Sigh!

In all your dealings, remember that SUP is to LiveJournal as Brezhnev was to the Soviet Union. The glory days are long over, but industry will rattle on and personal data will be secretly collected before the wall crumbles and we flood Facebook, Wordpress and InsaneJournal. Brad is Maxim Gorky, Frank is Lenin.

I want to ride out of here in the trunk of a Volga, but...I'd miss you people.

In case you haven't heard, I am traveling through Western Europe for three months.

I leave on September 11! I know we're all supposed to be cowering in fear of the terrorists on that day, but goddamn it, I'm flying to Barcelona and neither my job, nor Uncle Sam nor the Islamo-commies can stop me.

My plan now is to burn all my money, see the world, and somehow stop living in a state of constant rage.

California's great, just don't turn your back on it. Creep alongside the wall and don't let it out of your sight.
-A Silicon Valley computer programmer I met in San Jose



On this trip I visited a castle of antiquities that seemed to float in the clouds. I also ran out of money and slept in the handicap stall of a motel bathroom. I got a ride to San Francisco from a crazed dental hygenist, partied with scumfuck punks in a freight train yard, and met a homeless fortune teller who looked like Rasputin. He flipped the cards and said, "You need to stop kissing ass!"

It was a picaresque journey through all strata of travelling society. I was disgusted by some things I saw and inspired by others. I wish I were still out there, that my bouts of freedom weren't so limited. Fortunately my head is swimming with new ideas and plans. I will try to write about it all soon.

In the end I never made it to Los Angeles, but that's an excuse to go back someday.

My first 35mm Leica experiment!

A torso and a mannequin dine on pig's head by candlelight. I imagine that they've embarked on a suicide pact, but the fiendish mannequin failed to poison her own wine.

Armless Woman at Dinner
Originally uploaded by thermidor.

Headless Man at Dinner
Originally uploaded by thermidor.

Tickets are nearly sold out!!
Do not miss this historic occasion!!

The weekend's movie-making went pretty well. There were a few minor setbacks, like the usual last-minute actor flake-outs which I tried SO hard to avoid this time and which made me want to die of stress. There is nothing worse than creating a MASTER WORK OF CINEMA which your friends don't seem to take seriously or care at all about, which is why I am so enthusiastic about building little clay men to star in everything I do from now on. Fortunately we managed to find some last-minute replacements, so I am a lot less upset about that than I could be. Also, I realized after viewing the footage that I should have done some things a little bit differently. BUT overall it was swell!

Dave (actor, A/V guy and pal) took some pictures on his "cellie."

Here's one of me shooting a camel [with a videocamera...NOT a gun...]



Another one of me, FEELIN THE HEAT OF SATAN!!!



As you can see, we shot at the refinery again. Weirdly enough, we met 3 other groups of people there: some punks rooting through the trash, a few other people who I think were homeless, and a rap-rock band from Center City shooting photos of themselves. I always meet pretty interesting people from the neighborhood when I go to the refinery, but it's become like a nexus or something!! Also, there's a big FOR SALE sign up now, so... will the giant oil cans be renovated into luxury condos, or perhaps an "office park"??

COMING SOON: scanned pics of me in Russia (yes, finally!) AND yearbook picture proofs!

The other day as I locked up my bike outside the Penn Fine Arts building, I saw another bike EXACTLY LIKE MINE that I have never seen before, all brown and old-looking with the same orange decals. For a moment or two I was filled with anxiety, because I imagined that that bike was my bike's double, and when I walked inside I would see a shadow version of myself doing the same stuff I do.... only, weird.
Anyway, seriously, I think my heart skipped a beat there!!

Right now I'm in Savannah. This may be the last time I visit for a while, cause these family vacations always leave me feeling kind of depressed. Every time I come home I find myself more and more alienated from old friends, the businesses I used to frequent have moved or gone out of business, SCAD has spread insidiously through new neighborhoods, my parents seem more deranged, etc. I will probably just hole up in my old room, which is now just 4 blank walls with a bed between them [with 20 years worth of my junk piled in the closet], and read books until I return to Killadelphia. Also I have a 7 page paper left to do, but I left ALLLLL the materials I needed to write it back home... so I'm considering just NEVER doing it, because I'm bad to the bone. The LAZY bone.

I took the night train down here, which was pretty awesome. When I woke up, a man in a cowboy hat sitting across the aisle from me was yelling, "Heeeyyyy!! You ladies wanna manicure or a pedicure? Cause I'm the BEST, I'll get out the cuticle and the...the little damn thing and I'll fudge 'em all up and make it look like the Taj Mahal!! I don't know if you know what the Taj Mahal is, but when you see your fingernails--you'll, you'll KICK MY ASS, HAW HAW HAW!!" Then he slid a bottle out of his shirt sleeve, sloshed a good deal of rum into his orange juice, and held the cup out to me, demanding, "JUSSS..STICK YER FINGER IN THERE AND STIR IT!!" I refused, and he got kind of mad, then he said he would marry me and was basically just a total lush!! This was at 7 o'clock in the morning!! Also, he told me he had a "little girl" up in Fayetteville who was married to a Vietnam vet. He described this situation as "a sorta mix and match--like at Pizza Hut!" But apparently he truly loves this lady and visits her by rail every month. On the way home he always stocks up his suitcases full of liquor and gets the other passengers to smoke and drink with him ["we're on a FUCKED UP TRAIN, might as well joke and laugh!"], and the conductors always try to throw him off, because you aren't allowed to do any of that stuff! Also, the night before he had mumbled, "Thass mah wumman... thass MAH WUMMAN!!" really loudly in his sleep, which seemed funny at the time, but I guess he had been dreaming about a showdown with the lady's husband. At any rate, I wasn't sure whether I should feel sorry for the guy, or to just salute his life of forbidden romance, train riding, and boozing!

You know you've reached the South when someone boards the train in the middle of the night and hollers, "Woooooooooooooooooooooooo-EEEE!"

On an unrelated note, why do strangers keep asking me if I'm "into drama" [theater??] or if I'm British??
And what's with people rolling up just one of their pant legs, is that like a secret symbol wimps use to identify each other or something?

The other day during film/video production [a course I'm taking at Penn], the class hipster made the remark that "gore in movies is what people do when they want to do something easy."

This comment really rankled me, due to the fact that this guy's own final project, which he had just finished screening for us, was an "experimental documentary" about himself driving to New Jersey and taping the sunrise. I.E. it was a pathetic excuse for being too lazy to make a real movie.

So I piped up and said, "No way, violence is HARD to do!"
Hipster [more like "lip-ster" cause that's what he was giving me] responded, "Well, you have to do it right, you can't overdo it, it must be tasteful otherwise it's childish, blah blah blah."

So basically, this person records images of the road from out the car window, adds footage of the sun [time-lapsed], slaps a song by some sadsack indie band on it, THEN has the GALL to say arm-rippings, stabbings, and brutal killings in student films perpetuate sissiness!!!! And everyone's just sitting there nodding!!

Penn students, man... if you can't beat 'em, hire a thug and make an "experimental documentary" about the thug beating 'em!!

Last weekend we shot the bulk of HATEriarchy, including its "gut wrenching" finale! In case any of you were concerned, the role of One Eye was admirably filled by Mr. Franklin Thirteen in a woman's wig. The whole thing went pretty well, although some of the shots will probably be a little dark or yellowy due to the fact that I HATE big lighting set ups and moved house lamps around instead. We also left a ton of nastified gore supplies at the refinery, including two raw pigs' feet and a pile of bright pink pasta. It felt kind of nice to add to the assortment of weird stuff down there, although it's hard to top the GREASY, CUT-OFF DREDLOCKS HANGING FROM A WIRE.
We also kicked around the idea of having mini-HATEriarchy sequels, like "HATEriarchy Goes Out For A Sandwich" and "HATEriarchy Refinances Its Home," all of which would end in maximum blood-spilling and heads being whacked off. YES YES YES!

In other news, I finally got my hands on a copy of the documentary MANSON, and boy is it chilling. Squeaky Fromme speaks at length about "going through changes" and having her mind blown on death and murder and drugs, all while gripping a shotgun, while others talk about the "fun" of watching a person's head roll of his shoulders, and how violence is a way to express love and all this other crazy stuff. I've read Helter Skelter, etc. before, but it's something else entirely to see people cheerfully turn to the camera and discuss stabbing strangers and feeding their kids LSD. It will take me a long time to process what I saw in that movie.
On a sidenote, I wrote Charles Manson a letter a while back to ask how he was doing, but he still hasn't responded! I heard that when he comes up before the parole board, he usually just stares at people and says, "Poof!...Poof!" over and over again.

I REALLY need to see this movie. I can tell it is the most insane thing ever without even fully reading the description [as i am loath to do, because i like movies to surprise me]. Check out her outfit and the giant syringe!

У меня новые русские ЖЖ друзья. Добро пожаловать!

Иногда, я пишу по-русски, но обычно я пишу по-английски. Не знаю, можете ли или хотите ли вы читать по-английски, но я надеюсь, что вам всё равно. Конечно, вы можете сказать мне, когда я пишу неправильно.

Вопрос!

У меня коммунитическая футболка (серп и молот). Я не коммунистка, но я интересуюсь Россией, историей, и социализмом. Моя мать сказала, что если бы я ехала в Россию и я бы носила ету майку, народ бы думал, что я коммунистка, которая любит Сталина! Это правда? Я поехала в Иркутск на следуюшом году, а я не хочу оскарблять!

(Простите, если это глупый вопрос.)