A Comet & An Eclipse Walk Into A Bar...

OH HELLO FRIENDS,

It’s that time again—time to check in at the Octopus Front Desk Diary to let you know how I’m surviving the current era.

By staying really really busy, that’s for sure! You all know I love my solitude & my downtime (and I still do of course) but I feel compelled to stay connected, aware & active these days. So that’s what I (& Moonface) have been doing. We get out more. We’re rerouting our neural pathways to be more engaged with an external world we’ve shunned for over a decade.

It’s hard work, but it needs to be done. 

Also been working hard on creative projects like the long-awaited

*****SHELTER CAT & TRUST FUND BABY**********

Friends, I have an exciting announcement: I’ve finished pencilling the first episode of SC & TFB! And pardon me if I say—it’s ALL RIGHT. I do comics the old fashioned way—pencil first, inks & colors later. None of this electronic shit where the computer helps you draw & color your shit. I don’t even understand that. And no disrespect to those who do their comics that way…I just…don’t understand.

It doesn’t mean I don’t admire people whose style differs from mine—quite the contrary. But I like the act of story-building panel by panel. Figuring out which actions & dialogues will go together, what shape the panels will take, how it will all flow. I’ve been “insulted” many times by people who consider themselves to be FINE artists—“your art is JUST cartoony stuff.” 

And to them I say—there’s more to comic illustration than just doodling stick figures. But I understand that their haughtiness comes from…not understanding.

Anyway… I’m not even a good illustrator, but I enjoy doing it (sort of) and it adds color & pizzazz to this otherwise grey & peach blog.

******MY TECHNOLOGY IS DEADNAMING ME*********

Friends, last year I spent money and time filling out stacks and stacks of paperwork & then I entered a courtroom and stood before a judge and pleaded to have my name changed,

and the judge granted me that wish. And I was happy & I announced it on Facebook & everyone hit LIKE and all was well. 

But then, friends, my computer started asking me to update its operating system. Please, it said, update me soon or things might start going wrong. And I ignored my computer’s requests because, honestly, it seemed to be working fine. But then it started threatening me—if you don’t update me I will no longer “support your applications.” 

And my computer even crashed a few times because I didn’t answer its pleas for an update. I hate updating my computer because “updates” are usually “downgrades.” They fuck everything up and I have to go in & relearn all the shit I took so long to learn in the first place.

So one of my New Years resolutions was to update my computer. It was a big deal because I hadn’t done it in 5 years & I had to do some intermediate updates & I was on the phone with tech support for several hours. Which I hate. Phones, technology, talking to strangers, yuck.

But I got it done. With only minor hiccups [boy do I hate what Apple has done with their Photos!!]

The only thing is—now all my “communications” are blatantly, loudly marked & monogrammed with my DEAD name!!

All my emails & FB comments & perhaps even somewhere in this blog my computer is deadnaming me so disrespectfully. 

That atrocious name I wore like a slutty Halloween costume for the first 45 years of my life has risen from the dead! And I don’t know why, because all my email & FB settings are on my new, LEGAL name. 

That means it is embedded somewhere deep inside my technology and I will have to coax it out and stab it in the heart. I’m afraid this is going to be another “dangerous process’ like upgrading. I’ve already looked into how to do it & it’s one of those things that risks destroying all your files, or at least your access to them.

YAY!!!!!!

***************EPIC OR NOT??**********

Friends, I was actually going to share my latest long-winded verbose unconcise non-economic poem with you, but I’ve gone on & on about comics & technology downgrades

SO…I’m deciding…right now…out loud, on the page…do i want to share the poem today? Because next time I’m sharing comics…

So, yes, POEM TODAY!! You’re welcome…

First though, I have to bring up this one thing. It’s really important so pay close attention: 

FLANNEL, people, IT’S NOT JUST FOR LESBIANS.

In fact, most of the lesbians I know wear T-shirts and cargo shorts. OR long, flowy dresses (yeah, lots of lesbians are feminine). Or tank tops. Lots of tank tops. But not a lot of flannel.

HELL & DAMNATION & SULFUR FUMES & BRIMSTONE & TREACLE! Kurt Cobain didn’t even wear much flannel. He wore fuzzy cardigans & striped T’s.

But me, I’ve been grunge since 1989 and I’m not going to change my comfort-first flannel-flying ways just because of this persistent Lez-Lez Bean stereotype I keep hearing about. Shut up and look around you—

—even lumberjacks don’t wear flannel anymore. There’s nothing to stereotype here, move along.

And in case you’re wondering my flannel affinity came from being a homeless drunk person. Flannel was my couch-to-day look, my sleepless night uniform, my hangover woobie, my outdoor pajamas. Nothing less.

Haha! i’m glad I got to rant about that. Now here’s a poem as long as The Iliad that you will skim over for 2 minutes but never read all the way through, then reread to make sure you got it all…

13 mos on T

***********TREMENDOUS GIBBERISH**********************

This File Is Currently Empty, all wispy & appropriate

Would I advise any species to trace

Its anger back to its origins? Octopus, jellyfish,

Seahorse in prickly skin?

It's not for the feint invertebrate

The Social Networking Sickness of 2014

Tallest wave of sensitive geniuses under the spell of internet sorcery

There will be many more ’15 ’16 ’17

Profane & volcane! The big Facebook serpent quo

All the harlequin pretext covering

Footsteps;

A Litany of Tentacles—

1. Family

2. The Government

3. Gender/Sex

4. Science

5. Humanities

6. Friends

7. Enemies

8. The Higher Powers

And now 9. The New World Order

All hints of 33rd degree masonry once leaking through

The seams of architecture now smeared with stucco, Chinese drywall approved by Trumpo 

I am the most special spectral agent forced to spy on our own hot dog flavored corpses

I vote for your sainthood w/ a boogery finger swiping right 

Artificial lifeline swooping too perfectly

Over radial artery—that's how saints get elected!

St. President  please polish the whole internet w/ Q-tips before proceeding to friend me on Birdbook because friend is not a verb it's an onamotapoeia --the sound of a lone microbe radicalizing—tweet

Is it safe to have everyone's mind wandering all over the sky?

Who's the real Army of Me—

You, the bulbous many-headed? 

The tongue wagging the crowd

Through rumored cattle chutes?

Or the Me you're wagging about?

Tom Robbins said we humans were invented by water as a means of transportation

And as noble as that sounds, I believe we’re actually some kind of data storage unit

Each of us a drone here to collect our lifetime of data &

Return it to the great base in the cosmos

The great meme generator of our time

I think I just plagiarized a bumper sticker

My mother's conditional love lasted til I was 3, my doctor died after he touched me twice (appropriately) Knocked out by

My father before I was one

De-spider Efforts!

I ripened

In her asphyxiating suitcase

So I'll branch out through

Black holes and

Cradle the old lady

Like she's a fresh stardust baby

Dorian Grey days crayoned despondent male 

Alternating happy sad female tear-years

If boys don't cry neither do mermaids, dragons Pokemon & whales

If girls cry then senators astronauts bounty hunters & trolls do too

Never suspecting the other side's green grass was toxic mold

Alone in our human/ant colony’s war/miasma crooked line dance icy whirlpool scorching debriscape  Robot Tea Room

It's too sunny out today  We're leaving rainy season & entering dry, slanted sun season

Cherry-dominant suicide

An ideal spot for a metaphysical reunion

HelterCulture

Victim Culture 

7 of Swords  a journey by land?

Exhibitionist Culture? The Foreseeable Culture Act of 2037.

Geranium Radio Party

Finite Digest  Levity's Rainbow  Uriah's Crib

Does Sophie dream of electric twins?

Unfair in height, five-foot-one

Gun fart, intrusive muse

Skeletons in the closet getting ready for PRIDE

When Amanda Palmer says "You have a dick,

You always win" we know the 4th wave of feminism

Has crashed upon a glass shoreline & imploded

Into all the shards that break us & reshape us

Been there, done better than the ones who never came back

A chain is only as long as a dog's ego

Misery loves Atari

                      Nintendo

                 Second Life

                   Monopoly

                the pharmacy

            the cable company

                 

                     quit it

The posture concave, shoulders parachuting in, head down legs strutting in vain, dragging your heart behind like a bag of blood

Imprints don't just disappear

Scary concrete blockwork

Stare them down w/ your opioid coping sensors

You work hard to ignore them

But that first default moment in the morning?

How fast can you chant, caffeinate, network them away?

Incomplete failure…(excited phosphor dots) Yap Co copay procaine 

Product of iatrogenic labeling —label scars more than the thing it describes—

Opposite of bandAid covering bullethole

My feminine IQ

Wild from tears

A jellyfish memory outlined

Whiskers of DNA--these are my people

But they are the next wave--better at being me

Than I ever was

The planet's collective endocrine system

Finally realizes the perils of overpopulation

More & more young people embracing

My old world androgyny; asex, anti-natalist views

Catching on w/ the new Nationalists

But I want to save the big Earthy testicle not the sticky white human race

Never go to Walmart in January — the most depressing coordinates on the time-space continuum

Why would I from my ivory tooth-like tower?

The world is so unmysterious now

Not just standing naked before us, but spreading

Its buttcheeks

Stunt poetry in action

Bone bunny Man village

Desperate Living Theme Song

Empty zen French dressing?

I love these words for I am their God. Bedlambic pentameter!

Wholesome helpmate, infernal bang theorist

Crack the window w/ my head

If I make it out of the bathroom alive

I promise to piss on the moon

Used to be we spoke up for what we believed

And the gov't would visit things like AIDS and 9/11 upon us

But now that AIDS & 9/11 have happened

Who will dare speak out?

This is what the Illuminazi wanted

33rd degree burn victims Skin canker and a bold chess movie plot

Insert the demagogue dialogue & watch the social experiment

Backfire--it's time to start erasing history by installing new code into the Hardware of familial Zillennials

1 generation gone since 9/11 and all memory has been sanitized by

Angelic heroic patriotic jingo lingo jumble jargon word pardon

You left me alone w/ all that country music!!!

Unfurl your phantom plans!

Holy traffucking! Paranoid MayDay Rave!

Guns are black magic just as much as gibberish is

Vowels are the true music of speech

Verbs are the music of poetry

I use words like numbers, doorless frames

Adoreless fame

I have a blog because I don't have a talk show

We’ve cut the Humanities 

In favor of machinities

And the purple artichoke, impaled

On all the pointed buttery details

We won't tell ourselves, a lame dick joke now

Without blazing hard-on verdict, without sudden wet-fingered synthesis

Senatized counter-attack, playgroundian Intelligence

Hobbies: writing, believing conspiracy theories, reading books, ice skating, doing a radio show, worrying about the karmic price of words sent out over the airwaves  Surely not as heavy as this ink  Or as instant as a full frontal automatic FB assault

(curiosity made the cat vid go viral)

Millions of meek Donalds sold

Virgin uncooked meat

A needle plunges &

Strikes the sidewalk's vein

A lark beneath

The mask of ether

Cries like a streaky pane

She walks onstage 

Like a glaze

1-31-17

***************

Did you make it? Are you okay? 

Lesbians

Well, I’m going to see if I can still post pictures of old art from my new Photo system. Next time I’ll have new art, if I can figure out how to post that…

I love you fuckers.