Monday, January 31, 2005

Freedom of Huh?? Wazzat?

A recent study shows that many US high school students don't understand the meaning of free speech, and are in many cases, completely in the dark about the First Amendment. From an Asociated Press story today:

"When told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes 'too far' in the rights it guarantees."

"Half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."

"Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not."

"About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't."


Click on the title to link to the AP story on CNN. /jack
---o0o---

The Cover Up?


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One of the focal points of the UFO and Alien Coverup story/myth are three documents related to a secret group known as Majestic-12. A few years back, the television program Dark Skies, focused on the Majestic story.

The Operation Majestic-12 documents were first revealed in 1987, when a roll of film was handed to a documentary filmmaker. Since then, many people have tried to validate the authenticity of these three primary documents. The Majestic documents outline the establishment of a TOP SECRET group to handle the 1947 Roswell recovery and procedures for evaluating crashed alien spacecraft. The U.S. government has always denied the existence of Majestic.

Dr Stanton T. Friedman, author of Top Secret Majic, has said: "investigation of the many arguments raised by skeptics has, to date, provided no indication that the documents are fraudulent and a host of small details which tend towards legitimacy for MJ-12."

Majestic 12 was in charge of protecting what the government knew about extraterrestrials and flying saucers. If you believe what these documents say, "what the government knew" is a lot. There are sites all over the internet dedicated to Majestic. These sites range from skeptical to telling you that we have already been invaded and that the guy sitting next to you is likely part of an Alien Hive.
---o0o---


Sunday, January 30, 2005

Mel, Part 1

Almost six years ago, Jerry Melin, died in Marin County, California (where he lived near The Grateful Dead, a band we both loved). He even met a few of them during his years in Ross. Mel's death was a jackhammer blow; a blow I still try to understand and absorb. There is not a day when I don't think of him often, all these years later. Even now--last night, in fact--there are things I want to tell him; things so strange, or amazing, or bent, or obscure and ethereal, that only he could plug in to them.

Mel died instantly of a heart attack in the middle of a tennis match. His wife, Dorothea, asked if I could speak a eulogy at his funeral. I wasn't sure I could, if I could even write it. I wasn't thinking right. Somehow, 'though, I felt Mel peer over my shoulder and was able to get something on paper.
I was even able to deliver the eulogy in a packed church without completely breaking down. It wasn't looking at his widow or his three young daughters, or all our friends, or the people of Ross that got me through it. I asked myself "what would Jerry do?" How had Jerry managed the deaths of our friends Phil, Peter, Jannah, Colin, or his father? It was not by boohooing...that was not his way. The Way was to realize it's over and go from there, and celebrate. "You celebrate them by digging that we're here, " he would say, "there's plenty of time to be pushing daisies. You celebrate them by celebrating this. Dig this and dig it now because tomorrow never knows, as that hippy Beatle sang."

I am working on other pieces about Mel, that I will publish here. With this eulogy, we begin at the end of the story. With this, the worst part over, we can move onto the good stuff.

Eulogy for Jerry Philip Melin

[This first paragraph about the church I ad-libbed at the funeral and wrote down when I got on the plane that night].

I look around this church, and I see--what?-- Three Hundred People? I know Jerry would have been amazed; he would be amused. This is half the town of Ross, California. Jerry never dreamed he could sell out a Catholic Church. It's S.R.O.--Standing Room Only--here. It should be. No, Jerry could not have dreamt this. I wonder if it's some kind of dream myself. But I know it isn't, because we are here, together. And I wish we weren't.

My earliest Jerry memory might be the Letterman's Jacket Incident. Jerry lettered in gymnastics, and had later made "improvements" to his Kent Meridian High School letterman's jacket. In addition to a carefully rendered, bright white rendition of Mister Zig-Zag on the back, he reversed the letters on his jacket to read MK. The football coach stopped him one day and asked (I'll try my dumb coach voice): "Hey­­ what's this MK jazz stand for?"

When Jerry answered "Mein Kampf," the coach, of course, went absolutely bananas. Jerry had to surrender the Jacket eventually because it violated several rules, but for Jer this was a personal triumph, beating anything he'd done on the parallel bars or the rings, and leaving his vaulting wins far in the dust. He'd riled The Man.

Over the years, I called him at various times--of the names I can actually say in church--Jed, Jer, Mel, Bart (referring to the Hobart Dump), Jeddy and even sometimes, Jerry. These last few years we settled into Mel, and he called me either Doc, or Jack.

He was a skilled artist, creating bawdy cartoons of people locked in improbable combinations and situations, and incredible William Blake-inspired drawings of sinners and angels. He was a skilled stockmarket analyst and a securities trading wiz (not bad for a guy with a degree in English literature). He wrote chilling fiction and fantasy, often in stream of consciousness bursts, folded into those twenty page letters from Mexico, Alaska, Greece, Bellingham, Manhattan or Seattle. He was an introspective philosopher who could keep you up all night discussing The Big Ideas, and Art and Women and Godhead. Jerry was also a prankster unparalleled. I could go on about that alone forever. Jerry was an adoring husband, a doting father, and a friend whose intensity swallowed you up. You knew he loved you.

I tried to find my box of letters, stories, drawings, and poems from him before I came to the funeral, and even those many emails. His letters to me, at least, were machine-gun meditations on life--a vortex of free associations on the nature of Art and Destiny and Man's follies. These letters were shot through with his comic vision of humankind that plumbed the lowest and highest of humor.

His warped sense of humor and willingness to talk from the heart sustained us through a lot of happy times, tragic losses, and life itself.

In 1978, Jerry and I took a most ill­-advised trip from my home in New York City to his home in Seattle. You could travel from anywhere to anywhere in the U.S. for $49 on the Greyhound Bus.

One of the things I remember most about that trip is how much we laughed and babbled and talked through the night as we crossed those twelve desolate, frozen states in those nightmare bus seats, usually trapped in the back of the bus, near the toilet. We finally arrived in Seattle, and staggered off the bus after three and a half showerless and cramped days. We went to our respective family's homes.

Jerry called two hours later to see if I wanted to hang out. We had been six inches apart for 85 hours! I was ready for a serious and long Jerry­break, but he wanted to know when I would be arriving at his place to liberate him! There was more to transact! We had unfinished business. He could never have enough. I was always the first one to go, to hang up, log off, or go to bed. He never ever wanted to say goodbye.

There was never a time when we talked that he didn't hound me to come visit him in Kent, Seattle, Bellingham, Manhattan, Long Island, Mexico, San Francisco, or up in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Wherever he was was where I should be. It was critical that he knew exactly when we would see each other again. It was always "Jack. . .drive that car down here tomorrow. . .it's only 16 hours and you've got five days off." Or "Doc. . .come down here and quit working so damned hard. . .we'll sit in the hot tub and talk about politics and Rembrandt and old kings."

Jerry would never ever hang up without extracting a solid promise we would get together As Soon As Possible.

In retrospect, I wish I had driven down here a week ago, the last time he insisted I come immediately. He was really applying the heat this time. He knew I had a lot of time off, and I thought about it. He really applied the pressure­­. But I don't think Jerry had any sense of what was to come later that week; I don't think he knew he had days to live. He just wanted that visit to glimmer in the distance, as a possibility, as a carrot to keep him going. Mel had to know you'd be there again, in person.

How can we not all love and cherish someone who loved us as relentlessly as that? For everyone who knew and loved him, there will always be a void that only Jerry can fill.

I'll miss those midnight calls about Flemish painters and Yeats and Shakespeare and the mad popes. It was all so very important to him and he always wanted every detail about my life, and the things I read and wrote and painted, and created at work, and about my family, and about my wife he adored. . .all of that was never far from his mind. Half the time, I couldn't pry a word out of Jerry, but he was there, pumping words out of me like an oil derrick.

Mel measured his life by the people he loved. That was his yardstick. I hope we can all come to practice even a little bit of what he taught us about devotion and intensity and reaching out. Jerry's love was relentless.

I know I speak for Jerry when I tell you he wants us to somehow accept this terrible thing and learn to laugh again. Jerry was never much of a mourner; he was a liver. This much commotion about his passing would be too much. He wants you to ponder not his passing but his glorious transit through this bright blue ball.

It's going to be too long
until we hug Jerry
but until then,
I know that once you're through
with the orientation and settling in,
you'll be teaching those angels
new moves and showing them
just how much room there really is
to dance on the head of a pin. ­­­­
---o0o---

Jack Brummet, 1999

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Government

Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.

- Frank Zappa

Hobo Signs


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This is a drawing of some of my favorite hobo signs. There are many more. Quite a few of these have made an appearance in my art over the years (particularly my favorite "man with gun.")
/jack

Friday, January 28, 2005

Five Sports Quotes You Might Like

Football commentator and former player Joe Theismann 1996: "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."

Hearing Joe Jacoby of the 'Skins say "I'd run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl," Matt Millen of the Raiders said, "To win, I'd run over Joe's mom too."

Shaquille O'Neal on whether he had visited the Parthenon during his visit to Greece: "I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to."

Pat Williams, Orlando Magic general manager, on his team's 7-27 record: "We can't win at home. We can't win on the road. As general manager, I just can't figure out where else to play." (1992)

Shelby Metcalf, basketball coach at Texas A&M, recounting what he told a player who received four F's and one D: "Son, looks to me like you're spending too much time on one subject."

It's Things Like This That Make Me Think The Press Are A Pack Of Treacherous, Unprincipled Weasels



VPOTUS Dick Cheney's green parka and boots stood out at yesterday's 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp. It alarmed the fashion police.

It's freezing there. He's 65. He's had, what, three heart attacks? I don't mind if he bundles up. I guess what the press didn't like is that he dressed like a normal American knucklehead, in a parka, stocking hat, and lace-up boots.

Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan described Cheney's look at the deeply moving 60th anniversary service as "the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower." "The vice president looked like an awkward child amid the well-dressed adults," she said.

What a steaming pile, Robin! There aren't many politicians I like less than the Vice President, but please come up with some substance, guys! It's not like the Administration doesn't have plenty of garbage you can dig up. But, no, Robin, you focus on the haberdashery.

Click on the title to link to the AP article. /jack
---o0o---

Smile


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Photograph of employees at Jack's work. Photographer unknown. Digital enhancements by Jack, 2004.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

qui tam pro domino rege quam pro si ipso in hac parte sequiter



Following ongoing revelations of government-funded propaganda, including bogus video news releases from the drug czar and DHHS, and White House payments to two "journalists," Senators Kennedy (D-Mass) and Lautenberg (D-NJ) are about to introduce a Stop Government Propaganda Act.

The President claims to be completely in the dark about the propaganda payments, or about any skullduggery. It's not that big of a leap to picture POTUS being in the dark about anything. The Act states, "Funds appropriated to an Executive branch agency may not be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States unless authorized by law."

"It's time for Congress to shut down the Administration's propaganda mill," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It has no place in the United States Government."

"The act would allow citizens to bring qui tam lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. government when the Department of Justice does not respond. If the matter is taken to court, the bill proposes that the senior official responsible would be fined three times the amount of the 'misspent taxpayer funds' plus an additional fine ranging from $5,000 to $10,000. And if a citizen's qui tam suit is accepted, the bill proposes that the plaintiff receives between 25 and 30% of the proceeds of the fine," Senatory Kennedy explained. "It's an abuse of taxpayer funds and an abuse of the First Amendment and freedom of the press. If the President is serious about stopping these abuses, he will support this legislation."

Qui tam (“key' tom”) is shorthand for the Latin, qui tam pro domino rege quam pro si ipso in hac parte sequiter, or, “who sues on behalf of the King as well as for himself.” Early English kings had no Justice Dept. or FBI or Homeland Security to prosecute thefts from the Privy Purse. Kings used their subjects to bring “popular actions” to protect the royal treasure trove. The lawsuits were known as qui tam actions. If an action was successful, the king would receive part recovered mon and the prosecuting subject, the rest. It looks like most qui tam suits now come from "whistleblowers," although Keelin Curran or Dave Hokit may disagree with my usual half-baked understanding of The Law.
---o0o---

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Painting: Flag 16



click image to enlarge. /jack

Adlai Stevenson's Proposal

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Federal Communications Commission To The Parents Television Council: Quit Dicking Around!

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You may call President Nixon by his nickname, Dick.
[1]
You may call the late President a dick, a synonym for jerk. [2]
You may not refer to RMN's sexual organ, using his nickname's homonym. [3]

You may not be able to say that ex-POTUS Richard Nixon "d***ed" the people of the United States. [4]
You may say that he dicked around too long with Watergate.
[5]
You may say that he dicked the Vietnamese War. [6]

In a move guaranteed to absolutely muck up the Maginot Line of Decency, the F.C.C. denied 36 indecency complaints yesterday. Those complaints were filed by the Parents Television Council, conservative watchdogs that file thousands of complaints each year. This notoriously priggish group of killjoys has criticized the F.C.C's crackdown on indecency as not being punitive enough on broadcasters. Today, Tim Winter, executive director of the PTC, is squealing like a mortally wounded swamp sow.

The complaints booted by the F.C.C. stem from episodes of shows such as "NYPD Blue," "Dawson's Creek" and "Boston Public." The offending programs feature characters using a term that is a synonym for "jerk."[2] Other complaints the F.C.C. denied focused on episodes of "Friends," "Will & Grace," "Scrubs" and other programs in which the characters discussed sex.

We know that of the hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, there are seven you cannot say on broadcast TV.

Television may show buttocks. "NYPD Blue" had episodes in which both Dennis Franz and David Caruso's buttocks were shown (boo) as well as showing the buttocks of Kim Delaney and Andrea Thompson (hurrah).

Television is permitted to show dead people naked if they are piled in a mass grave [7]. The breasts and buttocks of non-white people are routinely shown in National Geographic TV specials. You may show the breasts and buttocks and even full frontal nudity of white people, if they are prisoners of war, or interned in a death camp [8]. It is OK to show a nipple if it has a sword or knife through it, but not if it has a ring through it. In fact, it's probably not kosher to show many of these parts if the person has a heartbeat. It was not OK when Janet Jackson aired her nipple out for three seconds.

It's hard to know what we know. Will the new F.C.C. Chairperson step up the crackdown, or continue to ease up the rules (if that is what is happening here)?. Rejecting these claims seems like an interesting step. The PTC, naturally, would like to see one of their own in the Chairman position. The next thing we hear from from the F.C.C. may well be a "course correction." Steady as she goes, fellas!

[1] Among others, nicknames for Richard include, Rich, Richie, Rick, and Dick.
[2] Or, a person, almost always a man, regarded as mean or contemptible.
[3] A vulgar synonym for the penis, along with Johnson, John Thomas, tallywhacker, member, one-eyed Jack, and hundreds of other synonyms. The Germans refer to all genitalia as "the parts of shame. "
[4] Since that usage alludes to the vulgar term for the act of sexual intercourse.
[5] Here, dicked means to spend time idly, or, fool around.
[6] Dicked, in this sense meaning "to botch or bungle."
[7] In numerous documentaries and news programs on The Holocaust and the German concentration camps.
[8] Spielberg's "Schindler's List," broadcast on national television, included several scenes of frontal nudity.

---o0o---

Monday, January 24, 2005

poem: Not Past Tense Yet

I can't get him out of my mind;
he's been out of his own for years.

He stares into the cracked mirror,
hoping that spontaneous combustion

will take him to that cold island
across the river.
---o0o---

jack brummet

Not This Future


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foo

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Pretty In Pink And Deranged: A Mark Ryden Show In Seattle


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I went to see Mark Ryden's show this weekend at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. I went twice. Wow. He is an amazing figurative and technical painter, and a master of juxtaposition, of color and light, and of evoking bygone images and concepts, alongside the modern. Ryden's work makes most of the famed surrealist painters look like chumps.

These thirty paintings are dense, whimsical, terrifying, and always surprising. Ryden's art seems to echo Freud, Surrealism, Classic painting, symbolism, dream theory, and French ultra-realist painters, as well as being influenced by realistic (and nostalgic) children's book art. Forget all this blather, 'though, and just go see the show. I haven't enjoyed a modern painter's work so much in many years.

The frames in this exhibition are some of the coolest I have ever seen. In some cases, he appears to have the frames entirely custom made--carved, finished, and aged. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the frames cost $10,000 to make. They alone are worth seeing.

If you live near Seattle, or Pasadena, where the show will move in February, don't miss this disturbing and exhilarating show...

His web site http://www.markryden.com is well worth visiting. The show catalog is wonderful, and is available at the Frye, and at Amazon.com.
---o0o---

Johnny Carson


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Breaking news reports this morning say Johnny Carson has died. Johnny was a huge pop culture presence, and if you are "of a certain age," you remember when he was on television that there was little else on. By the time The Tonight Show came on at 11:30 PT, a lot of the other stations had signed off for the night (even major cities only had a few stations). I won't go on about how iconic he was, or about how he helped break so many major comedians, or how he was "cool" in the Hugh Hefner/Rat Pack sort of world. You'll be able to read about him later today.

The Beach Boys (when Brian Wilson was in his seriously wacked out phase) wrote a song entitled Johnny Carson. It was one of their very strangest songs ever (right up there with Take Good Care of Your Feet). The lyrics don't do the song justice...you have to hear it to appreciate how truly bizarre it is:

He sits behind his microphone
John-ny Car-son
He speaks in such a manly tone
John-ny Car-son
Ed McMahon comes on and says "Here's Johnny"
Every night at eleven thirty he's so funny

It's (nice) to (have) you (on) the (show) tonight
I've seen (your) act (in) Vegas out of sight
When guests are boring he fills up the slack
John-ny Car-son
The network makes him break his back
John-ny Car-son

Ed McMahon comes on and says "Here's Johnny"
Every night at eleven thirty he's so funny
Don't (you) think (he's) such (a) natural guy
The (way) he's (kept) it (up) could make you cry

Who's a man that we admire?
Johnny Carson is a real live wire.
[repeat chorus four times]
---o0o---

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Random Numbers And Deviates


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A classic and strange book has been reissued. A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates [1] by our old friends, The Rand Corporation. It retails for $30 (paperback) and you can get it for $20 at amazon. The reviews, of course, are hilarious geek humor. Click on the title of this entry to read more about the book. Or buy it!

[1] The book routinely used by statisticians, physicists, polltakers, market analysts, lottery administrators, and quality control engineers. A 2001 article in the New York Times on the value of randomness featured the original edition of the book, published in 1955 by the Free Press. The rights have since reverted to RAND, and in this digital age, they wanted to reissue a new edition of the book in its original format.

Friday, January 21, 2005

One Of My Favorite Government Photographs


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Unfortunately, it's not a flying saucer, but the domed top of a 70 foot long vacuum tank in Cleveland, Ohio at the renamed John H. Glenn Research Center. The guys in protective clothing had just emerged from within the tank where they had been cleaning in the toxic mercury atmosphere. This NASA photo was taken on January 1, 1961. Ike had three weeks left in office. John Glenn hadn't even gone into outer space yet. Camelot was about to be in session. /jack
---o0o--

Painting: Sixteen Panels


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This Is Hump Day, When We Finally Have More Of President Bush Behind Us Than Ahead Of Us

January 21, 2005.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Oath of Office 1-20-05

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Dr. Condoleezza Rice - Nude Photos

Did you arrive at All This Is That looking for photos of Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, nude or in flagrante with men, women, or both? Google shows large numbers of people searching for hot Conde photos. If bona fide photos do exist, I know you, the denizens of the WWW, will find them. Happy Hunting! You'd probably find more interesting pictures of people who pose nekkid professionally, but if you're just interested in sexing up The White House, you're on the right path-- at least it seems preferable to a passel of photos of, say, Paul Wolfowitz or VPOTUS Dick Cheney...
/jack
---o0o---

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

The President's Second Half: At Least Do No Harm

On the Reuters Wire today:


"PARIS (Reuters) - The rest of the world will be watching with anxiety when President Bush is inaugurated Thursday for a second time, fearing the most powerful man on the planet may do more harm than good."

Our Allies' anxiety focuses on our unilateral approach to foreign affairs and incursions. Our friends hope, but doubt, POTUS will, like the Hippocratic Oath, "help, or at least do no harm."

I'm not expecting a lot from this President but I hope he keeps the damage to a manageable level. Especially the collateral damage! Is that asking too much? Believe it or not, among my friends, I am probably the most hopeful and upbeat about this second term.

Click on the title for a link to the Reuters article.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Monday, January 17, 2005

Fishing With The Old Man

We always went to a promising, well-stocked lake on opening day and then hit various lakes every week or two while the lake season was open. I wasn't often included on Steelhead [1] fishing because of inclement weather, the treacherous stretches of the river, and my uncanny ability to fall into any proximate body of water. We didn't fish saltwater, unless you count crab pots and clamguns.

On a Serious Fishing Trip, you needed men, mountains, fly-fishing gear, canned food, and a good load of John Barleycorn. For serious fishing, we headed east, to the Bumping River. We drove far south in the Green River Valley, and then cut up into the mountain foothills and circled around Mount Rainier, to the Cougar Flats campground. The closest towns were Goose Prairie [2] and the little town of Naches.

The fishing expedition included me, my dad, and at various times, Al Sorenson, his son Jack and his friend, Sonny, Bill Cavanaugh (a notoriously besotted bartender), Big Bob Hansen, Al Simms, my Uncle Romey (Raw' mee), his son Jimmy, a couple of station wagons, a jeep, and a pickup. The men were salt of the earth, blue-collar, Democratic, card carrying Teamsters. Not a one of them graduated from high school, or even completed junior high. Most of them lied about their age to get into the service during The Depression. They were now furnace repairmen, sheetrockers, drivers, mechanics, and cabinet makers in their mid-thirties.

We headed into the mountains after a stop in Auburn or Puyallup at the state Liquor Store. We bought whiskey (Four Roses or Seagram's Seven Crown), and cases of Olympia Beer and Honeydew or Shasta soda for the kids.

One whiskey mishap is seared into my brain--a senseless outrage I committed upon an innocent jug of Four Roses. We hit a rest stop. As I opened the door, I smurfed a half gallon jug of whiskey onto the sidewalk. It broke. Five men raced into action. One guy held the bottom of the jug upright to prevent any further diminution of its contents, another one tried to dam up the little brown river. Someone might have licked the concrete downstream of the disaster. I almost remember some misty eyes. I was in the doghouse and, henceforth, the jug was stored wherever I wouldn't be, preferably in another vehicle entirely. I don't know how many miles we backtracked to replenish the Four Roses, but I do remember Bill Cavanaugh telling me I "was about as handy as a cub bear handling his p**ck."

In the grand scheme of things, I merely postponed our arrival, and cocktail hour, at Cougar Flats. It's not like any lines were going to be wetted the first day of the trip. There was plenty of time to get the Seven and Sevens [3] poured, and to feed the kids, and themselves, cooking dinner on a Coleman Stove and over the campfire.

There was Dinty Moore Beef Stew waiting, and Chef Boy R Dee's Ravioli, Bar-S Hot Dogs, Vienna Sausages, Franco-American Spaghetti-O's , Rice-A-Roni, Chili con Carne, Tang[tm], the space age Kool-Aid, Honeydew Strawberry, Olympia beer chilling in a fishing net in the river, Spam, Pork and Beans, Canned Tamales, hot cocoa, candy bars, and beef jerky.

Even at the age of seven, the excitement of the road trip was infectious. There was swearing, farting, loud laughter, and a general relaxation of all rules of decorum. The place names were magical: The Bumping River, Cougar Flats (I don't remember ever hearing a bobcat/mountain lion/cougar), Goose Prarie, and Naches. Mount Rainier was another magical name, and we were so close, you could almost touch it. There were deer, fox, beaver, raccoon, coyotes, squirrels, bear, crows, woodpeckers, owls, badgers, marmots and river otters.

We camped among thick stands of Douglas Fir, in old oiled canvas tents with a fine tang of mildew. The woods were lush with salal, Oregon Grape, nettles, strange mushrooms, ferns, banana slugs, and moss. Rainbow and Cutthroat Trout were our quarry. At least in theory; I don't much remember the fishing part of the trip. I remember hikes to see the bears, seeing men in the middle of the river in their khaki-colored waders, fried baloney sandwiches, hot cocoa, beer pancakes and chili with oyster crackers for dinner. I remember the stories that were spun as the adult beverages made the rounds.

Around the campfire, they told endless, improbable stories punctuated with guffaws and snorts of disbelief. They spun World War II yarns of army and navy shenanigans, being on a thirty day run of KP for fighting, or breaking into the supply huts to make off with the torpedo juice [4]. They didn't talk about fighting the Germans and the Japanese. They told shaggy-dog stories of run-ins with the Military Police while on shore leave, and being put in the brig for some minor offense or "misunderstanding." There were elaborate tales of the German Girls, the French Girls, the Australian girls, the Philllipine girls, and the Japanense girls, none of which made sense to me. Tales of outwitting the sociopath drill sargeant, or pulling pranks on their entire army company were favorites.

Every night, we secured the camp against the bears and even the squirrels by hoisting the food up in bags and dangling the bags far out on a tree limb (or locking it in cars). We kept the campsite far cleaner than we kept ourselves. A pan of grease poured onto the ground injudiciously could easily attract a momma bear and her two cubs. We often heard the bears rummaging around outside the tents at night. More than once, we would wake up to find a loaf of bread we had forgotten with a neat squirrel hole burrowed straight through the middle. The bears mostly kept their distance since the fishing was good and there was a garbage dump a couple of miles away.

In the morning, after bacon, beer pancakes hot cocoa and coffee, we would fish. I was usually tied up on the bank, just like when I "fished" for Steelhead on the Green River [5]. I was tethered to a tree so they could keep track of me, and because if there was a body of water nearby, I would invariably fall in.

There must have been dozens, but my only memory of seeing a fish was when Jack Sorenson and his friend, Sonny (they were about 15 or 16), jumped in the river and grabbed a couple of cutthroats. They had been fishing all day and finally gave up and snagged the fish with their bare hands.

On the return trip, back to the west side of the mountains, I was given strict instructions to watch my language and not tell any tales. It was an early lesson in the motto "what you see here, stays here."

I went fishing with my dad many more times. Usually we fished the nearby lakes for trout, and sometimes on the Green River for the elusive Steelhead Trout. My father's desire for me to excel at fishing ran head-on into my utter inability to sit quietly and fish. Sitting in his pram on a lake, it was very difficult to sit still, and even more difficult to remain quiet.

No matter how many times they told me, I never really believed the fish could hear me, and even if they could, that the babbling of a seven year old would seriously disturb them or prevent them from lunging for the eggs on our hooks.

I drove my old man nuts when we fished. In the boat on the lake, his pole would most often sit unattended as he cussed and attempted to either untangle my fishing line, fix my fishing reel, or rig a new leader, sinker, hook and bait when I tore mine off in snags at the bottom of the lake. When my line wasn't twisted around the anchor, I was talking, and if I wasn't talking I wanted lunch, and if I'd had lunch, I needed to take a pee, and if I didn't have to pee, I got my fishing line hopelessly entangled in his.

Despite hectoring him with demands, and preventing him from ever actually fishing, he brought me along every chance he had[6] . All he wanted to do was drop a line in the water and wait for the fish to bite. All he wanted to hear was the slow lapping of the lake against the boat. But his spawn was a hopeless motormouth, utterly uncoordinated and tempermentally unsuited to the fishing life. He got it.

After returning from one of my earliest trips (I was in kindergarten or the first grade), I landed in hot water at school. The fishing story I told during "Show And Tell" was peppered with C***sucker, sonofabitch, and other choice scatalogical references. I must have learned to keep my mouth shut after that. I do not believe the men mended their ways.
---o0o---

[1] Steelhead Trout are an ocean going rainbow trout, considered to be one of the great sport fish. They are extremely tasty.
[2] Home of the great Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who wrote about the area in his bestseller Of Men and Mountains.
[3] One part Seagram's Seven and one part 7-Up, over ice. Mmmm.
[4] An alcoholic beverage in World War II, made from the high grain alcohol fuel used in torpedo motors. The poisons in these liquids were passed through makeshift filters (e.g., they poured it through a loaf of bread).
[5] Yes. That Green River. I grew up two blocks from the river where Gary "The Green River Killer" Ridgeway dumped the bodies of his 50+ victims many years later.
[6] John Newton Brummet II died six months after JFK, on May 19, 1964.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Poem: Defensive Daydreaming

Six hours into the surprise visit, he lumbers on.
My brain unsnaps from its moorings
and drifts like a drunken dirigble
into the torrent of everything I've seen,
smelled, eaten, licked, drunk,
smoked, touched, read, watched, and heard.
It's like he's been talking weeks now
and I remember Nikita Kruschev
on the television at the UN, flashing
those bad teeth and that goofy smile,
pounding those oxfords alive.
I try but I can't quite hear him;
I hear my friend narrating himself.
Things have gotten so out of hand that
I remember today is Renoir's 164th birthday
and I don't even like his painting,
but, hey, at least he threw in some nudes.
He looking at me! What did I miss?
He looks for a yes and keeps talking.
"Yeah," I say, "right. . .yeah." I think about
Motherwell's Reconciliation Elegy
and how he charged around the studio,
rolling vast turgid highways
of black oil over acres of canvas.
I think about Alice Neel
painting all those people
and what they thought
when they saw the final product
or what people thought when they saw
the first Cubist or Dada paintings.
My friend looks for a show of interest.
Yes! By all means, encourage him.
I cock an eyebrow. He revs back up
and I think about my favorite color,
that mid-palette blue...a blue bisque,
the color of my grandma's cameo brooch...
vibrantly subtle...is that possible?...
yes, it's the color of Della Robbia's Florentine ceramics.
He goes on about old times, about how it was then,
way way way back when when when
when we were all back where, back when, doing what
with, for, and to whom. My brains coughs up chimes,
resonations, cross-references, cerebral links,
odors, tinkles, cues, and subtle whiffs of distractions.
I hear Charlie Parker play Carvin' the Bird
somewhere in my head and it segues into
Black Throated Wind and lurches into
Foggy Mountain Breakdown. He jumps
from childhood to yesterday, in between, and back.
I nod and pick up the reverie, falling, falling
back, back, back to the night my daughter was born.
It was as quiet as a painting in Berkeley,
driving at three a.m. on Telegraph Avenue
toward Oakland, to the delivery room.
I saw a new moon hung on our old sky.
We watched the monitor and waited.
When her robber-stockinged face came down,
one bleat to the rafters started us all breathing again.
He's buzzing in my left ear
and the rhythms say I am safe.
I think about dreams--not drifting
like this, but real R.E.M. dreams:
I don't know which is better,
to dream it or see it,
to see it right now,
or to have seen it.
I don't know which is better,
the memory or the thing itself.
The memory can be repeated forever
but loses fidelity like an old record
and the fictions your mind confects
start filling in the gaps
until the memory becomes a framework
for what we wanted to be, or what should have been.
He nudges me, waiting for a yes, the go-ahead sign.
Yeah baby, take it on home. I think about Casey Stengel.
He suspects I am drifting over the hills and far away.
I nod "um." It is the sun's birthday
and where did the crows go? When he jumps to El Toro,
my mind starts sleepwalking from Boot Camp.
I wonder if I will ever get to Palestine,
or if there will ever be another Palestine,
or if I will get back to Seville or Tetuan,
Chora Sfokion or Brooklyn, Heraklion or Hoboken,
Vinaroz or the Delaware Water Gap, if I will ever see
Leningrad or Katmandu, and I wonder
if I would want to see Calcutta, Johannesburg,
Bhopal, Cleveland, Camden, or Port-au-Prince?
I don't know which is easier:
to listen or pretend to listen?
I think about bottles of beer
chilling in a tub of cracked ice.
Sexy rivulets of water fall down bottles
glistening in the hot sun.
Even my nose is tired.
Should I pee, or hold it?
Should I hold it and focus
on the distraction?
What did Gertrude Stein mean
when she wrote about those
"Pigeons In The Grass, Alas?"
Was it the pigeons or the grass
or the pigeons and the grass aggregated?
I want to bang my head on the wall
to dull the pain between my ears,
and he's warming up for the stretch.
A pipe doesn't slow him down and the wine
just keeps his throat supple, his voice nimble,
and the memories and word torrent flowing.
He talks about the Marines
and six years marching, marching marching
on the parade ground erect and spitshined,
marching, saluting, dreaming, marching, yes-sir-ing.
I remember Nick Gattuccio's name
means Sicilian Dogfish and the time we drained
a demi-john of Chianti in Florence.
He tells me twenty things I don't want to know
and ten I'm indifferent about for every one I do.
He remembers where he left off
and murmurs a bridge to the next installment.
I think about the firefall of light I saw that day
on a rising skyscraper.
The welder is a star thrower, and constellations
of pale yellow sparks tumble from a heaven
of beams and girders strung with wire and pipe.
Those sparks are like his words, falling down iron bars
to disappear like fugitives in a white lake of sparks.

---o0o---


Friday, January 14, 2005

ET Visitors: Scientists See High Likelihood


[click to enlarge this painting by Jack]

I have been fascinated with alien folklore for years (Roswell, the 1947 Mt. Rainier UFO sightings, Cattle Mutiliations, Area 51, The Hive, Dark Skies, Abductions, Crop Circles, John Lear, Whitley Streiber, Dreamland, Bill Cooper, Foo Fighters, Project Bluebook, the Men In Black, The Black Choppers, The Betty and Barney Hill abduction, Government coverups, famous "alien" encounters, Majestic 12, and Dulce, the massive underground city, among other people, places and things).

I have read hundreds of pieces by completely deranged wackos, skeptical scientists, and many people somewhere in between. I am hopeful, but skeptical. I'd like to believe we have some cousins Out There. Mostly, I have been interested in the urban legend/folkloric aspects of this, but there are some serious scientists discussing the issue of possible extraterrestrial visitors.

"We are in the curious situation today that our best modern physics and astrophysics theories predict that we should be experiencing extra-terrestrial visitation, yet any possible evidence of such lurking in the UFO phenomenon is scoffed at within our scientific community," says an astrophysicist, Bernard Haisch.

Click on the title of this piece for a link to an interesting article on the space.com website. ---o0o---

Thursday, January 13, 2005

poem: the glass is not half-full

I saw our dreams
Disappear
Like a white pony
Over
A low grassy hill.
---000---

Jack Brummet

Tsunami: Before and After

[click to enlarge]

14 sets of before and after satellite images of tsunami damage in various South Asian countries.

http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/14.html

Shattering Gamer Stereotypes



Click on the title to link to the original article on the Game Industry News website.

"The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has released the results of research recently conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc., which shows that typical American gamers are far removed from the stereotype of the lazy, fat, isolated geek that has been falsely pinned on them. The ESA says that gamers spend far more time exercising, attending religious services, reading, etc. than they do playing games. Video games are merely one activity in a well-rounded life."


Wednesday, January 12, 2005

The Rasterbator

[click to enlarge]

The Rasterbator is a web service that creates gigantic rasterized [1] images from any picture. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into cool looking posters up to 65 feet long!! To get to the site, click on the title of this article above.

To check The Rasterbator out , I uploaded a drawing I published here a while ago:

http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2004/12/jack-drawing-faces-no-467.html

The image I put on this page is page 38 of 375, or 1/375th of the rasterbated image!

First, I upload the image. I select the size I want, and they process it. In a couple of minutes, I download a PDF of the new image. Printing it in the large scale format will take 375 pages of 8 1/2 x 11" paper.

This slick software creates gigantic half-toned images [2] like a massive painting by Roy Lichtenstein with Ben-Day dots (they give you an option to scale the size of the dots). This site would be great for making large scale posters. . .without going to Kinkos [tm]. They write on their web site about releasing a free GPL version sometimes in the future. This had to be a fun application to create.

/jack

[1] Rasterizing converts images into a bitmap form for display or printing. Vector graphics, and vector and outline fonts have to be be rasterized to print or display them.
[2] If you look closely at newspaper photos, they are done in half tones, using dots to represent the blacks and whites (and greys by the way your eyes blend them).
It's all circles. You can see a half-toned photograph here: http://photos1.blogger.com/img/278/2473/640/jb.jpg
---o0o---

Dave Hokit & Jack at The Top of Mt. Constitution, Orcas Island, Washington



Click to enlarge. . .

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Poem: It's Getting Crowded Here

We cover the earth
With Venn Diagrams
Of our steps
Bisecting old steps.
---o0o---

What A Difference A Day Makes!

Only yesterday, I posted a note about how the 42nd and 43rd President have become Bosom Buddies (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/01/bosom-buddies.html).

Today, POTUS named Michael Chertoff (an ex-federal prosecutor who was chief Republican counsel to the Senate Whitewater committee) as the new head of Homeland Security! This guy helped spend millions of dollars, and a lot of time trying to put Bill and Hillary behind bars.

That should give Presidents Bush and Clinton something to jawbone about at their next coffee klatsch.
/jack
---o0o---

Rabelais!

After reading Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons (about which, more later), I have begun re-reading Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. I have read it three times and parts of it many times.

It is a difficult, strange and wonderful book. But you should read it anyhow. So, just why should you read an obscene, difficult book written by a 16th century French monk/doctor/lawyer?

It is an exuberant, satirical, wonderful, encyclopedic, and, at times, tedious book of sonic thought and riotously inventive language. It is filled with learned disquisitions, and scatalogical lists. It lives up to its name: it is Gargantuan. Rabelais is right up there with Shakespeare and Melville and Joyce. Most of all, this work is filled with a shimmering, laughing love of life.

/jack
---o0o---

Monday, January 10, 2005

Bosom Buddies?



Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

"For two men at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the relationship between the 43rd and 42nd presidents has grown surprisingly warm and personal over the last six months. " Click on the title for a link to this story! /jack
---o0o---

Sunday, January 09, 2005

What Happened To Odor Eaters?

[click image to enlarge]

Dear Dr. Scholls and Combe, Inc.:

This is almost as depressing as when Johnson & Johnson replaced the ultra-cool little red thread on Band-Aids [tm] with a tacky little plastic strip.

You're breaking my heart. I wear tennis shoes 98% of the time, and Odor Eaters [tm] and Odor Destroyers [tm] were an important accessory. But I can't find them anymore.

Dr. Scholl's web site is pathetic. Yeah, you do have Odor Destroyer Insoles listed somewhere, buried deep among the flossy gel insoles, and other products. Combe, Inc.'s website at least pays lip service to the coolness of Odor Eaters. But, I can't find or buy your products anymore. I guess stinkfoot is just not worth bothering with in the 21st century!

You both claim Odor Eaters and Destroyers exist...but no stores carry them anymore. All most stores seem to carry are those silly gel insoles and a bunch of ozone whackin' sprays. The insoles now appear to be virtually extinct.

You'd think there would be more demand for your products than ever--I mean, you are required to remove your shoes off in some people's houses. But whew!!! It is easier to go out and buy methamphetamines on the street than it is to find the formerly ubiquitous Odor Eaters.

Dudes! There must be millions of people like me out there, willing to part with four bucks for these products. Get with the program!

Yours,

Jack Brummet
Seatle, Washington



Select Wisely - Help For Travellers With Food Allergies

This posting is--amazingly--not a political rant, poem, drawing, or warped story about my past. A couple of old friends in 'Jersey recently started an interesting niche business/web site [1] for travellers with food allergies. Jim and Pamela Ahlberg have begun a business selling pocket-sized cards in fourteen different languages, covering over 40 specific food allergies. These cards would come in handy in Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants right here in the U.S. and Canada. They have a wide variety of cards covering just about any contingency--including one for vegetarians [2].

Their daughter Meredith had been travelling in Europe, but had some serious food allergies and was unable to tell restaurant workers about her condition, or grill them about what exactly was in their food. So she

". . .stuck with what she knew: ice cream, bread and shish kabobs. No pastry in Vienna, no chocolates in Switzerland, and no local German cuisine. Wanting to help her and others with similar challenges, we have developed this unique product."

An article on them appears here: http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/0404/06allergycards.html

Nice work, guys! Sometimes the internet actually is about more than stealing music and downloading "adult entertainment." Click on the title of this entry, go to their web site, and buy some stuff! /jack

[1] Maybe not so much of a niche, since 2% of American adults, and 8% of children under three have food allergies.
[2] Vegetarians who have a philosophical food allergy, more or less...
---o0o---

Crossfire to Stop Hurting America::: Jon Stewart Wins

A couple of months after Jon Stewart (the host of Comedy Central's Daily Show) accused the "Crossfire" hosts of "partisan hackery," implored them to "stop hurting America," and called the ranting little demi-god Tucker Carlson a "dick, " CNN announced it won't renew Carlson's contract and it has cancelled the long running show.

"I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp," said CNN Chief Executive Jonathan Klein. The video (and transcripts) of Stewart ripping into the Crossfire hosts are all over the net...

/jack
---o0o---


Woody Allen, on the Ku Klux Klan and The Constitution

"I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats. "

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Interviewing Another Psycho



Click on this image to blow it up (and make it legible). I did this cartoon after two women I work with interviewed a particularly spooky guy. Once again I borrowed David Rees's cartoon (which he borrowed from clipart). /jack
---o0o---

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Foot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils

My friend, Doc, (http://drstephencw.blogspot.com/) today details his involvement in the Rama cult (he didn't jump the rails, but his former guru, Rama, did). [1] He also wrote a couple other interesting pieces on Rama earlier in the week. Rama sounds a little like Marjo Gortner, Jimmy Swaggart, or any other charlatan with a good rap. He was prodigiously good at extracting cash from the flock. Interestingly, he hooked in a lot of software developers just at the moment when many software businesses were cranking up their acts and starting to make boatloads of money.

Thinking about cults reminded me of my Baptist roots. We were American Baptists. I'm not sure about the other Protestant sects, but our church had definite opinions on the other churches. The Jewish faith was well-regarded, since it was the cornerstone of the Protestant religions. I didn't hear much about the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Churches of Christ, Grace Fellowship, Reformed Protestant, United Brethren, First Christian Church, Church of the Nazarene, Pentecostal, or even the Menonite, Quaker, Episcopal, Amish, Shaker, or Evangelical Covenant churches.

The Catholic Church was regularly and savagely excoriated. I remember preachers railing against "The Cult of Mary." "THEY FORSAKE OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST FOR HIS VIRGIN MOTHER AND CONDEMN THEMSELVES TO PERISH IN THE FIRES OF THE GREAT DECEIVER!" In our church, the crucifix was empty, but in the Catholic Church, Jesus eternally suffered, nailed to the cross. "THEY CELEBRATE THE AGONY AND MURDER OF OUR LORD IN THEIR STATIONS OF THE CROSS!! THIS CHURCH CELEBRATES THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST TO HEAVEN."

"THEY DO NOT EVEN READ THE BIBLE! THEY IGNORE THE GOOD BOOK! THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHRIST OUR LORD IS IGNORED!" Confession was an excuse to sin even more--a free pass to perdition! Our ministers ranted against The Priests, The Nuns, The Brothers, The Bishops, and Cardinals. Most of all, they railed about the devil incarnate: His Holiness, The Pope, in his gilded palace, The Vatican.

The Reverend bemoaned "THE ABOMINATION OF THE EUCHARIST," the foul and damning Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and its perversion of what was clearly intended by Our Lord to be symbolic.

"THE CATHOLICS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTRAGES OF THE SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY MASSACRE IN WHICH FIFTY THOUSAND OF GOD'S PRECIOUS CHILDREN WERE MURDERED! THE CATHOLICS RAN THE INQUISITION!"

There were, of course, also degrees of weirdness within our own denomination. The Southern Baptists with their prohibitions against makeup and dancing among other things, were considered a hopeless bunch of joyless prunes (even in our church, that went so far as to use Welch's Grape Juice for communion). Looked even further down upon were the Immersion Baptists--who took you to the river for baptisms, even in January. We did that only in the summer, but it was more ceremonial that doctrinaire. Still further down the line were the Foot Washing Baptists. At last you come to the Snake Handling Baptists, who were so out there that they did indeed feel like a cult. There is probably another splinter sect of Baptists somewhere, performing even wackier acts in the name of religion.

When does a cult become mainstream? When does a cult jump on the rail and become a church, or religion? I'm not really sure. Clearly, the Church of Latter Day Saints has transcended cult status and gone on to become the fastest growing church in the world (I think Orthodox Judaism is the second fastest growing).

[1] check out the links in the articles there--one to Wired and one to a whole (free) book on the Project Gutenberg site).

/jack
---o0o---

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Get Your Bankruptcy On!


Click the picture to enlarge. I stole the cartoon templates from David Rees of "Get Your War On" fame (who found them in clip art). This cartoon was inspired by the news today that another parish has gone bankrupt, and is selling off most of its churches. /jack
---o0o---

Hear, hear!

I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.

- Roberto Rossellini

Half tone jack



I'd been looking for a decent half tone filter for a while. not bad...

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Seattle Sledgehammer Murders Poster (directed and Produced by Del Brummet)


Click to enlarge...

Revisionist Pronunciation

Since the tsunami tragedy last week, I keep hearing people bobble the name of the Phuket province in Thailand. Some people ("talk radio for men!" and twelve year olds) seem to enjoy the pronunciation that sounds like "F*** it". I have heard several other pronunciations as well. In fact, two lexicons I looked at give "pOO'kit" as the correct way to say it. . .which is how I've heard it on the national news. Local radio, of course, is all over the map on this one.

This made me think. When you order the Hanoi Beef Noodle Soup (Pho) at a Vietnamese restaurant, most Americans pronounce it "Foe," whereas the actual pronunication is "fuh," a word many people are not comfortable with.

Uranus is now, often, pronounced "yoo'-run-uhs" instead of the former "yoo-ray'-nuhs" with both the pronunciation and accented syllable changed to sound less like the exhaust chute of the human body.

In 1999 there was a huge flap over an aide to Washington Mayor Williams who resigned after using the word "niggardly" (a word meaning "stingy") in a speech. This one, too, was political correctness run amok. The aide was (rightly) reinstated after all the pushback and noise subsided.

What's next? Are there other words that have been popularly corrected in the last few years? /jack
---o0o---


Sunday, January 02, 2005

Chou En Lai, Transformed



This is a painting I did over the top of a surplus silk portrait of Chou En Lai that I picked up for $20 at Archie McPhee's. I added acrylic paint, canvas swaths, india ink, taxidermist eyes, gloss medium, a blown up digital mouth printed on paper and glued to the portrait. On the jacket, which you can't see here, I added brass buttons (also more, communist surplus...they are from pre-breakup USSR military uniforms). I have another one on the same material of Karl Marx. Both these paintings are in my office at work. /jack
---o0o---

Saturday, January 01, 2005

New Year III



(c) 2005 jack brummet

Happy New Year II ?

How many millions of celebrants
Awake in the New Year
In alcohol post-partum agony,
Seeing square out of one eye
And round out of the other?