Dense Milt presents Condensed Milt

This Cartoon Life

2012-01-24T06:15:00.000-08:00

Spinning Mad Tunes
The Needle hits the wax
and the party starts
Homer J. in the da house
Here's George Jetson
His son Ellroy
Jane his wife
Daughter Judy
Flinstones, Meet the the Flinstones
There a modern stone age family.
Lester B. Goodman already drinking salutes you
Dense Milt up and writing
and me- off to work I go, Hi Ho Hi Ho.

The Beaver

2012-01-22T01:53:00.000-08:00

"This is an ongoing debate that boils up around people like Phil Spector, Roman Polanski, and Michael Jackson: Can we—and should we—enjoy the art of people who are personally morally reprehensible? If they make amends and try to redeem themselves, I would say yes. But Mel Gibson doesn't seem interested in doing any of that. "
The preceding quote is from an article in The Atlantic magazine explaining why the reviewer did not bother to watch the movie The Beaver. Hi review of the movie became the three reasons he chose not to watch it. He had already made up his mind and could not separate the actions of the Mel Gibson, the actor off camera with Mel Gibson, the actor playing a role on camera.
There is a strong wave of judgement in our world today. From the fundamentalists in the Middle East to the fundamentalists in our own backyard, some people just like to judge. In fact, they feel it is their duty to judge. And anyone deemed to be morally reprehensible is simply not eligible for any kind of review, attention or evaluation of their art- if their personal actions are so unacceptable.
So we condemn Mel Gibson because his actions have ben described as "sexist, racist, anti-semitic, verbally abusive and perhaps even physically violent toward women." And we condemn him because he is an admitted alcoholic. This we do even though we encourage him to come forward and admit his issues, and deal with them. Just because alcoholics or drug addicts admit they have a problem, and may even be getting help, there are those who say we should still boycott their work, and shun them publically for their private lives, what little we know of them.
Are we setting up our celebrities to a higher standard of conduct just because we consume their art in a pubic forum? Should any alcoholic deserve a free pass for their harmful actions, or ill behaviors that may have resulted because of their alcoholism or because they could be mentally ill, or because they may claim that they suffer from depression?
Because Pete Rose gambled on his own sport, ( and we know gambling can be a form of mental illness) should he be banned from the sport he loves, and shunned from the Hall of Fame, even though he clearly belongs there based on his record as a baseball player? Is this question complicated if the individual is generally not a nice person to be around?
What about the genius of Phil Spector or OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson? Should we devalue their accomplishments in music, football and entertainment because of actions that proved to be criminally actionable, or a form of suicide by celebrity? Who do you despise more- OJ "The Juice" Simpson, who set countless records as a running back in college and the NFL, but who later may have murdered his wife, among others or someone like Barry Bonds, who broke Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth's home run records, but who allegedly cheated by Juicing himself with steroids to assist him in achieving those results?
Is it possible for someone like George Bush or Stephen Harper to actually do something that may have been good for something? Or should we blanket hate them for all the other nefarious actions that so offend our good consciences?
I happen to like the skinhead art of Attilla Richard Lukacs, even though the subject matter makes me uncomfortable. I respect his vision, and his sophisticated talents, even though his work seems to celebrate this violent, racist sub-culture that I abhor. I think the music that Burzum created in prison, serving his sentence for murdering another heavy metal singer, is beautiful. Does that mean I support his Nazi views?
Getting back to the Beaver, I was moved by Mel Gibson's portrayal of a middle aged man who suffers from depression and anxiety. The movie premise seemed to be silly at best, but he makes it all seem possible. Some critics have said that his change of personality is too sudden when he "adopts" the Beaver persona. Have they never seen someone who is in a manic phase of their depression?
I have a friend who lives with this, and he would often come around and say, I'm much better now. He would say I"m better now so many times, that you knew he was not better, but just in a different phase of a complicated illness.
Can someone who is mentally ill appear to be inspiring to a young child- yes. They can also scare the living daylights out of them, causing the child to wonder if they would someday also fall victim to this illness.
Is it believable that a wife would try to do anything to keep her family together, even having sex with a hand puppet?
People do much worse all the time. The sub-plot with the son who writes term papers for other students for money, who falls in love with the young girl who became a graffiti artist to deal with the trauma of an older sibling's death all seem very plausible to me.
In the hands of less talented actors, or director, this story would have been a failure, but instead, it is an allegory of families dealing with mental illness, and families dealing with grief, and families dealing with a loss of their own voice or art. And it is a movie in which a deeply troubled celebrity gets to show the world that he is still an actor of immense talent capable of creating a performance that goes far beyond expectations to reach redemption.
Here is a review of The Beaver that pretty well nails it in my book.
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/the-beaver-review-sxsw-mel-gibson.php

Punch in the Eye

2012-01-21T01:53:00.000-08:00

I was 4 years old. I remember my older brother Kelly was there. I can't remember why I did it, but I punched another kid in the eye.

I remember feeling triumphant, then feeling bad, then being taken home by my brother. I don't remember any repercussions for punching the kid in the eye.

What did I learn from this incident? A sense of power? Knowledge that the best way to settle an arguement is to fight? I do not even remember the other boy or his name. I don't remember anything about him, except that I punched him in the eye.

The feelings that lingered for the rest of my life was that punching someone is not the way to deal with your anger.

I developed a fear of my own strength. A fear of the harm I could cause. I felt bad because punching him made me confront a side of myself that I did not want to indulge. A side of me that I did not want see come out. This is the lesson of holding your temper.

My father had a reputation for a temper that preceded him. I don't mean that he inherited his temper from his father, although that is the usual course of development of our tempers- how we express our feelings of anger is not inate, but is a learned behavior. Obviously I learned this from a young age. What other memories do I have that precede the one of punching a kid in the eye at age 4?

I remember falling down a stairwell to a basement in North Vancouver when I was two. I lost one of my front baby teeth. Later the same permanent tooth was chipped when I was 8. For years I had the indignity of a silver cap. I also remember running naked out the front door of our house in Port Alberni when I was either 3 or 4, running down the street until my mother caught me, spanked me and lectured me on decency. And then the punch in the eye.

I bring this up to explore what are our earliest memories are. Why do some memories stick, when others disappear? I think it is because these memories were important in our development in some way. The punch in the eye at age 4 lead to the development of a temper, and a consciousness of anger, and how we choose to express ourselves.

I was very conscious of my father's temper and the way he expressed his feelings. I was also conscious that when he exploded, it did not make me feel good. I made the decision at an early age not to express myself in a similar manner. So where was my anger to go if I could not just let it out? I was afraid that if I let the genie out of the bottle, I would not be able to control it.

As a result, I spent my early years withdrawing from situations that might result in violence. Yet violence was all around me. At age 5, I saw JFK shot, and then Oswald shot. Later, Martin Luther King Jr, and Robert Kennedy. Every night on the news, we had violent reportage from Vietnam. Naked children running down the street, except in her case it was after being bombed with napalm.

The Sixties were a particular violent time to grow up in. At home, my father was not a violent man; he was just loud. He said what he felt, when he felt it, and seemed to forget about it once it was over. But I felt the reverb, I could hear the echo, I could sense the bounce back. For days after, I would stew, and simmer on a low boil, doing what Hank Hill (on King of the Hill) famously said was the time honored tradition of sucking back your own rage, swallowing it down until you feel that lump in your throat, and that sick feeling in your gut. That's how you hold in your feelings.

But there would be times I could not hold the anger inside. It would burst forth. I remember kicking a locked door open in the gym, surprising the gym teacher who pegged me as the quiet kid. I remember getting into a fight with a kid, grabbing his underwear and giving him a 'brownie". But I also remember when he retaliated by kicking me real hard in the crotch. The pain was unbelievably painful, and even though it left a mark on me to this day, I refused to tell anyone. Anger and shame kept me quiet, but along with the pain, I seethed inside.

Once I was mad at a girl in drama class. She was kind of cute, but was actling like a brat. She did something resulting in me getting a little wet. The real damage was to my ego, as I felt humiliated, so I left the classroom and deliberately went down the hall, grabbed a bucket, and filled it with water.

I then proceeded to dowse her with an entire bucket of water. Well, all hell broke loose, as she was connected with the jocks at the school, and here I was, a drama nerd, humilating this jock's girl. For weeks, I was on a kill list.

Later my anger found its release in acting. I watched Taxi Driver about 15 times, and A Clockwork Orange about 10 times. I became the 'go to guy' for the psycho parts. In an acting exercise, I was asked to show "status" over another actor in an improv, and basically, I made him grovel, forcing my fellow actor to cry. Another time, I kicked a girl in the head. (an accident)

I was angry and all that pent up anger and rage that I had been suppressing for about 17 years started to explode. All around me, other kids were going through the same thing, and all these rejects moved from the suburbs to Vancouver. This was the start of the punk scene in Vancouver.

My anger poured into my writing, and after finding expression in acting, I finally made the decision to combine my love of primal theatre, poetry and music. This was the start of AKA.

AKA helped me to express my rage, to vent my anger, to rail against the injustice around me. This is why punk as a movement, and as a community, as an outlet for my rage and anger was a such a personal turning point. There was a lot of screaming with my first band, AKA. My first non AKA act on the Smilin' Buddha stage was to run on while another band, the Shades were playing Psychotic Reaction. When the band sang, And it goes like this, I grabbed the microphone from thge singer and screamed AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!, and jumped off the stage backwards into the crowd, who caught me ( as they did that in the early days!)

A few months into this new punk life, I was attacked after a show. I had left the show at O'Hara's early ( a show that later became famous for its own violence), and went home to my new apartment in Kitsilano. It was pretty much a bed, a table and some chairs, and not much else. Bored I went out to the Chinese fast food joint down the street. While I was waiting, some French Canadians were playing songs on the jukebox.

At one point these three kids came in, proceeding to harass first the French Canadians, then the Chinese people who ran the place, and finally make gestures toward me, the token punk.

As I left the place with my food, I turned and said- and forever I will wonder if this was the best line I could have come up with- Why don't you go home and listen to your Foreigner records! ( with a sneering "Foreigner".

I was half way down the block when two of them came out of the restaurant, and shouted " What did you say?" I said, Why don't you go home and listen to your Foreigner records? Well, then the two of them starting running toward me.

Now remember, I'm not the violent guy. I'm the lover, not the fighter. But I wasn't a coward. I stood my ground as they came upon me. I like Foreigner you fucking punk! He kicked the bag of food out of my hands. Stupidly, I bent down to pick it up, and he sucker punched me, right in the eye.

Blood was running down my cheek as my face kind of melted. His fist perfectly positioned so the smallest knuckle broke the skin of my eyebrow, and the brunt force of the rest of the fist broke my nose.

Blood was everywhere and at that, they took off. Just one punch. The third guy in the trio who was actually the biggest of the three, then came running down the block toward me.

I'm thinking, what now? He says, Oh my god, I'm really sorry for my friends- do you need me to call someone? No Fuck off! I mumbled through the blood, picked up the luke warm Chinese food and went back to my apartment.

Later that week at the Buddha, I saw Wimpy, who was and is my favourite of all the punk singers, and he asked me what happened. I told him and he said, well, I guess you're a punk now.

All it took to be reborn as a punk was a punch in the eye. That and 17 years of holding inside all my feelings of anger and rage.

Bowl of Sick for the Soul

2012-01-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

Remember the good old days? Waking up in a pool of your own sick? Oh, those were the days. I pride myself on my ability to forgive. Especially my ability to forgive alcohol. Alcohol, which has done me so wrong over the years, that I should hate it and never enjoy it again, but instead, I forgive. And forget. And rinse and repeat.
There is a love/hate relationship with Alcohol. I never met a bottle that I didn't want to kill. With alcohol, you can have your cake, and eat it too. Just don't be surprised if the cake comes back up in the morning. As you wake in the crumbs of the Devil's Food, it looks you in the eye, and says," you thought you could have me, but it was only a rental. "
We salute the hungover Jerry McGuire's of the world, who say, You had me at bottom's up! Then you had me again at face value, facedown in a bowl of sick.
Ah, the hangover. The morning after. There is something about the hangover that we need to hold and treasure. It is the return of our investment, the kick in the head, the point after last night's touchdown, the penalty shot right between the eyes.
My misadventures with alcohol could fill a book, but don't worry, I'm not going there. That would be wallowing in the wasted. We called the Jazzmanian Devils, The Hardest Drinking Band in Show Business. It wasn't a musical endeavor, it was a Private Member's Drinking Club. I remember enjoying a beverage at the Railway Club with the iconic Steve Taylor, who looked to the end of the bar, at the guy who was there every night, rain or shine, and said to me with all sincerity," If I ever look like that, promise me you will shoot me?"
Judgement is another hallmark of alcohol. A measurement of the man. How many? How much can you drink? Can you handle your drinks? Can you hold your liquor? Can you drive home?
Now we get to the dark side of alcohol. It can kill you. Many things in life can kill you. Getting up in the morning can kill you. Sometimes even bad luck can kill you.
I've known people who drank themselves to death. It is not a pretty sight. It is incredibly sad, especially to family members who watch this process. I say process because rarely is it quick. It is gruelingly long and progressive, and it draws in those around, wounding them as well. Alcoholism, like other forms of addicition, has many causes.
There are as many reasons a person develops into alcoholism as there are reasons to drink. Usually, there is an underlying genetic disposition. More likely, there is an underlying cycle of pain or abuse or tragedy or a betrayal of trust.
Often love was involved. But we say drink kills. We don't say love kills. We don't say life kills. But everyone who has life will one day have death, so it follows that life kills. We are born to die. I want to Live Fast, Die Young, and leave a beautiful memory, or so the song says.
There are traditions of romancing the bottle, romancing the relationship we have with booze. Booze. What a great word that is. Makes it sound like it is. Easy. Breezy. Beautiful Boozy cover girl.
But we likes our drinks. We likes our whiskey and we likes our wine. Our highballs, our 3 sheets to the wind, our slow comfortable screws. We likes our Harvey Wallbangers, Tom Collins, Gin Fizzes, Martinis, our girl drink drunks, Pink Ladies, Greyhounds, and Sidecars. Booze has fun names, a rich history of mixology, associations with crime, bootlegging, the Mob, Al Capone, the Seagrams, the Bronfmans, a verifiable Canadian history lesson.
I consider myself a bit of an expert when it comes to alcohol. I have extensive knowledge of bar lore. I have more stories and jokes and bits of useless information relating to alcohol than much else in my life. Oh yeah, I'm not a lawyer, but I've been called many times to the bar. I went to the doctor, and he found traces of blood in my alcohol stream. I got a million of them.

WHAT DO WE FEAR MOST?

2012-01-14T16:49:00.000-08:00

FEARS THAT WE HAVE THAT ARE BASED ON RATIONAL TRUTHS:

Unemployment, poverty, wars, warts, loss of freedom, loss of football, loss of memory, loss of children, financial loss, losing your pen, rampant greed, rampant eco-destruction,rampant global warming, corrupt politicians, Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, socialists, socialized medicine, Social Networks, social diseases, Stephen Harper, Stephen King, King Stephen Harper, diseased religious fanatics, corrupt religious fanatics, lone gunmen, one gunman, gangs, gangs of gunmen, police, police with guns, mental illness, mental cruelty, cruelty to animals, cancer, dementia, genetically modified foods, food shortages, water shortages, short people, short tempers, fingers on the button, fingers fingering your button, not being able to button, the industrial military complex, industrial music, borders, doctors, doctors without borders, doctors with borderline personalities, shopping for books at Borders, Amazon, Google, Apple, Apple after Steve Jobs, having no jobs, look ma no hands, mothers, fathers, bad mothers, bad fathers, evil chickens, evil children, snakes, rakes, rape, apes, the Dutch, the Bomb, Obama, the Oprah, the restless natives, the Chinese, the Russians, the Jews, the Americans, the American Jews, Woody Allen, having a woody in class, having no class, having no woody, the pine beetle, pining for the Beatles, Christmas, Christians, Mitt Romney, mittens, kittens, money, monkeys, melons, felons, feelings, freedoms, condoms, prose and cons, prose or poetry, poetic license, love, luvs, uvulas, vulvas, viruses, vulvas with viruses, bulghur, Bulgarians, Hungarians, going hungry, going crazy,clog dancing, blogs, logs, joggers.

FEARS WE HAVE THAT ARE BASED ON IRRATIONAL FICTIONS:

Vampires, ghosts, werewolves, Soylent Green, Martians, marshmallows, mellow hippies, hipsters, brains clouds, Hag's disease, soul suckers,Ripley's (1) , Jack the Ripper, bodice rippers ( no, that is real), men whose stomachs are ripped,men whose brains are ripped, men, ( in general), zombies, The Pulse (2), The Pulse (3), the Undead, the Grateful Dead, dinosaurs, Michelle Bachman, eyes of newts, Newt Gingriches eyes, Ron Paul, the White Plague (4), the Gold Standard, giving up the Gold Standard, Goldfield Syndrome (5).

1. Ripley's: alien parasitoid macrovirus. The adult aliens resemble deformed potato beings with legs, while the younger aliens — nicknamed "shit-weasels" because they can be created in a host organism's stomach and escape by eating their host's body between the stomach and anus — are legless, smaller versions of the adult alien. Both adult and young aliens have a mouth consisting of a slit on the underside of the head that goes down the length of the worm. The lips separate to reveal hundreds of teeth that can bite through steel.1

2. The Pulse: A powerful virus which lies dormant inside mobile phones and which requires a powerful signal to set off. The exact unleashers are unknown, but are implied to be a terrorist group due to numerous theories in the novel. The virus is implied to have been released just after September 11th, and lain dormant in cell phones ever since. Once the right signal is transmitted and leaked into incoming phone calls, the caller's brain cells immediately disintegrate and they are unable to recognize friend from foe; they are even unable to recognize other people infected with the virus. Inevitably, the infected callers become psychotic and start killing each other, the chaos of which lasts approximately two days before the infected callers have become "stable" enough to cooperate and recognize each other.

3. Band from the 80's featuring various non-descript future bankers.

4. The White Plague: A genetically engineered virus that kills only women. Released only on Irish, English, and Libyan populace.

5. Goldfield Syndrome: A form of anterograde amnesia in which the sufferer begins each day with no memory of the events of the previous day. The person believes every day to be same day on which they acquired the condition.

1. Stephen King 2. Stephen King 3.dense milt 4.Frank Herbert 5. 50 First Dates ( see also Groundhog Day, Independence Day, and Dog Day Afternoon)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_diseases

HOUSE OF CURTAINS

2012-01-10T22:07:00.000-08:00

Today's challenge: write an instant song/poem with the title House of Curtains, and using the words quilt and patchwork.

HOUSE OF CURTAINS

What is that shape behind the drape?
A baboon's ass or a man with a grape,
In the house of curtains they draw the blinds
Invoke words like quilt and mess with your minds.

Who is the doll behind the curtain?
Flicking her sash with a dash of flirting?
She dances like an Egyptian behind the Venetian
Limbos under the valance to bring us to completion.

So it's drag and swag over rod and pole
Work the japery of her drapery like a patchwork soul.
Then we nod to the valance while catching our balance,
And the shape behind the drapes reveals her talents.

densemilt 2012.

BALD LIKE ME - A SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE COMING EXPOSE!!!!

2012-01-09T22:49:00.000-08:00

In the flood of light against the yellow wall, the face and shoulders of a stranger - a fierce, bald, a very bald man glared at me from the glass. He in no way resembled me. I told myself that I was tired, that I must not judge these men who for the price of a ride submitted me to the swamps of their fantasy lives. They showed me something that all men have but seldom bring to the surface, since most men have hair over their skulls. At this time, D was picking up rides from balding males off of the highway. They asked him various question regarding his sex life and asking stereotypical question about a bald man's sexual activity. D had to realize that these men would never ask him such questions in the day, but only in the private time in those cars. D realized as well that every bald man was different from the inside than what his actions showed on the outside.

"I have never been more moved by a non-fiction book since “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey. "

Blogger Dense Milt decided, in 2012, to risk his life in the shadowy world of male pattern baldness to investigate what life was like for balding men in the days when the “b” word was used as lightly as “the.”
His goal to be an objective observer was blown almost immediately. By using what he called his medication and the love of good hair stylist, he exposed enough of his skull to be considered a Bald Man. Already sympathizing with the people still considered 2nd class citizens at the time, Milt (a 53 year old with a full head of hair) emotionally became a bald man. He experienced what it was like to be on the receiving end of the “hate stare,” being pushed to the front of the line, walking tens of blocks to use a “bald” bathroom, and others. No normally haired person, no matter how sympathetic to the plight of bald men in their early fifty to sixties, could understand what it was like to be oppressed and hairless for life.
For six weeks Milt traveled the back country of roads of New York's Catskill Mountains and suffered the treatment from the hirsute young of the day that was a daily occurrence for a bald man in 2011. He began his journey by stopping at a hair salon several times in his natural disposition and then in character. The stylist who ran the salon was delighted when he, Milt revealed himself and with his help Mr. Milt was smoothly embedded in the Bald community. He learned how balding men were kept by women for their money, and how they said they "loved to rub the skull."

He immediately discovered that his common beliefs about 'baldys" were absolutely false. In fact he found them to be very little different from the average beautiful person with hair.
It’s also interesting that Balding North Americans are referred to as “Society of Skulls” , or simply as "SOS" dozens of times throughout the book. The epilogue is almost as interesting as the journal that makes up the book. Mr. Milt was rocked by the response to the series of articles he wrote on the subject of baldness and other than a few personal attacks the response was positive. He became an active go-between for bald and non-balding community leaders all over the country, even working with Howie Mandel, who asked him to wash his hands. He continued to fight the good fight beside his brothers, both bald and non-bald to work toward equality. This book will make you search your soul no matter what the color of your skull is. And if this review does anything, I hope it makes you run, not walk, to my contest featuring this book and for those who don’t win, run to the library or bookstore to GET THIS BOOK.

It should be required reading for EVERY North American over the age of Forty.

No Beast So Fierce

2012-01-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

I watched Straight Time last night, a movie from the late 70's starring Dustin Hoffman, Theresa Russell ( her second movie), Harry Dean Stanton, Gary Busey, Kathy Bates and M. Emmett Walsh.
This film is based on the book No Beast So Fierce, written by outsider Edward Bunker, ( Bunker has a cameo in the movie). Hoffman apparently wanted to direct this filmn as well as act, but decided during the shoot that his temperment was better served on the other side of the camera. He brought in his friend Ulu Brosgard ( who directed The Subject was Roses on Broadway and on film with the great Jack Albertson) to direct.
Straight Time is the story of Max Dembo (Edward Bunker), who was a real criminal who spent most of his life in prison, but recounts one of the times he was "free."
Freedom is a strange concept for someone in prison, as the career prisoner often finds life in prison more comfortable than life outside. Comfort comes from community. I once asked a family member who was living on the streets how they could live down there, saying it that way, down there like some kind of hell on earth. Their answer was that it was the only place where they felt community, where they felt they could live without judgement of who and what they were. I know a lot of that was the drugs talking, but there was also a truth that resonated. One of the so called pillars that needs to be respected when we try to 'fix' the drug problem is providing community.
We watch the scene in the visiting room at the LA County Jail when Theresa Russell comes to see Dustin Hoffman, who did not show up for their date, as M. Emmett Walsh busts him back to jail on the unproven assumption that he is using. This scene is a master class in acting. His eyes won't look at her straight; they can't as his emotions are balled up inside him like a caged animal. His face is the face of rage, anger, but it is all internal. He is the lifetime criminal, the guy more used to life on the inside. You can also sense that he doesn't want her to get too close, knowing that she risks more than her innocence being with him. M. Emmett Walsh is Frank, the parole officer, a corrupt porcine oaf who holds the keys to the handcuffs and Hoffman's freedom. All I'm going to say here is that you will enjoy his comeuppance on the highway. It is a scene that will burn forever in your head.
We also get to see very young Gary Busey ( pre motorcycle crash), Kathy Bates (pre weight), and Harry Dean Stanton, who always has had that face, that hangdog loser face. His character is a perfect companion to the John Cazale character in Dog Day Afternoon. Sal you can go to any country in the world, where do you want to go? Is Wyoming a country?
Dustin Hoffman meets up with the character played by the film's real life author Edward Bunker in a bar. Bunker's forehead, greasy hair and 70's moustache is as brilliant casting as Hoffman's fish out of water jitters.

Straight Time is based on Bunker's first person account of life on the inside and outside of prison No Beast so Fierce. As the cover to the left proclaims Quentin Tarantino call this book "The best first person crime novel I've every read".
Bunker enjoyed some fame after getting out of prison as a writer and actor- he played Mr. Blue in Resevoir Dogs. His book Animal Factory was also made into a movie, with Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong. This is the real hard-boiled stuff.
Interesting that they change the name of the movie to Straight Time. As I was googling Straight Time, I forgot the title for a second and typed in Straight Life.
I got the schmaltzy Bobby Goldsboro song ( Leaving the straight life behind, I'm just playing a game in my mind ), and hardcore heroin memoir The Straight Life by the jazz great Art Pepper.
Pepper's autobiography is one of the best autobiographies that I have read. When he talks about how he felt shooting up for the first time, you can actually understand how that lifesyle would have the attraction it does.
Most people do not fall into the down and out lifestyle of an addict for kicks; dope is not the gateway drug to injecting heroin. Pain is the gateway drug to heroin. Abuse is the gateway drug to heroin. Being raped by family members you trust can be the gateway drug. No, Pepper spells out his life story of pain and tragedies that bring a person to heroin. When he describes in detail the pain, and then how for the first time in his life, he did not feel pain, he did not feel anything, and the absence was such a relief from a lifetime of hurt, it doesn't make you want to go out and score. But it does gives us empathy for what drives people to addiction, to practices that can kill themselves a little bit everyday. It does what the film Straight Time does: it shows us how some people who cannot fit into our society do not feel comfort in this society. For the addict and the hard core criminal, the concept of being out, or Straight Time, or living the Straight Life is a false dream that doesn't fit the cards they have been dealt.
I am reminded here of a person I will not name who was very close to me. She was an alcoholic, which is a label we give to people who prefer the company of a bottle. Her alcoholism did not define her, but her alcoholism killed her. Contrary to the opinions of some people very close to me, it was not her moral failure or lack of control or her inability to say no to a drink that put the metaphoric gun in her hand. It was the demons inside that grew from a world of deep pain and hurt, that come from an abuse of trust of some kind, the kind of abuse that drives a person to feel they are worthless, to devalue their life, to seek the solace in something to kill the pain.
In the end, the pain is killed, but so is the patient. We hope their peace in death provides a comfort that they could not enjoy in life. But every death marks those left behind, and we are left to grapple with the unanswered questions to what we perceive as an unfinished life.

The Women I Have Wronged

2012-01-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

On the stage, I sang,"To all the girls I loved before." At home, I have thought long and hard about all the women I have wronged. Like the Drive-By Truckers say, "Don't be so easy on yourself." Starting with my mother, I had disappointed her in grade 3 when I was caught on the playground showing off my older brother's May Playmate calendar. I knew I was in trouble when my grade 3 teacher, a silver haired wire framed glass wearing old maid sat me down saying, of all the boys in her class, she had never expected this from me. Her disgust was palpable, and she had no choice but to share this incident with my mother.

All afternoon I waited for my mother to come home from this parent and teacher conference. I thought of running away, and I got as far as getting on my bike, and riding round the corner, when a large barking dog chased me back home. I returned to my bedroom where I waited for the judgement. When Mom came home, she asked me to sit down, as she had to discuss something with me. You probably know what I'm going to say. I knew what was coming. The feelings of shame enveloped me. Like Madge said, I was soaking in it.

"Of all my sons, you are the last one I would have expected this from," she echoed the teacher's sentiments. Why? I shrugged, I dunno. I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. The reason was simple. The "bad" kid of the class, Randy, ( the bad kids are always Randy) had brought his father's pen with the girl in the bathing suit. When you turned the pen upside down, the bathing suit disappeared. So it was competition that drove my decision, not moral turpitude.

My crime was distribution of unacceptable material, shocking society and the schoolyard with my youthful pornographic interests. But no one spoke of the larger crime: I had stolen this calendar page from my brother. Surely, that should have been the real crime. One doesn't steal from your family.

My theiving ways were not limited to porn; I shoplifted candy just to see if I could get away with it. And I was fairly successful; I did get away with it most of the times, except the one time when my mother caught me. She was not amused. She was suitably shocked and offended. She reprimanded me and gave me her famed "five finger exercise." I'm sure she also threatened me with "wait until your father gets home." Except that my father was not usually at home, except for on the weekends. By the time he came home from his sales job on the road, he had no interest in being the bad guy. He had very little interest in fathering either, much to the disappointment of his children, much to the martyrdom of his wife, and much to the contraire of his public image.

My world of home was dominated by women, my mother and my sisters. My older brothers, like my father, found ways to escape- friends, jobs, girls, cars, wars. I wanted their attention, their recognition, their love. My childhood was not a prison, or the nightmare existence that many children live through; it was a very typical middle class family existence in the 60's. Kennedy, Oswald, Ruby, Apollo, the Beatles, cars, motorcycles, forts, fights, long walks by myself, trudging through snow drifts to get to school, Hot Wheels, Matchbox cars.

In a house filled with so many siblings and parents, I lived mostly in my mind. And it was crowded in there, with all those bad thoughts pushing me around.

My interest in girls began at an early age. My first crush was on my kissing cousin; I am not sure if she knew my feelings then, or even if she knows now. But being attracted to your cousin must be wrong. Next was a girl named Marlene in grade two. I tried to kiss her. I chased her all around the playground. My feelings for Marlene were not reciprocated, but she at least was laughing in a good way. Not at me, I don't think she thought I was a creep. At least I don't think she did. Our schoolyard chases were playful, young and all a bit of fluff. I can't remember if we actually did kiss, but I think we did. Did I wrong her? I can barely remember her.

The next objects of my affection were two girls who I wronged in grade 5, we should talk about them for a moment. She sat in front of me, in the first desk. All the desks were arranged from the smartest kid to the dumbest kid in what now seems like one of the more cruel arrangements of my young life. My teacher was the first male teacher I had. He was very handsome, and always wore a white shirt, button down, with a skinny black tie. Jacket seemed to be non-existent. Often the shirt was short sleeved like Michael Douglas in Walking Tall, no excuse me that was not the name of the film. It was Falling Down. Sort of the opposite. In retrospect, I guess the title Falling Down is a comment on the revenge fantasy of Walking Tall. This teacher was also the coach and the PE teacher. His strength and dominance were compelling to me. He seemed to be interested in me as a person. Often he would let me go to the library to read, as he knew I was bored with the regular assignments. So when he arranged the desks in order of smartest to dumbest, I did not question the logic or the fairness of the arrangement. My place was the second desk, and my place was secure in his world.

In the first desk was an odd girl. Her name was Sally. Sally Odd. I kid you not. She was a big girl with a slight girl moustache, and she was very funny and a great friend and confidant. My wrongs to her were not even considering her attractive, even though as I look back at her white shirt cleanliness, I remember beautiful eyes, and dark eyebrows, and breasts. No, that can't be, it was grade five. Or was it? Strange how the mind plays tricks.

One of the many cruel tricks that the teacher played was reading aloud the homework of some of the more challenged children, including my neighbour, Julia. She lived across the street, kiddy corner, in a small dirty house. She was one of about 8 kids, the result of a blended family of her mother and father's marriages. They were the first poor people I was really conscious of, and it was thought that they all shared one room ( and bed). She was poor, dirty face poor. She was the first kid that I was conscious of as being poor. We were not poor; we were middle class. We had a Catholic family next door before I started school, the Sullivans, who had 10 or more kids. There were so many kids in that house, that it always smelled like piss. Piss and honey. I remember that smell even now.

As my grade 5 teacher read aloud Julia's homework, he cruelly made fun of her bad spelling. "For brekfast I had a pass of tosst." " A pass of tosst? " I sat in my second desk from the head of class knowing that this was wrong to make fun of someone. Especially someone clearly not a mental or social equal. But I sat there in my second desk just watching him make my neighbour Julia cry. I said nothing and that was wrong.

So I wronged Julia too. We are up to about five women that I have wronged, and I haven't even mentioned my sisters yet. Suffice to say, I probably wronged them too, so let's just add them to the list of the women I have wronged.

John Gilmore: Laid Bare

2012-01-02T22:06:00.000-08:00

John Gilmore 1954

2012 and my goal is to watch less TV and read more. And write more.
I've always been interested in many things, and usually have a few books on the go.
Which has come to mean, I have a few books that I am trying to read, but nothing that has grabbed me by the balls and forced me to turn pages, tuning out the rest of the world.
Because that is what good writing does: it inhabits you, it intoxicates, it drugs you into believing you are in another world.
About a week ago, I started reading Laid Bare by John Gilmore.

Gilmore was an actor back in the 50's. He "knew" James Dean. In the Biblical sense. He doesn't hold back; you will probably learn more about various Celebs than you bargained for.
Gary Indiana says," I read Laid Bare straight through with stunned fascination...The opening chapter is really a masterpiece all by itself, it recreates an entire era.."
Genesis P-Orridge says" This is a graphic vision of Hollywood- a dark, new existentialism full of grossly compelling characters whose self respect, sincerity and sense of identity are as thin as the slime that seems to cover their every activity. Magnificently necessary!"
In his chapter Confessions of an L.A. Son, it starts out with " 'I've had my cock sucked by five of the big names in Hollywood," James Dean said to me one night on the set of Rebel without a Cause.....How long could it go on? That's what I wanted to know. The answer was it could go on until nothing was left, until they had what they wanted and nothing was left."
Gilmore talks intimately about Hank Williams, Janis Joplin, James Dean, Marilyn, Lenny Bruce and other icons of American tragedy. He was there in the front seat of that particular time of myth making.
America eats its young, and Gilmore gives us the straight up restaurant review of each meal. It's hard boiled, and boiled down to its very essense, which is more than just gossip. He captures what seems to be the sense of the time.
Gilmore has also written quite a few true crime books. One is called Severed about the infamous Black Dahlia case. Does he get more into it than James Ellroy, and his mother/whore fascination with Elizabeth Short? We will have to read it and find out. He also did a book on the Manson Family, and other lurid tales of Californication and madness.
Does he remind me of anyone? Our own John, John Armstrong, who's book Guilty of Everything is about to be made into a Hollywood movie with Jay Baruchel as the young Buck Cherry.
Will they "ruin" the truth of the memoir? Who knows. Is any memoir all true? I've explained my thoughts on this subject many times, most recently just this last month in another blog post. What binds them is the fact that you can't put this stuff down; it almost reads itself. The honesty and revelations are simultaneously presented in a way that invites the reader to have an eye witness window to times that will never repeat themselves. "I can only give you everything," John Armstrong exclaims in one of his songs. Who are we to ask for more?

Buried in the Past but Still Pissin' in the Wind

2012-01-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

Ambulance Blues

An ambulance can only go so fast
It's easy to get buried in the past
When you try to make a good thing last.
I never knew a man could tell so many lies
He had a different story for every set of eyes.
How can he remember who he's talkin' to?
'Cause I know it ain't me, and I hope it isn't you.
And I still can hear him say:
You're all just pissin' in the wind
You don't know it but you are.
And there ain't nothin' like a friend
Who can tell you you're just pissin' in the wind.

Neil Young

This is the first post of 2012, and I can proudly report I am still pissin' in th wind.
As the man says," It's easy to get buried in the past". For me, this is especially true and apt.
In 2007 I nearly buried myself. In the five years that have passed since my cardiac adventure, I reconnected with my creative self. I started writing Condensed Milt and other blogs.
I have unsuccessfully tried to initiate some musical projects. I reconnected with friends from my creative time of the late 70's-80's.
One of those friends was Lenore Herb, who left us in October 2010. Along with a few other
friends, we formed a group called VDOC to promote her work, to help preserve the reportage and art she had created, work that was corroding with time.
It became so important to try to bring attention to the potential loss, as so much vitality was
tied up in these videos. The Lenore Herb collection captures my youth revolution,
chronicles the creative process, and bursts forth with a vitality missing in my life today.

"It's easy to get buried in the past." I have tried to claw my way out of the grave. I have tried to
reinsert myself in the history, dusting off the memories, telling the stories that have yet to be
told.
I believe the work we created still sparkles. AKA was one of the best bands of that time.
Musically, lyrically, presentation, execution, performance, politics.
We were left out of the official record of that time, Bloodied but Unbowed.
We were not the only group left out.
But the void still rankles.
No mention, no one interested enough to include any music, footage, opinions.
Not in the film, or the extras.

The film is a vital piece of work that jumps right out of the television screen. It works much
better on the small screen than the big screen. It is not lessened by AKA's absence.
It stands on it's own as a great film. The more I see it, the more I enjoy it.
The filmmaker has no obligation to put us in the film, only to tell her story.
And yet....."it's easy to get buried in the past."

So as this new year begins with hope and trepidation, I may be buried in the past, but I will
continue to write about what interests me. I hope it interests a few of you.
Writing is different than music. Music gives you an immediate reaction to your creation.
You can feel it, hear it, and see with your own eyes the truth of the reaction.
Writing offers more freedom. I don't need to have a band to write.
I don't need to pin jello to the wall in trying to schedule grown adults for rehearsals.
I just write it and post it. Put it out there. I try very hard not to overthink or overwrite it.
I want the truth of the moment. I don't want to give myself the opportunity to second guess.
This helps to make the writing as immediate as the music was.
But at times, it seems I am just pissin' in the wind.
Sometimes, I get blowback. Sometimes, I get wet. I get sent to the showers.
Feel free to be the friend that says, Dense, you are pissin' in the wind.
Because I take that as a good thing.
Because I would rather keep pissin' in the wind instead of being buried in the past.

So it's time to move on, past the jealousy and anger. It's time to tell my stories.

Gather round. It's going to get weird.

Relax and Open Your Hellmouth Wide

2011-12-29T14:21:00.000-08:00

Hellmouth. Sounds like what you get after a night of hard drinking and smoking cigars. As in "My mouth tastes like Hellmouth". Apparently that is not the real definition. Hellmouth is literally the mouth of hell. Visions of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern run into my head. The whale-monster Leviathan is also associated with this description. Recently a song of mine was pronounced "Leviathan with soul".
In The Whale, an Old English poem from the Exeter Book, the mouth of Hell is compared to a whale's mouth, though somewhat indirectly:

The whale has another trick: when he is hungry, he opens his mouth and a sweet smell comes out. The fish are tricked by the smell and they enter into his mouth. Suddenly the whale’s jaws close. Likewise, any man who lets himself be tricked by a sweet smell and led to sin will go into hell, opened by the devil — if he has followed the pleasures of the body and not those of the spirit. When the devil has brought them to hell, he clashes together the jaws, the gates of hell. No one can get out from them, just as no fish can escape from the mouth of the whale.^[8]

Satan himself is often shown sitting in Hell eating the damned, but Hellmouth should not be considered to be the mouth of Satan, as the Hellmouth never bites the damned, remaining wide open, ready for more.'

So now we have a Hellmouth wide open and ready for more damned, presumably. That gnawing hunger or thirst that displaces reason and civility. What I have colloquially called at times "The God Shaped Hole." I suppose God has no exclusivity clause on "Shaped Holes". Apparently Satan gets to have one too.

Please note the picture to the left ,which Wikipedia calls Simplified Last Judgement.
Simplified Last Judgement sounds like something you would find in The Rapture for Dummies, a book I recommend, if you can find it. Given the state of politics in the USA, this book may be out of print.

Note in the picture Jesus is sitting on what looks like either a puff ball or perhaps an egg. An egg ready to burst, releasing forth a plague of spiders, snakes, vermin, and pestilence.
To his left and right, the supplicants. On the left is the Virgin Mother, and on the right we have either Joseph, or John the Baptist, or for all I know, it could be another Occupy protester, hackeysack hidden beneath his robes.

In the bottom left hand corner, we have the naked multitudes. As my father and mother always told me when I said I wanted to run away from home, well son, you can go, but you will have to go the same way you came. The threat of public nudity has kept me docile for almost 18 years.

In the right hand corner, we have Hellmouth. Finally you say, we've been wading through this whole blog post just to get to Hellmouth, or the heart of the matter. In this picture, Hellmouth is represented as the head of the Leviathan, but looks more like an inner city rat's head than a giant fish. Inside the mouth are the damned, but we must ask why are the damned so nappy, looking like an album cover from the soundtrack of a 70's blaxploitation film.

Much smoke is coming from from the open wide Hellmouth. Perhaps an allusion to drugs or all night revelery. According to Wikipedia, "the body of the Leviathan, especially his eyes, possesses great illuminating power. This was the opinion of R. Eliezer, who, in the course of a voyage in company with R. Joshua, explained to the latter, when frightened by the sudden appearance of a brilliant light, that it probably proceeded from the eyes of the Leviathan. He referred his companion to the words of Job: "By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning".
Neesings is defined as sneezings or snorts, but more accurately from the old Hebrew, is breathing with difficulty. Sort of like when my wife sleeps in another room because the sound of my neesings keep up awake all night.
It is revealing that in spite of his supernatural strength,the Leviathan is afraid of a small worm called "kilbit", which clings to the gills of large fish and kills them.

Excuse me, but one of the Seven Princes of Satan is afraid of a worm? And we shall call the worm 'kilbit'??? The irony is rife.

Let us review what we have just learned here.
1. God can't control Satan
2. The Hellmouth must be open wide
3. The whole shooting match can be brought to it's knees by a small worm.

Legends and myths were often stand-ins for unvoiced fears. Discretion, public decency, bad translations, take your pick. Allow me to shine a light into the origins of the Hellmouth.

Could it be that the myth of Hellmouth is simply a metaphor for the oldest male nightmare of the vagina dentata?!? Can the roots of our religious fundament be boiled down to our primal fear of the "other"? To our primal need and fear of the Mother?

Allow me to shine a light into the metaphor:

Similar to the Hellmouth, the place from which all life emerges lures the unsuspecting "Rapture for Dummies" with it's sweet smell, drawing us in, tempting us to the pleasures of the flesh, Original Sin, and just when the Devil has you down on your knees, in your most vulnerable moment of weakness, the jaws clamp shut. You have entered the Hellmouth.

Remember that the whole enchilada can be shut down by a small worm, known as the 'kilbit'. How's that for a buzz kill? All things considered, I'll take my risks.

So relax, and open up the Hellmouth wide. Softly, wipe the sleep from my eyelids of the morning, and call me Leviathan. With soul.

Worried about the economic crisis?

2011-12-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

A Shaggy Dog Story

2011-12-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

This story does not have a happy ending. It does not end well.
In the search for truth, he explored his mind and memories like a traveler- how far back could he go?

He remembers that musical boundaries were pushed, sexual boundaries were stretched, psycho-pharmaceutical boundaries were expanded upon.

He stretched farther and father, the smother of mother, stretching the lie, retching the truth from the tongues of salesmen and bloggers and artists and charlatans.

His father said "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story".   That is the official story. How he remembers it.

Or at least, that is the official truth he tells the world. No one is left who can remember the actual truth.

And that is the truth about truth. It belongs to the survivors. And the official truth belongs not to the survivors, but to the highest bidder.
The truth is auctioned off like slaves of old, the truth is bought and paid for like the oldest profession. In times of financial shortage, the truth can be bartered, traded for beans or a cow or the oldest unmarried daughter.   The truth begs the question, what is truth?

He remembers a time of great instability. Mind, music, identity in flux. We reinvented ourselves.   He remembers a certain notoriety, a respect, "the nod", the tip of the hat. It was not imaginary. It was real.

But as time went on, his notoriety faded, the respect dimmed, the nod became more of the shaking of tremors. Yes, the hat was still tipped - it was a tipping point, a point of contention for a man who still wore hats.

At one point, thirty years on, a film was made that attempted to define his generation. He was moved by the film. He was moved out of the time of his generation. He was written out of the time of his generation. He was officially erased. He was disappeared.   His story was revised; history was revised. A new truth was born and he was left alone with his memories. Did he imagine all this?   What was the truth?

Perhaps he was becoming a man out of time.

If so, what is the ticking sound that he hears in his head?

This story does not have a happy ending.

Memory-an excerpt

2011-11-27T01:51:00.000-08:00

From Memory by HP Lovecraft:

The Genie that haunts the moonbeams spake to the Daemon of the Valley, saying, “I am old, and forget much. Tell me the deeds and aspect and name of them who built these things of stone.” And the Daemon replied, “I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, for it was like to that of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were called Man.”

"I can't remember a thing. That's why I'm here."

That is what I tell them, the fans who come to see me. One came by today. She looked so much like my wife. Where is that one anyway? Always out with her friends. When is she coming home? Galivanting falluting galvanizing van van van Vancouver.

The afternoon light is dim. I look out the window but I see no birds in the trees.

It is actually very dark and everything is quiet.

Except for that bitch in the next room, who just keeps crying. Something about her Danny or Daddy. Make up your mind bitch which is it? Your Danny?

"Daddy! Daddy! Please. I'll be good this time.....Please. Daddy!" Her pathetic wail starts low, sounding like a scared child; she is no child. She is probably my age. I get so fed up hearing her I shout, Shut up you stupid bitch!

It is quiet for a brief moment. Then the whole thing starts again.

Daddy! Daddy! I'll be good this time.

Christ, where are they? Security? Didn't they hear me call? Security! Escort this one to my room.

Someone is at the door. Another fan. She's young enough to be my daughter. I don't think so, but I don't know. I can't remember shit. That's why I'm here you know.

Why is my daughter wearing white? Is today her wedding? Why wasn't I told about this? Or did they tell me, and I forgot? She wipes my mouth.

"You can't shout that like. Please calm down. Miss Brook is just upset again. I'm sorry if she woke you up."

What does she mean 'woke me up?' Christ, it's not like I'm a child here. It's the middle of the afternoon. Am I supposed to sleep in the day time now too? They have funny rules here.

"Here. Did you need some water? Take a little. That's a good man. Now get some rest. I'll be by later to check up on you."

NmGggnnhh. Rbbdu. Christ!
"I'm sorry. Did you need something? "
Nmmmggnh. Rbbdu. Christ!!!
"That's good. You'll be ok. Your daughter is coming by tomorrow she said."

What the hell is she talking about. She is coming by tomorrow? Today and tomorrow? What does she do all day? Doesn't the poor girl have a job? Oh, right today is her wedding day. No? Then why is she here now wearing a goddam wedding dress? Weddings. Wife. Walls. Walking. Walking. Waaaaaa! Daddy! Daddy! I promise I'll be a good girl.

Am I walking? My legs aren't moving so fast. If I had a candle in my head you could say I was a little light headed.

I used to be in a band you know. You probably heard of us. One day I jumped off a stage and they caught me and I screamed but that was before I jumped, but they caught me. They don't catch you anymore. They left you drop.
BANG. Fuck that hurt. The bastards didn't catch me this time.

"Oh my god, he's out of bed again. I think he fell. Code blue in room 403. Code blue. "

Oh, my daughter is here again, and she is wearing white. She looks like an angel. Why is she looking at me like that? Is it lunch time?

Nmmmmggh. Rbbdu. Chrrr. Sss. t.

I can do it myself you ignorant foods. Fools I meant today. To say. I meant to say Foo on you. We don't care what you say, Fucky you. You heard me shitbirds. Shithead birds turds n-n-n-nnerds. I can't do everything here. I'm pulling my load, you pull yours. Lift my what? My head?

"I think you had a bad dream. We'll get you cleaned up. That's a good little man."

If your going downtown miss, you might as well say hello to my friend Mr. Happy. See? He's happy to see you too.

"Daddy! Daddy! I promised I'll be a good girl....Daddy!"

My dog is coming tomorrow to visit me. Maybe he will play some cards! Hah! That's a good one. I used to be in a band you know? We used to jump off the stage and young girls would....they would...
I forget what did they do?
I can't remember so good these days. That's why I'm here.

Buy Nothing Day

2011-11-25T00:58:00.000-08:00

From the folks who brought us Occupy Walmart, comes the most terrifying thought America never had.
Buy Nothing Day.
Want to send a real message?
Stop buying crap you don't need.

Backscatter!

2011-11-23T23:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/lawsofattention.html

Red eyes at dawn, seek something to hold onto

a familiar breaking through veils

in the dark our eyes slow to adapt

Behold the Dazzle!

- you must pay attention now-

From midnight porn to morning pouring

Watch out for the poor on the road

the Specular reflects spectacular holes

then genuflects in the middle of nowhere

Speed on

Tempo of light

Behold

the Waves of night still

Imposed on daybreaking

Still/life creeping into Light- the coyotes must find their holes

Did you see the raccoons strewn with their

wet black Davy Crockets red glare-

stripes stripped to the status of roadkill

Pull the veil of light striations

Revealing coruscating glare on glass- the grooves burrow into a morning frown

A heavy load of Rain lights on shiny pavement

Backscatter! Backscatter!

Do you see that there is a shimmery glimmer on the road?

You reach for coffee and eat the cake of Soft tremulous distortion

The light adjusts and suddenly Luminescence

Guiding us from the nether radiance

thru the angry fog and angry god
and hungry dogs to the possible

At night they howled at the moon,
but the dawn is gone

For now the night departs for tomorrow

while I forgot to say that the sky is falling

Why stop at a moustache? Many options available.

2011-11-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

ABC'S OF DEMENTIA

2011-11-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

A=ALZHEIMER'S B=VASCULAR DEMENTIA C= "NORMAL"

D= WALNUT E = WALNUT F=WALNUT

Why I Vote

2011-11-20T22:14:00.000-08:00

This weekend local elections were held and I voted. My candidate for Mayor did not win; three out of 6 of my councillors won and three did not. Was I satisfied with the outcome? To be frank, I did not know the candidates well enough to know if it was the best decision. But I still voted.

Why vote? I posted on my facebook the thought to Occupy the Voting Booth or shut the F. up. Apparently many people thought this was of interest, as it drew many comments.

The same day I wrote a blog post on Screaming Growling Art which attracted two people to comment. I should have titled it Occupy Screaming Growing Art if I wanted people to read it.

I digress. Why do I vote when in some cases I'm not totally sure who the right person is to vote for? Because like many immigrants to Canada, I went through a process to be able to vote, making the right to vote more important to me.

I was born in Canada in 1958, and moved to the US in 1963. My father and mother moved us to the US, and as a child I had no say in the matter. I enjoyed my childhood there, making many friends. One friend from grade 8 just called me the other day. He is a lawyer in San Diego. We had great laughs remembering our grade 8 Social Studies class, where we played an educational role playing game called Disunia- where we replicated some of the decisions by the original colonists to try to create a republic. It was great fun, but I reminded my friend of the time our teacher brought us into his room, and reprimanded us for messing up the game for the other kids. We were having our intellectual fun times, and because of some actions, threatened to mess up the role playing so that we would have a similar outcome. At least that is how I remember it.

My parents wanted to become US citizens so they wrote the tests and we went to ceremony and some of us were naturalized as US citizens along with our parents. In 1973 we moved back to Canada, entering the country as landed immigrants. How could this be? We were born in Canada.
Well at the time my parents gave up their citizenship to become citizens of the US, they also conveniently gave up my Canadian citizenship. So as a Canadian by birth, I was a landed immigrant.
Flash forward many years, and the names changed and I was a Permanent Resident. This always caused much discussion as I crossed the border, as I would have to explain the whole thing.

So in 2003, some thirty years after moving back to Canada, I decided to apply to regain my Canadian citizenship. In 2005, I attended a ceremony in Canada along with all the many immigrants from about 50 different countries who were also becoming a Canadian. They even made a joke about it; look at all the people from all over the world wanting to become a Canadian. Why, we even have a Canadian who wants to be a Canadian!

Since that day, I have voted in every possible election. I had some years to make up. I always try to inform myself and make the best decision possible. People are fighting all over the world for the right to have a say; yet in most communities in North America, voter turnout is around 30 something %- in the town of my birth, Burnaby, only 15% of the eligible voters voted.

I know many of my friends believe that the old saying, If elections changed anything, they would be outlawed. The same old crooks get in no matter. They are all devils of a similar color no matter what the labels say. Even the labels are confusing. In BC, we have a provincial party called the Liberals, who are not affiliated with the Federal Liberal party. They are not even "liberal".

So why vote? Because I can. Because I still believe that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Does civic responsibility end at voting? No, it is the bare minimum involvement.

Do the people who do not vote deserve to even have an opinion? Unfortunately, yes. But also unfortunately there are many who do vote that still deserve to have an opinion.

Does your vote matter? Ask Ellen Woodsworth if a single vote matters? How about 100 votes? If the 60+% who didn't vote voted for Ellen and Tim and RJ and Sandy and all the other candidates that worked hard to represent their city, then the results may have been different. Elections are decided all over the place by the smallest of margins. Margins smaller than the margin of error.

Meanwhile in Syria, people are killed by their own government for trying to stand up for a right to vote.

Growling Screaming Art

2011-11-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

32 years ago, I wrote an article about a local band called Tunnel Canary. It was called, Tunnel Canary Hates You. Besides being the first article written about the band, it was probably the only article written about the band for 30 years.
Tunnel Canary was and is the creation of Nathan Holiday, who at the time went by the name Aleh Fitzgerald. He has had a few names in his lifetime, but safe was not one of them. Never would anyone call Tunnel Canary safe. Hated by the punks, they were the ultimate punk band.
Their best performances were live on the street with Aleh playing his wall of noise guitar- loud, transgressive, yet to my ears beautiful and almost symphonic in nature. Judy or Ebra as she was called then, was the "singer". As you can hear on the link on YouTube, she took the screaming vocals of Mars, and Lydia Lunch and pushed the envelope. It was a direct action aural attack on the consumers who passed by on the street. Time has not dulled the power of this music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP8icVH5PU4

Another woman artist who is often called a screamer is Diamanda Galas. Galas has an eight octave range, and is closer in nature to an opera singer than punk. Her Litanies of Satan with the wicked Wild Women with Steak Knives was an introduction for me to her art. I think the first songs I heard from her were on a Henry Kaiser/John French record at my friend and band mate Alex Varty's. Henry Kaiser was a good friend of Alex and John French was the original drummer Drumbo from Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. Today
I was listening to a Scandanavian interview with Diamanda Galas this morning. It starts at about the 17 minutes mark. She talks about her voice and how her father wanted her to play the piano, but not to sing, because singers are just a step from whores.
http://svtplay.se/v/2602691/kobra/del_8_av_13

Before the 17 minute point, the same interviewer speaks with Angela Grossow, the growling singer of Arch Enemy.

Angela discusses the "growling" technique favoured by the black metal/death metal singers today. To see her sing is a beautiful thing. I find the music, lyrics and fashion a bit comic book, but this woman is the real deal. Angela- call me. You need a 53 year old sax player. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JFgT9JXZlU&feature=related

Recently, I have been getting into black metal. Clearly I have listened to extreme music for years, but this is the first time I have sought out a Metal genre. In past, I have disdained the moronic lyrics, obsession with Satan, Dragons and medieval monsters. Speaking of monsters, we come to Varg Vikernes, the

Varg Vikernes

Norwegian black metal musician, writer, philosopher and religious, political and nationalist activist, arsonist and convicted murderer. Yes you read that right. Convicted murderer and arsonist. Killed a singer from a rival band Mayhem for personal and political reasons. Varg is Burzum, a symphonic black metal band from Norway. I wonder what Varg thinks of the Norway shootings, where all the children were killed by a madman. Nothing would surprise me. What did surprise me was the beauty of the music that comes from this racist, anti-semetic murderer.
Check out Jeg Faller by Burzum from the album Fallen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh7BWiDSuSY

Here is the English translation:

I Am Falling
High up there I stand in time;
in the green, beautiful and warm,
strong tree crown, in white clouds,
surrounded by the beautiful and friendly few.

I am falling.
All the way down.

High up there I stand in time;
on the top of the world tree's crown.

From high up there I fall from time;
down into the bottomless, empty and timeless.

The tree's rind changes in the fall.
Branches and boughs, leaves and nuts,
rush by me in tremendous speed.
The roots and the ground comes nearer.

My time disappears to somethwere else.

Into death, from death.
Into life, from life.
Downwards and across the river
without a source.

Into darkness, from darkness;
into cold, from cold.
Through time, from time;
to where the deities smile.

I drink from the river of forgetfulness,
row dryshod across the river of hate;
sail with the wind,
to the end, beginning and meaning of the devine powers.

Another band on my radar is Arabrot.

Here are the lyrics to their song:
Madonna was a whore
We picked dirty on Mother Teresa,
... Melanie Nelson and Ofelia,
..queen Sheba!
Madonna was a whore!
Say whore!...
Marie Antoinette
Whore, Lolita!...
...Venus will never...
Madonna, Madonna was a whore!
...Venus will never...
Madonna, Madonna was a whore!
Madonna was a whore!
Madonna was a whore!
Madonna was a whore!
...Venus will never...
Bring it up Queen Marry!
Madonna, Madonna was a whore!

Their new release is called Solar Anus- how often do we hear metal bands reference Georges Bataille?

The title and part of the thematic inspiration of the album is from the french literate Georges Bataille. Like Bataille, Arabrot is fascinated by the joy and energy of unifying the high and the low, the filth and the pure, the animalistic and the divine in man. In songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Kjetil Nernes’ own words:
Gold indicates the sun as we hail Bataille’s take on the subject of abjection. Solar Anus betokened the Golden Calf - juxtaposed between utmost evil and greater sanctity. Such as the eternal radiance of heaven or the egregious iniquities of the abyss. Or the alchemist of The Holy Mountain converting faeces into gold.

There are many interesting links on their website too.
http://www.disinfo.com/

One of my favourite black metal bands is a Washington state band called Wolves from the Throne Room
Winter is coming... is the line from Game of Thrones. The game here is Wolves. Their newest release is Celestial Lineage. Go on You Tube and listen to an interview with their drummer. I know, drummers should never speak. But often they demonstrate an unlikely intelligence.

"Who cannot live with honor must die with honor."

As I have said a few times in this post, there is almost a classical aspect to much of the black metal sounds. The guttural growling may be the polar opposite of opera, but their tragic songs and emotions share similar roots.
This is how we go from Galas to Callas. If you have been drawn to this post because you love black metal, check out Tunnel Canary, Diamanda Galas, and also Maria Callas.

If you have not heard Maria Callas, that is a tragedy. Below we have her singing Madame Butterfly.

Maria Callas - Madame Butterfly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLaY2VcIEq

Madame Butterfly is the opera based on a story of love, deception, honor and death.
Could be the theme of a death metal song.

Angela? Are you listening?
Do I have the write the Death Metal opera of Madame Butterfly?

I think I will call it Motherfucken Assault and Buttery. Better start growling.

I'll Walk Alone

2011-11-11T08:27:00.000-08:00

I posted my mother and father's song on Facebook today. It was I'll Walk Alone by Dinah Shore. Both of my parents served during WW2. They were married and dad went overseas. When he came back, my mother didn't recognize him at first. When they had their 50th wedding anniversary, I made them a compilation tape of music of their generation. What amazed me was just how sad all the songs were. To be alone, and waiting for the one you love to return. My mother was fortunate in that my dad came back in one piece. He was not physically scarred or emotionally shattered as so many others were. And he was alive, unlike other war time brides who waited and waited and found themselves widows. Remember all these "soldiers" are usually 18 -20 years old, except for the the one's like Michelle's grandfather who enlisted at 16, lying about his age to serve his country.
On Remembrance Day it is important to remember that most wars are fought by children. Wars are declared and set in motion by old men, but they are always fought by youth. Usually soldiers are young, many are poor, and most are scarred by their involvement.

It is also important to remember the other victims of war- the women and children who are caught in crossfire, collateral damage, rape trophies for a sick army mentality.
It is important to remember the difference between wars then and now. There has been an evolution of how we kill, now we can kill by drone, by proxy, war is like a video game with real consequences.

Game over. Remember war sucks.

time xplaynd by bill bissett

2011-11-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

time is reelee abt how evreething is fleeting n how we deel with that
n how deeplee we undrstand that awareness th jewels shine as our
undrstandings th layrs n openings apertures n iris lens in or not
n how manee narrativs reveel our paradoxikul n continualee shifting
minds n all th dimensyuns byond narrativ as well astoree is what
time is it what time is it 4 ourselvs n our specees n how timeless
th breth uv th galaxee n oftn ourselvs tho agen fleeting lyrik song
chant philosophikal theologikul prsonal propheseez vizual n tanguld
tangos our dances thru ths dimensyun lerning th binaree n wanting
n hoping 2 b unlerning th binaree with th invisibul dansrs in th ancient
n now glistning ball room n th 4tune tellrs shuffuling theyr decks how
we yern 4 n letting go uv our games finding love n th chancs 4
savin th environment n our selvs

—bill bissett

The Night Ocean

2011-11-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

H.P. Lovecraft "The Night Ocean"

Now that I am trying to tell what I saw I am conscious of a thousand maddening limitations. Things seen by the inward sight, like those flashing visions which come as we drift into the blankness of sleep, are more vivid and meaningful to us in that form than when we have sought to weld them with reality. Set a pen to a dream, and the colour drains from it. The ink with which we write seems diluted with something holding too much of reality, and we find that after all we cannot delineate the incredible memory. It is as if our inward selves, released from the bonds of daytime and objectivity, revelled in prisoned emotions which are hastily stifled when we translate them. In dreams and visions lie the greatest creations of man, for on them rests no yoke of line or hue. Forgotten scenes, and lands more obscure than the golden world of childhood, spring into the sleeping mind to reign until awakening puts them to rout. Amid these may be attained something of the glory and contentment for which we yearn; some image of sharp beauties suspected but not before revealed, which are to us as the Grail to holy spirits of the medieval world. To shape these things on the wheel of art, to seek to bring some faded trophy from that intangible realm of shadow and gossamer, requires equal skill and memory. For although dreams are in all of us, few hands may grasp their moth-wings without tearing them.

Did you know:

Yawning is an unacceptable behavior for Muslims, especially in public places. If yawning occurs, the yawner is instructed to cover his mouth with his hand. The Prophet said, "Yawning is from Satan. If you are about to yawn, you should try to stop it as much as possible. If you yawn, Satan will laugh"

Does Reason Sleep Tonight?

Frequently I have pondered the phenomena of hypnagogia. What is that? This is what Wikipedia says.

Hypnagogia (from Greek hypn "sleep" + agōgos "leading, inducing") is the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (i.e., the onset of sleep), originally coined in adjectival form as "hypnagogic" by Alfred Maury.^[1]^[2]

The equivalent transition to wakefulness is termed the hypnopompic state. Mental phenomena that occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include lucid dreaming, hallucinations, out of body experiences and sleep paralysis.

Sometimes the word hypnagogia is used in a restricted sense to refer to the onset of sleep, and contrasted with hypnopompia, Frederic Myers's term for waking up.^[4] However, hypnagogia is also regularly employed in a more general sense that covers both falling asleep and waking up, and Havelock Ellis questioned the need for separate terms.^[5] Like I question the need for separate terms for Liberal or Conservative, or Democrat or Republican. Indeed, it is not always possible in practice to assign a particular episode of any given phenomenon to one or the other, given that the same kinds of experience occur in both, and that people may drift in and out of sleep. In the words of Bart Simpson, I always dreamed of becoming a drifter.

Other terms for hypnagogia, in one or both senses, that have been proposed include "visions of half-sleep", "the borderland of sleep", the "borderland state", "half-dream state", and dreamlets.

Romanticism brought a renewed interest in the subjective experience of the edges of sleep.^[13] And what is more romantic than the ''edges of sleep"?

I am reminded of the lyrics to the song Detour Ahead:

The farther you travel
The harder to unravel the web he spins around you
Turn back while there's time
Can't you see the danger sign?
Soft shoulders surround you

[edit]Tetris effect

People who have spent a long time at some repetitive activity before sleep, in particular one that is new to them, may find that it dominates their imagery as they grow drowsy, a tendency dubbed the Tetris effect.

This effect has even been observed in amnesiacs who otherwise have no memory of the original activity.^[28] When the activity involves moving objects, as in the video game Tetris, the corresponding hypnagogic images tend to be perceived as moving. The Tetris effect is not confined to visual imagery, but can manifest in other modalities also.

[edit]Sounds

Hypnagogic imagery is often auditory or has an auditory component. Like the visuals, hypnagogic sounds vary in intensity from faint impressions to loud noises, such as crashes and bangs (exploding head syndrome). People may imagine their own name called or a doorbell ringing. Snatches of imagined speech are common. While typically nonsensical and fragmented, these speech events can occasionally strike the individual as apt comments on—or summations of—their thoughts at the time. They often contain word play, neologisms and made-up names. Hypnagogic speech may manifest as the subject's own "inner voice", or as the voices of others: familiar people or strangers. More rarely, poetry or music is heard.^[29]

^{Now that is sad that poetry and music are not often heard. Do you think a support group would be helpful?}

[edit]Sleep paralysis

Humming, roaring, hissing, rushing, zapping, and buzzing noises are frequent in conjunction with sleep paralysis (SP). This happens when the REM atonia sets in sooner than usual, before the person is fully asleep, or persists longer than usual, after the person has (in other respects) fully awoken.^[18] Sleep paralysis is reportedly very frequent among narcoleptics. It occurs frequently in about 6% of the rest of the population, and occurs occasionally in 60%.^[30] In surveys from Canada, China, England, Japan and Nigeria, 20 to 60% of individuals reported having experienced SP at least once in their lifetime.^[31]^[32] The paralysis itself is frequently accompanied by additional phenomena. Typical examples include a feeling of being crushed or suffocated, electric "tingles" or "vibrations", imagined speech and other noises, the imagined presence of a visible or invisible entity, and sometimes intense emotion: fear or euphoria and orgasmic feelings.^[31]^[33] SP has been proposed as an explanation for at least some alien abduction experiences and shadow people hauntings. Shadow people hauntings? Orgasmic feelings?

[edit]Other sensations

Gustatory, olfactory and thermal sensations in hypnagogia have all been reported, as well as tactile sensations (including those kinds classed as paresthesia or formication). Sometimes there is synesthesia; many people report seeing a flash of light or some other visual image in response to a real sound. Proprioceptive effects may be noticed, with numbness and changes in perceived body size and proportions,^[35] feelings of floating or bobbing, and out-of-body experiences.^[36] Perhaps the most common experience of this kind is the falling sensation, and associated hypnic jerk, encountered by many people, at least occasionally, while drifting off to sleep.^{[37]How is that for a slag? You hypnic jerk!!!}

[edit]Subjective interpretation

Hypnagogic phenomena may be interpreted as visions, prophecies, premonitions, apparitions and inspiration (artistic or divine), depending on the experiencers' beliefs and those of their culture. Could this explain the Bible?

[edit]Cognitive and affective phenomena

[edit]Receptivity and suggestibility

Thought processes on the edge of sleep tend to differ radically from those of ordinary wakefulness. Hypnagogia may involve a "loosening of ego boundaries ... openness, sensitivity, internalization-subjectification of the physical and mental environment (empathy) and diffuse-absorbed attention."^[38] Sorry dear, its my loosening of ego boundaries. Let me just loosen my ego boundary and slip into something more comfortable. Hypnagogic cognition, in comparison with that of normal, alert wakefulness, is characterized by heightened suggestibility,^[39] illogic and a fluid association of ideas. Such as writing a blog? Subjects are more receptive in the hypnagogic state to suggestion from an experimenter than at other times, and readily incorporate external stimuli into hypnagogic trains of thought and subsequent dreams. This receptivity has a physiological parallel; EEG readings show elevated responsiveness to sound around the onset of sleep.^[40]

[edit]Autosymbolism

Herbert Silberer described a process he called autosymbolism, whereby hypnagogic hallucinations seem to represent, without repression or censorship, whatever one is thinking at the time, turning abstract ideas into a concrete image, which may be perceived as an apt and succinct representation thereof.^[41]

[edit]Insight

The hypnagogic state can provide insight into a problem, the best known example being August Kekulé’s realization that the structure of benzene was a closed ring after dozing in front of a fire and seeing molecules forming into snakes, one of which grabbed its tail in its mouth.^[42]

Many other artists, writers, scientists and inventors—including Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Walter Scott, Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison and Isaac Newton—have credited hypnagogia and related states with enhancing their creativity.^[43]

A 2001 study by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett found that, while problems can also be solved in full-blown dreams from later stages of sleep, hypnagogia was especially likely to solve problems which benefit from hallucinatory images being critically examined while still before the eyes.^[44]

^{Now that is what I call 'problem solving.'}

[edit]Amnesia

A feature that hypnagogia shares with other stages of sleep is amnesia. But this is a selective forgetfulness, affecting the hippocampalmemory system, which is responsible for episodic or autobiographical memory, rather than the neocortical memory system, responsible for semantic memory.^[9] It has been suggested that hypnagogia and REM sleep help in the consolidation of semantic memory,^[45] but the evidence for this has been disputed.^[46] For example, suppression of REM sleep due to antidepressants and lesions to the brainstem has not been found to produce detrimental effects on cognition.^{[47] Could this be the real reason behind the REM breakup? Lesions to the brainstem? Enquiring minds need to know!}

[edit]Daydreaming and waking reveries

Microsleep (short episodes of immediate sleep onset) may intrude into wakefulness at any time in the wakefulness-sleep cycle, due to sleep deprivation and other conditions,^[57] resulting in impaired cognition, amnesia.^{[17] Why waste hours 'sleeping' when you could be microsleeping? How much more work could we get done, if we were only allowed to microsleep? I often wonder that after working a typical 14 hour day.}

Gurstelle and Oliveira distinguish a state which they call daytime parahypnagogia (DPH), the spontaneous intrusion of a flash image or dreamlike thought or insight into one's waking consciousness. DPH is typically encountered when one is "tired, bored, suffering from attention fatigue, and/or engaged in a passive activity." Such as driving, or operating heavy machinery??? The exact nature of the episode may be forgotten even though the individual remembers having had such an experience.^8]

^{I remember getting married, and having children, and then....well it all is a big blur.}

Prod Amin: the final cut, as told to dense milt

2011-11-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

Doreen Grey circa 2010

Originally written in 1980-81 and published by now defunct WESTCOAST MUSIC MAGAZINE.

Doreen Grey- Lenore Herb left our earthly plane in 2010. She was a true visionary outsider, and is missed more than words can express.

(Fuzzy insert of old TV serial)

“Stand back Billy, this is far too dangerous for you!"

"Golly gee, Mr. Milt. No one’s too young for Doreen."

You are about to enter the eyes of Doreen Grey.

Warm your heart with the tale of Vancouver's video visionary who, in three short years, has risen from the dead generations of beatniks and hippies, from humble beginnings as a punk inspired video artist, to her position of primetime doctor of documentation, musical archivist, political activist and musician.

Doreen Grey is quickly gaining a reputation (even as I now write this) for the voice that doesn’t stop when the TV's turned off. She is a firm believer in change), and the powers of youth and women, she is involved with Metromedia, a non-profit society offering community access to electronic media; has been instrumental in the formation of three music/arts cooperatives- Push Art, MODAMU and Unit 306, which promote democracy in the arts and self-promotion.

But Doreen Grey is probably best known for the work on her own Prod Productions. Possessing one of the best archives of new music on the West Coast, Ms. Grey has systematically set out to document the new music developments since their inception three years ago. Many of these bands have since changed so dramatically, or broken up, that these visual records of a musical and social rebellion are invaluable. Her special projects with Point Zero Eight, Braineaters, AKA, Sea Monkey and the Melodic Energy Commission do more than document progress; they stand as video art pieces in their own right.

Her tape High Monkey Noon ("a plea-for understanding in a world too used to misinterpretation") was the first locally made compilation to grace the screen at the MODAMU (Moderndancemusic) historical first video/rock gig. And this is the major point that separates Doreen Grey from other video artists: her accessibility and integrity. Instead of treating the medium as some highbrow experience shown only in small cloistered rooms of art school or the Video Inn, Doreen has taken her work to the masses, showing them at hall gigs, parties and Rohans, making the evening sparkle in the boring time lags between bands.

Doreen Grey was kind enough to peel off a few of the screens sheltering her third eye (a few adults are blessed with a third media eye) delivering a musical hysterectomy of Vancouver in the process.

A play with words: One Ax. Credits Roll...Lights. Camera on Dense Milt:

Dense: Doreen, let's start with your association with Sea Monkey, that fab-duo, and discreetly work our way to the bottom of your musical history.

(Switch)

Doreen: Giving berth to roaming Sea Monkeys (please note: Methods and Procedures for Proper Care and Feeding of Sea Monkeys) was a natural process; another evolutionary step along the starting path from baby bed in the closet, to the time I left home to live with artists and poets, which was after my $20 trip to San Francisco before the summer of love.

I was going to live there, but fate lead me to stay and take LSD. The house we lived in got really notorious, after a drug bust we decided to turn it into an art gallery and hung up a huge sign off the front porch telling everyone to GO AWAY - ARTISTS AT WORK.
Al Clapp, who was working for the CBC, came and did a news hour special, showing the lab and our brightly coloured psychedelic rooms. We were plagued by weekend hippies (that's when I first met some of U-J3RK5 (an older-type college punk band) but soon almost everyone succumbed to being a full time freak. We were also plagued by the usual straight and Right Wing media-types. The final outcome of the 60's was hippy businessmen and the best result was evidenced by the generation that was just growing up then, particularly the free schools.

This was a new attitude toward youth and freedom. Parents started to realize their children didn't need to conform to society to succeed. The next big influence in my life was after the death of my poet-husband, when my daughter was eight months old. Although it was tragic, it resulted in a lot of good, because it made me independent and learn to survive on my own without being somebody's woman or wife; it taught me how to live by, and for myself.

It also showed me how fickle and uncaring the community was. But that was when music came into my life again. The huge gap left by people was taken up by the likes of Lightning Sam drifting up from the boys' stereo in the apartment below. King Luxsac, at a time when nobody had horn players, would play at be-ins to derision and laughter, because they had trombones, alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, as well as the standard R&B instrumentation.

ZOOM to Mr. Milt's shoes. (Randy) Pandora is on Camera.

Dense: Do you think there was or is a lot of creativity in Vancouver?

(Pull back. Pull anything.)

Doreen: There's something about Vancouver - it's a very poetic town.

There is a really strong energy that is like an oozing primal swamp, which lends itself to a lot of creativity. It comes out every ten years or so. And having been born here, I feel sort of blessed with a native vision. San Francisco may be the psychic capitol of the world, but Vancouver has something else that could be very powerful if the right people were to unleash it. I'm saying this because it’s the only level left to people with humanity left in them to come and survive the holocaust. Or we could continue in a type of grim patriarchal dictatorship that leaves everyone pale and ghoul-like with the only color added being red, the blood of the children sacrificed on the cross of consumerism.

(Insert with care)

Dense: I would say this unleashing of energy happened around the start of the initial punk happenings – that spirit of youth, rebellion, and intelligence. What influence did this have on your life?

(Switch- Intense close-up of Doreen).

Doreen: It was music that woke you up, and made your blood circulate; made your nerve endings come alive and your brain start to think. It was like coming alive after being dead for so many years. It was as though I was driven to capture this; I didn't think about why, I just did it. I knew somebody had to do it.

The people in the new music scene are very attractive; I'm not going to say sexually but an energy. (CLOSEUP on Doreen Grey's lascivious grin.) You can look at someone and say they are alive, so alive, you want to be alive too. And you can look at some people and say they are dead.

I could say punk was an excuse to do video, but it was almost as if the two came together. It was technology that also attracted me. I had been through the horror stage when we rejected anything electronic and sat in fear of machines. But this music was so packed with life and energy, that it could transform you. This is sort of a natural process of growing older; you die over and over again in your lifetime. You become a different person. You have to. You become transfigured.

(Fade. Enter religious music).

Dense: It was at this point our Doreen became known as Doreen Grey. She gathered together a group of people to videotape the early punk gigs. This group called Chaos, later kicked Doreen out because of her supposed lack of ability and knowledge. Still obsessed with her vision of capturing this music, Doreen contacted people from her past and began the tapes of major poets, who were visiting for a special series of readings to promote West Coast presses. She received a grant from the Canada Council to finish her post-production.

Included in these tapes were Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McLure, Margaret Atwood, bill bisset, bp nichol, Victor Coleman and Steve McCaffery. Working through Metromedia, she learned the technology of video.

She also learned the politics of control; how the means of production were firmly entrenched in the hands of a small patriarchal dictatorship. Doreen Grey's progress to date is really a testament to the tenacity of her survival in the face of odds faced by most women trying to invade all-male territory.

I asked Doreen about the people who dismiss her work as punk video.

(Camera 1 on her third eye).

Doreen: Some people don't appreciate people who have eyes to see. There was a multitude of creativity happening, that not only had eyes, but got angry and annoyed and thought things out for themselves. Because when you do that, you take responsibility for your own existence. And when you do that, you can’t blame society; you have to start to think.

Thinking is a frightening thing for some people. They’re afraid they going to find something out about themselves they don’t like. Sanity in this society is thought to be someone who is happy, and if you’re not happy and satisfied, there is something wrong with you. I’d always wonder why people didn’t do something, without realizing the reason it wasn’t being done was that I myself didn’t go and do it when I saw the necessity.

And I think that is the crux of everything; if people observe something or think something should be done, and I’m not talking about tearing things apart, going out and beating someone up, telling someone to fuck off, I’m talking about creating things.

As far as I am concerned, I think everyone is a potential artist. Everyone in society can create. When I look through a camera, I’m trying to interpret what the person is saying. I can see it; I can hear it.

When I’m behind the camera I want to make it an extension of me trying to understand. So other people can understand. I’m an interpreter. I try to translate real people and happenings onto videotape and make it accessible to people.

Through the eyes of Doreen Grey: I’d like people to better understand each other.

(Fade) Lone spot returns to Dense Milt.

Dense: The future plans of Doreen Grey, truly a myth in the making, include the set up of a community broadcast station, more community production and starting her own musical group. She wears black, red and certain striped materials, frequently wonders why it’s the poor kids that are the ones who always get sexually abused. (Abrupt cut)

Pause for refreshments.

Hands shook.

When I found this the other day (again), I was amazed how well it stood the test of time. Consider that these words are about 30 years old. Doreen Grey lives on in her work, and in her own words.

A celebration of her life and life's work happens this Sunday, November 6, 2011 at 560 Seymour Street, in Vancouver, BC Canada.

An explanation of the universe outside the room of Endgame

2011-10-31T06:06:00.000-07:00

Hamm: Look at the ocean!
(Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.)
Clov: Never seen anything like that!
Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke?
Clov (looking): The light is sunk.
Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that.
Clov (looking): There was a bit left.
Hamm: The base.
Clov (looking): Yes.
Hamm: And now?
Clov (looking): All gone.
Hamm: No gulls?
Clov (looking): Gulls!
Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon?
Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.)
Hamm: The waves, how are the waves?
Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead.
Hamm: And the sun?
Clov (looking): Zero.
Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again.
Clov (looking): Damn the sun.
Hamm: Is it night already then?
Clov (looking): No.
Hamm: Then what is it?
Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.)
Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray?
Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.

Another day, another dollar. Do we work to live or do we live to work? What is the name of the feeling one has when waking in the dark, it is dark all around, and the dreams of the night have not quite ended, they do not want to end, they refuse to die, they must go on, they can't go on, they go on. I found that word one day, but today I forget the name, it is so important to have a name. I woke with the word "disambiguation". It seems this is a "wiki word" devised to explain a situation where ambiguity arises, so "disambiguation" is now required.

Why can we not have ambiguous, ubiquitous, GRRAY? That is the world I wake upon. The GRRAY world.

And today is payday. The pot at the end of the rainbow, the lucky charm, the end all and be all, and still, it is like pissing in the ocean, for what? To release, to relieve momentarily, but to what affect does the piss make to the ocean?

What are you afraid of?

2011-10-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
Snakes?
Spiders?
Maggots?
Quicksand?
Authority?
Aliens?
Anal probes?
Homosexuals?
Women?
Men?
Having children?
Water?
The number 13?
High places?
Enclosed spaces?
Arms races?
Space?
Jews?
Bankers?
Communists?
Fascists?
Men with knives?
Men with guns?
Having no guns?
Killers in hockey masks?
Having no fun?
Having no funds?
Having no arms?
Having no use of your legs?
Losing your mind?
Losing your child?
Death?
Freedom?
Sex?
Commitment?
Obama?
Palin?
Pumpkins?
Republicans?
Occupiers?
Stephen Harper?
Poverty?
War?
Peace?
People doing drugs on the street?
People doing drugs under medical supervision?
The 1 %?
The 99 %?
Vampires?
Werewolves?
Dragons?
The Future?
FEAR ITSELF?

FREEDOM'S just another word for NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE.
If we have nothing left to lose, why be afraid?

The Killer Inside Me

2011-10-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

It took me 49 years and a heart attack to realize that my own body was trying to kill me. One fateful night in 2007, a bad joke was made about "the widowmaker", and my sister drove 30 miles from the outskirts of Atlanta to a little town called Lawrenceville. After admissions to the hospital ER, my body gave me payback for years of inaction, abuse, and stress.

You remember youth I said to myself; youth was just before this all happened. Now there is a time bomb that threatens to blow up inside my chest. My body conspires to snuff out any last hint of youth, all eyes fixed on the buzzer beater, odds placed on the old ticker in the last race to place, no show, not winning. Slowly you get angry with yourself, and you make empty promises with God, then mad and madder still, and in the end, the body will settle on nothing less than having you actually go mad, stark raving nutters, brain chemicals choked on depression and panic and the ever present thoughts of why me and fuck you, careful with that bottle, put down the axe, Eugene. Finally even my blood is forced to take sides. The Killer Inside wants nothing more than the end of me. Like suicide by cop, the Killer knows if I go,he goes too.

Seeking the Soft Gooey Center

2011-10-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

From our first breath of life, the possibility of unconditional love lives in our heart.

As as we move through this life, we learn to place various conditions upon this love.

Our unconditional love becomes “conditional.”

Over time, the sheer volume and inventory of conditions can develop into what is commonly known as a heart condition,

Conditions act in ways that harden the heart.

Do not despair… you can remove conditions just as you can place them on yourselves.

All conditions are self-imposed.

The original condition is unconditional.

Do you actually think you can protect your heart from breaking?

The conditions we place on ourselves accumulate to harden the heart, which is the physical center of all emotions.

A hard heart will be more fragile and subject to breakage.

It is in the best interests of your health to seek the unconditional.

We are born to seek the "soft gooey center”.

Steal This Blog!

2011-10-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, author Jenni Diski reviews a book on Shoplifting, and offers her own thoughts on why people steal.
The Thrill? Desperation? Hysteria? The Wandering Womb?

The general impression may be that shoplifting is a female crime, although this is not born out by statistics.

One in eleven people shoplift. The ages can range from kids in the candy aisle to professional boosters in their golden years. While people of colour are more likely to be questioned, watched or arrested, it is really a faceless, raceless act that encompasses the whole rainbow coalition.
Walmart announced in 2006 that they would not be prosecuting anyone who stole under $25, so they could concentrate on professional boosters. This is the same company that lobbied for raises in the minimum wage, so their customers would have more money to shop at ...you guessed it: WALMART. It is also the company most responsible for the outsourcing of jobs to China, the credit imbalance, the death of small town America. Moving the Grizzlies to Memphis. (OK, maybe not that one.)
Listen to Jenni Diski: http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/09/26/110926on_audio_diski

MORAL COMPASS
X_________________________X__________________________________X__________________________________X__________________
STEALING CANDY STEALING CANDY FROM BABY ROBBING THE CRADLE CHILD ABDUCTION

X______________________X____________________________X___________________________X__________________
FAKE ID THEFT OF ID IDENTITY THEFT PATRIOT ACT

X_______________________X____________________________X___________________________X__________________
OCCUPY WALL STREET SQUATTING SKIPPING OUT ON RENT MORTGAGE CRISIS

X________________________X____________________________X___________________________X__________________
DOWNLOADING PIRACY SHOPLIFTING WALL STREET

WHO MOVED MY CHEESE?
SEE: http://raineer.hubpages.com/hub/cheese-theft

WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PARACHUTE?
or WHY IS THIS GROUND SO FREAKING HARD?

GOLDEN YEARS or GOLDEN SHOWERS?
HEY MADGE, YOU'RE SOAKING IN IT

SO THIS IS WHAT DEPRESSION FEELS LIKE
or
IS IT REALLY MENTAL "ILLNESS" WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD IS FUCKING CRAZY?

It appears that "THEY" got away with it. The massive loss of pension funds. The sub-prime mortgage crisis. The bank bailouts and subsequent bonuses. Was it the thrill that drove them? Hysteria? Walking Wombs? Are "THEY" really just shoplifters, except that "THEY" lifted the whole shop, the mall, and the parking lot? Have you seen the abandoned malls in the US?
Like scenes from Dawn of the Dead. Eat brains, indeed.

Which finally brings us to the "riots" and "looting".

We express moral outrage and seek to destroy young lives who were drunk and made a mistake. Was this just not a way of combining the shopping experience with the tailgate experience? Upscale dumpster diving?
Simply eliminating the middle man? You've seen the markups at some of these stores. It's highway robbery!
If you want it, here it is, come and get it. But you better hurry cause it's going fast.
Pile it high and watch it fly!

The Social Networks struck back with a "Shame the rioters" campaign.
How about a Shame the Bankers campaign?

Can you identify the criminals?

Lenore then and now

2011-09-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

Lenore then

Lenore now

As you have been everyday, since that fateful day in October 2010, you were on my mind this morning as I awoke.

So strong and so fresh, like you were in the same room. And truly, I do believe you were.

You are with us all, everyday.

People say that, when close friends are gone. They say " they are with us", "I can feel her in my heart", "when I close my eyes I see you there".

And it is true. Yet is also false and such wishful thinking.

Because you are not here.

You are gone.

You are definitely gone.

I can imagine the conversations we would be having. I can almost remember the conversations that we did have. I have a strong sense of the laugh, the Lenore laugh, somewhere between a chortle and a raised eyebrow.

You always knew things, things that other people didn't. And some of what you knew was true and some was just Lenore. But you knew. And God help the non-believers.

Were you perfect? You were perfectly Lenore.

Were you a dangerous woman? As dangerous as you could be.

Were you a mess of contradictions? You were a mess. You were contradictions. You were Lenore.

Were you a raw nerve, a live wire, a divining rod, a reputation that preceded your presence, an idea whose time had not come, a visionary outsider, a royal pain in the ass? You were all those Lenore, and more.

I remember a time when you were upset with the "punk rock royalty", so I gave you a crown. And while some would be offended by this sarcastic crowning, you revelled in it. Of course you knew the crown was given with love, and even though we were laughing at ourselves, we were also mocking this concept of "punk rock royalty" that offended us so.

This morning I awoke and picked up a book "Under the Sign of Saturn" by the brilliant Susan Sontag. I had been given this book the past weekend, when I went with friends to visit with your beautiful daughter Saphira and Charles at their home in Gibsons. The book has a drawing by Constance Fogler of a person climbing a ladder against a giant tree, while two men look on and marvel at the climb or the tree.

The book opens with a quote from Beckett:

Hamm: I love the old questions.

(With fervour.)

Ah the old questions, the old answers,

there's nothing like them!

Endgame

She begins her book with an essay on Paul Goodman, writer of Growing Up Absurd, and many others.

Here is her last paragraph of the essay On Paul Goodman:

"With or without his books, I shall go on being marked by him. I shall go on grieving that he is no longer alive to talk in new books, and that now we all have to go on in our fumbling attempts to help each other and say what is true and to release what poetry we have and to respect each other's madness and right to be wrong and to cultivate our sense of citizenliness without Paul's hectoring, without Paul's patient meandering explanations of everything, without the grace of Paul's example."

I miss not having you to wake up at 7 in the morning with my crazy phone calls.

I miss your Lenore laugh and those eyes that always twinkled.

I miss your fearlessness in the face of injustice.

I miss smoking a joint and playing with words, and drinking wine, and being with our mutual gang of friends.

I miss your artistry, your vision, your outrageous behavior.

The fact that you were so difficult at times, made you that much more lovable at all the others.

I will treasure every minute we spent together.

I will mourn every minute we spend apart.

I will remember Lenore.
And more.
Then and now.

You can change the world in your sleep

2011-08-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Richard Hell said the Blank Generation was not about blank personalities or emptiness or nihilism.

The Blank Generation was a blank slate. It was a promise. We each have the ability to fill in the Blanks.

We can make ourselves into who we want to be; we can surround ourselves with people we like, we can change the world by changing our own world. This is the essential DIY message- Do It Yourself.

Going back further, Bowie helped popularized the concept of re-invention of self- i.e. you can be who you want to be.

Years later, the US Marines told potential recruits- Be all that you can be- The US Marines. I'm not sure if being a US Marine would be "all" that I could be. I am sure that I could never be all that- not at all. It's just not my nature.

Punk rock for me was an awakening of self. A re-birth. A series of dreams and invention. As I said once, "You can change the world in your sleep."

High school was a mass experiment in socialization. And while some people fit in, some didn't. For many people, high school is still the lens and mirror they see themselves through/in. And if high school was the best years of your life, time to get a new life, buddy.

So we made our our own world - a world where we could fit in.

One of the defining moments of the early punk days in Vancouver was a DOA gig at the Cambrian Hall.

Our group of high school misfits had kidnapped a guy in Montana. OK, I guess that needs some explanation. Bastard and Goof went travelling to Montana-essentially a cross country beer run, and stopped for gas in a little shit hole in Montana.
Cowboy Bill came out to pump their gas, and they said wanna blow this popstand and come to Canada? He filled their car and jumped in, and we had ourselves an American pet. We brought him on the rollercoaster on the PNE after many beers, just to see how many rides it took to make him puke.
See, isn't he cute when he pukes? Crazy American kidnappee. Anyway, we took him with us to see DOA and the Dishrags at the Cambrian Hall. The Cambrian Hall was a small community hall run by a Welsh society. In the early days of punk in Vancouver, many gigs were at these ethnic halls, (Japanese Hall, Ukrainian Hall, Odd Fellows Hall- a fitting name for a venue).
The Dishrags opened the show with their punk schoolgirl charms, but things began to get ugly outside. In those days, a biker contingent seemed intent on crashing these gigs, drawn by the assumption that all the rough and tumble of the mosh pit was an open invitation to crack heads.
I can't remember if the police had shown up, but the situation was getting tense. Inside the hall was extremely hot and sweaty. We were all drinking cheap beer, and absorbing the white noise of the early punk gigs. The sound was horrible but we didn't care! This was something new, and we were all there to be a part of this new group of friends.
At some point, DOA took over the stage and told everyone to get inside, they were locking the doors. This kept the loogers out, a circling of the wagons so to speak.
This action sealed the deal. It was US against THEM. We were on the inside and THEY were on the outside. DOA proceeded to bring a freshly painted banner dripping in red paint that said DOA on the stage. Red paint was everywhere.
Their set was like so many of their early sets. Essential one long song of many short songs with the occassional 1,2,3,4 punctuating the start of a new song.
Chuck Biscuits was and is the greatest punk rock drummer of all time. You can take that to the bank. Maybe his brother Dimwit came close, but Chuck was fury, arms and attitude. Easily the best looking member of DOA- now that is not a hard contest to win- a babyface with a scowl and almost a jazz sense of time.
Randy was.....Randy is....a Randy. With all that goes with that name. Old school rock star moves. bass hung low probably hung low himself, who knows? Well a few people do, but not me.
And Joey? Joey was the commander, the leader and he knew it and we knew it. He is a survivor, a canny businessman, a cartoon and a genuine great guy. But that night, he was a GOD.
The show was filled with sweaty guys and girls, beer, red paint and buckets of water thrown on the audience from the stage. The floor of the hall was a disaster, and after the show, the cute little Welsh couple who ran the hall were in tears over what we had done.
And I sort of felt bad for them. But I also felt a feeling of belonging that I had not felt before.

Watching the Detectives

2011-07-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

“There’s a time for reciting poems and a time for fists. As far as I was concerned, this was the latter.”
— Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives

I went to watch the fights and somebody started a hockey game

2011-06-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

"In Canetti’s system, production is nothing but “the modern frenzy of increase.” Since “increase” is a characteristic of crowds, production becomes just another instance, a double one, of the crowd gone wild, for goods and consumers each make up a crowd."

Here we sit broken hearted
Came to sip
but when the crowd departed
The Cup became glass
Our City lost all its Class
to an Unruly Mob
who looted Lord Stanley's fob.
They lobbed
newspaper boxes
and looted the Bay of watches and clockses,
Time stood on its ear
as all watched with horror
The City's aflame,
and now we're the poorer...
For these louts and these goons
Their 15 minutes secure
Like their chums from '94
the hockey game was a blur.

The nimrod natives were restless
fuelled on Booze, and blood on the bongo
And in the flash of a flash grenade
We forgot about Luongo.

It is a "world class city " til
you get poked in the eye
stabbed in the gut,
while on-lookers stand by

We watched the game,

the world watched the fires.

The Prius, the Hummer, the BMW tires

A Mob Dressed in sportswear of Corporate Colors

A Flash Mob all a Twitter, as the twits turned over cars, burned the Red Carpet, and the portable Shitter.

Finally the Mob burned out their rage and in the end,
who remembers our hockey heroes upstaged?

The Canuck's season is over,

to the streets we must clean up

And get ready for football

The Lions host the Grey Cup.

Another Way of Drowning in your own body

2011-06-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18211068?nclick_check=1

"Leonard Lloyd, of Oakley, is a retired marriage and family psychotherapist and former probation officer who said he is familiar with being helpless in the presence of human tragedy.

"The emphasis on inaction by potential rescuers is misplaced," he said. "Every indication is that this man was determined to end his life just as he did. It is tragic that he had come to the point that he no longer wanted to be alive. People close to him tried to talk him out of it, made extra efforts to get him to return safely home, to no avail.

"But the tragedy is not that rescuers did not stop him, but that all previous efforts, such as mental health care at (a local psychiatric hospital) and presumed aftercare were not sufficient to lift his chronic depression.'' "

The emphasis of this story has been the inaction of the firefighters, as well as the crowd of 70 onlookers to a lesser extent.

The real story is not that 70 people and professional life savers failed to help, but as the comment above states, "the tragedy is ....presumed aftercare (was) not sufficient to life his chronic depression."

Chronic depression is a form of drowning in your own body. (One of the highest google searches for this blog is the post I wrote in regards to my father's death from congestive heart failure Like Drowning in Your Own Body)

As anxiety increases to unmanageable levels, we feel a sensation of panic similar to drowning.

Unfortunately, I can speak of both of these experiences on a personal level.

Once as a teenager, the morning after a night of drinking, my buddies and I decided to swim across a lake for a lark.

All very well, until I reached the midway point and realized I was exhausted. I started to sink. When people speak of a "sinking feeling", I know that feeling. There is not much like it. I saw my buddies well ahead of me.

All around me, water. Below me, more water.

Were there boaters out on the lake that could help? No. I knew in the split second (minutes) that I had a choice. To live or not to live. To be or not to be.

I wanted to live. I found the where-with-all to make it to the other side. And when I got there, I was almost blue.

I said to my buddies, let's walk back.

Walk back? There is nothing but mountains, trees, and bears for miles. That is not an option. You have to swim back.

And I did, because I am here today.

Flash forward to 2007. My well documented heart attack. Once again, near death. Once again, deals made with God to let me keep on living.

I said," if you want to take me, take me. But if you have something more for me to do in this life, please let me live."

And I did, because I am here today.

5 months after my heart attack, depression overwhelmed me. Depression was not a stranger, but this time it was different.

This time it was serious, and life threatening. When you feel that sinking feeling to the point that you cannot even make the decision to sink or swim, to want to swim, to want to go on.....well, that is what depression is.

It is not feeling sad. It is not having the blues.

It is overriding panic, anxiety, indecision, and most of all, the feeling that you are not in control of your own body. Not in control of your own mind. Not in control.

Another way of drowning in your own body.

In the words of Samuel Beckett, "I can't go on. I'll go on."

National Donut Day - we bow our heads in silence

2011-06-03T20:02:00.000-07:00

Homer, patron saint of donuts. D'oh Nuts. Second cousin married to second cousin Floor Pie. Closely related to Don't make friends with salads.

Did you know....
14 billion donuts consumed annually in the US.

Did you know...
Top donut consumers are not yellow.

Did you know....
But they do live in the midwest. What else can you do in winter? Make babies?
What do you do when you are too fat to make babies?

Relax. Eat a donut, pal.

Here we see one of the 7 wonders of the world:

The Krispy Kreme Bacon and Eggs Burger.

Seriously, what more is there to say.

Did you know that donuts are the #2 baked good in the United States, second only to bread.

Damn bread.

Is there no justice?

With all the cops eating donuts, you think there might be justice.

Justiced Donuts. Mmmmmmmmm.

HAPPY DONUT DAY!!!!!!!

They attack from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain

2011-06-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

Brain Shivers

What doesn't cure you, may kill you yet.

Akathisia, or acathisia, is a syndrome characterized by unpleasant sensations of "inner" restlessness that manifests itself with an inability to sit still or remain motionless (hence the word's origin in Ancient Greek: from καθίζειν - kathízein - "to sit" with a privative a as prefix expressing negation or absence; literally meaning inability to sit).

Akathisia may range in intensity from a sense of disquiet or anxiety, to severe discomfort, particularly in the knees. Patients typically pace for hours because the pressure on the knees reduces the discomfort slightly; once their knees become fatigued, they sit or lie down.

High-functioning patients have described the feeling as a sense of inner tension and torment or chemical torture.

Jack Henry Abbot (1981),a convicted murderer and author, described the effects of akathisia produced by antipsychotic drugs when given without the necessary medication for side effects (e.g. procyclidine) as may occur in prison and even sometimes hospitals:
These drugs, in this family, do not calm or sedate the nerves. They attack. They attack from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain ... The muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside of your mouth and your jaw locks and the pain throbs. For hours every day this will occur. Your spinal column stiffens so that you can hardly move your head or your neck and sometimes your back bends like a bow and you cannot stand up. The pain grinds into your fiber ... You ache with restlessness, so you feel you have to walk, to pace. And then as soon as you start pacing, the opposite occurs to you; you must sit and rest. Back and forth, up and down you go in pain you cannot locate, in such wretched anxiety you are overwhelmed, because you cannot get relief even in breathing.

—Jack Henry Abbot, In the Belly of the Beast (1981/1991). Vintage Books, 35–36. Quoted in Robert Whitaker, Mad in America (2002, ISBN 0-7382-0799-3), 187.

Brainless by dense milt

2011-05-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday with the Seals- new ABC reality show takes down both Celebrity Apprentice and Survivor

2011-05-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

With Celebrity Apprentice finale and Survivor finales on tonight, enquiring minds want to know who the Navy Seals can hunt down tonight? Gaddafi's in hiding. ABC execs ponder if America will be down with having the "right to exterminate with impunity" as it goes domestic? No wonder Sarah Palin is armed to the teeth. The Seals know better than to take on Mama Grizzly.

How about this scenario?

Navy Seals burst into the Trump boardroom, taking out the Donald, as Obama breaks into regular programming to tell world that real estate terrorist Donald Trump was captured without incident. Unfortunately, Meatloaf, John Rich and Marlee in proving their loyalty to the Donald, are fired. upon.

Cut to Marlee's sign translator. She gave it all for the Donald.

Meanwhile on Survivor, Phillip takes it all.

Can the world get weirder????

The Animal Supermarket

2011-04-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

Apples, tomatoes, lemons and cheese.....yes, we are on our way to the Animal Supermarket. As a young lad, I would listen to these 78's by the bed. Animal Supermarket, Alladin, Big Rock Candy Mountain. Oh.....the buzzin' of the bees in the lemon drop trees.
Of course, the original Candy Mountain had cigarette trees, but I think I prefer lemon drops to cigs.

My mother and father sang these loud with their great car singing voices, regaling us with many songs from the Depression. Hallelujah I'm a Bum, Hallelujah Bum again, Hallelujah give us a handout to revive us again.

Songs of hobos, and bums, and sailors rolling home dead drunk.....by the light of the silvery moon!

My family of seven children were conveniently numbered with the first three coming badda bing badda boom, then a short gap and the surpise redhead in the crackerjacks, another short gap and bing, bang boom me and my two sisters.

Years later I had the 78's transferred to a cassette. Now the cassette languishes in a suitcase somewhere in my garage, if it has not already met an untimely demise.

Why do all these memories come back today? I went to a record collector swap meet today, the first time if I am honest. Scores of Comic Book Guys, and characters.

I picked up some treasures, met some interesting people and here is the song poem from the day's collection:
Some Velvet Morning
Lonely People Do Foolish Things
Look to Your Dreams
She was Poor but She was Honest
My world is cavin' in
What'd I say
What is this thing called Love
Spring can really hang you up the most
On a clear day you can see forever
Everything put together falls apart
Give a damn
I had a dream
I think: therefore I am
Don't say it
I have dreamed
April come she will
The Wonderfulness of you.

It Barely Dawns

2011-03-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

Been up since 5 and can barely keep my eyes open

The cars fade in and out as my mind wanders...

In Antarctica, penguins wade through Kotex

Kleenex and our crap and corruption.

On the other pole, an acerbic bear floats on an icecube.

Between these extremes, a soft gooey center where I sit on the edge of my heated seats.

It will take more than coffee, cocaine or courage to get through this day.

Send Deb Dawson to Coney Island!

2010-08-25T22:43:00.000-07:00

Deb Dawson's latest cartoon, "Ray Condo's Crazy Mixed Up World" is 'World Premiering' at the Coney Island Film Festival at the end of September. It has also been chosen for programming at the prestigious Ottawa International Animation Festival in October.

This is a labour of love that Deb has been working on since the untimely demise of the legendary Ray Condo.

To see her demo reel, go to http://iliketoanimate.com/

Unfortunately, the way arts are funded in our province, it is very hard for creative people to support themselves, especially in a way that allows them to go to New York, even for a World Premiere!

That is why I am appealing to you. Send your donations to help Deb get her cartoon ass to New York; better yet, acquaint yourself with the artist that is Deb Dawson. Say Hey! Does your company or project need a brilliant animator that could use a few paying gigs?

Check out Deb Dawson's website at http://www.iliketoanimate.com/
Or send your cheques payable to Deb Dawson to

Apt C 2404 Guelph Street
Vancouver, BC V5T 3P3

$5, 10, 20, 50, 100- whatever you can spare! Make the world a better place and hire an artist today!

Fingers on keys

2010-08-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

Fingers on keys, resting, waiting for inspiration to move them. Spell it out, let the thoughts flow from mind to fine motor skills, gently pressing on the keys, but not moving, and then moving again as the thought takes flight. I keep hearing what sounds like water running through pipes, a release of pressure, the computer itself is percolating like a pot of 60's folgers from the can, the eruption of caffeinated concentration and then the sigh, eruption, sigh; this is the sound that I would awaken to as a child, better than an alarm- alarms don't have aroma, alarms don't imply mother, and father, and two poached eggs on buttered toast, marmelade or strawberry freezer jam. My mother stretching the food budget with postwar frugality.

And now, hands on keys, fingertips poised to remember, to translate transfer the roar of the rotary phone, the smell of Vitalis on the favorite chair, television that you had to get up out of the chair to change the channel, My Mother the Car, Dark Shadows, It's About Space, The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space, as tv tried to make sense of our increasingly fragmented world. A time when news was news. When war was bloody and on television, not sequestered and embedded, but raw screaming bloody children and monks on fire, and assassinations, and rye and ginger, and sliding down a mountain of Montana snow on a flying saucer.

All this and more brought to life again, by the mere placing of fingers on keys.

Shit happens....for a reason

2010-08-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

Shit happens.....for a reason. Shit meaning stuff, meaning bad karma, meaning bad events, meaning cancer? Because "everything happens for a reason". Or so I said to my wife in the car, who replied, I don't buy that. Bad things happen and then people try to make sense of it, by reasoning, it was meant to be. Or I deserve it, or God knows better than we do, you see, there is a plan!
Or is there? Our lives are ruled by randomness. The only guarantee of success is persistence, and luck.
Or birthright. As we know from looking at all the great talented suicides of even recent history, talent is no measure of success. Far from it. It is often a curse in a world that is increasing becoming stupider and stupider by the minute.
So does shit happen for a reason- well, if that candy makes your life sweeter, or that dream makes the next morning bearable, or that old time religion helps you to screw your neighbor's wife and cheat at business, only to be pious and proud on Sunday, well then shit happens for a reason.

Decline of the Art of Cake-Baking

2010-08-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

A terrific peal of laughter from the others was released by my "Decline of the Art of Cake-Baking." The matter was as follows: for a time giant, larger-than-lifesize cakes appeared to me. Like standing in front of a lofty mountain, the cakes were so gigantic that I could only see part of them. I launched into detailed descriptions of how such cakes were so consummate that it was not necessary to eat them, for they immediately stilled all appetite through the eyes. And this I called "vision bread" [Augenbrot, literally "eye bread"]. http://www.wbenjamin.org/protocol1.html#IX

Last night went to an opening for Rosmond Norbury, and was instructed in a good way by artist Cornelia Wyngaarden on the origins of the word Flaneur, leading me to read up on Walter Benjamin. And we know, it is all about the Benjamins!
This great site http://www.wbenjamin.org/ has many of his writings available to read. Drawn like the proverbial fly on the wall to ....I see that Benjamin and his fellow travellers in thought wrote a book On Hashish, about their experiences with the drug.

I particularly loved the idea of The Decline of the Art of Cake-Baking and "vision bread", as I have always said "we eat with our eyes", and "never eat anything bigger than your head".
If the way to a good man's heart is through his stomach, and your eyes are bigger than your stomach, and the eyes are the window to the soul, then close your eyes, dream of diets, and hug yourself, because life is full of crap and cruelty, and every good boy deserves fudge.
There. I've finally said it. It needed to be said, and I said it.