Sometime in August; Do Not Visit Me or I Will Punch You in the Face So Many Times

Ross is such a big baby. Every time I see him he just complains about stuff for so long until I have to punch him right in his nose to make him stop. That or his delicate sinus system can't handle plummeting altitude change coupled with the blood thinning effects of alcohol. That bloody nose of his became borderline biblical. Look at all that Ross blood. We couldn't get it out of our kitchen tile grout for WEEKS. All this bloody excitement got me thinking about taking a lot of pictures of injured things, like my messed up hand. But then I ran out of injured/bloody things to photograph, had to work a bunch, and the idea fell to the wayside.

Started my last college class. It's basically beginning drawing and beginning painting wedged into one class. The puttering old man teaching the class takes too long to complete even the simplest acts of instruction, but he is very nice and he does get the point across, eventually. Drew them friendly men on the butcher paper that was on the tables in our class room, the idea was lifted more or less from one of David Firth's Jerry Jackson videos.

IN OTHER NEWS, there is none. Burger receipt has made its way through many thousands of pages. It's been my bookmark for Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, currently residing a bit more than halfway through the third and final volume. The bookmarks blunt and dirty character has become particularly enjoyable over the course of its use.

8-7-2010 Tosser

Been awhile! Too many legitimate excuses, no point in typing rationalizations. These photographs are older than some. From when Jessica was around a few weeks ago.

We went to a park in Auburn that I used to spend large chunks of time in during the summer. A type of day camp was setup there. We kids used to run that damn place. Chants for food that went unanswered resulted in widespread chaos and disarray. Marching en masse across the park yelling in semi-unison "OOOOOOOREO, WHOAAAAAAAO!" was a daily occurrence. We thought the combination of the winged monkeys from Oz and oreo cookies was something extremely clever to be looked forward to with relish.

So we walked about. There were still kids in the pool when we got there. A few birthday parties, some couples having picnic dinners. And me, wildly flinging my camera around in a bid to gather some interesting unanticipated images through the method of camera tossing. Fair amount of success. You can just see Jessicas head in the bottom left image. Top left image was taken on the back roads drive home, didn't realize that peacocks and deer were on such good terms.

8-5-2010 Self Titled

Mostly running on autopilot recently. Work is scheduling me a lot more, which is good, because what the hell else do I have to do? A bit stressful though. I've an aversion to things that I don't know how to do. Thus far this job is either; things I know how to do changed drastically or, tasks I have no familiarity with. Ah well. It's good for me to be thrown out of my comfort zone.

Jessica, beautiful girl that she is, bought me Starcraft 2 as a surprise, totally unexpected. Had major issues installing/patching it. With it running and the increased hours at work, I have been a lazy boy.

Stupid carpal tunnel.

The photographs I took today, still working on the complicated "Nature is a blind malignant force that wants to eat your children," project. I'm conceptualizing a rad way to display these. We shall see what happens.

7-26-2010 Nerds and Emptiness; a Quest

A significant part of my childhood was spent playing the vidya games. I just dig em. my parents wouldn't buy me any console systems, and we were a Mac family, but just the same I would save funds. Bought myself a gameboy pocket, a nintendo 64. Plenty of others. Getting to the point now, there was one particular game I used to play on my mom's first generation iMac. Its name was Starcraft. Starcraft is one of these games that grabs you by the short 'n curlys and simply won't let go. It has been twelve years since the last Starcraft game was released, yet people kept the old (ancient by video game standards) game alive. This type of behavior is insanely rare in the vidya game community.

Starcraft is special. The developer, Blizzard, finally decided to make a sequel, creatively named Starcraft 2. I pre-ordered it about two months ago, thinking that my new job would certainly supply me with the necessary 55$ I would need to secure the first-Starcraft-game-in-twelve-damn-years. Unfortunately, that job sucked. I do not have anywhere near 55$. But I went to the midnight launch of the game anyway. For the spectacle, and the nerdly dudes.

These shots are from the mall in Roseville where the gamestop is. I had no clue how to get in that late at night, so a bit of an adventure was required. The sensation of walking around an empty center of commerce was bizarre. I walked down some type of promenade surrounded by closed restaurants that were all still playing muzak in their patio seating. In some type of double nerd conundrum, my quest to hang out at a midnight vidya game launch simultaneously reminded me of Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

7-24-2010 Harcore Kids Love Captian Planet

Jessica was in town! That was rad. Went to The Boardwalk, a semi-shitty venue that I haven't been to since I was sixteen. Tons of screamo type of bands. Would've shot all of their sets regardless of our aesthetic differences, but Jessica was there (!) and hanging out with her in the back was drastically preferable to abandoning her to take pictures of bands I don't enjoy.

Did get up there eventually though, for the last two bands. Attila was good, though how much I enjoyed them last night may have been influenced by how much I didn't enjoy everything else. All the previous bands had adopted the screamo/hardcore/autotune "sound," while Attila veered closer to metalcore with some gnar gore vocals at points. So I dug all up on them after trying not to laugh at the other bands; though when it really comes down to it, at least them screamo fellas are pursuing their interests and expressing themselves creatively. Bottom photos are both Attila's set. Up top are the most diametrically opposed images available in The Boardwalk; peaceful and serene lighting alongside blown out marketing toilet.

7-21-2010 A Time for Jobs, Dogs, and Malign Plant Life

New job new job. In a photography studio. That makes sense right? Seems great. Better than that real estate gig I've been trying to get off the ground. Funky little studio tucked into a shopping center down in Roseville. Assisting the owner tomorrow during a photoshoot with a one year old babychild today.

Looking at a map of Roseville to get my bearings before plunging into the madness put me in mind of Kevin Flanagan, as his house and the city of roses aren't all that far apart. Called him and dropped by. These were all taken on his property. I've decided to work on the "hungry nature," project wherever I am, as nature is most places. Bet I could work on this project anywhere in the world. Quite a thought really.

Kevin is a complicated man. There he is, sitting in his bus. He repairs/makes/creates/rigs many things in his yard and workshop there. My mom calls him "quite the renaissance man," as a cute way to describe someone who never quite has enough time or material to realize his many ideas and dreams. Seems to be a good state of mind. Dog's name was Regan, Josh's dog. I was trying to take a picture of a bird scratching for bugs, but Regan's spittle served nicely as a substitute. Nice enough after she was stuck in the back of the truck with me on the way to pizza & other soul nourishing items (beer for all, cigarettes for Josh).

7-19-2010 More Natural Distortion

"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are deep valleys with wood that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs."
Opening paragraph of H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space

This seems to be my general theme for this project that has emerged from No Not Thought. Began with that shot from Nevada City, when the manzanita bush took on a more powerful presence than the sun. An unhealthy desire for life from a numbingly simple plant. There is also a mixture happening here; a confusion of the nature's mindless hunger with the familiar and sinister feel you get when looking at human objects being overtaken with plant or rot.

These photographs are meant to be bizarre and grotesque, and I believe more are forthcoming. As an additional note, these were all taken within 200 ft of my house in Newcastle. Might try to find some of the places Clark Ashton Smith (a local Lovecraft contemporary) wrote of and shoot them as well, I know he wrote of Bowman, and that is right up the road...