We're computerizing and we just don't need you anymore

Well, to my surprise, the reading went rather well. The not-so-cheap cheap beer helped, certainly, but I think I'm actually getting the hang of performing in front of crowds. Seemed like most of the people in attendance were teachers (probably because one of the other writers performing was a teacher at columbia), but still, when SAIC hosts readings, we're lucky if even one faculty member shows up. Furthermore, everyone I spoke with was friendly and down to earth, except for the one fellow SAIC student, who was the most awkward, withdrawn artist type in the place, and she told me my work "paired object with emotion" and then quickly meeked her way out of the room. Oh artspeak, blessed artspeak; anyone care to decipher what 'pairing object with emotion' actually means? Cause I haven't a clue.

Our living room looks like some sort of meth lab gone wrong; we've got blenders, fans, tarps, tubs of murky water, shredded paper, sawdust and cement dust, a few dozen beer cans... more on this later.

Here's a picture I took last fall. The sepia bugs me but not enough to change it or anything. Just visualize it color-balanced.

Somehow

I completely forgot that I'm giving a reading tonight at Manhattan's Bar in the south loop. I guess it's part of Columbia's grad writing program, or at least organized by one of their students. I don't know how, but I almost missed it completely, I just woke up in the middle of the night and realized it was today. I'm not exactly prepared...

Wow

31 people were shot this weekend in chicago. And the crazy part is this- that's not much more than normal apparently.

Only two people were stabbed though. What happened to a good knife fight?

Huh

I kid you not, just yesterday I spent a good half-hour reading about mid-west earthquakes- the New Madrid fault and whatnot, you know, in southern Illinois, where this earthquake thing just happened this morning.

And I won poker last night. I'm pretty sure this makes me a certified clairvoyant, if not all out soothsayer.

Oh 7th grade vocab words.

Elsewhere, here's proof that my home town Colorado Springs is the only place home to crazies a notch crazier than those silly mormons in texas.

How it feels to be something on

I'm not sure why blogs seem to come and go. This is my fifth blog in as many years, and they've all followed the same trajectory- in a creative fit i'll start one, spend lots of time designing it to look half-way not shitty, update feverishly for a time, then get bored with it, then comes that strange embarrassment phase where I wish I'd never started it, then I delete it.

well I'm not going to do that with this blog, yet, although I've already stopped updating very often. I sold my little digital camera last week because I was broke and figured my digital SLR was enough for one man, but it's so big that I never take it anywhere- hence no pictures these days. Oh well.

On the bright side, this week is rather fantastic. Tuesday was the joint BFA/MFA reading at the Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection, which scared the shit out of me since I was collaborating with someone I'd never met, and his work was the exact opposite of mine- he had these odd poem things that were loud, screamy, almost rap, almost scat, almost slam, and I had my whimpy little regular poems. We read side by side, alternating after each poem, so this exaggerated the contrast. Surprisingly I think people liked it.

Then tonight at SUGS I'm in a show about the suburbs, mostly painting and photography, and then there's my poem- in vinyl on the wall. The curator called me last week freaking out because even at one inch letters the poem was 14 feet long. 14 feet! talk about compensating...

Plus we finally broke 70 degrees for the first time in half a year. That's the third longest span of sub 70 degree weather in chicago's history.

And the blue line was fucked on tuesday, people were trapped for hours, smoke, evacuations, thousands of angry passengers yelling, fun fun. The funny thing is that I'm really glad stuff like that happens, it brings the city together and shows us how much we need public transportation, and also how fun it is for half the city to be three hours late for everything.

I owe my roommate a third of a bottle of cheap champagne and some grape soda on top of that, but let me say- yay for grape soda mimosas before class.

Oh, and one last thing, my friend mike and his awesome awesome awesome band the Jack Trades called me up last night and asked me to design them a flier. Thoughts?

The Fabulous Destiny of... (how it ends)

More artists should be like Peter Doig. Down to earth, humble, good sense of humor, and also a great painter. He deservedly has a big show at the Tate right now. Check out this video of him talking about his work.

Memorie Dal Futuro

hilarious, if a bit heavy handed, article in the Onion.

the temple

I like this photo because it's sort of like time travel.


I don't know much about the older building, except that it houses an anachronistic Sears department store on the first four levels and a bunch of empty offices on the upper levels. It looks to date to the same era as the Carson Pirie Scott building across State Street, which would put it at 1899, although I'd bet it was a built a few years later. I could see into the upper floors of the building from my old residence in the Chicago Building, and they were mostly empty offices and rusty stairwells. The cornerstone of the newer building, One South Dearborn, claims 2005, so I'd bet there's a hundred years between these two buildings. When I took this photo there was this group of thirty-something secretaries huddled in the alcove smoking, and one of them asked me if I painted, and if I would make a painting for her. I told her i was an excellent painter and gave her my number, but she never called. She could probably tell I was full of shit.



I like sunday afternoons with roommates baking apple pies and me learning how to play the mandolin and all the windows open for the first time in six months. I like Madison and her puns like apple pi. I like not having to kill time, I like being satisfied just looking out the window and seeing people on the corner and kids playing in the street. As Jayme said once, don't think of it as killing time. Just don’t think of it that way. She’s right.

I like mathematicians. I like them because they always wear shirts that look like graph paper, and sometimes they make beautiful music, especially if they're also canadians, like Dan Snaith...



I also like this video and this documentary of the same guy.

I like not being cynical and not being a jerk but sometimes this is hard for me. I like being chipper.




I like geology because it's one of the best story tellers we have, and I like the megafloods in the northwest that must have been amazing to see.

I like Logan Square. I like Pilsen. I like Chicago; a lot.

I like making lists of things I like.

Amarillo by Morning

my bank got robbed. by a woman. a woman who weighs less than me, and i'm quite the dandie. she had no weapon, just a note. I should point out that this is the branch I use weekly, across the street from where I lived last year. I'm kinda sad I wasn't there.

Kiss me on the Bus

I've been following the Children's Museum issue for a while now and I didn't have much of an opinion until I read this post at the Beachwood Reporter.

I don't want another building in Grant park, but come on, it's not pristine open space. Half of the park is already paved with tennis courts, skating rinks, and ego-fueled architecture. The Beachwood points out, though, how much other neighborhoods would benefit from the Children's Museum. Not to mention how much money they could save and put towards better causes, like maybe keeping our kids alive long enough to go to a museum?

Anyway, last night we ventured towards the Map Room, but the Armitage bus had stopped running by 8:30 (wtf?) so we hit the Green Eye instead.

Fin Du Monde isn't as good as I remembered, I like beers with lots of alcohol, but this time it just had too much of a liquor aftertaste.

That bountiful feast just showed up on our kitchen counter yesterday. I'd eat it, but I think maybe my roommate is a... what's the word for people who have sex with vegetables?

Special Collections for special people

Once again, I’m blown away at the access schools and museums give a clumsy chump like me. Last month I got to flip through an original printing of Napoleon’s Description de l'Égypte at the Ryerson Library, and yesterday I browsed the University of Chicago’s special collection of Poetry Magazine’s early archive. They have the original manuscript of T.S. Eliot's first published poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, typed by Eliot, with his scribbling all over it. They’ve also got hand-written letters and rough drafts of poems by Pound, Eliot, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost (who haggled over $50 with Moore in a long series of letters), Wallace Stevens, and so on. And they let me hold this shit! Pick it up, make paper airplanes, etc. I don’t know who else they let in that place (I got in because one of my professors has the hook up), but if you can make it happen, it’s a top-notch place to geek out. I also recommend stopping by the bar at the bowling alley next door beforehand; they’ve got huge baskets of fries for cheap, ensuring you’ll leave your greasy thumbprint on history, like I did. And come on, you need a few strong drinks to handle some of Pound’s bullshit.

p.s. I just spent the last hour messing with the template, hopefully everything on this blog looks good to you faithful readers out there?

Night Windows

view from my window

So i know that photo probably looks all blown out and whatnot but I can't
figure out how to make the photo look as good online as it does on my camera or
on my hard drive. meh, I still like it a lot.



here's one katherine took...


anyway so earlier i went for a walk/train-ride/bus-ride and was gonna take
a thousand pictures of my adventure but ended up with just this sad one of
candy hearts:



oh, and here's my ass being retarded:


AND... after the rain set in, one last one for the night.