Blogavad Gita

Gaspar de Portolà felt it too

delachaux — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:44:52 GMT

San Francisco has been up to its little tricks again. Hitchcock didn't choose this setting to unleash his little psycho-noir kingdom for nothing. Even the weather is smoke and mirrors. I’m 12 years deep in this muck and still completely appalled with inspiration. It’s funny how even your thoughts seem to mutate from one micro-hood to the next. It's sort of like a game of thought jenga; you start out with the most basic, most rudimentary ideas and stack your way to the shakiest ones before the whole totem comes splashing down. Thorazine and lifejackets are almost mandatory. Maybe it’s the steep hills, the cracked pavement, and slippery street dialogue that bounces around echoing off of Muni busses until it feeds and grows into blaring sirens chasing itself around the city like schitzophrenic phantom banshees from long lost emergencies. Culturally speaking, this place is like London after the Nazis developed those channel-hopping V2 rockets. Startling next 'it things’ declare themselves with a bombardment of new and explosive ideas, sights, sounds, and sunglasses- all of which will have immediately vaporized into charred ruins by the time you can stick your toe in. Everybody’s cooling notions of just (what the fuck) are frequently bumbling and stumbling through booby-trapped tripwire detonations of powder-kegged wonder, shit-showering bliss, and agonizing scene disintegration. Who can keep up with this hot mess? And then, just when you’re about to throw in the towel, nod to the hangman, and make your final escape into religion, drugs, or suicide, the subtle magic of it all catches you completely off guard. There you are walking past Dolores Park on a warm San Franciscan night and the arid slopes are filled with everyone watching the Wizard of Oz projected high for all to see. The whole park claps with giddy elation over the munchkin's dance and screams with terror over the wicked witch. And in one of those infectiously reflective moments, you stop and look around, take a deep breath and realize you’re just happy to be with everyone. Just happy to be in San Francisco....

Artificial Disco Intelligence

delachaux — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:09:17 GMT

I would like to get a few of these in a room together and study the effects they might have on each other. Isn't this how the terminators get started? Soon their intelligent beats will destroy us... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GjD4XLxR6c

Indian Love Call

delachaux — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:20:50 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPp5IO07D9s&feature=related Much like Biz Markie’s evocative ‘Just a Friend‘, or the visceral tremors in Adam Freeland’s controversial mid-period, the haunting yodels of Slim Whitman’s ‘Indian Love Call’ also transport me back to a place I’ve long forgotten but somehow feel as though I might’ve worked there for a stint. Clerking maybe. Perhaps for a tender sweat and an honest wage I too was somehow happy within the crying glass tears of a pedal steal guitar. Somehow I too could hear that Indian love call ringing so clear. As I sit and listen to the delicately seared passion screaming through the creases of it’s simple country-western disguise, I’m buried beneath time and echoed through eternity. Also I’m wondering why there’s no picture of Slim to go with his bio on wikipedia. Can somebody with an account do something about that? Show some integrity people.

Post Playa Voodoo Dreams

delachaux — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:53:09 GMT

They're kickin' in pretty good for me this year. They're usually at their most potent within the first few weeks that succeed being out there. Last night I dreamt that there were deep, dark, cavernous caves underneath the playa built by some long vanished primordial civilization. The entrances to them (sprinkled around the perimeter of the playa) had modern facades with painted tiling and cement steps leading down into the ground (like subway stations) but the further you descended into them the less broken bottles and grafitti you saw and they became more dark, eerie, and primitive. Nobody really knew how far down these caves went or what might lie deep within them. Even the BORG LLC wasn't exactly sure of how to harness the strange psycho-magnetic currents that sizzled up from out of their depths. And there were all of these archeological groups involved in a bunch of messy litigation, all vying to win bids on who got to explore, excavate, and ultimately make a lucrative museum out of the whole mystery. Meanwhile I had a flashflight and just sort of poked around in them. I kept finding ancient artifacts of furry bmx bikes left from burns that happened centuries ago.

For Sale or Just Personal

delachaux — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:31:37 GMT

I randomly ran into Tom Waits last weekend. I actually ran into him twice in the same day in two separate towns. What are the odds? The first time we were both standing in an old second-hand junk store in Bodega staring into the same old display case. There were old antique ashtrays, daggers, belt buckles and such, everything reeking with that musty last-of-the-Mohicans presence. I would have never even recognized him if he hadn’t of started asking the owner a few questions about the stuff in the store. “Are all those up there for sale or just personal?” That haunting, gravel-blown voice stops you dead in your tracks and you feel like all of sudden the whole ragged pantheon of smoky characters from his long and twisted catalogue has just fallen out of the ceiling and are dusting themselves off all around you. Confetti from decades ago still faintly twinkling. “Oh, they’re just personal… okay….” I chose, wrongly perhaps, to keep my mouth shut and just move along. I typically don’t like to bother anybody. Plus what the hell are you going to say to Tom Waits? Let the man tinker. But you can imagine how stunned I was to see him again an hour later outside of a country grocer in another town ten miles away. He pulled up in a black Lexus station wagon caked in dusty mud. This time however he seemed somewhat antsy and worried. He picked up the pay phone outside the liquor store, glanced around, then hung it back up as if maybe he was supposed to call somebody or supposed to be somewhere but he couldn’t quite recall who or where. Can you imagine living in a little rural Sonoma town where Tom Waits is running around like a fugitive, slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s, ducking and dodging around town trying to avoid his own scary little puppet show? Almost makes you want to leave the city.

One Big One

delachaux — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:48:28 GMT

I keep getting these 'tags' from people wanting me to divulge 5 things about myself that most don't know. I figured I'd just give you one big one instead. You'll like this one though. Pull up a pillow. After graduating college with a degree in cognitive philosophy I moved to San Francisco and immediately got a job as a night clerk in a downtown porn store. Big twist for me. I could explain Wittgenstein but I had never even held anything like a vibrator, a butt plug, or a dong (let alone something the size of a Shindler's Fist!). I was infinitely entertained. And curious. How well could a guy like me sling dildos and anal lube? What kinda characters would I meet there? Could I actually be around all this crap for eight hours a day? I mean- skin flicks constantly goin' off hot and heavy from TV screens in every corner of the joint. I'd only seen about a dozen porn flicks in my life. And I mean Total. Needles to say, comedy ensued immediately. As some of you know, Frenchy's is on Geary down in the Polk Gulch area. Yeah it's still there. I don't know about now, but it used to be sandwiched in between a homeless shelter and a methadone clinic with a seedy massage parlor right above it, a tranny dive bar right across the street, and a gay hustle circuit right out front. Bukowski himself couldn't have found a more sordid block of realastate. And of course, being a young and naïve whiteboy, I found the whole thing adventurously compelling. No more reading about theories on the human psyche, time to see it in the field, up close and personal, warts and all. So I signed up, got hired, climbed in. Now Frenchys mostly rented porn videos and sold adult novelty items, but they also had a dark labyrinth of XXX arcade booths in the back where cracked out hustlers turned tricks with the chicken hawks who loved them. Having to police that circus was a tiresome aggravation that was often dangerous and always disturbing. So to take my mind off of that zoo I became immediately fascinated with the voluminous library of porn up front. I couldn't believe how many movies there were. To be honest, familiarizing myself with them started to feel like grad work for me. As if channeling the recent inertia of my college study routine I went to work picking apart the porn industry as if it were my new major. I read all of the industry mags, tried to watch most of the flicks, and basically just did my homework on all the actors and actresses so that I could be a premium aficionado. Why not? I was 23 and needed something to do. Now I admit, I couldn't physically watch every movie in the store (it all just sort of churns into blurry shades of flesh after about the first 50 hours). So I studied the industry rags instead. I read all the reviews, bios, editorials, anything I could find. It was all there in front of me just waiting to be gleaned. Like finding a hidden vault from some strange and distant civilization. I spent countless graveyard shifts learning the history of it all; finding out exactly how it all came to be. What were the origins? Who were the pioneers? Who were the contemporaries? I learned all about who the up and coming directors were, who finally quit the biz, who filmed the classics, who shot only video, who won best new starlet, who won best new stud, who got signed to this, who got busted for that, who got dissed, who got dumped, and who finally went double-anal. I stayed right up to speed on it all. You ever hear about Quinton Tarrantino working in a video store before he hit it big as a director? Supposedly his knowledge of films was so extensive that a customer could bring any title up to him and he could give them the full 411 on it. Well that was me with porn. "Oh yes- of course we've got Christy Canyon videos… Now were you looking for her classic stuff with GVA, her mid period, or stuff from her later work with Vivid?" And on those rarest of moments when I really didn't know my shit I would just make it up. It always worked. "Uhhhh yeah…. I've seen New Wave Hookers 5. That's the one where they put her in the… and then the clowns fuck her with the…. and she sucks all the…yeah…some great talent in that one. Not as good as volume 4 but definitely worth viewing....." Soon word of my geeky passion began spreading and customers began seeking me out for advice on which titles they should rent, buy, or just stand around marveling at. I loved it because it turned an otherwise shamefully subversive retail gig into a convivial public symposium of animated discussion. Now I know what you're thinking. It seems stupid right? What do these pervs care about these flicks? They're just going to take the tape home, fast forward through half of it until they finally cum all over the place and then return it the next day and never think about it again, right? Well in most cases yes. Definitely yes. BUT, like with everything else, you've got your eccentric minority who eat, breathe, and revel in the canon of their choosing. And in this case the canon was porn. It took a little time for them to come out of the woodwork and stand up and identify themselves above the bashful hordes who just wanted to jack off. But they did. And I loved them for it. It was always interesting to see a new voice kick up from behind the gangbang rack. Or some collector in the classics section maybe. Typically they just had to fall within ear range of a heated discussion. Then they'd lurk anonymously as if to still be perusing the videos when really they were sizing up the conversation and planning their surprise bid to join it. Then that moment of truth would come when they could silence themselves no longer and would step up and say… "Ahhhemmm…. Excuse me but Joey Silvera couldn't shoot quality Gonzo if his own cock was a damn beta cam. His whole series is lifted straight from Buttman's stuff!" We knew we had another one. And so the polemics would continue. And these guys knew their porn too. They knew every sound from every pound to every mound from the ceiling to the ground. They had the most uncanny acuteness when it came to their likes and dislikes. Fetishes that had been aged to perfection. Lifelong hunts for that perfect ideal scene. It was out there. It had to be out there. Before long my counter started looking like a weekly book club with a gaggle of guys standing around for hours debating the merits of the latest release. They were from pretty diverse demographics too; everything from cab drivers to cooks to accountants, actors, bankers, lawyers, computer programmers, etc. They'd all drop in to talk shop. Obviously they had no other venue to air these particular opinions so the place became a kind of forum for this type of behavior. Now remember this was the mid 90s and the internet had but a scant fraction of the content and capacity that it has now. You still had to forage in public for smut back then. And I tried to make that task as bearable as I could for those cursed with the addiction. If I was going to be involved I wanted it to have grace, dignity, and pride. I felt like Sam Malone at Cheers giving the Norms and Cliff Clavens of San Francisco a safe place to be candid. They were after all just like me. Just trying to find their way through life and everything. Like all of us. Just running with the hunted. Occasionally finding a place to catch our breath and pretend we're somehow leading the chase. On Holidays I'd have Tommy's Joint cater and we'd feast on roast beef! Of course by this point the store management found the whole thing a little worrisome and put me on the radar of the big wigs. They finally came in to survey what was transpiring and, while finding my motives a little suspect, decided that it was somehow probably good for the bottom line. After all, I was inadvertently creating public interest and in turn selling the stuff like hotcakes. I sold it to everyone. Including celebrities. I even sold a gang of tranny videos to Darth Vader one night (James Earl Jones). Which then meant that folks from the industry even started dropping by. I met most everyone who was anyone in the biz in those days; Chasey Lain, Janine, Jenna Jameson, John Leslie, Rocco, Buttman, everyone. I sometimes miss those days and wonder why I threw in the towel after only one year. Sure I only made barely enough dough to scrape by on but I had a whole world of camaraderie where I had a voice of respect and authority. People sought ought my expertise and I delivered with a smile. It was all somehow strangely fulfilling. And then I just quit. That was it. Just moved on to something else the way we often do. Nowadays on the rare occasion when I happen to step foot inside an adult store and take a look at the products an answer to the question of why I left almost instantly surfaces- "Sheeesh…. This shit is ridiculous…."

Sentimental Testimony from an Adolescent Witness

delachaux — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 20:03:46 GMT

Growing up I used to spend most of every summer with my grandparents in deep rural South Carolina. They were Jehovah's Witnesses. Every Saturday morning my grandpa and I would meet up with others from the local congregation and go out proselytizing via ‘door to door service’ as they called it. I loved it because I got to carry a briefcase and look somewhat official about something. Plus, unlike in California, most folks would invite you into their homes to enjoy a cold jar of iced tea while you argued southern-fried metaphysics over an 8-track of Slim Whitman yodeling on a hot summer day. What a unique experience. Sometimes we’d even get chased off by some hell bent ruffian with a shotgun yellin' about how his own country preacher warned him that we'd be fixin' to come out and convert him. Usually after a couple hours of placing Watchtower magazines all over yonder we’d all meet up and go out and gorge on a huge buffet lunch at Duff’s Country Diner (which was like a Sizzler on steroids). On Sunday mornings we made the weekly trip to the Kingdom Hall meeting. I still remember that fresh new carpet smell of the Hall’s modest, air-conditioned interior. I spent most of the sermons fantasizing about some intimate interlude with some saucy southern milf sitting a few rows in front of me. For hours I would sit there holding a bible over a boner while I imagined all of the sordid sex she and her husband must’ve sanctioned to produce such a blessing of kids. After the meeting the "Elders" would ask questions and the congregation would raise their hands to answer. A microphone would be brought around to amplify your voice. I always loved being picked to recite some edifying verse from the Holy Scriptures and hearing my adolescent voice echo over the comfy reverb of the Kingdom Hall's K-Mart-like PA system. My Sunday wasn’t complete until I got to utter something profound over Jehovah’s sound system. And sometimes the weekly housewife of my fantasy would turn and smile approvingly. I loved Jehovah’s Witnesses. Does anyone know if they ever got their Armageddon and consequent eternal paradise on earth? I always hoped they would.

D' Accord

delachaux — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 15:26:28 GMT

I’m going to get a little heady and whimsical with this one so if you’re not in the mood for nauseating drivel from self-absorbed travelers then pull the ripcord right here and now. You sure? Okay. So….. You ever hung out with an old hooker? I’m not talking about one that just looks old. Not one of those crack-charred husk with high heels holding up a bruised heap of horror at the broken age of 28. Not the ones dragging their empty shell pussy-first down the street fiending for the next fix. No. I’m talking about one of those ones who have kept it mostly together over the long haul and can still recall every sentence on every page of their epic journey with timeless antidotes and worldy witt that somehow lend a strange grace to it all. The ones who’ve been in every possible situation, slept with every type of person in all possible positions, gone on every kind of adventure with every kind of companion while consuming every kind of concoction and still somehow retained the wisest of beauty and the most unbreakable dignity despite the blows. That’s the city of Paris. As the crown flagship of an exhausted civilization, Paris now just smiles politely at all of our dramatic little ambitions. She’s seen them all at one time or another. She’s seen them ignite into fantastic flames that shoot through the sky and burn up the stars and then seen them fall back down to earth and crash into the gutters of despair. Having gasped at our wildest possibilities and sighed with our saddest futilities her smile is soiled wry from centuries of experience, like a mausoleum of our hopes, desires, pinnacles, and tragedies. Humbled in her presence, there's nothing left to do but just sit and smoke with her.

Positive Vibes: An Empirical Inquiry

delachaux — Mon, 15 May 2006 21:28:13 GMT

Positive Vibes. I see this phrase offered, given, prescribed, and hoped for on Tribe every time I take a look at someone's blog, follow a thread, or read a listing. Typically I just glaze over the words while subconsciously translating them to mean something like optimistic thoughts, accessible demeanors, or inspirational behavior. But lately I've been a little more curious. What are "positive vibes" exactly? Are they powerful and compelling manifestations of human consciousness or just superstitious hokum of an antiquated folk psychology? Are they part of a cosmic energy that we're only just beginning to comprehend (like Yoda and Lao Tzu allude to) or just glib and exhausted vestiges of a failed paradigm (like the flat earth theory or Dokken)? As a good Wittgensteinian, I decided that the answers must lie somewhere within the common everyday utilization of this phrase. You know, like Dr. Lecter asks (and Marcus Aurelius before him I guess) What is their nature? What are positive vibes witnessed to be doing? Where are some instances of them? And so I took some time to gather a little de facto field research on Tribe and get a better understanding of this ubiquitous and enigmatic enterprise. A search on Tribe will yield 922 instances of positive vibes. Many of these instances are in people's personal profiles where folks often list positive vibes as what they're looking for here on Tribe. Hmmmm…. I assume they'll know them when they see them. But maybe not. You can't always exactly 'see' positive vibes, right? Well sort of. Some Tribe pics often depict folks either "giving off" positive vibes or being the targeted object of them. Take a look at this first example. http://people.tribe.net/essentia/photos/756312ca-0017-4632-918a-59386e08f8aa If not for the title I would've completely missed the boat on this one. I should have known it had something to do with malt liquor and avocados though. In this next picture it's stated that the positive vibes had flowed from this art gallery exhibition. Take a look. http://people.tribe.net/b61ae795-2ad3-43be-95fc-1d55be9608d1/photos/f5c67cc3-f057-48c0-8687-e424ace7e139 The individual in this next picture is actually listening for positive vibes. http://people.tribe.net/dalehauskins/photos/cf820e6c-431c-43c3-826e-2ac582e68edd So, essentially, you can feel them, emit them, or even listen for them. The most popular medium according to my research however is "sending" them. At least 4 out of 5 positive vibes transactions on Tribe involve one party either sending them to another party or, in most cases, requesting that others do the sending. "I'm sending you positive vibes right now" was the last example that I read. It was in response to an individual who had been having some trouble with an ex-lover and decided to air her misfortune. In this case, like many others, the positive vibes seemed to be administered as kind of a get well sympathy gesture. You'll sometimes read about people "directing" positive vibes toward someone who has endured physical, mental, or spiritual peril. Let me show you a common example: http://people.tribe.net/45e59d96-8ae0-4e34-90b4-8af7c7a89a9e/photos/8cf0bba0-d39b-443f-8d44-7c62dff93ad1 This is a classic third party request for positive vibes. It's unknown what happenned to Nick or why he needs the vibes, or even whether the requester actually knows him. Could be a random send. Sort of like a traffic cop, you might send some out to Dan, maybe direct a few sideways toward Michelle, but then save the core of your cache for a whole group of peeps who really got screwed up somehow. One tip you might want to keep under your hat is this: Whatever you do, make sure your friends and acquaintances keep a little stash for you too. It sounds selfish but I can't tell you how many requests I read by folks who were desperately trying to procure positive vibes from anyone who would listen. I even read one request for positive vibes "all around". Wow. Wouldn't that be something...

Sunset Sex Salon Confidential

delachaux — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 18:50:07 GMT

So I'm reading the April issue of San Francisco magazine on the L coming home from work the other day and what should I feast my eyes on but an FBI surveillance shot of my local barber, Yuen Poon, and this big article about how the feds raided her brothel on 19th Avenue. Just when you think the Sunset is dead... I've been going to get my haircut at Poon's Hong Kong Hair Salon on Taraval at 17th Avenue for years. Poon never really gave me that great of a cut I guess, but hell- it's only $9.00 and quick. At first I never really thought anything was too out of the ordinary at the salon. The staff was always friendly and they always had an issue of Jane for me to thumb through while getting my haircut. Sure they were always yellin' at each other in Cantonese, but I figured they were just family. Sometime around 2001 a visiting friend of mine returned from the salon with some suspicion that something was "going on in the back". I had never even realized that there was a "back" to the place. But sure enough I too started to notice some peculiar behavior every time I went in for a cut. For one, everyone in the joint seemed startled every time I walked in. Sure I was the only white boy to seemingly step foot in the place, but there was an air of something peculiar in the way they greeted me. Then I started to notice more and more older Chinese men coming into the salon, some even bald, blurting out abrupt chunks of old Toisan tongue and being motioned to scurry into the back room. For a longtime I conjectured the scenario to be something as benignly traditional as an illicit gambling den where gamers laid around high in a dreamy fog of opium trying to focus on their cards while hired "company" doted on their every wish. I was partially right. Upon one visit I actually got a glimpse of the inner world when a young Chinese girl appeared out of the back while I was sitting in the barber chair. She looked as though she just stepped out of an 80s Prince video. I was immediately beguiled by the lack of creative fantasy amongst middle-aged Chinese men. But just as sudden as she had appeared, Poon yelled something impetuous at her and she receded back into her lair. At that point I just came to the obvious conclusion that some sort of 'happy ending' massage situation was transpiring in the back and that's how I left it. Well dig this. As it turns out, Poon was running her own little ho house in the back of the salon and turning a pretty penny in the process. Apparently the operation blew up so big that the little walls of the salon could no longer house the madness and she had to expand the ever-growing enterprise into a 3-bedroom house on 19th Avenue (right around the corner). She was making bank as local johns paid visit day and night to have a sample of the latest product that had been trafficked into the Sunset via a vast and complex sex slave network with roots stretching all the way to rural Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Bling Bling off the Chinese Caligraphy. But, as often is the case in the biz, Poon got a little too confident with the success of her pimp skillz and her bucket started getting holes in it. Neighbors started getting suspicious, some downright incensed. It wasn't long before someone started whispering in the ear of SF Vice and before you knew it investigators were snooping around Poon's trash wondering what kind of beast was producing this size payload of condom rappers and empty lube bottles. On a dreary day in January of last year a team of feds decided to find out. Poon got raided and arrested on charges of housing prostitution and human trafficking. They also arrested 4 naked girls who were just chillin' in the joint. Some couldn't even speak a lick of english. They uncovered all kinds of craziness, including 120K in cash and about 12 johns who happened to be paying a visit at precisely the wrong time. Everybody got hauled down to Bryant street and when the smoke cleared and the story finally surfaced it was more nefarious in scope than anyone (especially me) had fathomed. We're talking massive pan-Asian sex-slave operation involving a battery of clandestine recruiters, hundreds of regional managers with parlors and bordellos peppered all over the united states from here to Atlanta. Thousands of young women sucked up from all over the eastern pacific rim and shuffled into a pachinko machine-like trafficking industry that confiscates their passports (most of them fake anyway) and drops them into a blurry maelstrom of stealthy sex-crazed destinations where they're forced to turn conveyor belt-like tricks and watch reruns of Seinfeld in the downtime all day every day until they can pay off their "debt" and then move out to the Bunny Ranch in Nevada and marry some dim-witted bartender. Yep.... it's a living..... Needless to say, I'm looking for a new barber. I typically like to keep it under $15.00 a cut. Any suggestions?

Fluffy's Furry Little Pharmacy & Cutesy Kitty Kingdom Crack Lab

delachaux — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 18:31:15 GMT

In the not so distant future, when all of our planet's natural fauna and flora have been drained extinct and the earth's surface is just one big dusty playa, we'll have all kinds of sprawling neon metropoli that glow, blink, sparkle, jack beats and pump bass round the clock for trillions of bright, bobbing faux-fur clad people. Society will teem amidst holographic dada sculptures digitally smeared into every possible square millimeter of available space. Everywhere you look you'll see a visual assault of projected commercials advertising disoriented sounds, surreal images, and hazy correlations to indiscernible products and peculiar merchandise. Visual real state will simply be too expensive to see anything for free. Our optic video-bit implants will scan every image we cast gaze upon and deduct neuro-credits from bio-linked accounts that continually monitor trends in our sight purchasing. The only official "gaze-free" zones that will not be buzzing with the loud and frenetic mishmash of media will be small and lampy fluorescent sectors like this one. And in these tranquil shop corners of civilization, where the dusty din of desperation dulls to a low hum, you will be capable of resting your eyes, clearing your mind, and focusing once again on procuring your next delicious batch of cute and fuzzy brain pellets guaranteed to electrically revamp the pep in your step, the flash in your mask, and the stroll in your soul that lets you stay up forever as the buggy, blissed-out sex zombie that human evolution intended... We've seen to it.

Happy Holidays From River Maniac

delachaux — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 23:04:14 GMT

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all; and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2006, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishees. By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

The Legend of Seven Foot Dilly

delachaux — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:35:03 GMT

"In the ten years since I have been studying, researching and writing about old time music, the name of John Dilleshaw has remained a tantalising and elusive mystery. An enquiry about Dilleshaw - or Seven Foot Dilly and His Dill Pickles, as the record labels read - became a standard coda to any interview I did with any older southeastern musician, and the enquiry usually drew a blank. Who was this tall, laconic guitar player who propelled such excellent, driving stringband music, and crazy-talked his way through solo performances besides? There were abundant clues: his records are full of strange place-names like Bald Mountain, the Dog River, Bibb County and Kennesaw Mountain, and the names of his supporting musicians appear on several of the skits his various bands recorded. Yet in spite of the clues, people digging after him kept drawing blanks. Repeated research forays into north Georgia unearthed a good many other musicians and some of these had heard of Dilly but none really knew much about him. Who was he and where did he go?" - from The Legend of John Dilleshaw Hmm...

Was Keely Smith really a Cherokee Indian?

delachaux — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 17:20:42 GMT

That's what my grandma used to say. Too bad more native americans never hit it big on the vegas circuit. Can you imagine how dynamic american entertainment would be? Does anyone remember what happenned to Aloha Betty? She kinda reminded me of Keely, except when she was cussin' and throwin' wine bottles around back stage. Talk about dynamic entertainment...

Mediasaurus X

delachaux — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 21:43:56 GMT

A buddy of mine helps manage the LAN security over at Network Broadcast. One night he invited me over to take a look at the infamous 'Mediasaurus X' that they keep locked up over there. With a few swipes of his after-hours lanyard, we were able to access the central studio compound and check out the inner patch closet where they keep the machine incarcerated. I snapped this photo through the thick glass encasement. It seems strange, to say the least, that they're keeping this thing under such tight security. I guess something went awry while a news crew was using it to get a story out in the field. Even the Network execs aren't exactly sure what happened. Did the machinery suck up the whole story, or just segments? Which segments were left at the scene? Who's missing from the story? The station film crew? How much late breaking news is locked up within it? Has this segment been edited? How is the piece being spun on the other networks? Or have they been fabricated as missing too? Nothing but questions at this point. Questions, and this uncanny- almost chilling- shit-eating grin on the mixed up face of the equipment.

Burly-Q Blasty-Blast

delachaux — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:52:09 GMT

Had quite the little blasty-blast at last weekend's Teaseorama barrage. Didn't get to peep too much of the Friday night performances as I was crankin' out the mood mosaic in the merch lounge and yappin' through margs at the bar. Saturday night, howeva, Sahtaday wuz a monstah! The Lollies kicked open the door and sent the faux fur flying. Then Murasaki Baby Doll torched the stage like screaming Godzira jacked on atomic Tokyo-yum-yums. Seeing the vivacity of Murasaki Babydoll instantly renders the rest of the world horribly dull and uneventful. Until Harlem Shake took the stage that is. Kin I gitta GOD DAMN, people! I've been abreast of Simone's voluptuous swagger for many years, but Alotta! This chick drops a payload! They brought the house down with their little holy-rollin' southern-fried Baptist halleluiah-shake-shake. The sleeper hit of the night that came out of nowhere was the elaborate Bollywood drama that Kellita and the other Feathers performed. It's inspiring to see the local girls pushing burlesque to new and creative heights like that. Of course I have to kick a little respect down to Hollywood for bringin' up Summer Peaches and those motherfuckin' Wau Wau Sisters. Seattle for Indigo Blue and Chica Boom too! Meanwhile back at Roky Roulette's wild afterparty I bumped up some of that burly-q big beat bonanza and the starlets went ape well into Sunday morning. It's fascinating how far this whole neo-burlesque ride has come over the years. It's like a favorite cocktail that you only order on special occasions and then wish you could drink all day long. Ingrediants include: a shot of pride, a shot of bewilderment, then float with feverish dreams and twist with a lime... Bravo Ladies, BRAVO!

It feels like you can swim

delachaux — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 15:36:47 GMT

Upon receiving multi-fi mega-data code scanning signals alerting the V-stream cuticle receptors in our gigantaplex mother drive here at 17th Avenue, the internal processor cut the signals into triadic syntax and uncovered argot-eating virus larvae nested deep within the lexicon's infested uterum, thus instantiating a code RED emergency lockdown on all security sectors linked to the drop zone. Not one for spook alarm drills, I de-fragged the manual transmission grid in the iHatch nursery, hijacked one of the more spacious bodypods and jettisoned myself, Mel, and Aurel over the hill and onto the Playa where upon ionic acclimation I found myself gettin' muppet-funky off the carbine fumes. After burning through seven and-a-half cataton-K-catridges I re-booted the death jacks and started sifting like a neon shit-dozer through furry piles of broken brain frames until my gestalt jostler cracked open and sprayed used cranoleum all over the esplanade, thus burning the furniture and disintegrating the whole event into a nasty schizoid dream blaring blitz-filtered battle breaks back from a forgotten future like dusty reverb echoeing off an old Western.

The little man in my head

delachaux — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 20:59:15 GMT

who continues to vex me...

Oryctolagus Humungus

delachaux — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:58:19 GMT

I recently identified and infiltrated a local neo-syndicalist cabal where they were performing a battery of trans-communicative experiments with telepathic pictographs between oryctolagus cuniculus vermin. As the photo documents, my own immediate memory was initially severed by such Herculean mind streams penetrating my modest cranium by these overgrown lab subjects. Eventually, however, I was able to re-mount my cerebral armor and detonate a defensive thought-storm of technicolor brainwaves that fried their central matrix and grinded their cognitive machinery to a halt. I wish I could show you THAT picture.

If these walls could talk they'd puke first...

delachaux — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:58:14 GMT

BLAMMO. Another day shot to hell. Another fat moth to the succulent flame of eternity. Another car bomb of brain sauce bar-b-qued all over the urban griddle. Pungent cheese wieners hiss in the flames with tinfoil tales of bruised-up quickie-mart mayhem in burnt rubber bathrooms flooded with melted crayon diapers, blown-out headsets, and crispy cream agony. Another detonation of daylight, another massacre of monsters, a full blown genocide of screaming moments obliterated by the brawny blast of carbon-based bi-peds. Another powder-blown burst of ball sack pollen spread all over this sandbox city fast and furious like a howling tsunami of para-gliding insects windsurfing wild fire engines with exploding girls-gone-wild confetti strewn all over the courtroom. Another cry from the kitchen as greenish iguana-stained cutlery showers crackling islands of petrified top ramon, dried merlot, and crusty cockroach antlers. Another giggle from under the covers as another sexy love affair gets smeared all over the walls. Panting moans gone giddy groping at that poisonously pure pulp of piping-hot sanity that slides pussy-first through the jungle like Tarzan the Transsexual siphon splashing every species in the groin with painfully pristine pillows of luscious porn tomato pie. Another day of smoke and mirrors as tractors in heat gargle down the street. Wrecking ball hangovers swing like huge sumu whales plunging through faces, through dreams, through crispy 12 piece buckets of fried God. More fuzzy photos from space. More anxious conversations frantically chewing the flesh off of each other like starving piranhas on a drowning pig. More nerf tombstones wet with wonder. More busted board games dropped off at the dump.