Today is my 25th birthday. We are going to pack up the van, drive to oaksterdamn and drop off campaign materials, ship this laptop and petitions to our boss and then our employment is finished and we will find ourselves on the road once more looking east. First stop, Vegas.
The trunk is loaded up with stimpaks and ammo, we are are a 4000 mile drive from the commonwealth, the harsh california sun beats down upon the parched wasteland. The open highway stretches to the horizon We can't stop here, its deathclaw country.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
its easy to OD from OC
no not the wildly popular prescription opiate, Orange County. Some kind of strange cultural wasteland, where really conservative people act really fucking smug and dismissive when you talk about reforming cannabis laws. Well i want to see the looks on their faces when they lose this culture war an I am legally using a once prohibited plant to brew new types of beer.
I think that is my angle in all this. I want cannabis to be legalized for adults to use, our right to choose what we use as medicine or recreation and all that, but the important thing that nobody realizes, is Beer.
All homebrewers know that cannabis is far superior to hops for flavoring and preserving beer. It's just too expensive to be practical under prohibition. Hops takes two full seasons to produce any flowers while cannabis can be harvested after a few months. There are so many genetic variations within cannabis but up to the present they have all been selected for fiber production (hemp) or psychoactivity. With the legalization of cannabis all of this will change, new strains will be created and traits will be selected for taste and smell in beer. I am looking at sour diesel as a hops substitute. hehehe.
When this legislation passes i'm sure certain brewers will jump on the opportunity and we could see the first cannabis beers within a few months.
cheers
I think that is my angle in all this. I want cannabis to be legalized for adults to use, our right to choose what we use as medicine or recreation and all that, but the important thing that nobody realizes, is Beer.
All homebrewers know that cannabis is far superior to hops for flavoring and preserving beer. It's just too expensive to be practical under prohibition. Hops takes two full seasons to produce any flowers while cannabis can be harvested after a few months. There are so many genetic variations within cannabis but up to the present they have all been selected for fiber production (hemp) or psychoactivity. With the legalization of cannabis all of this will change, new strains will be created and traits will be selected for taste and smell in beer. I am looking at sour diesel as a hops substitute. hehehe.
When this legislation passes i'm sure certain brewers will jump on the opportunity and we could see the first cannabis beers within a few months.
cheers
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Welcome to Oak Land !
We crash landed here in oakland about a week ago. Our first two nights were quite interesting, 4 of us arrived at a speak easy on 12th street where the front is a converted storefront with an art gallery, downstairs, behind a revolving bookase is an underground nightclub that stays open until around 6am. Crazy crazy shit went down the first night after the jazz show was over. Our hosts were really chill, nice people they just lived an insane lifestyle and had "interesting" clientelle.
We started volunteering for the 2010 tax and regulate cannabis campaignthe day after we arrived in the city, distributing flyers at a festival, doing data entry and phone calls, editing our database have been our new day to day activities. As of this morning we have been hired as Regional Coordinators for the Southern California Area. We went from sleeping in the woods to snazzy office jobs legalizing cannabis. Life moves pretty fast here in California.
Yesterday our GPS affectionately name MAGI, was stolen, we were on our way to a SSDP meeting at Berkely and we found our van, affectionally named "Barry Vanillo" with a window smashed out. We were remarkably calm about the whole thing, our co-worker took the train and we talked to the police. Welcome to Oakland. I hope you bought some good crack after selling our GPS system, window smashing guy. How does one go about selling a recently stolen GPS anyway ?
We are currently staying in the basement of the Student Union at Oaksterdamn University. It is a technical college that trains adults for "careers in the cannabis industry". It is one of the coolest places I have ever seen. The student union reminds me of CRC after parties, except everybody has a legal medical card.
I have a bunch of postcards for ppl, just need to get me some stamps.
I could never have imagined this two months ago
more posts soon
- James Fox
Regional Coordinator for Southern California
2010 Tax and Regulate Cannabis Initiative
Next Generation Inc.
We started volunteering for the 2010 tax and regulate cannabis campaignthe day after we arrived in the city, distributing flyers at a festival, doing data entry and phone calls, editing our database have been our new day to day activities. As of this morning we have been hired as Regional Coordinators for the Southern California Area. We went from sleeping in the woods to snazzy office jobs legalizing cannabis. Life moves pretty fast here in California.
Yesterday our GPS affectionately name MAGI, was stolen, we were on our way to a SSDP meeting at Berkely and we found our van, affectionally named "Barry Vanillo" with a window smashed out. We were remarkably calm about the whole thing, our co-worker took the train and we talked to the police. Welcome to Oakland. I hope you bought some good crack after selling our GPS system, window smashing guy. How does one go about selling a recently stolen GPS anyway ?
We are currently staying in the basement of the Student Union at Oaksterdamn University. It is a technical college that trains adults for "careers in the cannabis industry". It is one of the coolest places I have ever seen. The student union reminds me of CRC after parties, except everybody has a legal medical card.
I have a bunch of postcards for ppl, just need to get me some stamps.
I could never have imagined this two months ago
more posts soon
- James Fox
Regional Coordinator for Southern California
2010 Tax and Regulate Cannabis Initiative
Next Generation Inc.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Adventures on the road
Hello all, its Alex coming in with some updates and musings. Me and jim have been is Santa Cruz since Monday and it has been an interesting experience. Santa Cruz seems to be a meca of sorts for traveling dreaded youth. There are many young adults and teenagers here playing music on the streets, smoking grass and asking for change. They are all mostly white folks who for one reason or another became or chose to become vagrants traveling around America and eventually ending up in this place. Of these groups of vagabound white youth we met up with a very familiar troupe with was our reason for coming here.
Grex has been in this city for two weeks and some of them seem to have developed a love affair with this place. During this time of year Santa Cruz is the perfect place to be a homeless youth. There are many others like you, its hot and dry enough to sleep outside wherever you want with no shelter, which is the housing situation that most of these travelers opt for. There are plenty of large corperate stores that seem to be looted on a regular basis for food and alcohol and the dumpsters are plentiful with food, so with free food and shelter the cost of living here can be very low. Out of the four nights we have been here me and jim stayed with an amazing couch surfer for two of those nights. She was a college student at UC santa cruz and her and her peers where very kind and intelligent people. It was interesting seeing two faces of youth in this city, hanging out on the street with street kids during the day and then spending the nights with college students. The other two nights we where out slept under the stars with grex and other traveling youth. It is a very comfortable life style with little concerns, no job no worries about material goods.
I cannot avoid the feeling however that I am playing homeless. The reality of my financial situation gives me the choice to live much more conventionally but for some reason enjoying the life style and comradeship of vagrancy seems more appealing then staying in motel rooms and eating out. It makes me wonder how many of the other traveling youth out here are making the choice to live this way or if they where put into a situation that dictated this life style. My guess would be that most have chosen it, and that does not seem to be an absurd choice. Once one has abandoned any care for social norms of behavior and material comfort the easy lifestyle of homelessness in the bay area becomes very attractive, especially since there are hundreds of like minded youth making the same decision providing a whole community to become apart of. This kind of thing would just not as comfortable on the east coast, given the reality of constant mosquitoes attacking you. After two nights of sleeping outside here I have not had a single bug bite or seen a single mosquito. Once the entirety of the outdoors becomes a place where you can comfortably sleep I suppose it becomes easy to forget about a bed and a roof over your head.
Soon we are heading to Oakland to volunteer for a period of time with the coordinators of the Tax and Regulate marijuana movement. Don't know where we are going to stay yet but hopefully my contact in that movement can find us a free place to crash while we are volunteering. I have been in touch with the managers of the petition as well and things look all lined up for me and jim to be working on getting signatures for the ballot by the end of the month. Its pretty exciting to see this all coming together and I cannot wait to start getting a good feel an the organization of the movement and see where I can fit into it. I have gotten to know the national groups pretty well in my time in the movement (MPP and NORML) but have not really had any interaction yet with the Oaksterdam folks and Richard Lee's camp of activists. I hope things go well and they are very happy to have someone with good experience from the East coast coming in to help them out, so we will see how things go.
Back on burning man. I know that my last post on the topic was very confused and drifted from place to place. I was still adjusting to reality again and digesting the experience that I had just had. I will attempt to describe things section by section so that they are somewhat more coherent.
The Bars: At burning man you are constantly having alcohol shoved in your face. Every 20 to 30 feet on every major road there are people behind a bar waving you down to have a drink. Most bars are attached to a camp which has a certain theme, and the bar is always in line with the theme of the camp. For example there as a party naked bar, where if you got naked they have you a Hawaiian style necklace. There was a whiskey and whores bar where to take a shot of whiskey you had to spin a wheel that you tell you to hump a stranger, kiss a bartender, dance on a strip pole or simular activity. People at bars want you to drink, and often demand that you do so. Strangely enough, even in this high alcohol environment everyone maintains their composure. At burning man there is a strong social stigma against incompetence, which includes a stigma against getting inebriated to the point that you loose your composure. Out of every festival or large gathering I have been to people have had themselves the most together at burning man by far, which is very impressive given the aggressiveness that alcohol is poured down your mouth. The bars are also a place where rapid fire socialization happens. You show up to a bar and start interacting with strangers very quickly, often in unusual ways. As with everywhere else in burning man people generally make a presumption of friendship and are very open and real with you, but more on that latter. The bars also tend to have live DJ's or bands playing at them, some of them good some of them not. This is not a constant thing but it is cool to see dozens of what would be local musicians playing in a place where you will never go. The bars are a critical part of the forced socialization that goes on in burning man, but represent a gear in a much larger machine.
I will cover something else in my next post, since I don't want to drag you all through several paragraphs of this stuff.
Also, I feel I should note a very odd experience I had the day after burning man. While I was driving heather to the SF air port we drove by, and almost over, what was almost certainly a dead body. It was very shocking to see someone lying between two lanes of rapid highway traffic as cars swerved around it. I had up to that point never seen death in that context, in the moment of event of death still occurring, there where no emergency service vehicles near by at all. We did the only thing we could do and called emergency services and let them know that there was a body on the road and where. My reaction to the experience was quite stark, I did not really know how or what to feel beyond pure surprise. I guess these things happen every day and we just played a small part in the ending of someones life by calling emergency services, but beyond that my emotional reaction to the experience is somewhat dissociated. I would think that I would have more direct sympathy for this body but I don't really have any idea who this person was or how their life ended. It is however somewhat haunting to look at a body as a object rather then a individual, but overall I have not been plagued by negativity around the event, its something that simply happened and that's it.
Well, if you read the whole post good for you, your actually interested in our experiences out here. Keep posted as the next few days with the Oaksterdamn folks should be very interesting and I will have some experiences to relate to you all. Keep living good out there wherever you are.
Grex has been in this city for two weeks and some of them seem to have developed a love affair with this place. During this time of year Santa Cruz is the perfect place to be a homeless youth. There are many others like you, its hot and dry enough to sleep outside wherever you want with no shelter, which is the housing situation that most of these travelers opt for. There are plenty of large corperate stores that seem to be looted on a regular basis for food and alcohol and the dumpsters are plentiful with food, so with free food and shelter the cost of living here can be very low. Out of the four nights we have been here me and jim stayed with an amazing couch surfer for two of those nights. She was a college student at UC santa cruz and her and her peers where very kind and intelligent people. It was interesting seeing two faces of youth in this city, hanging out on the street with street kids during the day and then spending the nights with college students. The other two nights we where out slept under the stars with grex and other traveling youth. It is a very comfortable life style with little concerns, no job no worries about material goods.
I cannot avoid the feeling however that I am playing homeless. The reality of my financial situation gives me the choice to live much more conventionally but for some reason enjoying the life style and comradeship of vagrancy seems more appealing then staying in motel rooms and eating out. It makes me wonder how many of the other traveling youth out here are making the choice to live this way or if they where put into a situation that dictated this life style. My guess would be that most have chosen it, and that does not seem to be an absurd choice. Once one has abandoned any care for social norms of behavior and material comfort the easy lifestyle of homelessness in the bay area becomes very attractive, especially since there are hundreds of like minded youth making the same decision providing a whole community to become apart of. This kind of thing would just not as comfortable on the east coast, given the reality of constant mosquitoes attacking you. After two nights of sleeping outside here I have not had a single bug bite or seen a single mosquito. Once the entirety of the outdoors becomes a place where you can comfortably sleep I suppose it becomes easy to forget about a bed and a roof over your head.
Soon we are heading to Oakland to volunteer for a period of time with the coordinators of the Tax and Regulate marijuana movement. Don't know where we are going to stay yet but hopefully my contact in that movement can find us a free place to crash while we are volunteering. I have been in touch with the managers of the petition as well and things look all lined up for me and jim to be working on getting signatures for the ballot by the end of the month. Its pretty exciting to see this all coming together and I cannot wait to start getting a good feel an the organization of the movement and see where I can fit into it. I have gotten to know the national groups pretty well in my time in the movement (MPP and NORML) but have not really had any interaction yet with the Oaksterdam folks and Richard Lee's camp of activists. I hope things go well and they are very happy to have someone with good experience from the East coast coming in to help them out, so we will see how things go.
Back on burning man. I know that my last post on the topic was very confused and drifted from place to place. I was still adjusting to reality again and digesting the experience that I had just had. I will attempt to describe things section by section so that they are somewhat more coherent.
The Bars: At burning man you are constantly having alcohol shoved in your face. Every 20 to 30 feet on every major road there are people behind a bar waving you down to have a drink. Most bars are attached to a camp which has a certain theme, and the bar is always in line with the theme of the camp. For example there as a party naked bar, where if you got naked they have you a Hawaiian style necklace. There was a whiskey and whores bar where to take a shot of whiskey you had to spin a wheel that you tell you to hump a stranger, kiss a bartender, dance on a strip pole or simular activity. People at bars want you to drink, and often demand that you do so. Strangely enough, even in this high alcohol environment everyone maintains their composure. At burning man there is a strong social stigma against incompetence, which includes a stigma against getting inebriated to the point that you loose your composure. Out of every festival or large gathering I have been to people have had themselves the most together at burning man by far, which is very impressive given the aggressiveness that alcohol is poured down your mouth. The bars are also a place where rapid fire socialization happens. You show up to a bar and start interacting with strangers very quickly, often in unusual ways. As with everywhere else in burning man people generally make a presumption of friendship and are very open and real with you, but more on that latter. The bars also tend to have live DJ's or bands playing at them, some of them good some of them not. This is not a constant thing but it is cool to see dozens of what would be local musicians playing in a place where you will never go. The bars are a critical part of the forced socialization that goes on in burning man, but represent a gear in a much larger machine.
I will cover something else in my next post, since I don't want to drag you all through several paragraphs of this stuff.
Also, I feel I should note a very odd experience I had the day after burning man. While I was driving heather to the SF air port we drove by, and almost over, what was almost certainly a dead body. It was very shocking to see someone lying between two lanes of rapid highway traffic as cars swerved around it. I had up to that point never seen death in that context, in the moment of event of death still occurring, there where no emergency service vehicles near by at all. We did the only thing we could do and called emergency services and let them know that there was a body on the road and where. My reaction to the experience was quite stark, I did not really know how or what to feel beyond pure surprise. I guess these things happen every day and we just played a small part in the ending of someones life by calling emergency services, but beyond that my emotional reaction to the experience is somewhat dissociated. I would think that I would have more direct sympathy for this body but I don't really have any idea who this person was or how their life ended. It is however somewhat haunting to look at a body as a object rather then a individual, but overall I have not been plagued by negativity around the event, its something that simply happened and that's it.
Well, if you read the whole post good for you, your actually interested in our experiences out here. Keep posted as the next few days with the Oaksterdamn folks should be very interesting and I will have some experiences to relate to you all. Keep living good out there wherever you are.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Dust to ashes
It was a place where the full force of the human imagination pushed itself into the dream scape of the playa. I left Reno with no clear conception of what was to come, I had no idea that I was about to be transported to another dimension of the human mind and imagination. Burning man is truly the twilight zone, it is a place where tens of thousands of individual creative minds come together to redefine reality and create a world of pure human expression. There is nothing on the playa but dust and what people bring to it, there are no plants, animals or insects. It is a world where there is only dust and the human imagination. I found myself at first overwhelmed and consumed by it all. The social environment of burning man creates a chaotic vortex of human interaction that you are forced to loose yourself in. Everyone is your best friend at burning man, you are constantly having short rapid fire bizarre conversations with complete strangers in the most bizarre conditions imaginable. One moment you can be discussing the works of Hunter S Thompson at the gonzo camp to screaming in agony in front of a crowd of people while being mercilessly spanked by the hard paddle of the Spank-O-Matic to relating the extreme awesomeness of everything going on around you with a women with breasts the size of your head while she is painting a dancing penguin on the head of your penis. That is all "normal" discourse of events that constantly unfold before you at Burning Man. You really have no choice but to surrender yourself and say yes to everything that is happening around you. During the day you live in the hot blazing desert sun, biking for bar to art work to absurd situation and back again. I am still comprehending everything that just happened and really don't know how to put it into cohesive thoughts yet, but be assured that it is one of the more wild insane life changing experiences that you can have on this earth. If you are reading this blog I was imagining you with me there, the whole time I was absorbing the madness around me I kept imagining what all my great friends would think if this place and wishing that they where here to share the experience with me. I will elaborate further on burning man once I have digested the experience some more, it is not an easy thing to express with words and the core of the experience itself can only be experienced directly.
So after the actual burn of the man we left at 2 am to drive to San Fransisco, which is where I am sitting now. This is a different place for sure a place that I will get to know well for my work. We have gotten word from Grex, they are camping without shelter in Santa Cruz, me and Jim are going to go alleviate their shelterlessness with out tents soon and see some of the first familiar faces in a while. We have about 3 weeks of traveling in front of us and are trying to figure out what we want to do and in what order we want to do it. We are transients now and its a good feeling. I look forwards to getting a handle on the west coast and what this place is all about. Not really sure what is going to happen from one day to the next but I like that feeling. Well, about time to be off to somewhere new, perhaps my thoughts will be a little more together the next time we speak.
So after the actual burn of the man we left at 2 am to drive to San Fransisco, which is where I am sitting now. This is a different place for sure a place that I will get to know well for my work. We have gotten word from Grex, they are camping without shelter in Santa Cruz, me and Jim are going to go alleviate their shelterlessness with out tents soon and see some of the first familiar faces in a while. We have about 3 weeks of traveling in front of us and are trying to figure out what we want to do and in what order we want to do it. We are transients now and its a good feeling. I look forwards to getting a handle on the west coast and what this place is all about. Not really sure what is going to happen from one day to the next but I like that feeling. Well, about time to be off to somewhere new, perhaps my thoughts will be a little more together the next time we speak.
From the ashes. We have arrived
My last known address was Camp Black Rock Steady 5:30 and Hominid, Black Rock City, Nevada.
The First night, driving through seemingly endless podunk desert towns until we hit Gerlach where things started to get weird. Street vendors selling all kinds of crap to potential burners, Kava Kava bars and shitty festival food, for sale ??? last chance to buy crap you don't need, scalpers with signs that said "need ticket" we know what you are doing man.
We saw our friend Kale, stranded outside of the Gerlach motel, holding a sign that said Orphan. He told us how the car he was in broke down and the extra ticket that was for him was traded for repairs. I hope he made it to the couch surfer camp.
Dust fucking everywhere bumper to bumper in line for hours, can't find the will call booth in the dust. Running around barefoot on the playa, finally getting through the gate sometime around midnight, we ended up somewhere near Kidsville, tired, kind of pissed off, we set up our tents in the wind and dust, then went into the city with our new neighbors. (awesome folks from Colorado, more about them later)
I got lost within 10 minutes and found myself at a bar called arachnophobia that served wine and goth industrial music. I sat down with some folks, all first timers as well and a joint was passed around. After a few minutes i had to leave, my head was swimming, where the fuck am I ? what is this place ? what have we got ourselves into ?
Extreme culture shock, over stimulation, heavy drinking, lots of asking for directions. I saw a Nevada state cop drinking wine at a bar called the lonely penguin. I was confused ad terrified, he leaned in and said to me "I'm real".
What the fuck is going on ? Its like a fucking psychedelic circus summer camp for mostly grown ups.
Its easy to forget that one is in the middle of the desert, with all the lights and people moving around, i had to go home and re-fill may water pack at least three times during the night, always feeling dehydrated, can't get enough water.
I met one of our couch surfing friends from Reno at the Information Center a.k.a. "The Oracle" He was just wandering around like me, quite serendipitous we biked around and explored our new world, i had to call it a night at 2 in the morning.
The First night, driving through seemingly endless podunk desert towns until we hit Gerlach where things started to get weird. Street vendors selling all kinds of crap to potential burners, Kava Kava bars and shitty festival food, for sale ??? last chance to buy crap you don't need, scalpers with signs that said "need ticket" we know what you are doing man.
We saw our friend Kale, stranded outside of the Gerlach motel, holding a sign that said Orphan. He told us how the car he was in broke down and the extra ticket that was for him was traded for repairs. I hope he made it to the couch surfer camp.
Dust fucking everywhere bumper to bumper in line for hours, can't find the will call booth in the dust. Running around barefoot on the playa, finally getting through the gate sometime around midnight, we ended up somewhere near Kidsville, tired, kind of pissed off, we set up our tents in the wind and dust, then went into the city with our new neighbors. (awesome folks from Colorado, more about them later)
I got lost within 10 minutes and found myself at a bar called arachnophobia that served wine and goth industrial music. I sat down with some folks, all first timers as well and a joint was passed around. After a few minutes i had to leave, my head was swimming, where the fuck am I ? what is this place ? what have we got ourselves into ?
Extreme culture shock, over stimulation, heavy drinking, lots of asking for directions. I saw a Nevada state cop drinking wine at a bar called the lonely penguin. I was confused ad terrified, he leaned in and said to me "I'm real".
What the fuck is going on ? Its like a fucking psychedelic circus summer camp for mostly grown ups.
Its easy to forget that one is in the middle of the desert, with all the lights and people moving around, i had to go home and re-fill may water pack at least three times during the night, always feeling dehydrated, can't get enough water.
I met one of our couch surfing friends from Reno at the Information Center a.k.a. "The Oracle" He was just wandering around like me, quite serendipitous we biked around and explored our new world, i had to call it a night at 2 in the morning.
Y'all goin to burnin man ?.
At a diner in Wyoming, they could just tell, who else with massachusetts accents would wander in at one in the morning looking for french fries and malts ? ?
Out of Colorado, the mountains frame our world, cloud covered, hazy and mysterious in the distance, here there is a lot of open grassland and scattered woods, no corn in sight, the long drives become an anticipated and loathsome exercise, sometimes they can also be an exhilarating and energizing aspect of our new transient existence. 40 minutes north of Denver is a Budweiser facility, i finally know where some of the magic happens, i have seen the place where rivers of ice cold piss colored watered down shitty American rice lager originate. I can almost taste the disturbing lack of hops. the americorn dream.
Colorado would be a great place to experiment with grass boats.
Its going to get pretty fractured from here on, sitting in a cafe in San Fran still de-compressing, when i wake up i still think i am somewhere on the playa. "wow who built all those trees ?" Holy crap someone made a mock up walgreens in the desert ? ?"
I feel that this will persist for a while. the "real world" seem like a huge public art project. Something in that dust has changed me forever.
Out of Colorado, the mountains frame our world, cloud covered, hazy and mysterious in the distance, here there is a lot of open grassland and scattered woods, no corn in sight, the long drives become an anticipated and loathsome exercise, sometimes they can also be an exhilarating and energizing aspect of our new transient existence. 40 minutes north of Denver is a Budweiser facility, i finally know where some of the magic happens, i have seen the place where rivers of ice cold piss colored watered down shitty American rice lager originate. I can almost taste the disturbing lack of hops. the americorn dream.
Colorado would be a great place to experiment with grass boats.
Its going to get pretty fractured from here on, sitting in a cafe in San Fran still de-compressing, when i wake up i still think i am somewhere on the playa. "wow who built all those trees ?" Holy crap someone made a mock up walgreens in the desert ? ?"
I feel that this will persist for a while. the "real world" seem like a huge public art project. Something in that dust has changed me forever.
Alex says the darndest things. In Wyoming
everything with a - before it is a quote
-Phantom Fireworks, some weird guy in a purple hoodie.
- If you are working for applebees you are not just working for applebees, it goes deeper than employment (blackwter ? -Jim)
(Cheyenne is pronounced SHEN-YAY apparently)
-That is all shen-yay over there ...
- We don't have money for tits, those tits are expensive (heather wanted to take Jim to a strip club)
- You have magical popping ears Jim
- Time to chase the sunset
- Its late night mormon radio
- Its fucking beautiful, even through the bug guts (on windsheild)
- It's a whole lot of bumfuck (Wyoming)
- What do people in trailer parks do ? (probably get drunk alot) Do they have Trailer park block parties ?
-Phantom Fireworks, some weird guy in a purple hoodie.
- If you are working for applebees you are not just working for applebees, it goes deeper than employment (blackwter ? -Jim)
(Cheyenne is pronounced SHEN-YAY apparently)
-That is all shen-yay over there ...
- We don't have money for tits, those tits are expensive (heather wanted to take Jim to a strip club)
- You have magical popping ears Jim
- Time to chase the sunset
- Its late night mormon radio
- Its fucking beautiful, even through the bug guts (on windsheild)
- It's a whole lot of bumfuck (Wyoming)
- What do people in trailer parks do ? (probably get drunk alot) Do they have Trailer park block parties ?
Monday, August 31, 2009
Above the salt
We have left behind the alien wasteland that is Utah.
The Great Salt lake reminded me of my ocean home, the water stretching to the horizon, small shrubs clinging to life amidst the alkali sand. As we chased the setting sun towards Nevada, the great sea dried up and gave way to a gray desert as far as the eye could see. We pulled over to walk on an evaporated ocean where sculptures made of rocks and discarded beer bottles dotted the landscape. I felt like our footprints would last forever in this place outside of time.
The orange pink sun dipped behind the mountains and I hit cruise control at 80mph, there was a little over 500 miles of desert between us and the "Biggest Little City in the World".
The Great Salt lake reminded me of my ocean home, the water stretching to the horizon, small shrubs clinging to life amidst the alkali sand. As we chased the setting sun towards Nevada, the great sea dried up and gave way to a gray desert as far as the eye could see. We pulled over to walk on an evaporated ocean where sculptures made of rocks and discarded beer bottles dotted the landscape. I felt like our footprints would last forever in this place outside of time.
The orange pink sun dipped behind the mountains and I hit cruise control at 80mph, there was a little over 500 miles of desert between us and the "Biggest Little City in the World".
DIVE IN!
Well, here is the moment that we have waited for. Its been an epic session of staring down the open road to get here but we made it. What comes next I do not know, my vision of the events about to unfold are merely speculatory and I am left with only my open arms to accept an unpredictable experience. I suppose that's how all true experiential learning happens though, I am confident that I will come out the other side a slightly changed person in postivily shifted direction. I have been thinking about this day for months, perhaps years now, and living in the moment of it is quite unlike I had ever anticipated. Well, nothing to do now but dive in with open arms, I'll see ya'll on the other side.
burnin, man!
as i write this i am sitting on the edge of a familiarly unfamiliar couch in reno, nevada--on the edge of a dusty, purple/red horizon that looks faintly like a man with his arms raised above his head in victory, and lemme tell you baby--we are ready to burn, man. one last morning of predictability--coffee, couch surfin' big talk (the opposite of small talk), sleepy smiles and the clacking of impatient fingers on keypad--soon we will be thrust into the wholly unexplained, unpredictable, wild-eyed fury of the fiery abyss.
salt lake city was beautiful, a frighteningly clean jewel amidst the swelling rocky mountain range that cradled it, and there we found yet another psychadelic couch ready and willing to swallow us up in its blissful arms. we encountered food not bombs and met a bizarro-tony hall who argued against BMan due to its "intrinsic corporate-ness" though he was not too proud to hand over some stale hippie bread and soft strawberries, which we ate with furious abandon-- indeed, we were too hippie-happy to break it to him that without those intrinsically "corporate" organizations he detests so much those strawberries would not be in so much gluttonous abundance they could be found in every dumpster on every street corner everywhere from sea to shining salt lake. but i digress (or regress). we also stumbled upon some mutant eyelined juggalos sustaining themselves on free veggie chili-gruel and classy 2 liters of dr. thunder (why wasn't it faygo?)...alex was enthralled, but couldn't bring himself to WHOOP WHOOP in their presence...i, however, had no such restraint. of course, as soon as the chuggaloads turned around and acknowledged me, i giggled like a japanese schoolgirl and hid behind alex like a squirrel skittering up a tree trunk.
i don't know what the fuck is going to happen next, but i have faith it will happen exactly as it needs to.
LOVE!
heather
ps- more later. cut us some slack (not that we need any more of that), kids! much more to come after the man (and our brains) burn baby burn...
salt lake city was beautiful, a frighteningly clean jewel amidst the swelling rocky mountain range that cradled it, and there we found yet another psychadelic couch ready and willing to swallow us up in its blissful arms. we encountered food not bombs and met a bizarro-tony hall who argued against BMan due to its "intrinsic corporate-ness" though he was not too proud to hand over some stale hippie bread and soft strawberries, which we ate with furious abandon-- indeed, we were too hippie-happy to break it to him that without those intrinsically "corporate" organizations he detests so much those strawberries would not be in so much gluttonous abundance they could be found in every dumpster on every street corner everywhere from sea to shining salt lake. but i digress (or regress). we also stumbled upon some mutant eyelined juggalos sustaining themselves on free veggie chili-gruel and classy 2 liters of dr. thunder (why wasn't it faygo?)...alex was enthralled, but couldn't bring himself to WHOOP WHOOP in their presence...i, however, had no such restraint. of course, as soon as the chuggaloads turned around and acknowledged me, i giggled like a japanese schoolgirl and hid behind alex like a squirrel skittering up a tree trunk.
i don't know what the fuck is going to happen next, but i have faith it will happen exactly as it needs to.
LOVE!
heather
ps- more later. cut us some slack (not that we need any more of that), kids! much more to come after the man (and our brains) burn baby burn...
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Trapped in a Maize
fucking corn.
its in all of our foods and its the only thing we saw for hundreds of miles. We didnt take any photos because it would be too corn-ographic. *we have tons of corn puns written down somewhere.
trapped in a maize
jesus is risen and she sports a beer gut at the worlds largest truck stop which is right near ronald reagans childhood home. Just say no to corn. Sorry Ronnie
It really started to drive us up the wall, endless endless monoculture, cornfields, farmhouses, cows... repeat until insane.
The radio stations were innundated with horrible country music and christian rock, most notably songs like, "she's sporting a beer gut" and "its a business doing pleasure with you"
Jesus was there all over the radio, overpowering the cosmic backround radiation. I had the feeling that he was amongst the corngregation of floral worshippers. What happened the the maize gods ? I think these people still beleive in them.
I was so damn illannoyed that i just said no-braska.
eventually our sapceship dubbed "Barry Vanallo" cruised into the outskirts of Denver Colorado, a suburb called Aurora
We pulled up to the home of our first couch surfing host, Steve. He met us outside after a few text messages asking if we were down for some drinking games and some "we are on your street, and lost" phone calls. They were having a party when we showed up with our overpriced Milwaukees best ready for anything. Everybody there was really cool and many interesting conversations floated around mingling with the cigarette smoke and eventually sticking to the floor amongst the spilt beer. Once we got settled and i had a few in me we played a round of stump with the locals. Everybody who played seem to really like this strange, barbaric drinking game from the northeast. The next morning we cleaned up, made some lunch, explored the city then said our goodbyes to our awesome hosts.
Wyoming is fucking beautiful i don't care what anybody says. It does exist, just like nantucket. The open prairies are amazing and they eventually become foothills to mountains with unbeleivable rock formations. I will publish a small post soon entitled.... Alex says the darndest things, in Wyoming
Eventually we passed out of the mountains and into the promised land, where christ spent his time amongst the native americans, hail the prophet joseph smith we have arrived !
its in all of our foods and its the only thing we saw for hundreds of miles. We didnt take any photos because it would be too corn-ographic. *we have tons of corn puns written down somewhere.
trapped in a maize
jesus is risen and she sports a beer gut at the worlds largest truck stop which is right near ronald reagans childhood home. Just say no to corn. Sorry Ronnie
It really started to drive us up the wall, endless endless monoculture, cornfields, farmhouses, cows... repeat until insane.
The radio stations were innundated with horrible country music and christian rock, most notably songs like, "she's sporting a beer gut" and "its a business doing pleasure with you"
Jesus was there all over the radio, overpowering the cosmic backround radiation. I had the feeling that he was amongst the corngregation of floral worshippers. What happened the the maize gods ? I think these people still beleive in them.
I was so damn illannoyed that i just said no-braska.
eventually our sapceship dubbed "Barry Vanallo" cruised into the outskirts of Denver Colorado, a suburb called Aurora
We pulled up to the home of our first couch surfing host, Steve. He met us outside after a few text messages asking if we were down for some drinking games and some "we are on your street, and lost" phone calls. They were having a party when we showed up with our overpriced Milwaukees best ready for anything. Everybody there was really cool and many interesting conversations floated around mingling with the cigarette smoke and eventually sticking to the floor amongst the spilt beer. Once we got settled and i had a few in me we played a round of stump with the locals. Everybody who played seem to really like this strange, barbaric drinking game from the northeast. The next morning we cleaned up, made some lunch, explored the city then said our goodbyes to our awesome hosts.
Wyoming is fucking beautiful i don't care what anybody says. It does exist, just like nantucket. The open prairies are amazing and they eventually become foothills to mountains with unbeleivable rock formations. I will publish a small post soon entitled.... Alex says the darndest things, in Wyoming
Eventually we passed out of the mountains and into the promised land, where christ spent his time amongst the native americans, hail the prophet joseph smith we have arrived !
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Chicago
Pizza Metro 925 north ashland, chicago IL
driving to the windy city, well, blows.
Ohio is full of wonderul flat nothing, novelty fast food chains i've never heard of.
the skyway looked like were driving across a bridge of reflected light in the poring rain. blurry electric light splashing on the windsheild, sleepy driving, so close, avoiding police like divers keeping their distance from sharks.
we made it
long as hell car ride to a nice apartment in pilsen where our friend Ann lives. permanent residents include 3 humans 2 cats 1 dog. smells like patchouli and coffee.
3 bleary eyed transient wanderers sprawled out in the living room.
coffe and curry and pizza that must have crack in it or something.
more to explore.
-Jim
speaking of bleary eyes, i think this city hasn't wiped last-nights brain crust from the corners of its own eyes--the sky is as slate grey as the sidewalks, and i haven't quite woken up yet either. tried to avoid conversion by some communoccultists (politicultists? pun courtesy of Jimberly), who refused to give an interview but deferred to their "leader", suspiciously named Bob. now fiending off the pizza shakes in metro pizza with some apocalypto (apocalypso--new genre? lets get on it) bleepmusic blares through the greasy speakers. i feel like i swallowed an inner tube of cheese. about to overdose on puns and parmesean (as if that were possible). following the 22s from corner to corner....pictures soon.
denver next. what furious horizons await us?
MAINTAINING MY RAGE,
heather
driving to the windy city, well, blows.
Ohio is full of wonderul flat nothing, novelty fast food chains i've never heard of.
the skyway looked like were driving across a bridge of reflected light in the poring rain. blurry electric light splashing on the windsheild, sleepy driving, so close, avoiding police like divers keeping their distance from sharks.
we made it
long as hell car ride to a nice apartment in pilsen where our friend Ann lives. permanent residents include 3 humans 2 cats 1 dog. smells like patchouli and coffee.
3 bleary eyed transient wanderers sprawled out in the living room.
coffe and curry and pizza that must have crack in it or something.
more to explore.
-Jim
speaking of bleary eyes, i think this city hasn't wiped last-nights brain crust from the corners of its own eyes--the sky is as slate grey as the sidewalks, and i haven't quite woken up yet either. tried to avoid conversion by some communoccultists (politicultists? pun courtesy of Jimberly), who refused to give an interview but deferred to their "leader", suspiciously named Bob. now fiending off the pizza shakes in metro pizza with some apocalypto (apocalypso--new genre? lets get on it) bleepmusic blares through the greasy speakers. i feel like i swallowed an inner tube of cheese. about to overdose on puns and parmesean (as if that were possible). following the 22s from corner to corner....pictures soon.
denver next. what furious horizons await us?
MAINTAINING MY RAGE,
heather
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