Wednesday

April 29, 2008

Paranoia Agent, transcribed by David Buuck (OMG, 2007). 14 pages.

Perfect for my nos. 57 then 13 bus commute home from work. Buuck has apparently transcribed the ending "prophecy"/next episode segment of Satoski Kon's anime series known in English as Paranoia Agent.

Buuck present them as 12 short poems all beginning with "To Begin--" and ending with "And then--" (except for the last which ends "Period", signalling finality:

Prophetic Vision

To begin--
The black shadow finally appears
swallowing up the karma of the people
The cry is coming from the source of
Purgatory
filled with bright red blood
Are they for the eternal goodbye
or the first cries of the newly born shoes of
gold
The last episode of a dream, an illusion,
a bubble in a shadow
Period (12).

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Tuesday

April 29, 2008

Remy writes about movie-telling, iterating some of the concerns that I've had recently.

Monday

April 27, 2008

1. Cori managed to pull off the surprise part of Dillon's surprise birthday party last night at the Creamery. Awesomeness all around. I hope Chad performs the full-length version of his piece that he, Erika Staiti & I did last night sometime in the near future.

2. Didn't see Jorge at the BBQ on Telegraph today, but ran into Jeffrey Schrader who was outside in his parking lot smoking. We watched some NBA & drank a funky, somewhat vinegary Korean rice wine/Ginseng combo that I picked up at the Korean market there on Telegraph.

3. Then ran into Michael Carreira & Eric King at Mama Buzz.

4. The photo's one of the blossoms I was talking about a few posts back. I think of Georgia O'Keefe everytime I look at it.

5. Unfortunately, one of the gloves I bought for next week's game is the Derek Jeter autograph model. I just might have to sign Ty Cobb's name over top of his.

Saturday

April 25, 2008

WORK no .3 is now available at Rock Paper Scissors (Oakland, on Telegraph) and Issues (Oakland, Glen Ave at Piedmont). It should be available at Quimby's (Chicago) next week. Still waiting to hear back from Bluestockings (New York).

And I still have a couple of nos. 1 & 2 available, if you want to have the complete series.
___
Oaklanders, if you haven't been to Issues yet, you should check it out. They are the nicest folk, totally supportive of the local community, and have an OK selection of zines. Any local zine or chapbook publisher should get in contact with them. Their main bread & butter is magazines. So even if you don't pick up WORK there, it'd be nice if you went there and bought something else to support those who support us, et cetera.

Friday

April 24, 2008

Via Dillon:

May 4th:

I give you two excuses for Sunday afternoon drinking and BarBQuing: the anniversary of my birth and baseball. Two teams, school-yard rules, bring gear if you got it (if not, we'll get some mits together). We're gonna BarBQ (or rather you all will BarBQ, and I will skip the middle man) and brown bag it and play (probably less than) 9 innings, or until we all make the DL. And it will be great fun. Bring friends, lovers, agents, personal trainers on temporary release from grand juries, etc.

Details:
Curt Flood Field (School St. and Coolidge Ave, just off 580) in Oakland
bring gear if you got it, including hats and sunglasses, chew pouches.
BarBQ and discreet cooler action.
TIME: 2pm

be there (or be out of the state or be ridiculed on field)
_____
For those without cars: The #57 and NL buses stop at Mac Arthur Blvd & Coolidge which is walking distance to the field.

Thursday

April 23, 2008

I'm not sure what I'm doing right this spring, but Oscar my peace lilly has two buds about to blossom. Artist Eric King gave me this plant on my return to Oakland from Beijing, and in the three and a half years that I've had it, it's only flowered once (last spring).

Wednesday

April 23, 2008

Even though I turn in grades almost a month from now, I can smell the end of the semester. I spent most of last night making 5 neat piles of all the projects that I've been neglecting. There just there in stacks on my floor begging for my attention. It's all very exciting.

Monday

April 21, 2008

Been meaning to say nice things about Erika Staiti's poems in the most recent Sorry 4 Snake, especially the second poem with it's interesting power play dynamic.

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Friday

April 17, 2008

Apparently, the Ghoul's show was syndicated in the Bay Area briefly in the 70s. He ran in Detroit for almost ever--ever being approximately my childhood & teen years and beyond. Once I visited my folks and he was still on late night. Crappy movies (really, really crappy movies, the worst I've seen), the stupidly abusive pre and post commercial Froggy episodes, the pre-South Park toilet humor. Everything I want to watch now at 2 in the morning. Damnit, I'd even watch Ghoul reruns. You hear me channel 26, 28, 32 or 38?

I only say this because I know I'm about to go into the library and won't be home until about 1 or later. The TV will insinuate I am a meth addict, abusive alcoholic, or in a vulnerable addled enough state to think that Ponch selling me an "isolated" ranch in an Arizona golfing "community" wasn't an oxymoron on the face of things.
That terrible late 1960s British racing movie that had the lead character named Potato Bug (worst movie I ever saw ever, thanks to the Ghoul) actually does sound better. I'd rewatch it.
I don't like to read or write that late. If I read, I tend to gloss, which does the writer and me a disfavor. If I start writting at 2, I'm committed till dawn. I don't like to stop once I get going. I got things to do tomorrow.
_____
PS. I'm also kind of sad that not everyone grew up with Soupy Sales & White Fang reruns. He was so much edgier than Mr. Rodgers.

April 17, 2008

Not sure what's been the matter with me lately, but I've been all mood-swingy. I don't enjoy it. I'd rather be stably miserable & all-pissy-pants or happy. I think it's because we didn't have the usual 40 straight days of rain this Spring & now my seasonal disorder grumpiness doesn't have a proper place to display itself. Something about having 4-5 months of solid snow as a kid in Michigan. O, California and your sunshine.

Luckily, Chad & JD knew a trip to the Coliseum was just the antidote for this elsewise lousy week. Blanton last night looked like a double A pitcher in the first inning--all night easy Mariner singles to center be damned.
Just need to get through my 9-midnight shift at the library tonight and I can put the lid on this work-week.

Saturday

April 11, 2008


WORK no. 3 is now out, featuring Demosthenes Agrafiotis (trans. John Sakkis & Angelos Sakkis), Jeffrey Schrader, Chuck Stebelton, Rusty Morrison, & JD Mitchell-Lumsden. $3 or trade to the address on the sidebar gets you a copy.

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Friday

April 11, 2008

I work late on Thursdays and am a chronic insomniac. I miss the golden days of my insomnia when UHF channels would show public domain or super cheap B movies (the late, late movie) until the morning news came on. I think a third of my cinematic knowledge was learned after 1 am.

Rabbit ears TV (I refuse to pay for television) now shows nothing but home-shopping rip-offs, poker, infomercials for idiotic products & great real estate opportunities in Mexico, Arizona etc. . . not good enough for day time or prime time but featuring Ponch (Erik Estrada) from CHiPs, so you know they must be a good deal and the agents credible.

I don't mind the garbage. It's late after all: the ads for high-end rehab spas, even the anti-meth ads you don't see during broad daylight. If one, and only one, of the rabbit ears channels would throw on an old full-length film or a run of series of old shorts, like Detroit did in my youth with the Comedy Clasics, I wd not only tune in to watch the 3 Stooges, Chaplin, Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Laurel & Hardy etc. . . I wd make most likely stay up late and tune in to watch the late night programming on nights that I don't work.

April 10, 2008

Some Taxt chapbooks recently added to the Deep Oakland Small Press Archive:

Eleni Stecopoulos, Autoimmunity

Suzanne Stein's, Tout Va Bien

Michael Nicoloff, "Punks"

Magdalena Zurawski, Selections from the Bruise
&
kathryn l. pringle, Temper and Felicity are Lovers

April 10, 2008

Poets Rusty Morrison, Barbara Claire Freeman, and Elizabeth Robinson

Sunday, April 13th, 7:30 pm
Pegasus Books Downtown,
2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley (510) 649-1320.

April 10, 2008

April 10, 2008


more project source material

Thursday

April 9, 2008

Giant Robot 31 (2003).
The other morning when I went around Jorge Boehringer's place with Vietnamese coffee hoping to retrieve the red backpack I had left there a few days earlier, Jorge generously lent me Giant Robot #31, a back issue of an English-language Asian pop culture magazine. It's been my favorite mass transit read this week: An advice column written by a Sumo wrestler, a somewhat non-sequitur interview with Satomi from Deerhoof where she calls San Francisco "a small village", and an interview with Cultural Revolutionary photographer Li Zhensheng.
In an interview with the designer who came up with Hello Kitty (Yuko Shimizu) for the Sanrio Corporation, they asked if she thought the company appreciates what she did for them. She replied, "I haven't heard anything from them, so I don't think so. If you write that, Sanrio might say something to me--or maybe not" (72).

Wednesday

April 9, 2008

Paul Deppler (of American Book Congress) annotates KSM's contributions to WORK no. 2 here.

April 9, 2008


source material for a new project I'm thinking about

April 8, 2008



found on E. 12st at 8 avenue

Tuesday

April 7, 2008

I was on the phone with JD (a Kansas fan) as Kansas decimated my brackets entirely.

Saturday

April 4, 2008

Geof Huth scrutinizes WORK nos 1 & 2:

"I have been reading so much Creeley recently that a read through the first two issues of the poetry zine Work was like splashing cold water in my face."

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April 4, 2008

Wednesday

April 1, 2008

How things went my way today:

1. Woke up and listened to NPR Morning Edition for an hour [6am].

2. Talked with Sha [7 am].

3. Ran part of the lake & went to the gym [8 am].

4. Watched the Thomas Crown Affair (Steve McQueen version) [9:30-11].

5. Ate salmon & watermelon for brunch [10:30].

6. Read Small Talk on the bus ride into work. See awesome Sakkis bio below [12 noon].

7. Nothing at work fucked up; in fact, I think (somewhat idiotically) I might be caught up from my week off in Brooklyn [12:30-5:30].

8. Tonianne, my boss, was nice enough to give me a ride to the A's game. She's awesome like that. She told me about her childhood history with the neighborhood between High Street & the Coliseum. She has very deep community roots to the East Bay area.

In fact, her brother wrote a book about their family going to A's games back in the day (Reggie Jackson days) and what it meant to them as a family & what those games meant to the East Bay as a community [5:30ish].

9. I was at opening day. The best day of the year. Now I have a legitimate place to focus my necessity for chaotic cohesion & mathematics without having to go further into my limited study of chess [7:05].

9A. An aside, I am thinking of learning the methods of playing the ponies, since I have what seems a legit horse track in the neighborhood. I picked up a couple of books while I was in Brooklyn that educate the uninitiated as to how to read & decipher the horse sheets, as well as understand what to look for in racing horses in general. I plan to start at the $2 bet line until it becomes clearer. I'm willing to lose $20 in an afternoon to be outside (fresh air fee) the whole time learning from others.

10. Had a seat in center field (section 240, the cheap seats) which I prefer because you can see the pitches. Changed seats in the 5th inning to sit next to Dillon & Corrie in right field (section 203). It's nice being with friends in the ballpark, even more so when it's opening day an the Athletics are playing Boston. A Boston game at Oakland is almost a hometown game for the Red Sox. Sox fans litter the stadium. It's the same for the Yankees. Glad I was with Athletics folk.

11. Corrie was nice enough to give me a ride to my place from the BART station [10ish].

April 1, 2008

John Sakkis in Small Town XII.

My favorite contributor note recently has to be John Sakkis' in the new issue of Small Town:

"John Sakkis is fanatically excited about the upcoming The X-Files movie. John Sakkis still keeps his 15 year old lamented The X-Files fan club membership card in his wallet. John Sakkis has Fox Mulder and Dana Scully action figures displayed on his bookshelf, he posed them so that they are holding hands. Girls think this is more creepy than boyishly charming. John Sakkis met William B. Davis (aka Cigarette Smoking Man aka Cancer Man) in San Jose at an X-Files convention in 1994, John Sakkis got Bill's autograph on a glossy photo. John Sakkis has read all of the X-Files tie in novels as well as the Official Guide to The X-Files vol. 1-9. John Sakkis is an OG X-Philes (from the Greek root "-phil-" meaning love or obsession), he used to keep a scrapbook of newspaper/magazine articles that centered on the show. In his highschool shop class he sandblasted "THE X-FILES" onto a sheet of glass and turned it in for a grade, the grade was a C and he was mad. John Sakkis writes monster poems collects records."

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