Once again I am helping my best friend make a bunch of money selling pretty things, and once again I am booked pretty solid with shit to do. I want to just rip off these pants like they were tearaways and flounce into a bunch of yallses apartment buildings but ALAS I am a responsible dude. SO here are some places I'll be guaranteed to be if you're also super fucking busy and want to breeze through my life like a lovely zephyr:

- THURSDAY: Rotofugi (on Chicago/Damen) from 6-9 for Daniel Danger's gallery opening. There will be soda and snacks and a bunch of artwork which will let you all understand why I stopped trying to be a comic artist when I met the kid in seventh grade.
- SATURDAY AND SUNDAY: At the Pitchfork fest, specifically at Flatstock, more specifically at Daniel Danger's table. Unless Boris is playing, in which case I'll be hooting and weeping somewhere near there.

Other times and places involve lugging a shitload of boxes around or pingponging between hither and thither, so call me on the legit if you want to try and work something out in the in-betweens, which I would love to do. The only caveat is that I forgot my phone charger at home, because I'm a dumbass, so keep tryin' the rang rang and eventually I'll figure out how to charge it.

I have no idea when I started this entry but I need to finish it so that I can post something else. OK GO

A) agnostic front good charlotte tattoo
B) bitches with problems""
C) company name imprint condom
D) dolphin hairiness
E) emetophilia
F) final fantasy viii draw stat
G) gta4 bmx
H) hahaha that looks awesome, including a soundtrack by
I) im going ssj4 over you
J) justin cant drum
K) killed themselves in an oven
L) logan's run fanfiction
M) memorial day 2000
N) nethackrc color stairs
O) objectivist dating site
P) platinum bitch message board
Q) quicksilver
R) r+b video naked dude
S) silk goku shirt
T) Tandi Iman Dupree
U) ulillillia spiderland
V) vysotskiy wiki
W) windows vista also i'm deaf
X) x11.app leopard download
Y) yaoi house
Z) -nothing-
") "ANTLER PORN"

MY NEW FIVE-YEAR PLAN

1. Steal the world's first known real unicorn.
2. Over the course of several months, or perhaps years, gain the unicorn's trust, until we are bonded for life.
3. Overtake, through some means, legitimate or no, Sealand.
4. Utilize both Sealand's self-funding infrastructure and the unicorn horn's known magical illness-curing properties to live on Sealand with a unicorn for all time.

You guys are welcome to come visit, but let me know beforehand, since I'll probably have to install some rifle turrets and lazer mesh to keep German pirates out and unicorn thieves out.

PROBABLY the best song ever written.



We had dinner, and now we drinkin Cisco

Also: PROBABLY the best song ever written.



Hello, I know that you've been feeling tired.
I bring you love and deeper understanding.
Hello, I know that you're unhappy.
I bring you love and deeper understanding.

EXCEPT that above all despite the casual racism and weird haircuts THIS is probably the BEST song ever written.



Admission, hope, dancing, extravagant hats. Word life, Lauper.

All my drafts boiled down to this:

I'm really glad that there's a tool that lets us cherrypick the best and worst from the web and lets us turn our huge smart lovely brains on it all, quicky-quick, hammer-simple. Now let's get a tool that makes it easier to pick our own brains.

From the Livejournal homepage:

food_in_fiction
For helping writers get more specific and more exotic about the foods they include in their stories.

Like, I didn't take a whole shitload of fiction courses way back to understand that verisimilitude in fiction's trappings is bypassable, and I know half of you already moved to Tumblr already¹ so this is a little like looking at half a deer beside 84 and going "Ugh, you got ants all in your fur, ugly," but there is some tiny part of me that is imagining a foodblogger hopping the rails directly to novellas and aiming their prose gastrointestinals first and now I want to preemptively suppress this. Like, "Marcella unknotted her shoulders at first sight of the edible menu." Like, "Jean-Benoit had cleverly hidden the engagement ring inside the core of the fourth flight, breast of anjou pigeon guarded by grated joselito ham and beetroot foam." Aw hell yeah, check me out getting grumpy at things I made up. It's like I never even left.

¹ Look for my thoughts on this in a mere five minutes, part of this Livejournal series, "Stephen relives his glory days of posting seven times an hour."

Lessons We Can Learn From Zapped! (1982)
1) In order to attain active psychic and telekinetic powers, you need only weed, Beer-brand beer, and quick-growth formula. Maybe also an Erlenmeyer flask.
2) Jason Schwartzman was lab-grown after some prescient Hot Dude Researchers studied the first four minutes of this film and said, "Oh, well, duh."
3a) Things which were more common in the 80s:
- Necking
- Awkward conversations
- Dogs named "Alfie"
- Beer-brand beer
- Mooning
3b) Things which, while briefly of favor, are again becoming more common since the advent of Zapped!:
- Massive, Charles Nelson Rielly-style eyeglasses
- Extravagant polo shirts
- Weed
- Classic Trek
3c) Things which will never go out of style
- Breasts
- Science
3d) Things which should come back in style
- Double breast pockets
4) It is perfectly acceptable to leave terrifying marionettes in the corner of one's room, staring into middle distance, even if this room is, chiefly, where you masturbate.
5) Eye lazers will never be something that any one of us won't always secretly desire.
5b) Hence, I guess, Zapped Again!.

I have befriended the Three 6 Mafia, and they have in turn entrusted me with the secret of Juicy J's new line of top-shelf vodkas. I am the only person besides J, DJ Paul, and Project Pat to know how it is made, and am expected to keep the distillery alive in case something happens to one of them (or, presumably, they get too high and forget).

Later that evening I receive a mysterious invitation to an old factory, which, while anonymous, mentions several events in the body that only a close friend of mine would know. I show up at the factory, alone and (stupidly) unarmed, whereupon I am ambushed by Crunchy Black, estranged ex-member of Hypnotize Minds. Quickly, in self-defense, I pick up a fire extinguisher and clock him in the head, hoping to keep him away from me long enough to make an escape. Unfortunately, in the dream I am much stronger, and manage to accidentally concuss him.

When he comes to, it's clear that I've managed to really scramble his brain, so I pull him onto a chair and apologize profusely. "No," he says, cutting me off, "don't feel bad. Maybe we've been too hard on J and Paul. Quickly -- take your formula and run. Gangsta Boo and Da Koopsta Knicca will be here any moment." I leave the factory and am immediately mobbed by the press, asking me about my recent inclusion into the Hypnotize Minds family, and as I break free I hear the wail of Gangsta Boo discovering Crunchy Black slumped over in the chair, and I run.

So I think I have been sort of remiss in mentioning this BUT: My band has been in the studio for a few months kicking the ass of our first record. It has been a pain and a half and I'm sure our engineer wants to just kill the hell out of us, but luckily we have been chronicling pretty much the whole thing here:

CITY SAFE PROGRESS BLOG

I dunno if this is any interest to y'all who aren't gear nerds or know Daniel and I or whatever, but at the very least there are some pretty bad pictures of me and some rough mixes and whatever. I think it's a pretty good read and I am really getting emotionally invested in this record, and not just because it is taking up all the time I had alloted for sleeping and playing GTA4. Anyhow there is an RSS feed so you might as well throw it in your computer aggregation mux thresher and wait two weeks to see if you just scroll past it looking for new ANTM posts by Rich Fourfour.

With Jason asleep next to me, allow me to take you on a voyage to italo disco.







I could pretty much listen to this until I died.

A City Safe From Sea is playing Versionfest in Chicago on the 17th. The show is at the Country Club Gallery (1100 N Damen), and according to Versionfest's website the doors open at 6PM. I have literally no idea when we're playing or who else is doing anything, but we're driving sixteen hours to get there, so if you show up AT THE VERY LEAST I will let you touch my perfect butt.

We've been recording for the past month or two at Q Division (where The Obliterati, Consonant, and Surfer Rosa were tracked) and it's been one of the greatest experiences of my life -- some of the rough mixes of what we've come up with are on our Myspace (I know, I know, but it's industry-standard at this point) and I'm pretty god damned proud of what's coming out of it.

So I guess what I'm saying is: If you live in Chicago and you don't show up and see my band I will hit you with a clawhammer. Just kidding! Or AM I.

On the heels of the last one:

IRL Strangers Whom I Would Loan $300, No Questions Asked, Even If They Were Drunk:
- Kevin Fanning
- Lainey Demond
- Klara Kim
- Paul Jansen
- Vlada

I had this idea just now and it seems like a great way to combine the memetic tendency of the internet with the notion that people should be lovely to each other more often. So:

A Incomplete List Of People For Whom I Would Fight A Stranger (And I Am Terrible At Fighting And Would Probably Lose), Like, An Actual Fight with the Punching -- But Who, I Suspect, Do Not Know That I Feel This Way

- Eric Marklein
- Marty Ryan
- Paul Thompson
- Adam Zavala
- Meghan Deans
- Jared Dunn
- Ang Duke

Not that I wouldn't man the fists for those of you who know my daily love, but there are some of you I think about a lot, and with fondness, and god damn if this sort of sentiment doesn't deserve to become memetic. So who would you fight.

POSTSCRIPT: I would like to amend this list to note that Lia Bualong should be on here except that I feel that she is fierce enough to make strong enemies, so I balked just in case. Lia, you may count this as double points on your scorecard.