As Far As I Can Tell

I’m at the 4th Coast trying to catch up on my weblogs and design sites but I can’t concentrate. On my left I’m forced to overhear the babbling and passage reading of some “hip” Christians from Threads Church. There’s upstairs classical music playing, but every time the downstairs door opens it intermixes with some rock-n-roll that I’d rather be listening to down there. All this because there wasn’t a seat next to an electrical plug-in.

God is love.
Old people are cool because usually they’re Christian.
The church in America preaches against miracles.

I guess I’ll head home.

I’m alive and well in Kalamazoo, but you wouldn’t know it by this weblog. I don’t have Internet access at home yet due to some new electrical codes keeping the cable guys from hooking me up. I can get on with my laptop at the Fourth Coast and 1977 Mopeds, but I’m always rushed; trying to get the rest of my daily online activities done. I’m fortunate enough to have some in my mouth at home, but it’s so unreliable and slow that it’s only for desperate situations. I’m posting this from a pirated dial-up account.

I’ve been busy these last two weeks moving in, setting up, house warming, buying a new camera, making t-shirts, visiting Chicago, and riding mopeds in packs up to 50 strong. This last weekend was Moped BBQ 8 and we had people in town from eight of the ten branches of the Moped Army. Hell yeah; it was bigger and better than ever. We were busted by the cops twice, did tons of riding, and for possibly the first time upheld the phrase “We own the streets”.

I promise this page will be updated with more Michigan adventures soon. SBC has pinky-swore to get my DSL by Friday.

This is my last post before I unplug my cable modem. I should be back online in a few days.

Hello Kalamazoo.

Yesterday I packed my truck to its absolute limits. Miscellaneous items were stacked in high enough that I couldn’t see out the back window, and Ivo couldn’t fit in for a ride to the train. I drove it all to Sturgis as darkness and rain were fading in together. Mother Nature really wants my things to be wet right now.

I’m excited that I’ll have a sort of studio space in Sturgis. I’ve grown used to having space for lots of art supplies and giant tables. It’s only 45 minutes away, which will actually be a nice isolation so I can concentrate on work while I’m there. I want to start separating various activities of my life by physical location. I’ve spent too long now doing everything at home. The blurring of living and work space starts to take its toll.

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This morning I had breakfast with Dan at the Main Street. I don’t think I’ll order my eggs with cheese on them anymore. Connie knows it as “my usual”, but a half melted Kraft Single isn’t really what I’m looking for. I’m going to miss all the great breakfast spots in Chicago.

Right now I’m waiting for Meredith to finish up all of her odds and ends so we can take off to Chicago and finish packing. I’m glad she’s able to come and help, not only so it will go quicker, but so we can spend the last few Chicago days together.

After escorting Jake to the airport to fly out to Japan I came home and discovered workmen dealing with the totally flooded basement apartment. The unit has flooded before, which really sucks for the tenet, but my area had never been affected. Today I got nervous about it and peaked my head downstairs just to make sure. Sure enough, my workspace was under a layer of water.

It ruined a bunch of projects from college and seeped into my main portfolio. A box of Wired and Metropolis, a bunch of books I bought to cut things out of, a stack of data cds, one end of a wonderful old map, and a batch of vinyl letters all had to be thrown away. I hate water damage so fucking much. Also, I don’t have renter’s insurance, and if I did it wouldn’t matter because most of the items damaged were more personal than valuable. At least my photo box wasn’t sitting on the ground.

On the upside my landlord contacted me and wondered if I could move out early so the guy from downstairs has a place to live. I was planning on moving some of my stuff this Saturday, but now it looks like I’ll move it all. It’ll be nice to get some of the rent money from this month back. We were going to be paying for a mostly unused apartment otherwise.

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I got the invitations for Moped BBQ 8 done today too. The card stock is too dark for what I’m doing with it, so I’m not super satisfied with the end result. I’m still sending them out though, so keep an eye on your mailbox this week.

Saturday, I went with Meredith to a couple events that were part of the Poetry Hop. It was set up as a panel discussion, not just of the various individual’s work, but on broader themes that are prevalent throughout poetry and life. In each session there were at least two people that I really enjoyed listening to. Smart, observant, and funny.

One of the more interesting questions that came from the audience was on the idea of the thesaurus degrading language more than anything else. The thesaurus, it was argued, makes us believe that a grouping of words all mean the same thing and are interchangeable. This overlooking of the subtlety of word meanings is definitely aided by the thesaurus, though I think it has positive idea generation purposes as well. I find it useful when I know I don’t have the right word, but I can’t put my finger on what I’m looking for.

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On Sunday I had breakfast with Evil Bill before heading off to Sturgis again to visit my parents and grandparents. While I was there I helped haul some furniture that my Mom bought at the Centerville Antique Fair and my Dad helped me build the moped hitching post I’ve had plans to build for almost a year. This high security homemade device consists of:

• Two 5 gallon buckets stacked into each other. The top one has the bottom cut out.
• Four U-Locks locked through holes drilled in the bucket.
• Cement poured in the bucket all the way to the top.

I now have a 100 pound movable moped security device. I needed to build it because I don’t have a good place to lock up at my new apartment and already I’ve had 4 kids ask to either “buy”, “ride”, or “have” my moped. I might have to hire a full-time security guard.

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Sunday night I went on the Moped Army weekly ride where we ran a relay race on the new WMU BTR Park road. It’s like it was designed for moped racing.

That night Jake rode home with me to Chicago so he could fly out to Japan on Monday.

After a long and tedious learning process I finally created my first screen for silk screening and made some posters for the upcoming Moped BBQ 8. I made the screens here in Chicago and took all of the supplies to Sturgis where my press is. From now on I’ll be doing everything in Sturgis.

Compared to the trial and error mess of making the screens, printing went smoothly. I’m so impressed with the quality and opacity of the ink. I’m really excited to start doing more printing.

Afterward I had dinner with my Dad in Three Rivers and made it to Kalamazoo just in time to see the excellent sequel to X-Men, X2. Bill was in town for two days only before he ran off to Japan again. It was nice to see him, even if it was only for a few hours. I’m glad he’s going to be spending some time in Kalamazoo this summer before going to Detroit.

Meredith and I stayed in our new apartment Friday night for the first time. Empty except for our air mattress, it felt like we were squatters.