AUTHOR.CALHO: If I didn't write it, I would be hitch hiking cross country to Maine and then Alaska in that order. While taking frequent breaks to spread leaflets. And sit in diners. And write on things because I wasn't at a computer. I may still do that in a few years. Writing this also helps me forget about and better understand the limitations of being human, and keeps me busy enough to allow me no free time to burn the world down.

THEMATIC.ABOUT : Collapse often. The things that hold people together and hold them apart and scatter brains. The things that make thoughts go boom. The things that ooh and aah and [expletive deleted]. Sometimes poking around the margins where responsibility ends and the only one to look to is the Original Equipment Manufacturer and say "but, I already pressed 9 for more options and the menus are exactly the same. Can you just replace it?" The answer will be: "please hold." Sometimes hanging out in dark corners. Sometimes following the train tracks. Looking for ways out and ways in and all the while sharing the things seen and heard and done and drawn and written and scorched and healed and teased and caged and dreamed along the way.
Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts

6/2/16

That Instant

You can definitively confirm Summer's arrival because you've fallen asleep naked on your back for the second evening in a row spread eagle with a fan blowing from your bow to stern trying to keep dry while your dinner finished baking only to wake up to a cold, over done, and dry dinner hours later and need a cold shower anyway.  Then while sitting and chewing your over done and dry meat, sweat beads on the bridge of your nose.

10/16/15

Helmet, Armor, Time, Money, Love.

The kind of love that lasts forever.
The kind of love that outlasts explanation.

Yep, that kind.

The inexplicable kind.  The kind that cannot be explained by an affinity for a God or the affinity for a person.  The everlasting, gut punching kind.

The kind that makes you change your ways even though changing your ways has nothing to do with how you express it, kind of love.  The sort that makes you wish you could be a different person.  The kind of love that makes your heart break when there are no more words to say what it is you had to say when you had to say it.  Hell, the mouth only has so much capability inside of it.

That kind of love.

The kind that changes how and what you do despite the fact that change now has no affect on your outcomes, and you do it anyway.

That kind of love.

The kind that tells you explicitly: SEX IS NOT GOING TO HELP OR HELP FIX THIS. and you do it anyway, because you enjoyed snuffling her private parts and she enjoyed yours, snuffling, just that much.  It turns into a private secret box,  permanent.  Oh, please!  Open it up to more!  To more!  Nope.  That's all you will get to know.  Forever.

Mind, body, and soul.  You are cut off.  Wander the waste lands.  Find an amalgam.   Find a new war to fight.   A new fart to sniff.  The embassy is closed.

Write songs about love and body parts and knowledge and loss and wars won.  Write them to whomever.  You'll find your way.  Eventually.  Eventually, having sex on our grave, I will think about you.  And

how I came
to be here.

6/30/13

Dear (_____)

Dear Summer,

I will walk with the wind on your mind.  And we'll have inside jokes.  The trees never pipe down and I'm okay with it.  They can laugh too.  I'll be there to give you a wink and a nod, Summer.  I'll learn the song you whistle and we'll walk with the wind on our minds.

sincerely,

Mr. Bubblegum

6/22/13

4 Years Is a Lifetime, Music, and Summer What?

Sometimes I wake up and it's hard to believe it's been four years since I made it clear of the 24 years that came before when it comes to my parents.  When people ask about them, I'm still tempted to say they died. They are dead to me, but just because they're dead in my mind doesn't make them dead in real life, even though it would be great if they were.  It's hard to believe I ever did love them.  I suppose I once did.  My mother anyway.  Is it better to be feared or loved?  They decided it was better to be feared.  It is easy to receive gratitude for putting out a fire.  I suppose it is easy to cling to those firemen and women rescuing you from that fire and believing you owe them a life debt.  A water debt.  A blood debt.

It is easy, until you find out, when the blinders come off, that they set that fire that took your body down to it's foundations.  Then it's not so easy.  When that sun dawns and the city you've been inhabiting in the dark comes into sharp relief and you realize you've been living downtown for 24 years and didn't know it and from the tallest skyscraper there you can't even see the city limits, you cry.  And I did.  For years.  I wanted to jump back then.  Break my heart on the pavement into beads of pomegranate flesh crushed.  I didn't.

I walked.  I ran.  And then I walked some more when my lungs and legs quit.  I camped.  I broke into abandoned homes and raided food and threw it in my back pack and kept going.  I slept on concrete and hid in basements when creatures roamed and cached weapons to defend myself.  Taught myself how to use them, because the day you come face to face with the monsters will be the day you are least prepared to fight for your life and the blood in your veins and your heart beat.  I walked for years until the buildings and bridges grew smaller.  The shells of "civilization" as I knew it grew fewer and far between, and one day I was outside of it all, on a hill top looking back in and I could see the towers so tall back then.  I could see the flag poles and radio towers atop the things so massive they crowded out the sky and blanked the stars at night with their ferocious brilliance.

And it's strange to be outside of it.  Strange to feel myself breathing.  There was a time, right after I took myself away from it all, that it felt odd not to be hurt.  I felt like my skin didn't fit.  My face didn't feel like my face.  It was difficult to walk, like my legs forgot how to do it in this new frame unburdened.  It felt strange to stand up straight.  Strange to deal with my bosses because I was constantly afraid that they might hit me if I messed something up or forgot to do something or did what they wanted, but they changed their minds halfway and did not tell me.  It never occurred to me that people are not supposed to be allowed to do that to other people.  It never occurred to me that people are not naturally inclined to do that necessarily.  It never occurred to me that there would and could be legal recourse for me if they did.  Shedding the things, piece by piece, that I once thought to be absolute truths of power relationships and interchange with "authority".

It was a difficult transition and four years removed from it, it feels like a lifetime away.  The longest four years of my short life.  I've done so much living, it amazes me and I love it.  I love being able to look forward without immediate apprehension.  Some days I wake up and my first thought is "so this is what everyone else has been feeling like all this time."  I wish that I did still retain the good memories from when I was little.  I've spent so much of myself and so much time eradicating the bad ones, but you can't pick and choose when it comes to that.  There are huge blank spaces in my memory now.  Massive expanses that I should have some recall about, but I don't.  Struggle with whether that's a good or bad thing comes up sometimes, but I'd rather recall nothing than wake up sweating at night.

A choice I decided to make.  The most vivid memories still remain, both good and bad; the worst of the worst and the best of the best.  Every time I speak to my siblings something new and minor comes to light for better and for worse and I forget all over again.  Strike it from the library.  Continue on my way.  I feel like, really for the first time in a long time, like I'm going the right way and ... there's no price to put on peace.  Peace at any cost.  Call it selfish.  Call it whatever you want to.  There's beauty in grace and grace is not killing your parents to square your own books.

There's music stored up in there.  I have about 120 tracks and sounds and machine sounds stocked up.  I really do want to do it, I haven't made the time to learn.  Really learn.  I'm passion infused about it.  I need it.  I'm terrified of failure the same way I used to be years ago when I first decided to share and open myself up to criticism.  Not just open myself up, but open myself up to criticism on something I thought I was pretty good at.  Music is an entirely different bucket.  I want to do it, I've taken the first steps, and now I just have to make one foot follow the other.  Never did download that manual for the autoharp.  It's not collecting dust though.  Every few days, I drag it out from under my bed and lay it down and pluck it's strings and see what comes out of it, but I'm happy to be a dabbler.  And unhappy to be just.

Beats, notes, and rhythms in my head and the struggle, I know, will be exhausting.  It's a problem of effort and I know that's a me problem, not an environment problem.  I've had some trouble with scheduling.  Trying to keep yourself out of trouble by sleeping on a max schedule will only drive you so far.  Eventually you have to step out of safety if you want to accomplish anything.  No one ever won a football game by kneeling down in the first quarter.  Crunch time is never convenient and I can't imagine the force of the crush that will drive me to try and I don't want to experience it.  I'll get on it someday.  To do lists grow long like finger nails.  Eventually you have to cut it down or at least paint them.

On another note, you know it's summer when the girls are out in flip flops and the guys are losing their shirts. That's the usual metric.  Everyone is out in their Ed Hardy tees and old men are jogging, red skinned, down the middle of side streets and kids are pushing their strollers and little carnivals with tractor trailer ferris wheels start popping up.  You know it's summer when you can't get a spot to fish on the river shore if you show up any later than noon on a Tuesday.  Opening your car door is like opening an oven door and you sweat from the effort of fixing yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast.  You know it's summer when you head down to the basketball court and you'd rather stand than sit when you're not playing because the asphalt is just that hot.

The real tell about summer, though, is when the ladies start to come out doors in shorts and Ugg boots.  I have no idea when that nonsense caught on.  What I do know is that every year it happens.  Inevitably.  It makes no sense.  I am a huge fan of form following function, but there is no function to it!  None whatsoever!  I am taking a stand against it.  I was walking down to the gas station in the middle of the day and a nub wearing Uggs and a jean jacket strolled by on the other side of the street and I tried to contain it, but I couldn't.  I guffawed for a second, choked, and then laughed at the top of my lungs.  It's okay though.  She's doing her and I'm going to do me.  No big deal.

Still though, come on!  Really?  Watching it from the corner of my eye all I could think about was gross, stanky, lady feet.  I don't care how pretty your face is, guy or girl, but if your feet stank something awful or are horribly deformed or even noticeably deformed, that's a deal breaker.  Call me shallow.  I don't mind, but there has to be limits.  Still chuckling while I walked into the gas station I was at a loss as to what planet that was considered attractive.

I'm not the style police.  90% of what I wear serves a function and a purpose and if that purpose or function requires something off putting or ugly, hey... go f#$% yourself.  Form will always follow function for me.  If I happen to net up some good form along the way it's just the bonus.  I love summer.  I love the absurdity of it all.  I got into a long back and forth with a girl friend about style.  Sometimes I do make style considerations when it comes to choosing the best function/form ratio.  She was dressed to the nines and I asked her why she would put herself into such nice clothes.  Turned out she just wanted to dress up on a Friday.  I scratched my beard.  She elaborated.  "Sometimes I'm just in the mood to feel a little different."

I got it, then.  When function governs there's less room for expression.  Everything can't be mechanical the way I want it to be or would like it to be.  Input equals output not always and it shouldn't always be.  Reproduction being what it is and kind of necessary.  Hard wiring.  And there I go, back to the mechanical.  I can't help it.  She had a point though.  After the conversation I felt myself starting to want to be a slacks and button up guy.  She explained that even though she was dressed to the teeth with shiny earrings, they were still her play clothes because if anything bad happened to them, they're not her actual dress clothes.  I might try to wear button up shirts more often.  Without buttoning them.  To pull that off I'll probably need pants without latex paint all over them.  That takes money.  Maybe not.  I love function.

I'll have quiet dreams about wearing dumb slacks and ripping the crotch out of them doing what I do.  In the meantime, I'll just do me and wear what I want.  I guess, in very short retrospect, I respect that Ugg jean jacket girl.  If I see her again I'm still going to laugh.  The same way people probably laugh at me strolling down the main drag in clothes with no form, scratching their heads like "did you look at a mirror before you left your house or did you grab the first four garments you could find on your floor and jump out of your door to conquer the world?"

And that's how you know it's Summer.

Kisses.  Later on, kids.


///Ladytron - "Soft Power"  ...daylight is the enemy...  I love the night.  Everything smells wet and good at night.  I want to sleep by the river again and talk to the fish while the fire goes out.

9/24/12

Dear (_____)

Dear Summer,

I dunno, baby.  I just do not know.  I've been flirting with someone.  Not to your color palette, however, that is how these things tend to go, year by year.  I thought we had something, but we didn't, and while it has been a torrid coaster of emotion through the hot days, I am looking forward to the cold nights.  I was born hot blooded and it's nothing to say less of you, but I am happy to admit a run on to tell you that I loved you.

Sincerely,

all your fond memos.

That Instant

you realize your summer passport has expired and everything that happens has to be above board or you'll never get back home.

9/2/12

Dear (_____)

Dear Summer,

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

sincerely,

Goddamnitihatesummer

8/8/12

Redesign (stealth mode, but not really)

So I'll make this short and sweet.  Some updates (hooray changes).  I haven't been sitting around scratching my bum and picking my nose and wishing for things to change.  Well I have, but that's only half of my day.  I'm on the "wish it, want it, do it" plan from the book of the same title as reviewed by Bill Maher on that show about the dog and the baby and the bad father and their crazy antics.  I don't know why I did that to such detail.  I think it was supposed to be funny.  Progressively funnier as the details got more specific and more vague.  Reverse comedy crash zoom.  What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, so some updates:



Auralport header













The Auralport is wearing it's summer best.  It looks a lot better over there (pictured here it's tinted gray) and the cloud bank drawn inside the letters really pops out bright.  The design actually turned out completely different from the idea I had in my head of summer fields and woodlands.  I wanted it to come out in deep greens and golds and purple and pink and as I was working on it I became more and more consumed with the steeliness of summer skies and the way power lines and telephones poles cut everything up when the sun goes down until it's too dark to see.  And then the links became these bits of flame salmon that kind of reminded me of how the clouds kind of catch fire bit by bit at sunrise and sunset.  So I wanted to capture some of that without making it unreadable.  I'm pretty sure it's borderline unreadable as it is, but it's the right kind of hardness I was looking for.  That same hardness that makes the summer sky hard to stare into some days because it is so bright and black at once.

I'm looking forward to doing the fall redesign though.  I think I just do better with darker pallets and color arrays and lower contrast over there.  OEMFail will always be a high contrast affair.

Bits for Flames received a little infusion of life in the form of two short short stories: The Hills at Wallston Park and Cement Head.  Obvs they're not for kids.  One is drama and the other is curio.  I still want to do more with it, but haven't really had the courage or drive to really sit down and tear something big off there.  I almost toyed with the idea of doing a redesign, but then I remembered I still have to do header art for the various sub sections, not to mention finish populating them from my stock piles of google docs.  Anyway, they're there for your consideration.

Times have been tough.  Times have been fun.  Finally regained the ability to do somethings, and learned to do some new things.  It's never all bad.  It's going to be a tough month though.  Then again, when is it never not a tough month?  I don't know.  Still popping off the works over at Auralport though the traffic stats are down, but I don't particularly mind.  I remember when I first started over there I was afraid someone would see it.  Funny how things flip around.  I'm not particularly happy with the subjects and themes lately, but I'm not sure what I'm turning toward as of yet, so I'm going to keep shaking my head like I've got swimmers ear and writing down what comes out until I hit on what it is I've been trying to say this season.

May be time to just sit down and grind out an album.

Anyway.  Unannounced changes that are now announced so they're stealthy, but not really.  I'm rambling.  Anyway, uhm...  I lived, I loved, I laughed, and then slept for 14 hours.  Gnite :P


///the item you are searching for has been moved.  for no particular reason at all.   because sometimes that happens.  bonus track available next time around.  i promise (maybe).

7/11/11

dear (______):

Dear summer,

Can I please hace five fucking minutes without a house fly the size of my fist flying in through the slit between my closed windows.

8/6/10

Best Panel Yet?



How awesome is that?! I love it. It turned out pretty damn sweet for a quick job. Either I'm getting better or illustrator is reading my mind. Okay, enough stroking my feathers (though I sort of needed that) and back to it. One more to go. As a side note, I think I might change those paint strokes to sharp angled sort of cutout comic booky "kaboom" explosions. I think that would look even better.

And, by the way, I think I'm going to make that panel the front for the "contact" and "about me." The only reason why I'm not making it the absolute center piece is because I already have in mind a photo I took in the very early hours of a cool day while I lived in Chicago. I think you might like it too. We'll see.

Alright, moving on: I still owe you an Inception review. It's cooled off a little bit and you've probably read other reviews by now, which is a good thing ("the more you know" and all that jazz) because I want to make sure I- who am I kidding? I just haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe it'll be informative, or at least inciteful. I think I'll be able to muster at least above average incite and skip the all capital lettered rants that begin with words like "must watch twice" and "it blew me away." Most people who review films and say things like "it blew me away" as the lead in are probably blown away for one reason or another by just about everything they see. ;) I at least save it for the second line.

I've got to admit, it feels nice to be buried in getting the facade of Bits done. I'll post up a screen shot later of what the panels might look like altogether. Totally pumped.

///Sage Francis - "Lie Detector Test" Honestly, I still don't know the difference between an MC and a Rapper, but if I had to put money down on whether or not Sage Francis was an MC, I would put my bills on a big ol' hell yes. Looking forward to listening to this on a back porch of my own, with a beer in my right hand, smokes on the table, and a friend or two enjoying a big fat lazy Friday afternoon and loving it.

5/27/07

fuck you & hell yes 05/27/07

Subject : fuck you & hell yes | hell no summertime
Posted Date: : May 27, 2007 3:02 AM

fuck you people that do dumb shit like post comments that say things like "hmmm interesting just thought you would want to see this GREAT WEBSITE." if this is you, you should probably not kill yourself. what you should probably not not do is tickle and elephants hind legs until they buckle, causing the elephant to sit on you, possibly asphixiating you with its asshole, but otherwise crushing you to death. it wont be easy finding an elephant... but click HEARE for GRRRREAT WEBSITE where they are giving away 500 dollar tickle sessions. fuck head.

the summer time is awesome. beautiful. depressing. happifying. all that good stuff that reminds you why you love waiting for it, hate it when its ending, and sleep through a lot of it while its here. that being said... my summer time is not awesome. summertime. summer time? who really cares. my summer time is sucking. my lady love is in spain. one of my favorite passtimes (in case it hasnt been made clear yet, masturbation) is not working at all... and i dont have internet access at my desk so my elbows keep going numb cuz im using the half laptop (accidentally ripped the lcd off) i have laying on my bed. the only thing i have to entertain me is my furniture moving job andmy other shit. shit being writing. im going to read a book about narrative design. since i cant seem to win anything at my school narrative wise. they can all go to ... i dont know... fuckin chuckie cheese for all i care. assholes. im just unhappy. not happy with the summer time. i feel like writing some philosophical stories might help me feel less worse. eh. fuck you. hell yes? hell no. i hate summertime.

and one more thing. what the hell is homestyle white gravy anyway! i hate commercials. and bad anime. and i hate how commercials are just taking turns portraying whites and blacks as idiots. what is that racial sparring bullshit. RAWR.

///dj acucrack - "platinum" heavy strobe lights. annoying swells. sore ears. and somehow it keeps feeling good. unlike summer everyday. fucking sound life.