Der Kid at Dizzyland...

Just a really quick note. You will notice yet another button on the left! I have gone back into the T-Shirt biz, something that long time readers may remember I was quite fond of in the past. The stuff in there right now is place holder just to get things set up. If I were you I would save yer cash until the new stuff gets put up in the coming days (yes NEW!).

Of course your Dog WOULD look swell in a TEAM ELF Bandana...

All hell seems to be breaking loose...

That is the $64,000 question. I have been talking and talking and talking to people in all aspects of the art world and the question comes back to "what do I do next? I guess the best place to start with that is to list where I don't believe I can go next. Harry Callahan said "...a good man knows his limitations" and whereas my jaw is nowhere as sharp not my gaze even close to being as STEELY I think that is a good place to start.


So where do I go from here? - Episode 1
1) The chances of finding just a "production" gig, beyond those I can grab up freelance from past clients and friends who need a hand. Far too many young impressionable faces all too ready to be devoured by the machine. They will live at their desks, work for almost nothing and forgo everything that is good and holy in this world. It is like trying to get a job eating brains when the Zombies are pounding on the door, wave upon wave of willing art zombies. Additionally they will know all the latest (and hippest) brian eating styles. They will know which tools are best suited for fully extracting the subtle nuances from grey matter.

"All we want to do is make your game! We're not unreasonable I mean no one's gonna ask you why?"

Been awhile since I sat down here to write about my thoughts. When that happens, oh my brothers, it is not that I am not writing but rather it is I am not writing anything that is anyone else's business other than my own. I used to write that sort of stuff in here but discovered that doing that had consequences...like people read it and if they didn't like it, and they knew me, I would get nasty e-mails or phone calls. Not something I really care to deal with right now. These days I have another "BLOG" of sorts made from this innovative new material called "paper". This material is AMAZING. Self powered, easily transported and don't even get me STARTED about the quality of its security features!

The last month has been pretty busy. I managed to scrape up the money to put Pliedes, my reliable old Subaru, back on the road. I even found the dough to pay the DMV the $667 I owed it for the pleasure of parking it, inert, in a parking lot at BACON'S AUTOMOTIVE in Novato, California. Larry Bacon has been a saint in everything that has happened to me over the past few years and I cannot say enough good things about the man. If you need automotive work done in North Bay, call Larry. His shop is convenient, reliable and on top of it Larry is a HOOT. So I have wheels again, although not the cash stream I require to keep the tank full just yet. That was a major obstacle though and I am surely glad to have it behind me.

I'd like to thank those of you who contributed through the Button in the side bar, few as you were. No one contributed that I didn't personally, which doesn't surprise me. It didn't cover the fees by a long shot but it sure as hell helped. Thank you little buddy, you surely do crack me up, and always have.

So it is nice to know that in these troubled times SOMEONE is getting a leisurely weekend off. You know, the kind of weekend where you can hang out with friends, maybe fire up the grill and down some Margaritas while you burn some ribs. The trouble is that it is the DMV computers that are getting this time off.

I got this friend, Gordon, best friend ANYONE can have. Gordon has been helping me get out of this great burly hole that I have got myself into which includes getting my vehicles registered and insured and SMOGGED and all that. He's right, totally right. As another old friend, Mark Blattner, used to say "if you don't do what they want they come after you with guns". Fine, guns in that instance are bad so I want to be "legit".

Notice how the levels of bureaucracy in the world have me speaking like I am an ex-con when my only crime is that I AGED.

So this last Thursday I went to the DMV (AAA actually) and paid the state $647 to register a 1996 Subaru with 314,000 miles on it. Usually I would expect that for that amount of coin you would be registering something with "spinner" rims, a hot tub in the truck and a Driver named OTIS. The trouble is that when the engine on this car blew up and it was relegated to a parking lot for two years I failed to TELL DMV that it was not running (file a non-op) and continue to pay the state for the pleasure of owning an lump of inert Metal in California. I will Scan in and publish the list of AMAZING taxes I had to pay on top of everything else, man get some popcorn before you read it 'cause it is more entertaining than a lot of Mel Brooks movies (excluding YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN of course).

After I did that the nice lady told me I had to go to the DMV website and pay an additional $14 to REACTIVATE my registration with the state insurance commissioner. Guess he needed STARBUCKS MONEY that day! I did that on Thurday in the morning.

After that I had a GREAT WEEKEND jumping through hoops to get the car SMOGGED after I put the new engine in it. This involved driving around to reset computers, hanging out while the mechanic twiddle with stuff so it would pass (a lot of which I had to UNDO yesterday because it made the car un-driveable).

OK I did it all, paid my dough, got it smogged. I washed it and cleaned and adjusted and looked foreward to, after all this, being LEGIT (all the guys in my cell block told me that felt great!).

I go in today to get my tag. The smae nice lady asks me if I had re-registered it. I say yes, right after I left her on Thursday. I did it like a post 1984 prole!

"Well the automated system takes 24 BUSINESS HOURS to update"

I was absolutely dumbfounded. The ladies behind the counter would not look me in the eye. My heart fell into my socks and made a mess of my shoes, already speckled with the effluvia of a month of working on putting a new engine in this poor old Subaru. I was told I would have to wait for the computers until OH, say WEDNESDAY, because I did it DURING a day and it usually takes longer.

In the past few decades I have made my living with computers. I know what it takes for them to talk to each other. Less time than it took for you to read that last sentence. The only way I can think that the computers could be this slow is that the people who are running them have the intelligence of mollusks and the motivation to assist the people they are supose to be there to serve about on the same level.

I also have images of the purchasing department in Sacramento, in all their glory, gathering around the table in their black shirts with the white ties and their pinstriped suits, toking on a big ole' blunt and awarding the computer contract to Louie's nephew who has a Commodore 64. Additionally I see that the "Hunchback's union" has a rep there so they have to include an interface with vacuum tubes and a jokob's ladder manned by a UNION (can't forget that) hunchback that every Friday opens a great rusty door with a giant key so he can access a cobweb covered knife that could be used as a Guillotine and shut off the computers for the weekend. After that a bunch of dodo birds with lunch boxes walk out, punch the clock and mutter "It's a living".

So even though the State has bled me of most of my resources and I have jumped through their hoops for a month or more to get my poor little station wagon back on the road I head out into the daylight an outlaw.

Hope the computers had a nice weekend.

The past month is a bit of a blur for so excuse me if at times my facts get a little muzzy. The weather was problematical and the cash flow almost non-existent but despite all of that as of tomorrow I will have a four wheeled vehicle that runs, is legally registered and insured. Hell despite my trepidations about Black Helicopters and such after reading LITTLE BROTHER I even bought a FASTRACK to get around the bay easier. I have a farday pouch for it though so that will help.

It is going to take me some time to get my mind out of mechanical mode and back into "clever bastard" mode but I have had a lot of things plowing around in, my head as the paint chips fell on me and grease flowed.

Today I have to do a little automotive house keeping on some remaining problems before finally picking up my tags tomorrow but for the first time in a very long time I feel like I am making progress. The Subaru is running, the Mitsubishi is gone and the sun has returned (the latter is a big deal). I have been waiting for SO LONG to be at this place in my plans that I am a trifle shell shocked. The repersussions are staggering though.

I can haul my cameras around now
I can haul my son around now
I am no longer limited by inclement weather
I can fetch materials for projects

As simple a list as it seems to you it is a checklist of wanders to me. For the first time in a long time I have new options, new options breed new ideas and new ideas breed good portents.

I have to go bend some wrenches just now, more later.

This is for my Dad who passed away ten years ago yesterday.