Autumn Sale

Shannon

maya and jenni

this is my new neice maya.

she's from china-- my sis and her husband adopted her a few months ago.

TheBlueMask circa 1990

It would appear I was sporting a `60`s lifestyle at that time.
Now I wanna see a 1990 Alfa photo album......who`s up next?

circa 1957

hmmm... the sinister connection between jack kerouac and knick pattywhack revealed at last.

p.s. click on this link to hear jacky-boy (as opposed to knacky-boy) read a great poem about charlie parker, the great jazz musician...

"chaaawwwley pahhhker looked like buddha..."

http://www.kilbot.net/writing/charlieparker.php

circa 1990

Canadian in Korea

pusan3%2e
Originally uploaded by micromacman.

This is the grave site where my great uncle Alfred was buried in Busan, S.Korea

blizzo is broken

walking to work yesterday morning, in the pre-dawn peg city darkness, fifty feet from the front door of the youth shelter, i rolled my ankle on a patch of ice. the result was a happy little sprain.

here is a helpful medical diagram to show you why i am presently unable to walk.

Desert Fan Clubs?

Ok, Ok, so the comparison between The Big JC and Keith 'pickled in pink' Richards is a little nuts. In ol; Keith's defense ( and JC I guess) I'll say this:

Guys and gals like St. Anthony, St. Augustine, Joan of Arc and the rest of it were the rock stars of their day. People came from all over Christendom to see them perform, miracles that is. When they died they were torn to pieces and botlled off and encased in reliquries in churchs and cathedrals all over Europe and africa and the middle east.
It's not super hard to imagine the celebrities of the day in the place of the saints of teh ancient and medieval world. Back in teh day those guys reflected the extreme embodiment of what was considered virtuous. Likewise with those the people put on teh pedastal. Now we just want drugs, nakedness and people taking our pictures. And in a world that is a choice between the stones and the backstreet boys I'll take the stones, thank you very much.

Or using replicas of certain 50 cent body parts to take home. Relics indeed.







Post Script: I guess that kind of makes the first secret gathering places the persecuted Christians used for worship the first fanclubs?

Original Desert fathers II

Some eat bread. Others Heroin.

St. Anthony was one of the original desert fathers. He was a Coptic holy man that at different times lived in a cave, a mountaintop and a tomb. As more people came to follow his ways, eating only bread fopr six months, fighting scorpions, slaying demons, he retreated farther into the desert.
At the ripe old age of 105 he decided to die and gave away his cloak and staff to his two diciples and commaded them to bury his body in a secret, unmarked grave so that he would not become an object of veneration.
These old deseert fathers were the truly hardcore of the early church. They didn't need the permission of no sissy abbott or pope that decided whether or not a preist could wear green on tuesdays or of what color buckles ones shoes had to be. They were so dedicated to this idea that they destroyed themselves to prove their faith to noone. Far, out, is, be, in, deed.

How I feel as of...........Now.

As the man once said: " If I don't get some shelter.......soemthing something

Greg Oakes! Where Are You?

OMG!!!

OMG!!!
this here humble little post, O my friends, loved ones, colleagues, enemies (on occasion, though remember that hate is not the opposite of love so much as indifference is), fellow artists, writers, critics, AlfA kids, painters, dreamers, visionaries, and other assorted fools and below-poverty-level lovies...

this here humble little post is post number

1001 !!!

horray!!!

p.s. the most recent issue of prairie fire mag has two poems by some cat named matt robinson. ???

Pink Portal

pinkgate, originally uploaded by The Stranger.

what's the secret word?

coupleaquotes

polonius: what is the matter, my lord?
hamlet: the matter?
polonius: of what you read, my lord.
hamlet: words. words. words.


"do i contradict myself? very well, then i contradict myself."

--walt whitman, from "song of myself"

Handshake 3

Handshake 2

Handshake 1

The White Squirrel

Portrait of James of My Heart, by The Plischk

Jeremy Bentham, philosopher, 1748-1832

A utilititarian, Bentham wasn't a fan of waste. So he decreed that upon his death his body would be willed to the new University of London on condition that he be stuffed, plucked, and displayed in his sunday best. Adequately displayed to students in a "suitably encouraging attitude of thought."

The trials and tribulations of perpetuity include having his head stolen and left in a locker. I wonder if that was before or after they replaced his original head with a wax facsimile.

Apparently, it was getting kinda funky.

Sitting & Believing

From "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg

hi folks-- here's a bongo exceprt from "Howl"-- in the biblical Old Testament, there's a passage where a prophet blasts the ancient jews for sacrificing their children to Moloch, an Assyrian (i think) god of war. "you shall not pass your children through the fire for moloch", he says.

here, of course, he's talking about the modern world, though.

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels!
Crazy in Moloch!

Altered Statesman before the Pink Gate

PICT0071_2, originally uploaded by The Stranger.

diving through the pink gate
rolling into the next world

welcome the high
welcome the safety of coming down
have you lost or gained your mind
it s not important alls the same

welcome detachment
disassociation with what's real
welcome devolvement
dissolve into dissolution
of your soul

Dave and Jim

PICT0069_2, originally uploaded by The Stranger.

5 days till departure

A 20 min. Saidman

Sorry guys, I`m riding a surge. I`ve been busy with the brushes.

Sealed Envelope

Was in a sealed envelope to heaven
and no one had known where I`d been
there was a white pill on the floor
and the water
was no help at all

Amid this intense lucid dreaming
my lip can`t follow
the words that I make
but why would he do this to himself?
himself
why would he do this to himself

When will this go away
I`m much too happy
too happy to say
that I feuled the Enola Gay
and flew it over
american states

but I think that I`ve been here before
sell my blood for dinner
is it art?
or nothing at all?

Was in a sealed envelope to heaven
and no one
knows what I`ve seen
but why would we do this to ourselves?
ourselves
why would we do this to ourselves

Millennium Library

for our expatriates

here's the knackerson comparison...



this is the newest saidman painting. it is for a xxxmas show in TO. it was inspired by the coville painting blizzard posted a month ago.

How the West was won?

Study Break III

Joe and Ren have decided that in the future all couples will look this great.
Joint post: Renberries and the Krahn

James L. Culleton

Josef Vissarionovich Stalin

Party is over. Where is your party pin? Do not worry everything is better! Everything is more cheerful! Thank you comrade Stalin for decreasing the sacharine ration for the fourth quarter in a row!

Joe 'Is that a Kulak in your pants' Stalin

And then we have party boy Stalin. What a card

Uncle Joe

Well, everybody is young sometime. It's funny how the young revolutionaries and general historic movers and shakers look like every left wing student. He probably ate soup out of a can, which, as we all know is the early twentieth century version of kraft dinner.

Feed

I can't put my finger on it

i just had to get that ugly dog off the screen 

Ugly Dog - R.I.P

The Suit, or........

This painting was recently impaled by a guitar (don`t ask). So I`m just giving the image a cyber send off from happier times. I`m not aware of any canvas repair methods. The hole is in between them.....hmm. Maybe it just finished itself.....?

Andrew Courtnage

A picture of Mordecai Richler.

ginsberg

this is a great photo of the "beat" poet allen ginsberg, taken by harry redl. redl is a truly fascinating character--born in vienna in 1926, conscriped into the german navy towards the end of the war when the germans were desperate for bodies to fill the ranks. his ship was sunk in the north atlantic in 1945 and he was captured by the u.s. navy, then spent the last several months of the war working as a translator for the canadian army.

immigrated to canada after the war, worked in logging camps, and all sorts of other odd jobs, before hitting the road. in the 50's, a friend gave him a camera, and he got really into photos. ended up passing through san fran on his way to mexico, and loved it so much he spent several years there on the way back, eventually befriending and photographing most of the major "Beat Generation" writers.

in 1961, he went to Hong Kong for a vacation, and ended up staying there for several years, documenting the VietNam War for six years.

i think he's still living... in vancouver.

irving layton

this is another harry redl image, of the montreal poet irving layton.

layton was a seriously crusty s.o.b., and part of the holy trinity of montreal-jewish writers.

a.m. klein (you gotta read him) was the first, writing thousands of poems from about 1920-50, before he suffered a nervous breakdown and spent the last 25 years of his life never leaving his house or seeing anyone.

then came layton, writing from about 1950-90.

then came leonard cohen.

Burn

The Sharma Sisters Consult Their Crystal Ball

dancing on the tightrope

tightrope, originally uploaded by The Stranger.

oh let me go home dancing on a tightrope
wearing superman's shoes Im a Jedi
with a new hope
remembering what Jah told me
from the burning bush
NOW IS THE TIME TO ARISE

Holy Crow the gate is opened.
How long have I been conjuring this passage?

Now the tiger is giddy.

Im in the process of creating 4 final tracks to ensure the success of the path to be release next week before i leave.

prayers for peace and war to the world

She's Back!!!

yeah so it looks like now I have to relegate myself to borrowing Killah's identity in order to maintain my status within this circle-jerk of artists and intellectuals...i'm waiting for acceptance here knack-brains....I know I've made it into your heart, now will you please just recognize my validity as a fellow artist-intellectoid? I know that there have been few comments or posts on my behalf, and for that void, I truly repent. I have nonetheless assumed (and it appears mistakingly so), that this blog was rooted in its original manifestation as a free forum for ideas, thoughts, and art. In the days of old I don't remember having a quota. If I remember correctly, inspiration was the measure of when I should or shouldn't contribute.

Now, if this has simply been a ploy to ignite my interest in this blog, well-done James ol'boy. Well-done. If it hasn't, well, I'm sad that the original Label forum has been laid to rest.

love Ren