5c spinning nickel

sitemap indexed by people,
place or  
subject

archives

deam log

Microcosmic DC

RomeRioni

Maphattan Project

to support this project, support Calamari Archive
or buy the books, music + art mentioned herein

Rem+Rom: A Raft ManifestSound Furies: 3.3 x 3.3 = S.S.Sound Furies: ununheard tapes by unknown artist

Rem+Rom: A Raft Manifest

Chaulky White: SSES SSES SSEY

The Becoming

Untitled: under the auspices

Ark Codex

Derek White: Marsupial

 

773> Automation, self-amputation + obsolescence: notes on reading Understanding Media
Any extension of ourself is regarded as autoamputation. Self-amputation forbids self-recognition To behold, use or perceive any extension of ourselves in technological form is necessarily to embrace it. To listen to radio or read the printed page is to accept these extensions of ourselves into our personal system and to undergo the "closure" or displacement of perception that follows [ ... ]

772> The birds + the bees: garbage collection, the death of the travelling circus + other creature features
Last night we spent a lot of time waiting for trains in strange places that usually din't reassemble real-world places, w/ lots of weird creatures that din't reassemble animals from this planit, or were recognizable critters morphing into deformed states. 1 train finally came, but it wasn't for picking up passengers, it was only for collecting garbage, so folks would wait w/ their bags + throw the [ ... ]

771> What do i care what other people think watching the clothes go round (June, 1993)
It seemed the man was crying. He was mumbling to himself and held his head in his hands. I pretended i didn't notice him. He'd look back and i'd be concentrating on painting. I painted about 6 blocks then he stood up and walked up to my porch. He had an unusual expression on his face and his arms hung uneasily. He sat next to me on the arm of the couch without a word, not even saying hi. [ ... ]

770> Feminist oyster shucking + books of sand inklooting i.0 by a.I.
... oscillating between 168-170, instead of 169-172. Last night had oysters (yes, we've gotten over our fear of shucking since we punk-shured ourself + passed out) + fish curry. Still have yet to go to a restraunt or get take-out during this hole pandemic. Hour heel is probly healed enough to walk or run but think wheel weight a weak just to bee safe. Caseload in D.C. is going back up, probly [ ... ]

769> ∀ll about our wonderful mother: processing a lazy-fair lifted wait + lack of sighence
We could tell her we were in jail being raped + she'd likely just say «wonderful» + try to put a positive spin on it, that it was a learning experience. If we were in a predicament + called her for motherly advice, she would say «wonderful, now u need to figure out for yourself what to do!» When we got suspended from shcool in Mexico in 8th grade + came home to tell her, she just said [ ... ]

768> Everything but the kitschy sink (May 1993): Biophysics, population dynamics, honey hunters + coyote Xings
Taco was pacing in a circle that included jumping over me and walking along the couch rim, over and over and over, as if to keep fleas from hopping on him, or at least to keep his mind off them. I'd look down and there would be fleas on fleas. There were fleas all over my arms. I was still tired but couldn't sleep. Eventually Kevin got up and we went running. First up the steep Hollywood sign hill [ ... ]

767> Oregonizing the K-OS of population dynamics + teaching our mother how to give birth
... another Ouroborian circle of K-OS to inkloot in our new i point zero project we spoke of last post. We halve lodes of papers, drafts, ephemera, etc. dat fall outside the category of photos (wich weave already digitally archived) + journuls (wich we're currently archiving digitally + halve only a few years/notebooks left). It was bugging us how we can't find nothing in ∀ll the K-OS so we decided to [ ... ]

766> 2520 soft zen iterations zeroing in on i point zero (i.0) by a.I.
we ain't just thinking about zer0 but ∀LL the #s, @ least the 1st 9 (10 if u count 0, wich we due) single-digit integers (tho really 1 shd only consider the prime #s 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 (4, 6, 8 + 9 are redundant factorizations), thinking we might make a book objet based on each 1 of these. in the zer0 hour we're planning 5 books of 20 double-sided sheets (40 pgs) for a total of 220 (counting boths sides [ ... ]

765> Space Cowboys jamming hands + hexes in cracks in the cultural doldrums of the '90s
It seems everything now is defined in terms of the past, post neo-hippies, post-punk... the whole '60-70s rock'n'roll thing is a niche that has been saturated, nothing's new, all the experimentation was done in the '80s, the likes of Nirvana just commodofied it for frat boys. Maybe music altogether needs to be dropped as what defines a cultural movement. All i know is i want a haircut and i should be [ ... ]

764> Let them eat jellybeans w/ clarified butter humped by free-lance pallbearers
We was about to say we never could stand Nancy Raygun but figgered it wouldn’t be wise considering this guy was kneeling on top of us w/ a gun (still pointed at Nancy). Then it was like Nancy Raygun was being interviewed by the media + all we herd was "I don’t know about you all, but I make my own butter." A few hours later we got on a train that ended up being an amusement park ride [ ... ]

763> Decomposition of the «Decomposing 4ier X-forms» 3-D art book objet down the rabbit-hole of our brain
.... + we was still annoyed no 1 was wearing masks + they was getting really close to us in our face + they was sposed to be "security" guards but they were endangering us + now taking away our harmless puzzle (a kiddie puzzle of Mona Lisa whose pieces we had scrambled so they appeared in diffrent order). when we said something to the supervisor woman she said she not to worry, she [ ... ]

762> Taking a walk on the wild side w/ malice in wonderland (Hueco Tanks + Joshua Tree, 1993)
Finally i just anchored myself and clipped my 8 in so if i got struck Shaheen wouldn't fall. I was perched on the edge of the cliff and i kept looking up and seeing lightning right above me arcing between clouds, building up. And that smell of ozone. I could feel the electricity and it had me spooked, i seriously thought i was gonna get struck. The majority of the activity hung ominously right [ ... ]

761> We are not wearing Percival Everett's shoes, nor are we walkng in Minnesota
.... wunderkind charactors that act way beyond their age, naturally precocious + whip-smart straight out of the womb, perhaps too smart for their own good... makes u wonder what Everett himself was like as a little 1. More than just black identity, the namesake Poitier alludes to what acting + fame does to 1's identity + also how labels + role-playing pigeon-hole people, setting preconceived [ ... ]

760> Dubbly conchus (ala Du Bois) from ass to sole + how the only true Amerikin music is black
.... a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an [ ... ]

759> 1 month (Feb 1993) in the long strange trip of this naked ape down memory lane
.... about how even if you're not sure what the next move is you just gotta go for it and hope it works out (and risk falling) whereas "traditional" climbers make cautious deliberate movements knowing he/she doesn't want to fall at all, but then again isn't living large. So should i just "go for it" and hope it turns out? Problem with this metaphor is that i identify more with trad climbing than sport [ ... ]

758> Buck Studies biking along Utah + Nebraska Aves NW
Utah is also a far cry from D.C., the hole point of our Microcosmic D.C. project (only 7 states to go!), specially in this homebound state we can travel there vicariously + reflect on these states. We don't got much experience w/ Utah, weave bin there a few times in our field geology days, or climbing in Moab, or hiking in Bryce + Zion a few times, including in 1992, whose journal we recently [ ... ]

757> ∀ll over the map of Z.S.'s NW, the count of M.C. + a few other shades of gray
.... 'Dumas' is the surname of his grandmother (a Haitian slave) that his ½-black father chose to take rather then the name of his (white) father, wearing it like a badge of honor (or chip on his shoulder)(unlike the Natalie character in Zadie Smith's aforementioned NW who changes her name from Keisha in order to fit in in a white world)(Zadie herself changed her name from Sadie, tho she still retains [ ... ]

756> An annotated hunger for potted bush meat (appropriation is the sincerest form of flattery)
... kudos to her for taking Remain in Light (the album that Bush of Ghosts was a study for) back to it's African roots + giving it renewed light (in an even more modern context). Either way, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. At same point, we all came from Africa. Dylan ripped off Woody, but Guthrie mostly just popularized folk songs (black + white). The original blues musicians were just the 1st [ ... ]

755> The last American, Ishi, book # 1,000 + grandfathering our reading log for Black Books Matter
+ when he returns to civilization (the Bay Area) a few weeks later discovers that most of the world has died of sum unnamed disease. He guesses maybe the snake bite saved him somehow, why he himself din't die. He encounters a few survivors + befriends a dog but nothing much happens, he randomly drives all the way across the country, helping himself to food, gas + lodging wherever. He gets to New [ ... ]

754> Black books matter on Swann ( + along Oklahoma + Montana aves)
So when we got back we stocked our boox w/ a bunch from our personal liebury + ordered a bunch more, not your typical Oprah book club writers, but more unconventional 1s twe dig, that folks may not have herd of, like Amos Tutuola, Kamau Brathwaite, Percival Everett, Ben Okri, Jean Toomer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Renee Gladman, Ishmael Reed, Steven Dunn, Ayi Kwei Armah, John Keene [ ... ]

753> Free will, whirlpools + Apache skiing while their eyes were watching the new physics (1993)
... freaked out at all the tubes going everywhere and bleeding ulcers, etc. Her parents came back along with the rest of her family and the medicine man. It was a culture shock, the going back and forth between English and Navajo, such a tight knit family. It felt good when her father came over and thanked me for coming, cuz i felt kind of useless before that. I'm just terrible at dealing with death [ ... ]

752> The siege on Swann Street + a strawberry stem left on our stoop
... + then there's the whole COVID thing that seems everyone has forgotten about... here we were cooped up in our house in isolation for the last 2-3 month avoiding all people + then this unfolding on our doorstep! The cops started pushing forward + all mayhem broke loose. We were still up on our roof so couldn't open our door anyway, we figured the best thing to do at this point was film it. [ ... ]

751> What spiderbots + googling Dead Souls is doing to our SSES-OS (a protest song)
Don't think we ever even kissed, but we met her mom + would hang out at their house in Woodside. In fact, some times we'd go just hang out w/ her mom alone, a prim + proper El Salvadorean woman who liked us cuz we were better than the other low-life jerks this girl was dating. Anyways, we felt bad cuz we gave her a ride to the city + felt sort of responsible cuz her mom had entrusted her [ ... ]

750> 20 pieces from the Corona Casalingo series
... for the most part these were made on cardboard boxes or other materials destined for the garbage or recycling bins, using supplies from the hardware store (leftover paint, etc.) + most of the images (we couldn't draw even a stick figure for the life of us, so have always resorted to collage) are from old books we found discarded on the streets of Rome, so weathered + decayed that we've kept them [ ... ]

749> Unknown stranger to myself in All the Names w/ the birth toll still registering exponentially
... specially now w/ the daily death count being a permanent fixture of front page headlines. But what about the birth toll? 100,000 ain't a drop in the bucket in the scheme of things. So far this year 56,514,288 babies halve bin born. Even if we take the current COVID-19 worldwide death toll (350,000) it's onely 1% of the total death tally (23,726,052 so far this year) + the population has still grown [ ... ]

748> Times arrow running backwords to the Bay Area, moving over stone, in discrete intervals, Dec 1992
Well, if i did die a sudden death and anyone is reading this, let it be known that death is not a big deal, just another journey i'm ready for, though i'd prefer to experience "this" reality for now. Which reminds me, tis the season for death and rebirth. Winter solstice. The New Year. Resolutions? My only resolution is to keep on keeping on. Yee haw. Acceleration. Propulsion, buoyancy. Jeff Koons [ ... ]

747> Making art to keep from losing our mind: a contribution to the psychopathology of configuration
... then again, how would a mind know if itself is crazy? Seams that's a distinction society or doctors would halve to make. One thing we're perty certain of tho is that we make art to keep from going insane, from losing our mind. Especially in this home-bound state there's ever an urge to be productive, to express + process what's going through our head thru art, music or writing cuz otherwise it ends [ ... ]

746> Tribal dreams of abandonment/persecution along MA + LA aves
... + walking into the theatre we couldn't see so well + others in the movie were annoyed at us squinting back at them, they thought we was just looking for an available seat + pointed to an open area which didn't have seats actually but u laid down on the floor in beanbags... but we couldn't get comfortable cuz what if the members of our tribe didn't go into this theatre? Also, when they ran [ ... ]

745> Physics as autopsy of reality: Beanfest in West Stronghold, a Biospherian turns 26 + the end of Bush-Reagan
I tried to tie off some chickenheads but they weren't so secure and came off. If i had fallen before the 2nd bolt i probably would fallen at least 40 feet onto the dinosaur teeth. It was a rush. Set up a belay in a dike and pissed and a black lizard ran over started sniffing my urine. The last pitch was 4th class and that was it. Very cool on top. I found a chalkbag. Awesome rappel. 100 feet free hanging. [ ... ]

744> Arkhiving art to taintalize our tush for the public record
... ain't it weird how we're always making things? then he aksed what we did to relax to wich we said making things is how we relax... it ain't work to us, if we don't make art there's a nagging sensation that we're dying + we got nothing to show for it. We cook food to survive day to day, but do we need to make art to survive? We make art to stave off mortality + as a record of our ∃xistence. For the same [ ... ]

743> Climbing–yoga–physics–dream–social–ultimate–reading–health + general philosophy journal (Sept 1992)
... to snort coke on the way to S.F., how it was all about timing—if you sniffed up in L.A. the buzz would wear off before you hit the Bay Area, so the idea was wait til you hit a certain point on the Grapevine to sniff some lines and it would last you just right. Problem with this theory was that we were going in the opposite direction and these lines certainly wouldn't keep Tom awake til Tucson. [ ... ]

742> Technical hockey loophole + further Chaulky flashbacks (Textiloma continuation)
We thought this was ridiculous cuz 1st of all if the 3 players were able to simultaneously place 3 pucks in circles the size of the pucks they could have easily scored the conventional way (hitting it into the net), tho the goalie was not expecting them to do this, so there was the element of souprize. We was also bothered by the lack of symmetry, how it was 3 out of the 4 corners + in our mind would [ ... ]

741> Re:pyschled (anti)-∀rt mini-brute 2S of beauty in the breakdown— sending out an S.O.S. pad
Problem is those S.O.S. pads have soap embedded in 'em so figured we may as well scrub down the stove to get the soap out so then we could use just the steel wool. In this piece we also used a cactus that was dying (fortunately the smaller arm of Juanita, likely cuz there ain't enough light in that spot) sum scrap wood + yes, leftover cinder-ash gray stain used to stain the fence. untitled 2020 [ ... ]

740> Our 1st summer climbing + getting sniffed out by a bear in the High Sierra
Next thing i knew i woke up on a smooth embankment at the lake's edge. It was as smooth as polished stone cuz of the glaciers. I laid down to chill and fell asleep thinking about how there was once 2,000 feet of ice over this spot, imagine that! Watched the sun set over Tenaya lake down below us, ate dinner of beans and pesto and then pasta and pesto. The coals were dying down and the noodles [ ... ]

739> May day may day! A not offal happy berthday island for cat speculation that is off-limits
... we were informed dat the Italian military occupied the most beautiful islands for themselves. We rode by 1 + looked for a loophole to get on it, by going thru a hole under a wave, backwards thru the curl + the waves incidentally were massive, like 100 feet tall + we were bodysurfing on 1 of them trying to get into the curl + down the hole but were picked up on top of the wave peak + about to crash [ ... ]

738> Eating pozole w/ no shirt on under surveillance w/ unidentified carbone-based chirping driving us loco
We assumed they knew everything about us so there was no point in even talking so we just kind of sat there in silence, sitting in the backseat of their jeep w/ them. At sum point they went over our future travel plans, where we had planned to go next + we said “we decided to just cancel our trip cuz this of all this bullshit.” The agent rolled his eyes like we were being mellowdramatic, “there’s [ ... ]

737> A Dream City casalingo exorcising up Georgia Ave to our liebury open for business
... other little free libraries around town are "closed" cuz of Corona concerns, wich seams ludricous... sure they might pontentially spread contagion, but folks need books now more than ever, especially since the public lieburies are closed + Amazon has deemed books non-essential so aren't restocking any (including our Textiloma, wich we was sposed to launch in a few days (u can get it on SPD tho [ ... ]

736> Almanac of the Dead (1992): Don't be a stranger (or a fuck toy) @ a Ⓚ in Surprise, AZ
... this was the one. I tried it then rode back to return it. Tried everything to no avail. Have to wait til tomorrow to get the right fuel pump. Annoying as this all was, i distinctly remember standing in that scorching parking lot with no shirt on sweating, covered with gas and grease and whistling and singing.... yes, i caught myself singing and said, wow, i must be happy. It caught me by surprise. [ ... ]

735> C-19 # 20: Obama the bellboy, fartichokes, mall-complex rubber exorcize trax, Amazon + garbanzo pasta
When the dust clears, only the non-academic mega-corporate Amazons of the world will weather this COVID crisis, the ones that can exploit the tragedy for monetary gain. We'll only be able to eat at chain restraunts cuz the mom + pop's have all shuttered up. There will only be the Amazons + us consumers + they will supply us w/ just enough essentials to keep us alive so we can keep consuming [ ... ]

734> This is our happy house: a casalingo gets fizzical w/ grizzlies + explores diabetes w/ owls + 365° knight mares
+ she gave us a handrawn map but also acted like maps were for woosies + that we shd discover the route for our self. So we set off + was running in the intrest of time cuz it was getting dark (8 pm) + also cuz we was afraid of bears + we ended up on this "trail" 1st thru a bad part of an inner city + then thru a museum until we ended up down a long dead-end hall + had to turn back + go the way [ ... ]

733> Food + dream log w/ Sumo duck (played by Peter Dinklage) vs. orthodox kale quiche (Thom Yorke)
He climbed up one of those rope ladders to a crow’s nest + right when he got to the top the camera zoomed in while there was a dramatic pause + he lifted his finger to his mouth then threw his head back + cackled as if he was having a revelation of what trick to do next to fend of the evil pursuer (who had legs). It was terrible acting, but excusable since it was one of his early films. When [ ... ]

732> The blasé malaise of Ms. Ann Thrope's year of R + R + U.S. ever being uncool along Vermont Ave.
Going for a stroll in these times is strange as probly every citizen of the world can attest to... the 1 intresting thing is that it's something the entire moondough is part of... 9/11 was sorta like that, especially living in NYC, but it was an American thing. When we travelled outside the U.S. in the months after the general sentiment was that it was something that happened to Americans + "we" (wish [ ... ]

731> 19 days of COVID coozine: cooking to combat cabin fever (w/ Ménières to boot)
If ever we was gonna write a cookbook, it wouldn't be about singular recipes but the flow from 1 day to the next... about efficiency, variety, conservation of resources, adaptability + yes, 1-pot meals cuz we're fundamentally lazy. Rule #1 would be don't follow recipes. Just get creative w/ what u got, analyze the contents of your fridge in the order of when it will go bad + then figure out what u [ ... ]

730> 4 books that shouldn't be books + a new guitar to shake a seeing-eye dog we saw shaking
Last night we were sitting in a row of plastic chairs outside of a blood bank in some mall complex (weird how a lot of our dreams take place in malls + we haven't been to 1 in decades), not cuz we were giving blood but just cuz it was a place to sit. There was some sort of class/seminar across the way + the teacher came out + started ranting + raving, about nothing in particular but about how people [ ... ]

729> Where our dream life (2016 – 2020) catches up to The Daily Noose + how we became anon I'm us
... agents/investigators started grilling me about what i was writing + i said nothing, just crazy nonsense. I showed them + it was a long list of summations, calculated out by hand. They asked what it meant + why + i said i just liked to calculate out infinite series for something to do, cuz they had no end to them + went on forever. They grilled me how i was able to make money doing this, to live [ ... ]

<a h