the latin

the latin
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

las vegas revisited

las vegas revisited
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

things to do today

arranging bowling pins
on the deck of the titanic

counting arrows along
cesar chavez boulevard

measuring my toes for
genetic counseling

drinking red wine
and laying in bed

bitter pill

charming
bitter pill

so hard so
white

so hard to swallow
(no brokeback mountain)

left unattended
and found
in the coat room
in the pocket of
some other
man

sorry bout this

xbox
i don't

miasma of wounded las vegas
coyote

sheer stockings
sinking
in the weight
of an evenings drinking

sorry to see you
go

on the road

on the road
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

The SF Public Library has Kerouac's original On The Road manuscript on display. It's a 119 foot scroll of typing, no paragraphs. He just stuck one end of the paper in and started typing. That's what Truman Capote said about Kerouac -'That's not writing , that's typing.' Umm, that's typing on speed.
The library also has some blow-up photos of the real life characters that populate the book. People like Lucien Carr, Hubert Huncke, Ginsberg, Cassady, and Mr. William Seward Burroughs of the Burroughs Adding Machine family, seen here in a clipping from a newspaper after he attempted, in Mexico, to shoot a glass off his wife Joan's head and missed. Missed badly.

eat drink and be merry

The sun has come out again in SF after torrential storms over the holidays. Literally and figuratively. I've been looking for a job but the pickings seem pretty slim. It looks like I'll be going back to New Jersey for a couple months to work on copying the archive of an artist.
Went and saw the band The Wine Chuggers on Thursday at the Makeout Room. They were good.
Tonight I'm seeing Ramblin' Jack Eliott. He must be like a hundred years old. The documentary that his daughter made about him is excellent. I highly recommend it.
It's still dark out. I woke up early today because I went to sleep at like eight o'clock last night. Is this blog-worthy?
"maybe nobody looks at your website 'cause it's about you." -New Yorker cartoon
Sean and I got ripped for the Wine Chuggers. Somehow appropriate. We met a cool chick from New York. She said " Your friend's crazy." A not unfamiliar opinion. Sean was howling during the show and I was over in a corner in a stoned sway. I'd had like six vodka tonics and then smoked some herb...

spam blog comments

What is up with the spam blog comments?

My last post received 13 spam comments from some douchebag carpet cleaners. How do they know what my carpet looks like? How did they find out my housemate smashed his toe in the hallway and left bloodspots all over the floor and didn't even try to clean it up?
What I need is a housemate slapping service.

put 'em in the stocks

From BBC World:

The top US court has rejected an appeal by a sentenced man, who argued about the legality of having to publicly wear a sign stating "I stole mail".

The Supreme Court turned down Shawn Gementera's appeal without any comment.

Gementera had argued that the measure would humiliate him, violating the Sentencing Reform Act and the constitutional ban on cruel punishment.

He pleaded guilty to mail theft after being held in 2001 for stealing letters from mailboxes in San Francisco.


In 2003, Gementera was sentenced by a district judge to two months in jail, to be followed by three years of supervised release.

The release conditions stated that Gementera must spend four days at a post office observing staff dealing with inquiries about lost or stolen mail, write letters of apology to the victims of his crime and give three lectures about his crime at schools.

The judge also ordered him to wear a signboard reading "I stole mail - this is my punishment" for a full eight-hour working day.

Gementera appealed about the latter requirement, but a US appeals court panel ruled against him earlier this year.

The court said in August that the record in Gementera's case showed the judge imposed the condition for the purpose of rehabilitation.

"Punishments aimed at imposing shame and humiliation are inconsistent with a constitutional requirement that punishments, even for heinous crimes, be consistent with human dignity," Gementera's lawyers were quoted by Reuters news agency when appealing to the Supreme Court.

back in sf

I arrived in SF last Tuesday and my initial reaction could be summed up by a phrase that I heard on at least two different occassions from Bruno, the notorious owner of the Persian Aub Zam Zam bar in the Haight. "San Francisco is a dirty little town."
After being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people walking on the streets of nyc perhaps riding the bus down Market street and being disgusted by the percentage of viewable folks who were either indigent, drunk, wasted, mentally incapacitated or all of the above (I felt like I was in a Dorothea Lange photograph circa depression years or maybe Diane Arbus)was not a fair comparison.
ah well san francisco still rocks and I have no real complaints. Now I just have to find a job. oy vey.
A friend suggested doing extra work on movie and tv shows. They pay $70 for an eight hour day. Yeah, that'll cover my bills. They're filming Monk in the city this week and that's a show that I think it would be ok to be an extra on.
My friend says it's "not the kind of work you do for the money". I guess sitting around bored for hours watching people set up equipment is something you have to really love.

unh

Saw a kid with a vote
for
Pedro

shirt today

sag hahrbah

spent the last week house-sitting for a friend of a friend in the the small old whaling village cum swank ex hometown of spalding gray -Sag Harbor. The house was very nice, big, well stocked, big art studio with tons of supplies all of which I could use. did some painting but mostly enjoyed the wine cellar . she had a lot of australian wines. i drank some nice cabernets while watching the playoffs , it got a little boring though i have to admit. I felt like i was in exile somewhere like Elba . It rained the whole time I was there. they say Spalding tried to kill himself a few times by jumping off the sag harbor bridge...? he finally succeeded on the Staten Island ferry, I believe it was.
I'm staritng to get alittle stir crazy here in Jersey and am thinking of heading back to "Cali". The job I'm working on is sort of plodding along without an end in sight (like most jobs, eh)so I kinda want to finish it up and then maybe go up to New Hampshire to see the old homestead before going back to SF.
Back to square one

back to the drawing board

fucking A

Hey Napoleon did you wet the bed last night ?

Um yeah we're gonna have to go ahead and move you back to san francisco...

new jersey etc.

Well, here I am in New Jersey...the garden state. no comment. Went to the statue of liberty last week and found out that since 9/11 you can't go up into the actual statue. How fitting that our liberties should be revoked at this poignant symbol of Liberte. Stupid french.
I was staying with my friend, Rene, at his loft in Jersey City and once again I was surprised at how only slightly gentrified it is. It's like, a 10 minute PATH train ride and you're in Manhattan. I guess the stigma of saying you live in "Jersey" keeps it free from new york snobbery. Rene has the whole top floor of his building and his rent is cheap, especially for "New York". Anyway, I stayed there a couple weeks and then they had a new roomate moving in so I hightailed it north to a little town called Leonia near the George Washington Bridge. A friend of mine from college has a big house here and I have installed myself in the basement and have found work with the estate of an artist who died not long ago. He worked in ceramics and did a lot of paintings, actually glaze on flat slabs of clay. So i have been cleaning the artworks and will start photographing, archiving, and then packing them for storage. It's pretty cool work and I can use the $.
I sublet my room in SF for the month of October so I have some time to kill here.
ah yes new york in the fall, chai tea, Jcrew sweaters, an endless river of Lexuses trying to get on the turnpike, It's lovely.

french fried

french fried
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

Remember when I was living in Boise, Idaho? Umm, that was like a week ago. Well, anyway, back when I was living in Boise, Idaho I had a friend who was getting married in Portland. So a bunch of folks in Boise rented a "mini-van" and drove there for the festivities.
This is a photo of a french fry that looks like a joint. At the post-reception we lit it and as people walked by we would hand it to them and they would attempt to take a hit off it. Hmm sweet deep fat fryer kine bud-o-ricious. They would suck like crazy trying to get a hit and would then hand it back and thank us. We found this amusing. Of course the thing smelled not so good.

Then we'll cut up the Constitution and make yellow ribbons out of it.

From Democracy Now...

American Legion Declares War on Peace Movement
The organization the American Legion has voted at its national convention to target peace activists and the antiwar movement. The group boasts nearly 3 million members. The group's national commander called for an end to all "public protests" and what he called "media events" against the war, even though they are protected by the Bill of Rights. Thomas Cadmus told the convention "The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples. The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

Chaka's licking the carpet. She has to stay inside in the mornings because the mailman is all freaked out. I guess she growled at him. I probably would have also considering his Dufus shades and liederhoesen like back-support.
I'm blowing out of here...so long Boise. I actually like Boise. It's a nice little small town. It's quiet and yet they have some cool bars and it's beautiful up here. But my time has come. My foray into the the world of construction-remodeling has made me realize manual labor sucks. Breathing in plaster dust while hauling eighty pounds of broken tiles, plaster and wooden lathe on your back, doing it for seven hours and then doing the same thing again the next day and then the next, well, you get the idea. Sysiphus had the idea.
so, yes chaka is licking the carpet...I am trying to figure out how to get my shit back to san francisco even though I'm headed east. ups, us mail, uship.com?
A friend is driving East and I'm going to meet up with her in salt lake city and then we'll drive the little fiat to New Joysey. Oy gevalt!

mmm...smoke..good

mmm...smoke..good
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

Here in Boise...Wali took off to go camping and I came down with some bug. So I hauled my ass down to Blockbuster and rented Sideways and Sin city. Sideways was great and Sin City was better than I expected. I thought Mickey Rourke looked a little like the Beast from Jean Cocteau's Belle et Bette.
Also got The Bride of Frankenstein, M (by Fritz Lang),Amarcord, and A Bullet in the Head(john Woo).(from the library-much cheaper)
the BOF was great. I can't believe I never saw it. The monster starts drinking and smoking and then he wants a woman. He and Doctor Posterius(whatver) force Henry Frankenstein to create the monster's bride and when he does she is a twitchy freaky thing with great eyes who promptly rejects the monster. Classic James Whale.
M has a young peter Lorre as a murdering child molester in 1930's Berlin. Alot of the movie has an almost documentary feel as they indicate all the latest types of detective capabilites to track down this insane killer who is terrorizing the city. Shots of people analyzing handwriting(unfilled loops indicate an indolent, lazy type of character, such as an actor), tracking down types of paper used in candy stores, etc.
The scene where Lorre is put to trial by the criminals of the city(who captured him because the cops kept busting their hangouts and messing up their biz.)is excellent. Peter Lorre pulls out all the stops.
Amarcord is great. Memories of small town italy from the thirties as only Fellini can do it(although Woody Allen tried).One great scene is when the family goes on a horse carriage trip to the farm and on the way they pick up the uncle who is at the Institution. After lunch and a few glasses of wine the odd uncle climbs to the top of a tree and starts yelling "I WANT A WOMAN!" over and over and won't come down.

I can relate.

Drink and Dial

A friend of mine called me and played back a message I had left him last Friday or early Saturday. I didn't remember calling him but when I heard the fitful starts and whining pejorativisms I painfully recalled making said call.
If there are any ohers out there to whom I may have rang up in my inebriated state please accept my, ah fuck it, consider yourself lucky.

I do remember get 86'ed from The Torch, a local strip club, but that's another story.

8/18/2005

hmm
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

pope visits german homeland

When did we start using the term Homeland? After the events of 7-11? What a God-Awful way to refer to our country. It seems very germanic, nationalistic, fascist, and Orwellian.
We just got a T1 line here at the house of eternal re-modification, Boise division. So now I guess I'll have to get caught up on current events. Has Karl Rove been arrested yet? Ha-ha, That's a good one.
Oh and who gives a fuck about the shuttle?
Jeebus help me.