Month: January 2006

Half-nekkid Piercings

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Let’s hear it for Half-Nekkid Thursday. My Right Nipple. You only get one nipple today because it’s half-nekkid, not wholly nekkid. You know, I was thinking about this earlier when I was talking to the very lovely and extremely talented chelsea girl, about when I got various tattoos and piercings. And I realize that the […]

Let’s hear it for Half-Nekkid Thursday. HNT_1

My Right Nipple. You only get one nipple today because it’s half-nekkid, not wholly nekkid.

Hnt Nipple Bw

You know, I was thinking about this earlier when I was talking to the very lovely and extremely talented chelsea girl, about when I got various tattoos and piercings. And I realize that the first ear piercing I ever got is thirty years old this year. And thus, a bonus HNT pic to go with my right nipple – here’s my left ear.

Ear Bw

I was fourteen when I got my ear pierced for the first time. Not that big a deal for today’s youth I guess, but this was in 1976. Only one boy I knew had his ear pierced, and he was a hippy kid who lived in a winnebago with his mom, a stoned-out hippy artist. I can’t recall the kid’s name or the mom’s name, but the winnebago was called “The elephant”.

So when I decided at fourteen that i really, really wanted my ear pierced (inspired in part by kirk douglas in 20,000 leagues under the sea, but more by a scene in Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz in which the young king has his ear pierced as part of a magical ritual to unlease his latent powers), it wasn’t easy to find a place to do it – this was before the days of piercing pagoda at your local mall. And when my mother (who did not understand my urge to punch a hole in my ear but went with me anyway) took me to a local jewelry shop, the creepy old lady who pierced my ear looked like she was just about ready to refuse. She’d never done a male ear and seemed to deeply disapprove of the whole idea. She charged for two piercings even though I only got one, and honestly I think her disapproval did more to win mom over to my side than anything else about the experience.

I’ve had seven more ear piercings since then, and still have a total of six including that first. I’ve pierced nipples, penis, scrotum, with varying degrees of success. I’ve pierced my ear to show someone it didn’t hurt, to commemorate a particularly memorable trip (my first trip to london), and sometimes just for the fuck of it. None of the piercings have really been planned, they’re all whim items that just sort of happen.

Sometimes you just have to poke a hole in yourself. And every once in a while, I meet someone who just understands that.

Deadringers, Gimmee

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Ok. Fine. I give in. Lust wins out every time with me. Which should not come as a great crashing surprise to anyone. I have a ring on order from Deadringer. Mark and Steve, the main men behind Deadringer, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They don’t have a pic of exactly what I’m […]

Ok. Fine. I give in.

Lust wins out every time with me. Which should not come as a great crashing surprise to anyone.

I have a ring on order from Deadringer. Mark and Steve, the main men behind Deadringer, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

They don’t have a pic of exactly what I’m getting up on their site yet, but it’s basically a combination of the two rings pictured below. The ring itself is the classic skull (the one on the left), but with the ‘shadow finish’ from the super-high-end armageddon (The one on the right).

Classic-1Armageddon

These rings are made custom, so the lead time was quoted at about two weeks for production, plus whatever it takes for shipping. These guys are way the fuck down in New Zealand, so this will have the distinction of being the best-traveled of my skull rings, at least until I myself get south of the equator again. My other two rings are made in the USA.

The thing I love about this particular ring is that it’s the most realistic skull ring I’ve ever seen, beating out even my clapton skull from Serious Silver. Steve Gillespie, the jeweler behind Deadringer, clearly sat down with a real skull, or at least an anatomically correct replica, and made a ring that re-created the shape almost exactly. I don’t think you’re ever going to find a better, more exact, real skull ring than this.

It’s wholly different animal than your classic rock ‘n roll skull ring, of which my favorite in the universe is the one made by my friend Tony Creed – my Elvis Lives skull. That’s a creature of rock n’ roll and horror comics, bikers and pirates, a thing born of artistic imagination.

The rock n’ roll skull ring has a vast range – most of it ugly, much of it stupid. The standouts though, Creed’s work and Crazy Pig, some of Bill Wall’s work, are a distillation of a Motorhead/biker aesthetic.

Different things. Different ends of an artistic spectrum. I love them both, the realistic skull and the rock ‘n roll skull. And I can’t wait to see this Deadringer piece.

Tree to Firewood in only minutes

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The tree butchers are here dismembering my fallen tree. A moment of silence. Plus chain-saws. (I can’t help it, whenever I think of a chain-saw I hear Ash’s voice saying “Tool Shed“) You know I’d gotten used to this monstrous fallen thing in my street. I kind of liked it. It gives my street corner […]

The tree butchers are here dismembering my fallen tree.

A moment of silence. Plus chain-saws.

(I can’t help it, whenever I think of a chain-saw I hear Ash’s voice saying “Tool Shed“)

You know I’d gotten used to this monstrous fallen thing in my street. I kind of liked it. It gives my street corner a primeval forest forest look. If you, you know, squint n’ shit. Maybe it’s more Prime Evil.

But anyway, it has to go, not least because it’s on my fence, which will need to be re-built, and because it’s half on a city street. And while my city may be your perfect corrupt, up-scale suburb, I’ll run outta bribe money way too soon to get the city to ignore this for long.


85364919 Ad1Fa9Ea5A

Ok, now who’s goin’ into the wood chipper? I have a few candidates. It’s not the same without snow, though.

More tree removal pictures are over on flickr

What I work on, can I have one?

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It takes a lot of sexy to make me lust for a computer. Now, lusting after the flesh and blood, well, you know about that. And lusting after certain inanimate or mechanical objects, sure. I mean, look at my obsession with skull rings, or something like the car from Supernatural. But computers – well, you […]

It takes a lot of sexy to make me lust for a computer.

Now, lusting after the flesh and blood, well, you know about that. And lusting after certain inanimate or mechanical objects, sure. I mean, look at my obsession with skull rings, or something like the car from Supernatural.

But computers – well, you know, I’ve never owned a computer. I have one, but it’s a tool for work and pleasure, it belongs to my employer, and that’s fine. I’ve always gotten by with what I can scrounge from work.

For the first time ever, I looked at this machine and said to myself (Self, I said), I want that.

The new Apple MacBook Pro:

MacBook Pro

This is the outcome of the super secret product I couldn’t talk about last summer. This is what my team have been working on – the intel based macs – since April. And it’s cool to see it come out, and even cooler to think, this thing we make, it’s good and I want it.

I Like To Move It Move It

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Moving day. We’re doing one of those pointless corporate re-shuffle where we all move from one office to another, many of us in the same bldg. I’ve been in my current job for almost six years now – a while, in my time line, only one job I’ve ever had (cisco) was longer and that […]

Moving day.

We’re doing one of those pointless corporate re-shuffle where we all move from one office to another, many of us in the same bldg.

I’ve been in my current job for almost six years now – a while, in my time line, only one job I’ve ever had (cisco) was longer and that was because stock chained me to the salt mine.

Most of the tech companies I’ve worked for move people from cube to cube and bldg to bldg all the time. Here at this fruit-flavored company it’s different. First in that I have a hard-walled office, a novelty, nearly a first in my career. Second, I’ve been in the same office for almost five years.

You get pretty settled in five years. You get from friont door to office to restroom to break room on auto-pilot. You can do it blind.

It’s easier when you move to a different building. You have to utterly break habits. Moving in the same building actually winds up being more disorienting. I moved up a floor and over about three offices, so the view out my window is almost the same, the office orientation is almost the same, still facing east over the santa clara valley.

I feel like I’m in the same office yet when I turn around and look out my door, I’m in the wrong place and I have a moment of utter twilight-zone confusion. And you know, I kind of like that feeling. It’s a flash of mental free-fall, all the connections cut loose.

This usually lasts a week but who knows, I’ve never been in the same office this long before.

Now I have to go look for my chair and my Sun keyboard and figure out where I packed my perl books. And then I have to figure out where the hell my co-workers wound up…

7even Things Meme

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I got this from Whirly but I monkeyed with the questions a little because I fuckin’ felt like it. Following Whirly’s lead, I won’t tag you (though I might goose you.) Some of these it’s hard to think of seven. Some, hard to stop at seven. The 7 Things meme.

I got this from Whirly but I monkeyed with the questions a little because I fuckin’ felt like it. Following Whirly’s lead, I won’t tag you (though I might goose you.)

Some of these it’s hard to think of seven. Some, hard to stop at seven.

The 7 Things meme.

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“LSD spoke to me,” Mr. Hofmann said

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Brutha Ray told me yesterday that my recent entries seem kind of on edge. And he’s right of course. Ray’s always right, except when he disagrees with me. Then, he’s only right half the time. Yeah, it’s true. I’ve been a little edgy lately. I could give you a catalog of the minor and major […]

Brutha Ray told me yesterday that my recent entries seem kind of on edge.

And he’s right of course. Ray’s always right, except when he disagrees with me. Then, he’s only right half the time.

Yeah, it’s true. I’ve been a little edgy lately. I could give you a catalog of the minor and major stresses in my life, the projects at work that are due to get announced next week at MacWorld, the things at work that provide a daily frustration and leave me thinking about a nice quiet, sane job at the funny farm. I could catalog the minor aches and pains and colds and allergies that come with the holidays. I could talk about wants and dreams and desires versus cold, stony reality.

But fuck all that whinin’. I got no patience with it.

Instead, let’s talk about LSD.

There’s a wonderful interview with Albert Hofmann, the man who invented LSD, in the NY Times.

…It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. “Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child,” he said. “I didn’t know what caused it, but I knew that it was important.”

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. “LSD spoke to me,” Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. “He came to me and said, ‘You must find me.’ He told me, ‘Don’t give me to the pharmacologist, he won’t find anything.’ “

It’s a wonderful interview with the sort of person who reminds me of the scientists my father used to talk about. The sort of people who were both scientists and philosophers. Deep thinkers, people who seem to look at the world and just see more than the rest of us do. I pretend to be one of these people, but I’d have to be a scientist to pull it off.

I’m too young to have been in the acid culture of the sixties. I can imagine my father having been there though, if he’d been in the right circles. He never dropped acid, but he was a huge pothead (my first experiences with pot were stealing from his stash and taking it to school). He would have loved the heightened perceptual experience.

Oddly, even though I started smoking pot way too young, I managed to not encounter acid at all as a teenager. I wanted it, would have tried it. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I would have tried anything, any drug I could have laid hand on, any sexual experience with anyone of any age. I was already drinking, though not much (A stolen beer here or there, a sip of a drink). But I was already seeking experience and sensation. I wanted it all, now.

It wasn’t until I was around nineteen that I stumbled, almost literally, onto LSD.

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Half Nekkid Scar Stories

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It’s another Half-Nekkid Thursday already. I was trying to take a decent photo of one of my scars. But the funny thing is, my skin just doesn’t really scar that much. I’m trying to find scars that photograph well and most of them are too flat and faded to show up in a photo. Two […]

It’s another Half-Nekkid Thursday already. HNT_1

I was trying to take a decent photo of one of my scars. But the funny thing is, my skin just doesn’t really scar that much. I’m trying to find scars that photograph well and most of them are too flat and faded to show up in a photo.

Two knee surgeries and I can’t find a mark from them.

A wicked slash across my face that I used to say was from a knife, but was actually a cat scratch, and you can barely see it. It used to look like a dueling scar, from right next to my left eye all the way down to the side of my mouth. Almost all gone now, but boy was it cool when I was ninteen.

The time I almost cut off my fingertip with my first pocketknife, only the barest white line.

Even the slash across my knuckle from last july when I was home alone and and hacked my hand when I was sharpening my favorite knife is faded to almost nothing.

The one I was going to post is on my foot, and I can just see it, but it doesn’t show up in the pic below, so all you get is a little bit of furry hobbit foot with no visible scar. Yet, trust me, the scar’s there and there’s a story worth telling.

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Lonesome Graveyard

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I been running like a man who’s been running in place I been actin’ like a fool who can’t remember his place I been thinkin’ bout the day when I’m dead and gone won’t you scatter my ashes and remember this song      –House of Freaks, Lonesome Graveyard I’ve been listening to that album – […]

I been running like a man who’s been running in place
I been actin’ like a fool who can’t remember his place
I been thinkin’ bout the day
when I’m dead and gone
won’t you scatter my ashes and remember this song

     –House of Freaks, Lonesome Graveyard

I’ve been listening to that album – Monkey on a Chain Gang – most of the day, and remembering when it came out. I played the vinyl to death, wore out a cassette. 1987. I’m trying to remember what I was doing in 1987.

I must have been working at Sun Micro at the time – I would have been twenty-six or thereabouts. I would have been in the middle of my music scene period, hanging out in downtown clubs most nights of the week, roadieing for several bands. Lotta schlepping amplifiers and a whole lotta drinking. The days when I could drink halfway til dawn and still go to work. The days when the ‘net was still new and I was figuring out how to seduce people with words sent over a wire. Around then I made my first try at writing erotica, a story that embarrasses me now but was remarkably good for a first try, all style but no substance.

Monkey on a Chain Gang was one of the albums I was playing those years. I’m trying to recall what else I was listening to, but not much of it stayed in my heavy rotation. Gun Club stayed, Thin White Rope stayed, and so did American Music Club, and of course Violent Femmes. And this one, more than any of those others. It’s one of the first albums I dropped on the new iPod I got for xmas.

I dunno if Bryan Harvey’s death would have hit me this hard if it was just the music. I mean, I haven’t followed his career since Freaks. I didn’t even really like their later albums that much. But it’s the absolutely horrible image I can’t get out of my mind. It’s not just him. It’s his kids. It’s the fact that his daughter, his little four year old, is like my daughter named Ruby. It’s the fact that they were murdered in their own home.

I can’t get the image out of my mind. And I can’t stop listening to the songs.

…won’t you scatter my ashes and remember this song…

Bryan Harvey, RIP

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Oh, god. Here we go with our musical heros dying. LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Bryan Harvey, singer-guitarist for the two-man ’80s rock band House of Freaks, was found dead with his wife and two children in the family’s Richmond, Va., home over the weekend. House of Freaks. One of my favorite bands of the […]

Oh, god.

Here we go with our musical heros dying.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Bryan Harvey, singer-guitarist for the two-man ’80s rock band House of Freaks, was found dead with his wife and two children in the family’s Richmond, Va., home over the weekend.

House of Freaks. One of my favorite bands of the eighties, and the maker of one of my favorite albums of all time (Monkey on a Chain Gang).

Harvey and his family, including daughters Stella and Ruby, were found dead in the cellar of a burning house over the weekend.

UPDATE:

Rumors are circulating that the family were found in the basement, bound, with throats slit. I have not found that on any official announcements, but I’m running across the same story several places. This wasn’t a house fire, it was something much worse.