Scrub

It’s four thirty, and the weak Duluth sun is already receding, it’s meager fall lifespan, exaggerated by the valley we sit in. I have spent the entire day preparing for this party. It is October 31^st, Halloween.

            I haven’t been outside much today except for frantic bike trips to the supermarket, most of the day has been spent inside doing the house work that I haven’t even considered doing since I moved in. I live alone in a giant three-bedroom apartment, it’s actually probably pretty small but it’s hard to notice that, when you have only a few possessions.  The mess I make in each different room is a testament to something or another, and I’m outwardly proud of; the art mess, the stencil mess, and even the habitation mess to a lesser extent, because each thing reaffirms that I am here, and doing things!

            All and all I do enjoy housework. Mopping a dirty floor fills me with a strange sense of pride and I never feel better with a collection of clean dishes and pans, in fact I think if I owned a vacuum cleaner I might fall catatonic to my freshly vacuumed floor, due to excess joy. As I looked over my kitchen, I wondered why I don’t always just keep it this clean. This is easily the most functional kitchen I’ve ever had, why have I been refusing to keep it up? This is my dream kitchen. It’s a bold statement, and really if imagination permitted, there would be: new linoleum, a set of sushi knives and mat, and food in the cupboards, discrete respectful mice. There would not be: a mystery carpeted cabinet. But this really is a short list compared to other ones I might have to write, mostly the fact that it isn’t a kitchen shared with slackers is deeply rewarding, and even when it’s messy it’s not that messy, or maybe more accurately, it’s my mess.

            But that said, there are some unfortunate side effects of living alone, the bouts of pride and carelessness, and all around solitary joy can easily give way to, mild unfocussed anxiety, and a certain needfulness of people that I’m unaccustomed to.

            But today people will be here, actually people, in large quantities!  But this guy, needs a nap.

potato stink

today I received my 12th blog follower...  now I've treaded quietly over the line of egotism for a while, but lets just get serious about this thing... how many disciples?

URG/h

groan, urrrrrrg. flllleeeegh... PAH

Tank masters digital sketch

it's a lot like every other sketch about these dudes, but this time... it's oddly sad

Digital comic test #2

or maybe I would do it a little more like this... hmmm

hahah wrong you're

Digital comic test

experimenting with a digital comic book style, I might try to do a short like this at some point... hmmm 

Beast (costume)

It may spoil the fun, but this is my costume this year! I'm so proud of the mask I get dizzy with self assurance that I'm the best. The more I produce the more absurd my ego gets!!

The Pillow Study (a dream I had)

My apartment had expanded when I woke up. I was in a severe state of confusion and lethargy, and had to drag myself from room to room, so it took me a while to notice the change. (Which only makes sense, how did I sleep through their work in the first place?) A new bathroom was added to compensate for my destruction of the first one, and some how the lay out was changed. On my second walk through the house I noticed a series of notes and diagrams arranged on a blank picture frame that was resting in the new back hallway by the new bathroom. They were from my mom describing the use on my new room “the pillow study” which could only be approached from one of it’s two doors, the other had been covered over with a crucial sheet that should not be moved, inside the room stretching from one corner to the other was a line of pillows laid end to end, across the length of the room. In addition there were several incantations and rituals to perform to enter, also the function of the room, as the pillow study did not necessitate my presence I left well enuff alone and explored the other minor changes due to it. They had opened a hole from my living room into the basement; it was small and covered over with a hinged wooden piece, that when I moved aside it let me see a work bench with tools and a story. The story was of a little girl and a little boy trapped in a deep recess of my building by seven long necked angry dragons.  They had forced the boy to go up to my rooms while I slept and build me my new bathroom and pillow study. When he returned the girl was jealous that he had gotten to see something other than the small hole in the wall where the dragons weren’t raging. She convinced him to flee. Which they did successfully, the dragons raged on carelessly. The children’s presence wasn’t needed.

            I left the house when I started to feel better. Walking along a low stonewall I saw Simone and Danie playing in the back yard of redmountain. I walked all the way to (school) where I met my new roommates. They had captured a man who looked deeply familiar, threw him in a sack and had me help drag him home. I didn’t want to but it seemed important. We took him into the back bedroom, where my new roommates were torturing him for some information, I knew not what. I lobbied for his proper treatment, and they always agreed to my face and beat the old man when I wasn’t looking.

            Disgusted, I entered the pillow study from the fabric door, when I emerged from it’s contemplated enclosure, My roommates had become a lizard and a bird, but still men. I went to visit the old man, he had escaped from us by lying still in a garbage bag in the corner, I found him and tore it open to give him some air. He talked to me, we talked of immortality, and I told him I wasn’t interested (??? at this point I might also have been the boy who escaped the dragons but the old man might have been too).  He himself was an owl, and the lizard came back and with his lizard’s speed, drug off the owl, to the palace of the king. The king wanted the secret of immortality, just like the lizard and the bird, and the lizard had told the king in exchange for land and money. I went there, unsure of what to do but hoping to give the owl a possibility for escape, in the end I did, moving a well sighted gun of a royal musket bearer so that the bullet struck the owl’s hat and left him to escape.  A search party was organized to find the hat. A soldier very near me found the hat and I came to inspect it. Inside there was a big “juicy pear” which was half rotten and enclosed in a pool of it’s own fluids. The man handed me the hat and ran to tell the king, but when his back was turned I tipped up the old bowler hat and drank the juice and swallowed the juicy peach in one fluid gulp. The guards then tried to kill me too, but I leapt into the air becoming a fox or a coyote and evaded them, leaving my man bones in the air in a pirouette.

           

The lizard knew as well that he had to escape, so the last of the immortal beasts departed the royal gardens. Latter I could see that owl and lizard were ship wrecked together on a beautiful deserted island, completely comfortable after hundreds of years with the bounty of nature. They now had the means to escape but owl and lizard said together. “Each new day even in so small a place is a whole new set of experiences, never has their been a day like this one, and tomorrow is the same” but under their island beneath the waves there were two children, a boy and a girl trapped by seven angry long necked dragons.

Pumpkins

A creative fiction dedicated to the fine men and women at the DPD.

The evening started in the standard way, in a hot bath. A Super One plastic grocery bag squished beneath a bath tubs worth of water and my bottom. I have to have a plastic bag with me when I take a bath, one day I plan to buy a shower mat and curtain, but for now I have to protect my buns from a minor chemical spill of a bath tub bottom. An early assumption on my part led to a series of absurd chemical based solutions intended to return a lime green bath tub back to it’s original rust stain white. The assumption was that the bathtub had a working drain, the very first time I used the bath it was to clean out some paint from my airbrush. Initial panic developed quickly into mild disinterest, (see blog post TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2010 "WHAT THE HELL?" ) and the tub remained that way for a week or so, in the mean time I bathed elsewhere, and continually put off the ten block voyage to Walgreens, when I finally decided that I wanted a good warm bath, I bought a bottle of off brand drain cleaner, and a bottle of the most caustic cleaning fluid I could find, and employed each with a reckless abandon specific to each product. I can not be sure but I think I may have invented one of the next big designer drugs in that bath tub before the drain cleaner finally forced what ever lump of matter, which had been lurking in that drain for months if not years, down to it’s final resting place. That chemical cocktail plus some poorly disposed of excess screen printing ink resulted in an unfortunate chemical burn on my butt.

            Now comfortable with my new bathing arrangement I relaxed as long as I could trying not to think about my horrific monster chemical seeping out of the tub into the water and absorbing into my flesh. When I got out shortly after I got in I dried myself out and quickly found a pile of pills I had left for myself before entering the tub. Mostly vitamins Calcium, and vitamin C, with fun additions like two pills of aderal and two pills of ginseng. A man has to prepare for what could easily turn into a quiet evening at home, so they each went down with a short gulp of water.

            Luckily a quiet evening at home was not what I was planning for, and hopped on my bike to do some last second chores before the b’ys came over for adventure, It took and absurdly short time for the Aderal to kick in and the next thing I knew I was flying down the road, peddling for broke. When cars didn’t move fast enuff for me to get to the movie drop slot and back onto the road with out stopping I cursed at them wildly. How dare anything move as slowly as a car!! I moved so fast on this expedition that I got home in time to have a half an hour to grow more insane before Anton and Bobby showed up.

When they arrived I ushered them inside in a frantic manner, picking up thing after thing to show them quickly then forget about. Anton had a sickness to attend to and quietly excused himself after we broke into a dumpster to dispose of his recycling. So Bobby and I started walking, a mini bottle of Makers Mark hanging heavy in my long jacket’s secret pocket, and a mischievous intention hanging heavy in my brain.

It wasn’t long until Bobby and I were participating in pumpkin pilfering procedures in canal park, our main target being the hotel industry which does odd things with pumpkins, spraying them down with clear coat and leaving them hanging around on hay bails as chemically preserved decorations, most of those I ignored. I prefer not to have a synthetic coating on my pumpkins if I can avoid it.  While we had initiated the procedures, we actually failed to pilfer any pumpkins in the first wave. Most hotels in Canal Park keep all of their plastic coated gourd decorations in the front, only one hotel does not, the Inn on the Lake. In addition to keeping their pumpkins on the lake side of the hotel they also have a popular fire pit out back, which foiled our early night attempts , but being soaked in speed and whiskey we went on and over the bridge into Park Point, while there I did something’s I’m proud of, and something’s I’m not, but in the end we crossed back over that bridge carrying three very large elegant pumpkins, in the least elegant way possible.

Have you ever tried to conceal a fifteen pound pumpkin under a coat? You have?! Well of course you have, but have you ever tried to conceal a fifteen pound pumpkin under a coat with one pocket filled with quesadillas and another filled with whiskey? Ha! I thought not! We had originally planned to go over to park point to borrow a poorly guarded wheel barrow. We were going to go back to the Inn on the Lake, and clear the clear coating, sons of so and so’s, out. Every last pumpkin was coming with us dangnabit. Of course we didn’t find a wheelbarrow, which is both too bad, and the reason why I’m not writing this from jail.  Still I see in my mind’s eye Bobby and I pushing a wheelbarrow heaped over with unusable pumpkins across superior street, a specialized branch of the DPD “Pumpkin Squad” emerging from their orange and white squad cars. At least there are pumpkin tarts in the interrogation room.

We finally got our pumpkins back to my place, and set them in my living room, next to my other stolen pumpkins. “it’s starting to look like a hot car lot in here” I remember thinking. I had been running low on energy while we hauled those mighty orange hulks around, so I had begun to think that my pills were wearing off; fallacy. As soon as I was relieved of my burden I was again immediately exploding with exaggerated thoughts and actions. We smoked a cigarette out back and I insisted on going to the Red Star. If a person is on accelerants and has a belly full of booze why would they not go dancing? We walked and talked furiously on the way there, bumping into my favorite bar tender in town, Erin, of Hanabi. He expressed doubts that the Red Star was open on Sundays, and pointed out my new career path as a motivational speaker. On our way back from the closed and locked Red Star we bumped into him again and we all meandered up to the kozy bar. A local legend of sorts that, at least, doesn’t match up to what I had originally imagined. It is just a small subterranean bar populated by old , long bearded cowboys, and cheap beers. I bought everyone a round of my favorite Kozy beer “Wild Cat” we chatted up the bartender, and helped a piteous miss with a couple of dollars.  Around this time the powerful mental abilities I had gained, short-circuited, and I was reduced to a heap of inarticulate brain dead.

Shortly after that everyone left to go to bed, it being somewhere near bar close, I myself stayed up twitching and talking to myself late into the morning… I love speed, and pumpkin police.

Fate, oh cruel fate!!

Still no camera, grasping at straws I came up with pushing content from another website into this one. My old comic books are slowly going up page by page on webcomicsnation. here So if you never got one of the really nice paper copies you will get your taste anyway.

Why put something on the internet that I have always refused to give away for free? cause I'm hoping that it will get me some attention from people I don't know or care about...  why? my oh my, you sure ask a lot of questions!

low quality babies

low quality babies for sale!

low quality babies for sale!

I have to get my camera back

(Working on my halloween mask, and a tattoo for Erin)

somber looking

I've been pretty awful at updates lately, I don't have access to my camera. blahk, but shit will get rolling again, I have plenty to post just need a way to get it up here.

bluhhhh

I don;t know!!

mural proposal bull

so I don't want to talk about this cause it makes me negative for some reason, but I do like this painting-ish bull-oni

You should come to this

It's going to be a party for sure,
lots of nice bands are playing. I couldn't list them

here, but let me tell you. NICE

More digital goofing off

just more digital sketch

Prince Caspian

Listen to: “Prince Caspian” by Phish while reading (I hate Phish but I love that song and woke up singing it this morning)

I hurled myself up using the springs of my floor-bound mattress to thrust numbed hands into coat pockets. My coat was hanging absurdly off the edge of my door, and a phone charger linked it’s nearest pocket into the wall. I followed the cord more with my hands than my eyes, which at that early hour weren’t working too well.  The phone blares out a horrible rhythm that I work with dulled dexterity to silence. “Six thirty”. A quick breakfast, and an unexpectedly long wait latter I’m out the door with my long grey military reenactment coat and small back pack with near nothing in it. Out the door I meet the good Doctor Ringsred, my beloved benefactor for the next month or so, and inside her car his old hippy friend Belinda. Regular pleasantries and light conversation in the car, on our way to collect our fourth, an old Finnish horse farmer, Donald.

            We made our way across the northern Wisconsin on back roads with a surprisingly coherent and interesting set of conversation, considering the extreme diversity of the individuals involved. Somewhere near eleven we arrived in Bayfield for the annual Apple fest.

            Now I shouldn’t have gone on this trip for several reasons first of all being the fact that I have no wiggle room in my budget, designed not for the maintenance of a bank account, but as a financially entropy control measurement. However when the opportunity arises to go sailing, the instant biological response is to drop your life and regular set of desires and pack up your meager possessions and leap from gangplank to swaying lake vessel. However it wasn’t till I got there that I realized how brief and unromantic the voyage would be.

            Though I did get a taste of a larger fantasy when I met our captain; Captain Dave, who was wearing heavy-duty rain gear out in the sunny weather. The captain is a large man, heavily bearded, and constantly imbibing a cheap beer.  He pointed out the local hierocracy and the passing islands, while drinking and teaching a young couple to sail. As I listened to him pontificate about local ass wipes, I looked around our group that was as eclectic as it was unlikely, and imagined a shipwreck scenario with these odd people.  The whole first season wrote it’s self in my mind.

            We swung around Madeline Island and headed back, the sail strained and we flew across the water, all I wanted to do was keep going, get lost out on that freshwater ocean. We could do it, we were diverse and quirky, each fulfilling a very different and entertaining function in the micro social strata. How could we fail?

Later: I had split free of my T.V. cast and filled myself with beer and booze. All dreams of adventure dissolved in my drink, and The night felt wild, I was with now the friends who had missed the boat, who stopped to get high and never made it there on time. We were headed out to sleep in the boat. Every several feet was a flimsy “No Parking” sign. We destroyed every one of them. 

Tarot and The evolving test wall

So I had begun this series of drawings. They were to be the basis for a Tarot deck all my own, personally designed with symbols both accurate to tradition and individual resonance. It was clearly too much to handle!!! Just kidding I'm too ego enriched to ever think that something is beyond my scope, I've been thinking about trying to pick up the project again, but being sooo busy with this goofy stencil project I have to keep them solidly on the back burner for now.

my stencil test wall keeps evolving, pretty soon It's gonna be a piece of it's own.