Mixed Greens.

This essay was written and is being used by permission. Father Ignacio Kotsakis, pictured above (not a pseudonym), is the author of the treatise you are about to read–:

Begin transcript:

“I am a cold war baby and for what it’s worth the Soviet Union used to be an altogether appropriate and useful reflection of our collective imaginations; kinda made you wipe your nose on the curtains more carefully, so to speak…. Some may say, that it’s still the case, that nothing has changed, but they would have to prove it and show me these are not simply more opiated promises. From my vantage point as an abbot, this country and most of its western approaches have become much more socially and religiously conservative; and I don’t mean it compared to the sixties, or in response to its excesses. It is not, as they meekly proclaim, the other arc of the pendulum’s swing, a spasmodic twitch, a reappraising of the consequences.

I won’t use the current administration to bolster my pieces, since so many have already made very good cases against these new century national polices, but simply put, these times are not, as they pretend to claim, a counterpoint to an overly liberal society; but a long standing need which man seems to indulge in, and often recklessly; to approach reason and humanists from an irrationally privileged and entitled need to dominate our fellow bedmates.

In the case of the United States, this was brought on by race and the perceived abuse of the concessions the majority felt they had made in good faith . Loosing some of their hard fought cultural, economic and political prizes reduced them to these great seething and consumptive masses. Law abidingly, they relented, because it had thankfully been civically ingrained, but they only did so because they intuitively sensed that the anger and hatred, of their formerly enslaved roommates, needed to be peaceably moderated. The possible consequences of these continued inequities might just be too eminently catastrophic and brutish, to be confused for more of the same. The rapid growth and economic prosperity of the 50s and 60s were about to be wiped clean, concessions had to be made, but not without consequences. Legions sat bitterly and passively waiting for a lovable and popular Moses, to deliver them from the compromises they felt they had been forced to make. And It came, ever so cleverly disguised as an enlightened sheep, in economically lupine clothes; but best of all it was sincere, self convinced and soothingly reassuring to these fatherless masses.

The political shift began to swing from a society where the individual pretended to be prized and adulate for questioning the state, to elevating him for his ability to beat it, cash it and love it. In short order, opportunists, gurus and self anointed abbots began the oft mentioned and inevitable process of ridiculing the very ideas, they had espoused with such evangelistic and vigorous zeal. They began to espouse commercial incentivistic as a better and more patriotic way. From idealism to embracing “The Prince” in less than 30 days. Injecting religiosity into the brand, to transform it into a new form of political thinking, I might venture to name: “National Social Narcissism”.

A political ideology based on speculatory enthusiasm, religious persuasions, self evasion; and on the religiously implicit acceptance, of an eminently pliable and disinterested populace; geographically gated and isolated, and continuously marinated in a mildly anxious chemical haze, masquerading as change.”

PS: I also found this while surfing.

Anonymous....

It seems that, as of late, many bloggers have decided to do so anonymously. This prompted me to think about anonymity as the act of expressing ones thoughts and ideas without revealing ones identity seems rather cowardly. At the end of the day, there are very few reasons for anonymity, unless your life or those of your friends of family are imminently threatened by the powers that be.If your clients or your boss look at you sideways because you have opinions and would like the world to know how you feel but need to do so secretly, you'd better be running for your life on a daily basis. Otherwise, don't bother, we are not interested, especially since for all we know, suspending disbelief, in your case, would only be worth it if you are exceedingly talented, comedic or excentric. Photographers, editors, art directors and all other trumpeting prophets of the creative classes shouldn't have to hide behind super secret cloaks to speak their piece.

If you fear that your job or your reputation might be compromised by what you have to say, I would rather you remain silent instead of rambling on about the mundane. Unfortunately, that's often what it amounts to: Opinions devoid of any information which for purely economic reasons need be protected by a vail of secrecy. Do I really need to anonymously know what photographer turns you on or wether digital is better than film? If you are going to wear a magical mantle of clandestinity, you'd better have something earth shattering to say, or shut it. Are you really, who you seem to say you is, or aunt Wilma masquerading for kicks. If it's adrenaline you seek, try freelancing......

In the meantime, I did a little research on Anonymity and came up with a few links which I found worth mentioning. Anonymous Photo Editor. Anonymous Photographer. And why often times a lawyer's brief turns out be more interesting than those less than stimulating anonymous bloggies.

"On a bag of frozen peas".

I had originally posted this poem last June about my friend Steve, who I assure you, is nothing but an entirely fictionally character and in no way bares any resemblance to himself or anyone else. I had appropriate his name and relative likeness to allow me to post the original poem below, which had been crafted to reflect my uninformed and entirely fictional views and opinions of the Art World; of which I am not a bona fide, plenipotentiary and recognizably known member. Nevertheless, since it was one of my best poems "ever", it really needed to be re-posted in its original form, devoid of potentially and offensively injurious references meant to humiliate, denigrate or disparage Steve's character, honor or person.

I shall post it first, before the perniciously ironic rant directly following this short, yet lyrical narrative epic sonnet(!). Furthermore, should you decamp and choose to browse greener, less obscure pastures, I shan't blame it entirely on you, but rather on the interminably long vituperations which follows this decidedly and purposely rank poetic odyssey. It is, I admit, long and tortuous even to those of you who might have by now become better accustomed to my professional and personal sense for self-ridicule. Those of you who may not have taken the time to ease into these mindful peregrinations might find it pretentious, offensive and bitterly pompous :

The Poem:

The Art World ; it’s like….

It’s like snatch; but sweeter It’s got swatch; but sooner It’s got stash; but bigger

It’s like smack but stronger It’s like you; but better It’s like Yak; but butter

It’s like; nice but later…. It’s got racks; like “Hooters” It’s got back; like looters

It’s like grass and fiddlers… It’s like ass, and fingers It’s like mass but longer….

Next:

I decide to remove the second part of this entry and will probably not be reposting it. I am a big fan of my own ramblings but finally decided against it.

Forty three (.Y.)...!

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Today is my forty third birthday. Since I am taking the day off, I figured I'd just lay around and enjoy what turned out to be a warm and sunny October day. Bright and early, my mother called to wish me well, second only to Adrienne, how sweet it be? *

Anyhow.... later today, between 10 and 10:30, I drove to Berkeley to once again ingest the world's largest frozen bucket of acidophilus and ice cream headaches. As I stood there, nearly unconscious, helplessly wolfing some type 2, I came to thinking that not so long ago; twenty three years, to be more or less exact; that it was I, who felt remarkably like these misshapen college grads....... Not to be outshunned between classes, I sat on the UC's lawn to take in the sun; a vain and failed attempt at warming the temperature within and these reptilian brains therein. Just then, and not a decade to soon, I suddenly and inexplicably recalled that my newfound friend "Mauzner" had Saturday mentioned: "Don't you know, you can mail order whores on Craigslist !". **

Not to be outdone, I picked up my iPhone(a gift) and started surfing Craigslist for pussy.... and then some, Aie papi!!!...... Men seeking woman, woman seeking man, men seeking men, women seeking women, LGBTs seeking men, men seeking LGBTs, humanity seeking relief, morning glory, that sort of thing..... First off, I can't believe I did not know about this until last saturday evening, what's wrong with me? It's not like I have never surfed Craig's crevasses or something. Nevertheless, there it is, under "services", between "event" and "creative". If that's not a happy ending, I wouldn't know it, if it were to hit me!

It's my birthday and I can only imagine what you're thinking, but no, I did not indulge and call one in. I am like Mauzner, afraid of diseases, and given the circumstances and the collegiate supernunnery surrounding me, I wisely opted not to call it in. But now that I think of it, this here fortuitous scene, might make for the perfect symbiosis of iPhone advertising, that thirty second clip on your TV screen. Mauzner, "it's my birthday gift to you, kid".... "Think of it as your big "YouTube" directorial debut, baby"!

Scene one: iphone fades in.... quirky iPhone acoustics chimes in....dirty little finger points and clicks on the mapquest GUI......dirty little finger on the mapquest GUI searches for pussy...." "san fran frisky shemale + seeks + dirty Latin" "...... map zooms in and there you is .... "gorgeous shemale Latin", so beautiful, and functional too, papi !..... dirty finga scrolls and calls..... iPhone tunes in, cute capitalist music fades to..... iPhone ringing..... gorgeous shemale Latin picks up her phone....." Aie papi, jew wanna play, jew wanna play papi"?

For those of you, who like me, have not had that Browse me long time feeling of these erotic services birthday wishes that is Craigslist, I highly recommend it. Just remember that if you are not a member of the student body, or faculty, and are browsing for craigslist's pussy on the premises of the UCB; it is wise to cover your dirty doings with an overcoat or any other, similarly shaped, protective shield. And BTW,not that you don't know this already; in this life, or the next, they don't offer rebates for pussy; on my or anyone else's birthday..... sadly......

Happy birthday to me anyway. "Thank you Mommy, I could never have written this entry without thee....!"

*My 12 year old son, Raphael, looked dazed and confused, when I asked him if he wasn't forgetting a little something. After thinking it over he blurted out, "Happy retirement". I came within an inch of turning coffee into a finely aerosolized mist. Where he got that idea beats me, but it might forever be, the best birthday greeting I have ever received.

**(Now, now, I would not want to start any rumors or anything but knowing a little something of his personality(he lives in my neighborhood in San Francisco) and having photographed him a few times for honey, I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't sometimes tempted to call in a few "ladies", to satisfy his needs for a little "R&D").

My new favorite ASCCI: (.Y.) . It means big tits.

"Ken, Alec, with this ring, I wed thee"....

One fantastic advantage of keeping a blog which nobody reads, is that freedom of expression, is just another word for nothing left to fear. Having said that, this fantastic voyage would not feel complete if I did not stick one in the ribs and shoot me in both feet while I am at it ; especially so, since I am so blatantly expropriating the language, if not the groovy feelings of the sixties. A few months back I got to thinking that I could not, for the life of me, figure out why Alec Soth is such the darling of photography's establishment, so beloved by the photographically minded masses. Granted, the man is a perfectly competent, if not a capably bearded photographer; but beyond that I can't tell him apart from his large format documentary brethrens, which are, as we now know, all the rage.

Knowing full well that my present choice of words are remiss, I can't help but believe that if you were to blind test his pics for originality, to the uncognoscenti, they might have a hard time telling him apart from the rest of the large forma-tees. And then it hit me, "Americana", he's got that all American thing going, that home town, hand on heart quality. I get it, he documents, in a Fine and Arty way, the hearts and minds of the beast; like Geographic used to when they drank Martinis.

You can hang it in a gallery, without attracting the kind of shame and contempt otherwise reserved for idiot savants and country bumpkins. After-all, who wants to wax poetic about the place you have so desperately and recently escaped from last week, and expect a gallery to take you under its clean, white and downey wings. Like telling mommy she's the best thing that ever happened to me, but without being overheard, mocked and ridiculed by the literati, like getting in touch with your feelings for free, play little league, or vote libertarian when no one's looking.

I could not, for the life of me, write an entry about this intuitive and ever so fleeting feeling until good old Ken Burns, the Lawrence Welk of documentary film making, premiered "The War" nationally, all across the country. There you have it, the perfect twins.... I couldn't believe it, I finally had that critically acclaimed hook, so desperately needed, to knock those two birds with one teeny tiny stick.

Ken Burns is to Alec Soth what Alec Soth is to documentary. It's Americana, but very still. Pan right, pan left, pick a universality and stick to it, squeeze in in a few tears and some scratch and sniff, and there you have it, success; where there was none, now there is. A little heartstring made that fat lady sing. For my money, Alec Soth should have stuck to Bogota and the shadows, where his work might have actually blossomed quite nicely. Nice timing though, I must admit. All the power to both of them, they deserve it.

Piriformis Syndrome.

In this entry, I am actually going to try to be both serious and informative. Hard to believe....but here it is:

In the past couple of years I have been in a hell of a lot of pain from what has recently been diagnosed as Piriformis Syndrome. If it sounds radioactive, it is. Not in a U238 kind of way but it radiates like a bitch and if you have never experienced chronic pain, do I not recommend it, even to those amongst us who profess to enjoy it. If by some chance, nature did not endow you with an ounce of empathy, this here: tear jerking, fist clenching, teeth gnashing, and all consuming pain, will make you wish you never existed. And the best part of it is, it's on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and every sorry ass day of the year.

Why am I telling you this? Fear not, I do not need your pity or sympathy, even-though I'll take your money, but if by some stroke of fantastic luck, you are reading this, and are sitting at home and contemplating the old adage, that dropping like a stone has its advantages, read these here phrases before you decide to leap off the ledge and into the bottomless pit (btw, in you are going to do it anyway, remember that you must jump from at least the 4th floor, to ensure a sufficiently traumatic death? .

As I was saying, in October 2006, I decided that I had had enough of this grief to actually do something about it. I went to see a MDs, and as it turned out, not just one but many. At the time the pain was severe but not yet devilish. I had just finished crossing the country and the Pacific several hundred times, in a three month traveling frenzy, which had aggravated my aches and pains enough to warrant a trip to the clinic. I started to believe that since I was spending all this dough on health insurance, why not give medicine a spin, no more barin' and grinnin'.... let's get some relief, you've earned it....

Long story short, the pain got worse and worse, the MDs got more and more confused as to why my supposed Sciatica had no visible diagnosis, no herniated disc or spinal stenosis. Hell, at this point, since we can't figure this out lets shunt him off to the pain clinic; it's what we do when our protocols are no longer useful and we'd rather not look into it, it's probably all in his head anyway. Being the type A that I am, and a strong believer in answers to everything, I simply refused to believe the way this was ultimately going. I decided to enroll my friend Scott, the MD, who one early summer day came bouncing out of the San Francisco mist to casually mention, that I ought to get Botox injections: " I read a paper recently that Botox injections can be quite effective, if, as you seem to so vociferously believe, that it's a muscular, not a skeletal thing". A quick search (Botox + Siatica) on the internet and there it was, the number three, the trinity(actually six). There are, in turns out, not two but three possible diagnosis for this wretched sciatic misery; and here is my word for it: Piriformis Doloris Vendictis. I won't describe it here, just go to these and the other links, I am so generously providing alongside this entry to remind you that medicine is protocol based; to believe in your instincts and listen to your pain, not the physicians who think they seen it all before; just another patient, like every other miserable wretched case before it. My condition, it turns out, should have been well known to the MDs who treated me, it's not that uncommon, but thanks to the time constrained and generally disinterested MDs who treated me, I was well on my way to rotting, alongside all the other unlucky corpses haunting the halls of the chronic pain.

Epilogue: I received a Botox injection in the Piriformis last August fourth, and am doing better. Not out of the woods yet, as a lot of physical therapy and possibly many more corticosteroids and Botox injections will be needed to deliver me from this nightmarish affliction, but at least now, it has a name and can be treated like the bitch that it is.

Below, are must reads, if you have any kind of sciatic like nerve pain radiating down your lower limbs. Even if your MRI shows signs of herniation or synopsis, as it often will; do not discount the Piriformis, and mention it to your MD, as a very real possibility. Send him/her the links and nip it in the bud, before it breaks your spirit, as it eventually will as the longer a diagnosis takes, the greater your chances of going insane in the membrane.

Take it from me, chronic pain is unmitigatedly the closest thing to absolute misery. If you have it, wether or not your Piriformis is the culprit, you have my deepest sympathies; I feel your pain, I really do mean it, even if I often profess to the contrary.

"Skakespians".

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As promised, I will now attempt to dissect the killer formula behind these starlets' photographic replicas. The power, the éminence grise, behind these two pixies, I so generously posted in today's and last Tuesday's entries. BTW, I have no idea who Josie Maran is, but I am familiar with Jessica Alba and of the ongoing struggle for cultural hegemony, between hers truly, and Miss Jessica Biel. If I am not mistaken, these two young women are being currently toted as America's hottest shakespians, or rather, "best in show", in a supporting role as a bathing beauty.

Notwithstanding this aside, and in order to properly complete this task, I undertook to partner with a literary companion to search the internet and settled with a symbols dictionary, so as to remain as objective and un-lascivious as might be expected of a male of this specie. One who could infuse this entry with credibility and referential certitude, as oppose to vaguely self referential ineptitude.

Without much thought or premeditation, I briefly transcribed into words what I was seeing on screen. Also, and as previously mentioned, least we forget; I stumbled upon these screen saving beauties, on the same website where as lady luck would have it, I also found a very atonal, Middle Eastern version of Nokia's iconic ring tune. (Furthermore, and as you may already know, cell phone manufacturers are forced to devote a lot of their precious, and limited global resources, to transcribing their "flagship" ring tones into other languages, and craft multi-culturally appropriate Pavlovian melodies, to win, the hearts and minds of the masses).

Josie Maran(Tuesday the 18th): Image includes three obvious and visible references.

Sunset :

As the orbit of Venus, is closer to the sun than is the earth's, it is never seen more than 48 degrees from the sun. This means that Venus is visible as the Morning star or Evening star in the immediate vicinity of the Sun. Thus Venus can only be seen from earth just before sunrise in the morning or just after sunset in the evening. As you can see, the use of the sunset, as a background for the Josie Maran image, wether, conscious or unconscious can be easily associated with Venus, the goddess of beauty, love and fertility.

Rocky Seashore (Ocean scape included)*:

As for the rocky seashore behind her, I will have to subjectively interpret its meaning, as a quick search on the internet did not reveal any interesting references, or reasons why the creatives, behind this image, decided to incorporate it in the shot. Based on my knowledge of classical texts, and secure in the knowledge that water is supposed to represent nature's passive element and is the ultimate solvent, I may be correct in presuming that the viewer is to feel non-threatened by this beauty but not so much so as to render her bland and unexciting.

The rocky shore line, is, I presume, meant to spice it up so to speak, infuse the scene with a bit of danger and mystery. Josie wants to be remembered as the girl next door, who might also, just as well spank you if you misbehave. She wants to pack enough of a punch so that you'll keep a close but admiring distance. She's just out of your reach, someone else's treat. Unless, that is, you can in turn prove that, you are indeed equal to her needs. A task, not so easily achieved, as the competition for such a beauty is stiff. In order to join her archetype on these rocky shores, you will have to earn it, and prove to this Aphrodite, that you can swim.

And what about that autograph, which also happens to be our third and final peek: After-all, she may seem unapproachable and beyond reach, but still, she is a human being and would not want you to think that she does not appreciate her legions of teenage fans. Think of it as a kiss on the cheek, a smile, a look back and a wink as she steps into the limousine.

As for Ms. Alba, I would venture to think that the image above is meant to have you believe that she'd be a better mother to your kids than Josie, who, if you're not jealously careful, might run off with Neptune, when you're not looking. Frankly who would blame her, have you seen how well hung Neptune is? and from the looks of you, all you've got going; besides that hair piece, is a few moles and that gun you're holding.**

* To separate these two, into distinct symbolic representations, seems at this point in time, inappropriate. **A Corsican Welcome.

Audio blogging is here to stay.

I was able to find good text to voice software, and with a bit of work, I managed to find the very tone and voice, this blog is meant to emulate. I shall soon, be slowly transcribing, each and every entreaty. So, if you like reading these entries, please listen to them, it will add to the overall feeling. They are now, and will be, far more representative of my personality.

"Dear Leader", the Audio Blog, is coming.

It is my great pleasure to inform you that I will be transcribing all past and future blog entries into embedded audio files, available right here, on this blog. This thecnology will allow you to listen to my entreaties instead of having to actually read each and everyone of them. A voice generating robot will be performing this thankless and dreadful task, so that I, may not have to.A word of caution, you might have to listen very carefully. As of yet, I am unaware of any free, Mac compatible software out there, which might do a better job than Fred....Also known as the "Stephen Hawking".

Ring Toons.........................................................................

[display_podcast] A quick note please: To experience this entry, as it was meant to be, it would be best to click the MP3 above. A pop up will appear, which you will need to forcibly shove aside, so as not to obscure your reading pleasure. Until such a time as I can figure out how to play it automatically, you will need to comply with this directive. Thank you, the management....

Begin:

On a whim, I undertook to search for Arabic ring tones and in the process of expanding my search, as is so often the case, I quickly became mired in a tangled web of baroque web pages, MP3s, MIDIs, pop ups, Dubai mortgages and Arabian real estate.

To my here disbeliefs, the Muezzin's MIDIs is, if well intoned, not a bad way to shake off some dream sleep and double check, how red delicious, Kabul's sunsets might look to the Almighty™, after a long day. In the meantime, while browsing afore mentioned website I nearly picked up my pen to sign these dotted lines: "Allah is defined as the ONE who ALONE, without partners or helpers created all that IS created in creation, either known or unknown." Sounds like an all rights grab to me; and because we should be so lucky, his excellency, rimes with intellectual property...... How's about 72 attorneys.....?

While desperately trying to extirpate myself from a dozen web pages, I inadvertently followed a link and came upon afore posted, Kafir beauties; which, to my manly delights, featured scantily clad celebrities. Cell phone mementoes, that to many a teenage dream screams: "Call me...!". Afterall, it does not hurt to dream a little, every time you hear that ring tone and pick up the phone; like snacking between meals, sneaking a peek, or coping a flat screen, when no one's looking..... If only that damn LCD didn't fade to black, with such annoying regularity.

As an aside, later today, I shall also explore why we primates find such images so compelling, and how they are, ever so deftly constructed to lure so many fishes with nothing but a hook and no bait. Why is it that images of such enticing and classically trained young ladies, always seem to say: Why isn't she calling.? Some day, I promess, I shall reveal, lay bare and peel back, the many layers of this cake. Trust me, nothing but good things awaits us in this future and upcoming journey.

Nevermind Fifty Ks.

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These are my great grand parents on my mother's side. I shot this framed image in my ninety four year old grand mother's bedroom last month, in Milaria, Corsica. I dropped by the village for a couple days to visit her and found this propped up, on her bedroom set. It was nice to see that even at 94, she gazes at their image every night, before she goes to bed and may be dreams of rejoining their warm embrace. I do not see any reason why I should not have 4x6 of my mother when I am her age but it was surprising to see this portrait come out of the woodwork, and remind me, that my grandmother's memories go back so far in time, that they seem down right alien, ancient and distant to this grand child's eyes. Time will render us all the same, and our descendants, our grand kids even, will look up some day and see us, not as we were but dead.

I would not mind owning portraits of my ancestors circa 1334, but I fear that that time has come and gone without momentoes, pics or snap shots. How rude, how thoughtless, how very, how to say, Dark Ages.... Nevermind them, for if all goes well, my descendants will be able to gaze up, five centuries from today, type in a password, hack my DNA and bring my carcass back to life, and give me another shot, at living on this planet; or the next.

Since I would not want to be a burden, I'd be willing to provide enough cash to actually live off the interest, even five hundred years from now. In the meantime, I might get there by investing my last dimes to cryogenetically store my seeds in geostationary orbit , which would, with any luck be launched back to earth at a prescribed time and date and reconstituted, for a small fee, by future scientists. If five centuries seem like a long time, a downright and boringly longtime, don't worry, it shouldn't feel any longer than a good night's sleep. By the time you rejoin your descendants, even at 5% compounded, you might even be rich. Like Social Security, but without the bitterness of government pay day.....

Come to think of it, this might make the makings of a trashy sci-fi; where only those with enough cash would be reconstituted to live and work another ten decades. The rest of us who could not or would not provide well enough for our futures would simply wither away and die alone, in orbiting planetary hospices, shot into intergalactic space, where may be some other race would find us and bring us back to life to work us to death as sex slaves, or digging amonium trenches, four million light years away.

Anyway, the possibilities seem compoundingly and endlessly hopeless...... Or better yet buy some government CDs, have yourself cryogenetically preserved along side Mickey, and there you have it, when your future mother drops you from her vageen, you'll be sitting pretty, richly compounded, on pile of money*. Grown up, eat candy, blow half your savings on Crystal, crack and hot babes, blow your brains out, repeat as needed. If all keep on going well, invest in the future once and you won't have to ever do it again. What's life without death, and death without compound interest.

*$1000.00 at 5% For 500 years= $ 39,323,261,827,218.67

Future Salamis of America.

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Two things for Friday Sept Sixth:

Thing One: I just took a nap for no other reason that I had to drive to Berkeley to deliver some promos for bulk mailing. After that, I went for a walk through UC, the university. Like an old man on his afternoon walk, my hands behind my back, I reviewed the offerings laid out on small tables where students proposed to let others, not I, join various ethnicities, to presumably once again bond and share a common ancestry, find solace amid a sea of unfamiliar kissters and grins. As if that was a barrel of monkeys, or something.

When I first moved to this country, when I was fourteen, it never failed, I had to be introduced to every French, Dick and Harry who happened to live within a 200 miles radius of me. Wether I like it or not I had to play the little diplomat, shake their sweaty paws and prove to the peanut gallery that indeed we were French, not some knock off, some cheap Chinese copy. That generally was achieved by muttering a few words, twirling our mustaches and cursing "Les Roast-Beef ".

As if sniffing a terrier's crack somehow smelled better to another terrier than a pug's posterior or a shepherd's ass. So, as I was saying; I strolled by so many recruiting stations that I became frightened and had to turn back, retrace my steps, return to my car and begin the short ride home to Saint Francis; but not before noticing the Future Business Leaders' hermit crab convention and the Future Accountants of America 's kissing station. Like a fucking Carny, but scary.... I quickened the pace and then down right ran as fast as my shackles would let me.

Thing two: When you are forty two, going on forty three, you'd better not succumb to the culinary temptations of Telegraph avenue, which as you might have presumed, and rightly so, are chuck full of tricks and treats for teens. I made the mistake of ordering a large frozen yogurt on this empty stomach. Large frozen treat came with a paddle, for scooping, and could barely be dragged, never-mind carried. It came oozing, out of the frozen yogurt machine, all 50 gallons of it and had to be consumed alone, with no other posse or company than my own.

Needless to say, on the bridge back to San Francisky, my lids were droopy and my killer driving instincts severely diminished. I hopped into bed, closed my eyes and threw off the main switch. When I woke up, I did not really wake, just dreamed that I was waking and cutting myself a piece of salami. As I was chewing I came to realize that there normally is, no cutting board or salami in my bedroom; let alone on my bed, at least not in the past several years of domesticity. I decided to double check that what I was tasting was real, not some fucking dream, that it was indeed a piece of dried and smoked meat I was indeed, masticating. That did it, and next thing I know, I am truly awake, with both my hands deep inside my mouth, searching for that salami treat I could have sworn I was chewing.

Thing Three: Look up, not at the night sky, just the top of this page and behold the galaxies. I love this image. Every point, every spec, a galaxy. I even tried to run the dust and scratch filter in Photoshop and momentarily cleaned a few billion errand stars, clusters and galaxies. But not to cause, any real, intergalactic damage, I, promptly, commanded Z, and reverted to saved, right away.

Resume

I was out of town from August 16 until September 2nd. I shall be resuming blogging operations as soon as I get settled into my unfortunate but necessary daily routine. Thank you for understanding.

Yepiphany....!

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I know, epiphanies are not supposed to be casually ignored and that you're supposed to do something with them like transform your life or cash them in, but who has time to wander beyond these sudden intuitive realizations, when you can just as well dismiss them.

For the most part, if I am lucky enough to have one, I tend to forget about them and move on, hoping that they'll find their rightful place, somewheres in the cerebral layer cake, to seamlessly labor on my behalf and the community of ideas I call "Me". It is hoped that whatever fabulous idea I might have had managed to snap right in, so that someday, I'll be able to have the motherload of all divine realization and take up my rightful place in the food chain; move up the water column, so to speak, to feast on sardines, not that krill and algae, I've been having.

Anyway, when I was in college, bathed in clouds of Maryjane, cassette tapes, cream of wheat and salami, I had an epiphany about music, which over the years I have dutifully put to the test of time and space.

Here it is, in a nutshell. If it seems mundane or drug induced, please don't blame be, just the THC. As I was saying it suddenly occurred to me that besides lengthy delays, which must invariably precede any self respecting epiphany, and which I am forced to reproduce here; to do the eye opening process justice, you cannot truly understand music until you have traveled to its country of origin and gazed upon its landscapes and geography.

I cannot recall the number of times I traveled somewhere while listening to the local music when all of a sudden it all made total sense to me by simply opening my eyes wide and eyeballing the topography.

One such example of many a musical epiphany was traditional Chinese music. After traveling to China for the first time in the mid eighties it suddenly became beautiful, melodius and sweet. My brain somehow combined what it was witnessing with the music and suddenly comprehended a music, which had heretofore, been inaccessible to my ears. A picture is worth a thousand notes.

Saturday Night Lite.

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I had forgotten how much fun it is to shoot what's on broadcast TV. In the seventies and the early eighties, a lot of photographers built their entire careers on taking pictures of what was on the telly. The resulting images are somewhat gimmicky and never that interesting, but undeniably fun and entertaining. At the end of the day, the appropriative ease and speed with which you can take pictures of television screens is just too much of a no brainer; which is not to say that ease and speed are not photographically good things. I make enough sweeping generalizations as it is already. Come to think of it, TV stills are to photography, what comic books were to Pop Art in the sixties, it's seen better days. Nevertheless, I am sure that somewhere, somehow, a lone genius is reviving the genre, and is being ignored because of flippantly opinionated people like me.

Still, I would not mind seeing a new wave emerge from that Phoenix' ashes. Problem is, flat screens don't flicker, which is unfortunate since half the fun is working with and around the cathode's flickering rays. On top of it all, to add insults to injury, digital cameras are making the process ever cheaper, quicker and easier.

Case in point, last saturday night, after returning from Slideluck Potshow, which included my work in the mix, I sat in from of my TV, with my girlfriend's new point and shoot and captured "digitally", close to six hundred pics while she slept next to me. Out of those six hundreds, I'd venture to say that almost half turned out nicely, even if they are, in my mind, devoid of value. The other three hundreds fell victim to flicker and delay.

So, out of guilt and shame, I further combined some of them into diptychs to feel like I was actually being creative, as opposed to some late nite fingering perv, pleasuring the trigger for leisure. As for screen stills, the ones I like the most are those where the photographer steps back to include the TV dinner, a fork and a spoon. Something I did not do. In order to make this photographic sub-specie more interesting one would need to create a story board and hunt down images* that best fit the script to create "cathodovelas" using found images available on TV, Youtube or DVDs. If I feel like it some day, I might experiment with it, as for now, I'll stick with large format. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be a bad way to spend an idle saturday night.

*which I am sure has already been attempted.

Vendicti piriformis doloris....

Andreas Gursky and Massimo Vitali (pictured above). Can't I just say that I like Massimo Vitali but don't care much about Gursky? Many happy returns to Mr.Gursky, but still, have I suddenly become French, or something? Do I not like him because he comes from a people who rapes our women and drinks our champagne, indulges in blitztkrieg, pre-cooked sausages and dubious sexual practices. Is it possible that deep inside, I equate German successes with grape shot and pillage. Is it possible that despite our common humanity, I still find myself looking east and wondering when Death Heads will violate our borders and grace us with their raves, chainsaws, black socks and speeches?

Do we really need another German theory of everything? Is it absolutely neccessary? Can’t I just jaywalk in Berlin, at four o’clock in the morning, without wondering if the Politzei will come out and slap me like a bitch? Do I really have to endure another lecture on American foreign policy, while his traveling companion reaches round to borrow my money?: “wir möchten etwas Geld borgen. Herr, wir möchte überwachen unser Kamerad sodomise Geschlechtsklaven….! Run it thru Google translate and see what it means…!!!!! Results may vary.

As for Gursky, have you ever walked up to one of his prints*? Don't get me wrong, I love large prints, I have been dreaming of enlarging ever since my brother got me into photography, back in the mid seventies; but until recently anything larger than a 16by20 was so expensive that you actually needed to be rich to afford one; let alone two or three. It meant that you could afford to show the Jones that their 4by6s didn't quite cut it.

Large prints can compete with paintings, if it's big it's easier to call it painterly, and that's what they call it, besides monumental and panoramic. Afterall, color photography did not become respectable until the nineteen seventies, and black and white before that, was not considered an art until the 40s or 50s. In a perfect world, who gives a shit: "Who cares if its black and white, as long as it catches light"**.

I keep being told that Gursky is important in the grand scheme of things but I just don't get it. For my money, I'll take Massimo any day. His work is so much more interesting, cohesive and pleasing, it doesn't feel contrived or labored. Unlike Gursky, Vitali's images manage to make you feel that maybe, just may be, humanity has some redeeming qualities. Am I partial to Vitali because he's more stilettoed than jackbooted? Who knows; I'm so over big ideas anyway!

I know fine art, isn't supposed to be funny but does Gursky really need to remind me. Call me Ishtar but it seems to me that contemporary German art's schickt is to exploit our need to believe that, if it's disciplined, dark, tortured and haunted(!), it has to be deep, important and arrestingly ravishing(!), well worth paying with those chocolate coated Prozacs you' ve been hearing so much about these days. Kinda like Mao and contemporary Chinese art. Without the Great Helmsman***, how the fuck are you supposed to know where it's made! Afterall, you're never too happy, as when the passion of your Christ happens to be a canvas, techno, straw and bee's wax.

Fame is frightening isn't it, doubly so because it has become so neccesary to achieve, especially when a simple "I love you" from your girlfriend or your kids is all you need to keep you happy. Unfortunately, I would like nothing more than to have enough cash to do as I artfully(!) please; without having to think about market forces, audiences, or the foods and staples that graced the tables where I ate. I'd rather not have to perform financial miracles and multiply the fishes, but just the same, fame too often means that to get what you want often involves bringing attention to yourself, and doing so over and over again. May be someday, after years of repeated efforts, I'll manage to squirrel enough cash to pay the ransom I've put on my head. Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining ...... it's just that my piriformis hurts like shit. I hear that at this age, it's perfectly normal to feel pain in my ass when it pisses down my leg and tells me it's raining.

* They look like shit. ** Personally adapted from the words of the powerfully diminutive Deng Xiaoping.: "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice". *** Or the "Mao Lisa", as I like to call it.

Ex Libris.

Here are some of the books I have read or re-read in the past year and would highly recommend. Since I have reviewed some of them as of late, I figured I'd throw in a few more. All these books are great but I'll add a star next to those which I felt were better than good, two stars to those I considered excellent and three stars to those few tomes I think are simply exceptional. I am afraid that my reading list does not include fiction. At some point I'll go through my bookshelves and the basement to put together a list of the past five years(may be). I also tend to give away books to friends and acquaintances when I am done with them, less clutter and it saves trees even if I am never quite sure if anyone reads them or just simply humors me. In no particular order:

How the Scots invented the modern world, Arthur Herman ..+.. The Gate, Francois Bizot ** ..+.. The Battle for Spain, Anthony Beevor ..+.. Churchill, a biography, Roy Jenkins ..+.. Imperial life in the Emerald city, Inside Iraq's Green zone, Rajiv Chandrasekaran** ..+.. Samurai William, Giles Milton* ..+.. Collapse, Jared Diamond ..+.. Mao, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday** ..+.. Chinese Lessons, John Pomfret* ..+.. Civilizations, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto ..+.. Under the loving care of the fatherly leader, North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, Bradley K.Martin ..+.. Ivan's War, Catherine Merridale*..+.. Sex with Kings, Eleanor Herman ..+.. Mapping mars, Olivier Morton* ..+.. The Places in Between, Rory Stewart* ..+.. Stumbling on Happiness, daniel Gilbert ..+.. Red China Blues, Jan Wong ..+.. The Bounty; The true story of the mutiny on the Bounty, Caroline Alexander*re-read ..+.. Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz re-read ..+.. Ghengis Khan and the making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford ***re-read ..+.. The History of Money, Jack Weatherford*..+.. Paris 1919: Six months that changed the World, Margaret MacMillan ..+.. The Best American Science and Nature writing 2005, Jonathan Weiner(editor)..+.. Krakatoa; The day the World exploded, Simon Winchester..+.. To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman ..+.. King Leopold's Ghosts: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa*re-read ..+.. Diamond: The History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair, Matthew Hart. All these books taste great.

" The Blond Giovanni ".....

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In the early spring of 1938, my grandfather was approached by a representative of Chang Kai-shek's government and was invited to lecture at Chongqing's Polytechnical Teachers' Institute. Chinese forces had recently moved their capital from Nanjing to Chongqing to continue fighting Imperial Japan's brutal occupation of China's coast and cities. China's strong man had been impressed by my grandfather's easy wit and strong command of the Chinese language and following a chance encounter, while attending a conference on Sichuan's largest city, the two men had struck up a friendship which was to last for forty years and enrich both their lives and families.

It had been during an extended trip to China's western provinces, where my grandfather had hoped to further refine his already prodigious knowledge of Chinese dialects and languages, that he had unwittingly walked into a temple in the hopes of visiting with the local abbot, but had instead stumbled, quite innocently, into Chiang and members of his extended family. The two men had exchanged pleasantries but had soon been engrossed in conversation the likes of which his aide de camp had never seen him indulge in. At the time, the great man was secretly planning on leading a million nationalist conscripts in a bloody campaign to flush out Mao's red bandits from Gansu and Shaanxi; instead of fighting the Japanese with the help of the communists, to which he had earlier agreed.

In 1934, Mao's troops had managed to regroup and lick their wounds after enduring a forced march and a fighting retreat to escape Chiang's military advances into their original soviet base in Jiangxi province. His army, thinned by hunger, disease and fiercely contested military clashes had seen it ranks severely diminished, as well as those of the first Chinese Soviet Republic. Only a few thousand bloodied and exhausted veterans remained. Strategic plans to finish them off had been drawn in 1936 but Chiang had been kidnapped by Chang Hsueh-liang and forced to agree to a truce and a much hated treaty between him and Mao's communist party to fight the Japanese menace together in the East.

A few weeks earlier, after a long and treacherous sea voyage on the HMS Bering Straits and a fourteen day trip up the Yangzte, my grandfather had found himself gazing upon a great alluvial plain, absentmindedly marveling at the expertly planted rice paddies over which so many tanned and bare chested natives toiled night and day. To get this far into China's countryside, he had managed to hitch a ride in Chiang's private car which had now just stopped to let its half dozen military officers and their mistresses stretch their legs and smoke the french cigarettes, he had bought in Hong Kong upon disembarking in Tsim Cha Sui; knowing that someday he might call upon this camaraderie to achieve his many aims, dreams and wishes. Making life long friends out of casual acquaintances had always been a gift he by now, almost took for granted; but this time, it was to forever change his life in ways he could never have anticipated. While China tried to march onward and away from its troubled and tortured past, my grandfather found himself swept up and transformed by events far beyond his grasp, and which were to irrevocably change his life; in ways his children and grandchildren would to this day marvel at. China was about to be further put to the sword and the torch but his fate was about to become more unexpected than his already storied escape from the impoverished and vengeful hills of his Corsican birthplace.

My grandfather started life as the youngest son of a family of merchants whose fortunes were being rapidly diminished by an influx of cheap imported salt and a new road recently built and completed by German prisoners of war; as part of reparations designed to punish, but also to compensate French economic losses suffered during the first World war. The road brought my ambitious grandfather new found opportunities to escape the family's trade but along with the outside world in came the Spanish flu, and the cheap salt which had previously brought them the great wealth and prestige this family of Corsican aristocrats had grown accustomed to, in their distant and storied past. The back of the family's mules and it's fortune, were soon broken by this newfound commercial route and the dreaded flu sent most of his siblings and relatives, to early and unexpectedly rocky graves.

Shortly after burying a sister and an older brother, in November 1920, he rode the last mule train to the sea and boarded the rusted hulk of an Italian ship ferrying a load of wine and tangerines to Sorrento, on Italy's Amalfi coast. From Sorrento, he made his way to Padua and called on a family friend his father had befriended in World War I. Over a glass of wine, tomato slices and Bruccio cheese he recounted the family's fall from grace and called on him to make good on the promises he had made while battling the guns the Kaiser and his Huns had so fiendishly and abundantly mass produced in the Ruhr valley.

Luciano Battesti had met my grandfather's father in the trenches and had been billeted in small rain beaten, beet farming villages, between Lille and Cambrai. Even-though my great grandfather was Corsican, and Luciano Italian, they had managed to disregard the ancestral enmities between the two countries, and in and amongst the muddied guts and rotting corpses of their compatriots, the two young men had become friends in Pozières and Bazentin.

Four years had past since that summer and Luciano could do nothing but mourn the death of his old friend and offer my grandfather a job as a clerical Orientalist in Padua University's Institute of Far Eastern languages; where he remained until 1922, when he was releaved of his duties after refusing to help Padua's militias torch old books and anarchist manuscripts, deemed unpatriotic by Benito Mussolini and his fascist brutes.....

To be continued......

In other news:

A man walks in his house with a duck tucked under his arm. Upon seeing his wife he pronounces out loud: "This is the pig I've been fucking all this time....!" Upon hearing this, his wife, perplexed and amused, responded in surprise: " Honey, that's not a pig, that's a duck under your arm...! " I wasn't talking to you...." the man quacked back to his wife.

Kiss me I'm bipedal....

Just finished reading "Ivan's War, Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945", by Catherine Merridale (Picador). For those of you who might still be trying to understand the scale, enormity and shear incomprehensibility of those six, bewilderingly catastrophic years, you might want to pick it up at your local read store. Ivan's war starts out slowly but once Catherine Merridale gets her grove on she manages to portray, with great skill, the Red Army and the men who filled its wretched ranks.

Believe me, I tend to be more easily mystified than heartbroken, but she managed the unthinkable and flipped this state of mind on its head. I soon found myself mourning and grief-stricken for the victims of this supremely Soviet state, and its uniquely echanting combination of totalitarianism, Stalinist ideological rigidity, and the absolute, unrelenting carnage brought onto them by Hitler's equally mind numbingly hateful brand of collective insanity. There may never be any words strong enough to express the misery of the "frontovikis" during and after the Soviets' "Great Patriotic War".

Ever-since the fall of the Soviet Union, the reconstituted Russian state has opened its archives to greater scrutiny and researchers like Ms. Merridale have been allowed to dig in and conduct interviews with former Red Army soldiers and officers. Russian and foreign historians will no doubt have a field day with its archived decades but what is certainly not going to change is that there is, and will always be, far more ways to die at the hand of man, than there are ways for men to peacably live by it.

Given that we are such damm bloody apes, let's stop pretending and go for a rename. How about Homo hemohabilis? Sounds nice, and beside, chicks will dig it.....and to further my case; it is widely believed that reds and oranges are meant to wet our appetite and stimulate our rage. I presume that way back when, the sight of a hominid's blood soaked hands, still whispers sweet nothings to this primate and comforts the murderer to live and mate another day. I'm down with that..... 'Hominid's delight'...!

Which reminds me: Odile Crick, illustrator and lifetime mate of Francis Crick, of "Watson, Crick and DNA", LLC... died July 5th, in La Jolla, California. She sketched life's double helix for her husband who could not draw for shit (Francis H. C. Crick died in 2004.). I guess that's how you might be remembered if your husband and his lab mate helped discover life as we know it. I guess that's better than, "she once cooked Francis some steak and peas....!". Her DNA has dearly departed but is survived in a brother, Philippe, and two daughters, Gabrielle and Jacqueline; two grandchildren; and four step-grandkids(her DNA, not exactly, but she loved them just the same anyway). BTW, Watson's sister, Betty, was recruited to type Watson and Crick's research paper on DNA, keeping it as they say, all in the family. Can't wait to read that obituary....

Old Blurry....

There were a lot of flags in that classroom, even when you turned off the lights. Couldn't get away from July's 4th. As for myself I take the 5th.