Is there anyone out there for me?

So I was sitting on the couch eating cereal, and a stupid commercial came on that made me laugh, except I didn't laught, I made this weird guffaw and snorted milk thru my nose. And then I had this horrifying thought...

I've been cooking lately

Bad Thoughts

It's 1am and the neighbors who live on the next corner are still fighting. There's this fat woman there who seems to yell and scream her way through life. All day all she seems to do is yell, at kids, dogs, the tv, maybe herself. Her voice reminds me of the mother in that movie "Throw Momma from the Train." Some woman yelled "Be Quiet" and she screamed back, at a decibel that could be heard through my closed window a good 40 yards away, to "Shut the fuck up Bitch!" Then she started screaming "get the fuck off of my bedspreeeead!" It's truly, truly, truly insane. About three hours into the fighting I finally heard a dissenting voice. It was a man and he slurred and spitted out his words with true hatred. I could hear her loudly slap him. And I wonder how does it get to this point. Why would people endure these situations that obviously make them profoundly unhappy. And at what point does walking away not seem like an option. At what point does being an adult and choosing to realize hey there are kids in the house not become an option. Kids who probably have to be up for school in 6 hours. Today when I was riding home I saw a man in doctor's scrubs kicking a car window with full force over and over again, the entire length of the bottom of his shoe firmly planting on the window. At first I thought did he lock himself out and is now trying to break the window? Then as I approached I realized a woman was in the car, she subsequently pulled off. Is this like domestic violence day or what?

Naked Interview

This morning I had a phone interview at 10am. I was supposed to be at work at 9:30. I called at the appointed time no answer. Then I was like fuck, and was like well I can't sit around, I need to get dressed at least and try to be not obscenely late to work. Take off top, phone rings....

Bang Bang, You're Dead

Though legendary in photojournalism circles, the Bang Bang Club never formally existed. It was really more of a bond among four young photographers — Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek and Joao Silva — united by their ideals, their photography and the historical events unfolding in South Africa in the 1990s - it was a battle most brutally waged in townships populated mainly by poor blacks. .

“Amazing how often these guys were shooting pictures of people committing murder, burning people alive,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times. The Times’s bureau chief in Johannesburg from 1992 until 1995, he often worked with Mr. Marinovich.

Mr. Marinovich was fairly new to photojournalism in 1991 when he won a Pulizter Prize for a series of photographs of supporters of South Africa’s African National Congress burning alive a man they believed to be a Zulu spy.

“I had been too scared to say anything to try to stop it,” Mr. Marinovich said, “and so that really disturbed me about myself and who I thought I was at the moment.”

The group routinely covered situations where it “was not a healthy place to be a witness,” as Mr. Keller put it.

That is the core of what the Bang Bang Club is remembered for: bearing witness. Mr. Carter’s picture of a starving Sudanese girl with a vulture nearby, first published in The Times, won a Pulizter Prize in 1994. The reaction to the picture was so strong that The Times published an unusual editors' note on the fate of the girl. Mr. Carter said she resumed her trek to the feeding center. He chased away the vulture. Afterward, he told an interviewer in April, he sat under a tree for a long time, "smoking cigarettes and crying."

"Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did," his father, Jimmy Carter, told the South African Press Association.

Oosterbroek was killed in township violence just days before South Africa's historic panracial elections. Carter killed himself shortly afterwards. Another of their posse, Gary Bernard, who had held Oosterbroek as he died, also committed suicide.

Looking for a place called home

When I was a kid we moved from the west coast to Atlanta for a year and half. That first summer was a weird one. I was in the first grade. That summer I had what I call my schizophrenic episode. I firmly believed that two men were following me and trying to assassinate me. So I would run past windows and doorways saying "whew they almost got me". At night I would sleep on the floor in the hallways or under my bed because I was convinced they were trying to crawl into my window to kill me. This would piss my dad off to no end. He would yell at me to stop being weird and that he paid a lot of money for my bed. Over the next few years I added a litany of paranoia's and things I was scared of. These included bathrooms, particularly the sound of toilets flushing, mirrors (after seeing Canydman with my cousin), people in wheelchairs, tampons, Mexicans, and the fear of being kidnapped to name a few. I was four feet and 10 inches of neuroses for most of my childhood. Now as an adult I realized most of these fears revolved around some type of stress, usually dealing with a move. I moved over 12 times between the ages of 7 and 15. The legacy of this is that I probably wouldn't even recognize "home" if it was staring me in the face. I'm always packing up looking for a place. I could have found it and left it a long time ago. I guess I'll never know.

I really see you

I hope you see me too

Smile say cheese

I think I'm getting a cavity. And I had a moment. Like fuck I haven't even finished paying for the last dental work I had done. First thougt: I have the mouth of a poor person. Second thought: I am poor. I haven't had health insurance going on 2 years now. It' depressing. It's life. I do pay attention to the more cosmetic stuff, making sure I don't have stains, there is a general pleasant odor maintained at all times, but it seems as if under the surface shits just falling apart. Everything is falling apart. And to come up with the means to fix what's going on underneath, in my mouth, and all the rest, seems like a massive undertaking that I'm not fully equipped to deal with.

When turtles orgasm...

I saw two shooting stars tonight

I hope that's a good omen. Because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

Thinking of you

Thanks so much. There was a horrific murder here of a young woman who volunteered with Homeless Health Care LA, so I am hyper concerned about safety.
Love,
Mom


Response to mother's request for my contact info. I've lived in the Bay since January. I guess she figures that if I get killed it might be pertinent to know where I live.

I don't know what to do with my life, cuz the one I got just tears me apart - buzzcocks

Wasteland

Dark Clouds - The hidden side of China's miracle economy from panos pictures on Vimeo.

Madame Butterfly was a man

In the 1988 Broadway play and the 1993 film "M. Butterfly," Bernard Boursicot was depicted as a high-ranking diplomat and Shi Pei Pu as a beautiful female opera singer who met in 1964. In fact, Mr. Boursicot was a 20-year-old high school dropout who had finagled a job as an accountant at the newly opened French Embassy in Beijing. His few sexual experiences had been with male schoolmates, and he was determined to fall in love with a woman, he wrote in his diary.

Shi Pei Pu was 26 when they met, delicate and charming. He lived as a man and taught Chinese to the diplomatic wives. He told Mr. Boursicot that he had been a singer and a librettist in the Beijing Opera. One perfect night in the Forbidden City Mr. Shi told Mr. Boursicot a story no romantic could resist: Mr. Shi said he was a woman who had been forced to go through life as a man, because her father required a son. A short time later, the men became lovers, although the sex, Mr. Boursicot would later say, was fast and furtive, always carried out in the dark.\

When the affair was discovered by the Chinese authorities, Mr. Boursicot passed them French documents, first from the embassy in Beijing and later from his posting at the consulate in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

Mr. Boursicot spent most of his life outside China and was romantically involved with men and women. On his rare visits to Shi Pei Pu, sexual contact was circumscribed. On one visit, Mr. Shi presented him with a 4-year-old boy, Shi Du Du, who Mr. Shi said was their son.

In 1982, Mr. Boursicot — then living openly with a male companion, Thierry Toulet — was able to arrange for Shi Pei Pu and Shi Du Du to live with him in Paris. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu were arrested for espionage. Mr. Shi first told the police he was a woman, but he admitted the truth to prison doctors, showing them how he hid his genitals.

Mr. Boursicot, hearing that Shi Pei Pu was a man and always had been, sliced his throat with a razor blade in prison.

In 1986, Mr. Shi and Mr. Boursicot received six-year sentences for espionage. They were pardoned a year later. Mr. Shi is survived by Shi Du Du, who lives in Paris and who, Mr. Boursicot said, has three young sons.

Although Mr. Boursicot and Mr. Shi occasionally spoke over the years, relations were strained. Mr. Boursicot said that they last spoke a few months ago and that Mr. Shi told him he still loved him.

Mr. Boursicot, who is 64 and has been living in a nursing home in France while recovering from a stroke, showed no sadness when he learned of Mr. Shi’s death, on Tuesday, in a telephone interview.

Asked if he had any sadness at all, Mr. Boursicot said: “He did so many things against me that he had no pity for, I think it is stupid to play another game now and say I am sad. The plate is clean now. I am free.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/world/asia/02shi.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

next time i'll bring more beer

A man once told me that people never leave you

Tales of the Insane

My dog barks every time my roommate comes in the house. It's severely annoying. So I read in some dog training guide that to alleviate barking you can squirt the offender with a water gun when they bark. So today I bought this bad ass, menacing watergun - it's a pastel colored frog. The water comes out in a stream out of the frog's mouth. Tonight I was half asleep and my roommate came into the house, as if on cue the little yipper started yapping. I quickly fumbled for my gat on the dresser and took aim, but it was too dark and I couldn't see. My dog by this time had stopped barking, probably because she was like what is this bitch doing. I suddenly realized the absurdity of my situation. I was wildly aiming a frog gun in the dark trying to take aim at my five pound dog. I am insane.

Dog Day Afternoon

umm yeah. he's so damn cute it almost hurts.








the grumpy, naked Shinto. the other kids were looking at him like dude put some clothes on. but he just scowled back and then snapped his dick at them like a rubber band. then he put on his blue clogs, hopped on his scooter, and was like what now bitches.

then he rolled up to the painting corner and was like give me that damn brush i can paint better than these peasants. move woman with the unusually white calves!



this is Papi. of Papi & Chico.

this is Chico. a very strange child.

he sang these nonsensical children's songs in his thick italian accent. while chico would periodically, in a high pitched nasally voice, yell out "na, na, na, nah, na"


then Papi collapsed on the floor, as if he just played Madison Square Garden. oh he also was wearing these boots with heels and did some type of Spanish flamenco moves, but he's Italian. In any case the french bulldog barked at him when he did it, so he stopped.




summer barbeque, artist compound, brooklyn

Oops I did it again

Richie totally reminded me of my previously terrible record with animals. My rabbit being eaten by an owl doesn't even come in first place in my little shop of horrors believe it or not. Disclaimer all of this took place before the age of 15, so don't judge me too harshly. Okay so here's my confession. When I was 11 I didn't latch my hamster cage properly and my little hammie got out. Unfortunately, this was the same week that our heater vents had been taken off to be polished. This being winter the heat was on full blast. There was literally black puff balls blowing around the house. I incinerated my first pet. Let's move on, shall we? There was the parakeet, who I one day, after watching some inane Sunday morning cartoon, decided needed to be free. I took my ol' Petey out of the cage and threw him up into the air rather dramatically, whispering gently "fly, fly, fly!" Sad to say my 12 year old brain didn't understand the concept of low ceilings and velocity when thrusting a 8 oz bird at a speed of 30 miles into a 6 foot clearing. Petey hit the ceiling and was out like a light for a good 15 minutes. The next morning he was dead. I had a pet rat once too, to round off my small animal experience. I was playing with the rat on my bed and then forgot about him. The next morning, it's stiff corpse lay smashed beneath my right side. I had a cat for about 15 minutes. Literally, a friend dropped her off to me and the second she drove out of my driveway the little kitty jumped out of my arms, never to be seen again. Eh I don't really like cats that much anyway. But the shitty part was like this kitten was the spawn of my friends beloved pets and she would ask for updates, and even pictures. So sometimes I would take pictures of random ass cats that looked close enough. Sometimes she would be like, oh I don't remember that white patch. I went with this charade for 2 years. I'm sick I know, and possibly as as child, had a predispositoin to become some type of serial killer.

I've been waiting for you to say it, but I guess I will