2005 will be better i swear
so keep on pushing
###
so I don't have to go to work all this week.
I am happy. Slacktastic. Roaming for thrift stores, watching dvds late into the night.
Like this guy, face first in narcotic botanical stupor,
blissful as the plant devours him.
dudes it's late
how was your xmas?
christmastime in the mountains
sorry for the absence, I've been hiding out at the secret rebel base.
days are getting longer, nights sweeter
tis the season
ksouth mentioned sugargliders
who would jesus bomb?
have to close the comments because of effing spammers
rip john peel
you can hear his memorial shows on www.bbc.co.uk
sorry I don't know how to make links yet.
turtle him off with a red hot poker
courtesy junktown all stars
xmas party
so the Handsome Boy Modeling School played at my work xmas party. they had a bartender onstage, because as Prince Paul aka Chest Rockwell put it "to be handsome is to be partially drunk"
then Drez showed up onstage and did old Black Sheep cuts! --- amazing.
it made me very happy.
I must confess we were all looking very handsome ourselves.
everyday magic, from when I lived on wygant and cleveland.
anna and ahnauna
at lost lake, with eli and alex machuco setting up the tent
japan part 2
where did we leave off? toy machines and lurking architecture.....
right.
there are many many things to love about japan. in some murky future I will devote a whole entry to my undying love for japanese convenience stores. seriously, I thought about them and their wealth of perfect-for-me products (15 varieties of unsweetened iced tea, fishnet kneehighs, four kinds of creampuffs, twenty kinds of rice balls, noodle sandwiches, etc) for a solid year, everyday, after my trip. I would stumble into american 7-elevens or circle ks and shake my head, cursing the fact that was thousands of miles away from my goal and here there was nothing but candy, soda, beer and stale chips.
if only someone imported this stuff to oregon. if only I could walk to the local plaid pantry and pick up a sixer of these, I would be perma-buzzed.
chu hi.
oh man oh man. this is the perfect alcopop, less sweet than its american contemporaries and in more fetching flavors, though since it's japan the flavors cycle through really fast and some of the newer ones I've had recently "taste like theraflu" as eric put it. lychee (pictured above) was my favorite. a tallboy of this and I was ready for any situation.
like ewan mcgregors' smiling face attacking you everywhere selling english lessons
or crazy sesame street murals near the gion district of kyoto
or the fact that 80% of japanese people wear a uniform (be it school, business, housewife, or policeman etc) and this translates to 90% of the dudes wearing suits, suits that fit.
americans are a very casual bunch, yo. certainly compared to forty years ago.
I only spent 2 nights in a hotel when I was there. Here's one of them
okay, see all those little rectangle signs? Each one of them is a bar or club in the office building. some of the clubs are like 14 by 12 feet. it's awesome.
here's eli, aka nomadic noise, with hella glossy jewfro, at tocca a te, a more regular-type club in osaka, the bladerunner part with crazy overhead trains and lights.
he had a dj residency there and threw wicked parties. businessmen politely applauded when I finished my sets. then they sent over beers.
I learned how to ask for chu hi.
here is yet another thing to love, bento on the train. so many kinds and so amazing.
and I finally got to eat ginko nuts, which mom had told me were edible , but I could never get past the puke smell of them in their natural state falling off the trees of my native illinois.
anyways, bento. so elaborate and varied. each city, of course, has specialities, and there are various kinds at the train stations, then they sell even more on the train, in case you didn't have time before it left. and with the mini soy sauce squeeze bottle!
a few last things to love
the shrines randomly, everywhere
Tokyu Hands, which is like a huge steroidal craft store mixed with sears, sort of ? and it has a whole floor of "Right On" brand clothing. Here is one section of the decorated packing tape aisle:
I had to confine myself to only shopping on the sticker floor, so that I would not spend all of my money in one afternoon.
I have to give a massive shoutout to Hiroshima, which has no pix, and also Uji. These two places are now deep in my heart, and the people who I met + hung out with are in deep too. later.
.
land of true ramen
dudes it is so late but I want to tell you this story about when I went to japan.
we were on the southern island of Kyushu when my friends' parents gave me a digital camera.
it was my first one and super fun to play with.
this was in fukuoka which is a funky ass city you never heard of (unless you're from japan)
like how there are probably 20 big cities in china none of us have heard of .
anyway...
everybody is really into small-scale gardening over there. they learn it in school. "nature" is big.
and weird architectural detail and funny names.
and ripping off hyper cool record designs to sell accessories
it's truly awesome the way they approach certain things. here's the "christion cafe"
you sit at tables in a church with a 16th century alter and smoke cigarettes and eat and drink whiskey...
as the saints watch you. I wonder what kind of food they serve? unfortunately our train was leaving before it opened at 5pm, so we didn't get to experience it for ourselves.
the architecture in japan was pretty boring, with the exception of the old temple-y stuff, and the very rare daring design. mostly it was all really boring buildings, and every thing was grey concrete. a blue tile roof was like cherries in winter. this osaka vision is super menacing, I think the pollution making it worse.
there were many things to love about japan though, even if the buildings didn't do it for me.
like toy machines
lots of toy machines
and underground malls that went on for blocks, connecting one train station to another beneath the city.
that was the spot to find the t-shirts on super sale, and dig for the ones with the most ridiculous sayings on them. My borther got me a huge pink sweatshirt that says
"ENWRAPPED WITH FREEMAN TOLET THE MIND AND FREE DANCE"
classic.
it's really late.
you will have to wait for tomorrow for the rest.
why don't you show me the way
just down the alley
I am working on a story for you guys, for now here's my favorite picture from my neighborhood.
They're so serious about it! Look at how long those braids are. This is obviously just a practice sesh. I'd love to see them in full ceremonial regalia.
manly streamers
at claire + mike's house in beaverton
ahnauna as dorothy
this is the last one of the series "gorge homeschoolers present the wizard of oz"
something to aim for
monkey boyz
spiderman with max cola
near east burnside
by way of introduction
Oh, hello ladies, hello gents.
This is dokuchan, which is japanese for "beloved poison" or some vague idea along those lines. japanese is beautiful and vague and good for poems, unlike english which really triumphs in the technical and sciencey realms.
It is my blog, this dokuchan thing.
I used the internet way back in the paleozoic, like circa 86 ...a friends' dad was a fancy scientist, or engineer or something, and had a modem and access to what was probably arapnet, since he worked for either the government or bell labs.
The computer monitor was green, I don't remember what model. Of course we downloaded porn, specifically a woman with impossibly large breasts (pre-photoshop), but couldn't see it till we printed it out on the dot matrix. Through a BBS I think. Then I didn't do any web lurking till the browser mosaic came out, around 96 or 97.
People have been telling me and I've been saying, for years, that I need a website for my pictures, and for the other stuff I do, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. It took me 3 years of planning to get business cards made, so it'll probably be another little while.
For now there's this.
I will try to post a picture a day, sometimes more elaborate stories, unless adventuring.
Please let me know if there's something you'd like to see.
I live in portland.
I really like it here, and after being a serious nomad for 10 years(till the summer of 2000 when I decided to make some roots) feel somewhat qualitfied to state that it's the most livable city in the us, if you like art and books and trees and stuff.
and rain. and clouds and epic sky.
and homemade fashion and music and lovely ladies, as evidenced above.
holly and eliza at the seaplane fashion show.
so we had some technical difficulties here at HQ
dokuchan HQ, that is.
our strength was too much for the ole interweb
and the modem sent many errors, a fantastical amount, the tech guy on the phone said
but then we did some multiplayer acupuncture, hitting the lines via conference call with he + nick
cleared the meridians