

finally, i tell him, not all the memories are good. a friend of mine freaked on it once.

i close my eyes. my friend (c) who later became my predator went manic after drinking a lot of it once. of course we were also doing whippets. the problems started when he couldn't get the whippet into the dispenser. he was moving too fast. he was crazy. he kept trying to get the whippet in to the dispenser long after his hand was cut from the metal handle and long after the blood was dripping down the frozen exterior. i tried yelling at him, but he was in a trance and wouldn't come out. he struggled and bled and struggled and bled until he was able to get it in and inhale it and subsequently turn purple and pass out. i stared at him for a while, caught in time and did nothing. he turned more purple and started mumbling. we were sitting on my futon and he was purple, passed out and mumbling. i shook him. he mumbled more. i shook him and shouted his name and finally he woke up. he knew nothing and thought i was being ridiculous about it all.

becherovka can be dangerous in the hands of a psychopath. be careful what company you drink it in.

it's been 13 years since i smelled these memories. they haven't diminished at all, they just needed a trigger.

travelling

guy and i are leaving the country in october. we don't know where. first it was mexico, now it might be indonesia. he told me this and three things happened right away. i stopped working and...

1. looked up news. is there anything violent happening there? i'm afraid of violence. i've had enough in my life.
2. airline flights. does it cost a million dollars? not really. it's not so bad. and there is a stopover in Taipei. TAIPEI. me, in china. hi, i'm looking out the window and i'm seeing china! it just doesn't compute.
3. uh, what cities are in indonesia? i don't really understand asian geography. never have.

i NEED to travel. i've never left the country. i think there is something i need to see/feel/hear/touch/know about other cultures. when people talk of it, i get a glimpse inside an understanding that is so far way, i can barely see it's possibilities. this can't be good.

guy likes rough travel. it seems to be about full immersion. i'm trusting him on this one as we tend to require similar doses of things to feel their full effect.

holy crap. china.

(image above is East Java, Indonesia)

and now for something completely new

this is some good times right here

make your own record.
here's mine.

Amen

my work is taking the roof off of the building while all of the artists are still in the room. the ceiling is covered in white and gray speckly cancer feathers filled with unknown pollutants. it is falling on all the artists and all the artists' computers. no one at my work has made alternate plans for those of us underneath a roof which is being torn off.

!! can this be comprehended.

no authority figures at my work made plans for the people who work underneath the roof while the roof is being torn off.

i have been spent one hour of four hours here today, working. three hours of four fuckin' around. this is good! when i go upstairs to the artists' room that is losing its roof to retrieve something from my desk, i inhale cancer molecules that immediately coat my throat, which is bad, but i get to make this sound like a hack/gag/wheeze which makes people laugh. this is good.

it's so exhausting trying to understand people who own companies and why they do the things they do.

now i'm in a teeny tiny office with one other artist. it's got good lighting although we are just slightly too close to each other. no one knows where all the artists are. we're like tiny baby spiders that have broken off from their mother and are floating along on random winds going god knows where to build a home wherever that is. we're orphans.

at least it's not an ordinary day, right? i said once before i used to wish for disaster just so things could be more interesting. it's important to be specific that the disaster not take place in my brain, with my body or with the brains or bodies of people i love.

may disaster happen but affect no brains or bodies.

amen.

Got any Exlax?

i'm all clogged up. i don't have anything funny or clever to say. when i think about what i want to write about, it comes out totally sucky like this:

"saw ween and the flaming lips at the greek on saturday. that was fun. ween ripped. had a giggle attack during "Buenos Tardes Amigos". hung out with 4 fun friends + guy. the flaming lips were inspiring. wayne walked in a huge bubble on top of the crowd's hands. there were lots of orange balloons. there were dancing girls in alien outfits and santas onstage. ate some mushrooms and smoked some pot."

see? it's a third grader's answer to how her summer vacation was and it doesn't do any events any good.

so i'm all clogged up.

carry on.

Cannabis Vodka

now all my dreams have come true.

Mmmm, doctor stuff

i found a lancet in my own personal walgreen's (first aid kit at work) yesterday. LANCET. a LANCET. doctor stuff is sexy. check these out:

"umbilical cord clamp"


"blood lancet"


"infusion set with burette"


"isolated dressing"


i don't need a latin lover speaking spanish to turn me on. i need scrubs and a lancet.

Pictures of Meat Part Two

"One of the more popular cuts: pressed shank braised with smoker's phlegm. It may take a few tries to get Uncle Hank to hack up enough Lucky sauce, so be patient."

for a good time, dial this.

and if that's not enough to get your gut silently vibrating with raucous laughter, try this.

3 hours with a 5-year-old

three great things guy's godson (N) told me last night while i babysat him.

1. "i will miss you" when i told him it will snow in new york when he moves there next year.

2. "i need a love cuddle" while watching a Winnie the Pooh movie.

3. "i always know what i'm doing" about taking photographs while we were on a "photo safari," out walking and taking pictures. i got shots of plants for a notecard collection i want to make for my sister while (N) was very very excited to shoot cars, garbage cans, garage doors, dirt and syd the cat.

the picture above is of us during a wrestling match we had earlier in the summer. (N) really seems to love being physical.

Rx

Hometown kick

somehow i came across my little hometown (norcal farming town) somewhere today...i ended up reading about my old choir director retiring and also names of restaurants that i don't recognize that "the locals" have been going to "for years". and then i decided to look up some properties to see exactly what the real estate's like now and i find that i can barely remember where most of the streets are and all of it is making me a little sad.

i really hated it there when i lived there. i left 18 years ago, pretty much the second i graduated from high school.

drunks, rich assholes, snobs and children of celebrities made up the little town i was raised in. i didn't fit in. i wasn't pretty, rich or terribly funny and those were necessary traits to feel comfortable in such a bitchy place. so many people wanted to live there and spent so much money just spending a few hours there that being a "local" felt like being a part of special club that the rest of the world dreamed of belonging to.

i miss it. there was a certain civility about sitting around one friend's 20 person glass table for a dinner of fine wine and homemade pasta. her younger brother would talk about things smelling "like butt" while chewing with his mouth open. the two family pugs sat in their mother's and father's laps while we ate, their freakishly long tongues lapping up rich sauces and meats from the table leaving long smears of butter. the family of four was very relaxed and talked about local news, school, local people, art, music and politics. they laughed while languidly shifting positions in their mid-century modern chairs. at my family table the children were instructed to be quiet while we ate canned vegetables. my dad would yell at us to wash our hands if we happen to stroke the cat while sitting at the table. it was not civil.

maybe it was my home i hated and not my town. i never thought of that before.

Earthquake Weather

i walked out of the house this morning and the air was so still and warm. it's almost humid, but there's no real moisture in the air. it's so strange. it feels like the calm before a tropical storm or a tornado or a nervous breakdown. it's what people in california call Earthquake Weather.

guy doesn't believe in earthquake weather. of course it's a myth, but it's something that we "say." i've been "saying" it my whole life. it's BASED on something real and it's creepy.

guy doesn't get it. it's alright, he's east coast.

i called him when i got to work and told him that when he walks outside today, he'll experience some very special weather. he said, What. i said, It's earthquake weather. he laughed and told me he'd be careful.

some history here and here.

how do you spell relief?

K-I-T-L-E-R

photos by stoneth

and stories, which really makes the experience.

nurture

if i didn't live in the castro, would i have as much sex on the mind? this clipping above is from the "Industrial and Scientific" category at amazon.com but i'm seeing something else and it's usually associated with leather.

Sonic Truth

rock not work

this is me at work today. i'm daydreaming. i'm picking my nose. i'm not working. i'm just thinking about how much i am going to rock tonight. i am going to crawl inside the sound space wall escape and lie down and enjoy my own personal heaven.

rock. not work. that's what i'm thinking about.

Sweet Meat

if i had a band i'd want to call it Sweet Meat.

i'd come out on stage and i'd look really hot. i'd have a hat on. i'd say,
"Hi everybody! thanks for coming out tonight! we're Sweet Meat!"

and then i'd hit my guitar really hard and we would shred.

pretty fabulous

my new favorite pre-fab.

pretty pretty pretty pretty fabulous.

orange velvet shift dress, black mary janes

and a bundle of nerves is what i was wearing the first time i met sonic youth. it was 1995 and i had let my little sister have my backstage pass. there was only one extra so i told my friends to take her in. strangely enough, really, it wasn't a hard decision and i was happy thinking about how much it was blowing her young mind.

go on in! have a good time!

i waited for them on market street outside of the the theatre. it was midnight. the tenderloin at midnight sucks and i knew this because i lived across the street on 6th. but i waited in my orange velvet dress, smoking cigarettes and tucking myself as closely into the warfield building as possible. i knew how to deflect the insane, how to become somewhat invisible and as i exercised these powers a security guard approached me,

"are you waiting for a ride miss?"

"no, my friends are inside. they're backstage, i'm waiting for them."

"hmmm." he said and paced slowly back to the ticket window and then back around and towards me.

"look," he said, "your friends are backstage?"

"yes."

"well, i'll take you back there, hold on..."

he was clearly concerned for my welfare, i'm sure i looked suburban and soft. he pulled out a huge ring of keys and opened a side door to the warfield i had never seen before. we walked down long, confusing hallways, totally unmarked, nothing to tell me where we were or where we'd end up when finally we came to a door. and he opened the door, and i saw my friends standing around and my little sister sitting at a table and i saw thurston moore and kim gordon and lee ranaldo and my sister sitting there, mouth agape, quietly soaking everything in, in this super dark navy blue room painted with glow in the dark stars and constellations.

"Hey! Hey!" my friends were surprised and happy to see me and i sat down and saw kim gordon look at my orange dress. i was way too scared to talk to anyone, i felt stiff and lame. my friend (D) gave me a washing machine magnet, from the tour, that she had had signed by thurston and lee for me. i just looked/not looked and watched/not watched, amazed...

...and then went home and sprayed thick layers of fixative on the magnet so that it would last forever.

Winona Darkly

look at this beautiful piece of art from A Scanner Darkly. it's winona. winona's cool. i felt sorry for her when she was busted for shoplifting. how embarrassing. seriously, it's gotta be like 80% of the population has shoplifted before and among creative types it's probably more. i shoplifted. i was really good at it. it's a wonderful high, duping the system. the only thing, ya gotta stop by 18 and especially if you're famous.

getting caught is mortifying and going to jail is not an option.

anyway, it's good to see winona making a cool movie and getting beyond all that stupid media bullshit surrounding her stealing some marc jacobs.

Erasing Thom Yorke

The Eraser is now out. any radiohead fan will love it. my favorite track is Black Swan, also featured during the closing credits of A Scanner Darkly, the new richard linklater film (haven't seen, can't wait to see).

i've already got it on my ipod if anyone wants a copy, let me know. and well, shit look at the beautiful art he picked out. guy is impeccable.
xo

more (not) transcendent shelley

the shining is a fucking frightening movie. it's excellent, i think everyone can agree. stanley kubrick is a genius blah blah blah...but WTF with shelley duvall as the role of Wendy? anyone who read the book, knows that she was sexy and bold, not a whiny wuss the way shelley played her. there was barely any way to feel sorry for Wendy when she's being such a pussy. i kind of WANTED jack nicholson to stab her just to stop the incessant sound of her voice. what was stanley thinking?

(another wonderful detail from the book that was left out of the movie was jack's constant chewing of excedrin. anyone who is familiar enough with the taste of excedrin will no doubt retch right now, upon thinking about it for at least 7.2 seconds. this tic more than anything, proves that he was out of his mind.)

it was TRANSCENDENT

whatever happened to kelly reno? he was so natural and amazing in the Black Stallion, one of my favorite movies ever. if you saw this as a kid but not as an adult, check it out. it is not only gorgeously, breathtakingly filmed and satisfyingly emotionally draining but the sound, by FFC's brother, Carmine Coppola, is transcendent (thank you shelley duvall in Annie Hall, "it was TRANSCENDENT.").

it looks like kelly reno stopped acting. why can't i find out what he's doing? he's a big mystery. i wonder if he's my neighbor. maybe he and jello are friends.

Regimen

This is what menstrual cramps feel like.

No F-ing Way!

how can one get as old as 36 without ever having heard of these before?!

obsessed with Augusten

he's so frackin funny. do yourself a favor and read him. these are books you burn through.

and a movie based on Running With Scissors out soon.

and some contro-ver-sy too!

over the rainbow, he is craaazy

a friend just notified me that syd barrett died on july 7.

not sure when he said this in an interview, i think pretty recently:

Do you still paint?
Not much. The guy who lives next door to me paints, and he's doing it well, so I don't really feel the need.

madcap laughs is some of my favorite cover art. and what a great word that is: MADCAP.

"I'M SIMPLY MADCAP!!"



(not to mention yummy)

There's something funny about pictures of meat.

Yes.

this is for that guy.
that guy i love.

hey guy, this is for you:

yes.

Bad Chewbacca

Lama has cancer. this has come about in the last week. one weekend, she's just a Good Girl! such a sweetheart, bounding around, wriggling for love and then next, she's got a cone and she's got cancer. she had to have a lump removed...her parents said that they thought something was wrong when her Chewbacca sound turned into "the chewbacca sound, but bad."

lama's got a cone. you gotta be careful when she comes straight at you to sniff you and slams her cone into your shins "OUCH! I JUST GOT CONED!" while i had already shed tears over her sickness, finding ways to laugh at the cone was not difficult...

after moving the coffee table out of the middle of the small living room in our cabin, "look at lama! she's freestyle coning!"

etc.

i'm afraid of large dogs. but i have never been afraid of the sweet sweet girl that is lama. when i look at her, since she's been sick, i think "oh, you're so innocent and dumb, you have no idea you're about to die." but then there are times, when i see in her eyes that she does know, and she's asking for help but she knows that might not be possible.

It's Survival Girl

there is definitely a part of my personality that is survivalist. i have always carried a very large bag filled with junk and stuff i will need someday like bandaids.

then there have been the more odd items: in the 80s there were always two tangerines knocking around with my high school books and makeup bag, in the 90s it was a water bottle sharing space with cigarettes and now, in the 2000s, it's a bag of lettuce.

if you ever see me walking down the street and you want a salad, it's your lucky day.

Bad Boy

syd, the 15-yr-old black mainecoon who lives in our house is being a very bad boy. he is insisting on sleeping on the bed. suddenly two weeks ago he started shitting in his own bed. this is a bed that he used to adore. then, after the Yeti died, he became irritable and needy and started forcing his large black body onto OUR bed. we have tried to curb this behavior with a large canopy made of netting that gets tucked in very tightly all around the base, but yesterday when we got home, we found his greatest success yet: a huge hole torn straight through it, just big enough for a fat black mainecoon body.

is this because of the yeti not being around anymore for him to tease? it must be. it's the only thing that's changed.

this is a big problem. it's causing discourse within the house. nothing makes guy more angry than fur on the bed.

LOVE her

mom calls me this morning from mobile, alabama. she is visiting family. she calls to tell me she "made it." we are all big worriers in this family, we call each other when we "make it."

she calls at 8:55am, i'm on the bus. i HATE talking on the bus. i immediately shut down. i can't do it. i answer because it's my mom.

Hi MOM!

hi sweetheart!

mom, i'm on the bus.

oh! you're on the bus! well, i'm ok!

can i call you back in a few minutes?

oh, you don't have to call back!

(feels my silent reaction to this, which is frustration because now i'm going to have to explain to her that i WANT to call her back, which is more talking on the bus.)

OH. or you can call me back!

ok.

I LOVE YOU!

I love you too MOM!

i hang up thinking that my cool bus demeanor is totally blown. those around me now know that even girls in bad-ass cop glasses love their moms.

The Manic Mosaic Artist of Sanchez Street

there's a house on sanchez street that's been slowly made into one giant mosaic over the course of the last 8 years. the front steps that descend to the sidewalk, the garage and the driveway have been filled with piles and piles and piles, all small, all large and all sizes of marble slab. there has been a tinkering sound coming out from the darkened garage for years, a garage so overflowing with a certain collection of stone that the door must remain open at all times to accomodate the thrust.

the art starts at the bottom of the house and climbs up, covering every inch, to nearly the roof line. ladders prop up against the house, sandwiched in between the small leftover spaces on the ground. the progress never seems to change.

and then suddenly, one morning, everything is gone. no more piles. no more tinkering. no more madness. it's all cleaned up.

the manic mosaic artist is dead and now his project is over.

"The whole world is wild at heart and weird on top."

some art i made once that i kinda like

from my illustration portfolio (sent in to bill graham presents for poster work). they told me they don't do portraits. too bad. those are the best!


this is iggy pop.


this is pj harvey.


this is that kid from village of the damned.
i thought it would be good for the cramps.
the swirly image behind him is an actual photograph of sound waves.


this is my old best friend (C) in high school.
i wanted it to be used for an L7 poster. i thought they would appreciate it.