Supplicant

The universe has created a situation in which I must cross a road choked with every cop car in the city to turn in an art grant application in the eleventh hour. I dash into traffic flanked by dads saluting as a hearse glides by on Delaware and I thought the word "pig" but said the words "fallen officer" to the well-dressed man from the art organization who recognized my Manila folder and frantic gait. I ignored some winky slacker inferences as I thrust the thing into administrative hands, who discerned a doping sub-adult in the business of spinning newsprint into ridiculous foody forms, smelled me troubleshooting for little children, contentedly pasting ice green tissue paper onto cardboard tacos at their beckon call. I am a lady in waiting to a little girl who paints a gargantuan Starbucks frappuccino pink with her entire palm and I have streaks of Elmer's school glue on my thighs when I show up to ask the nice men for their money. Now the paperwork in the packet has a life outside of me and every stolen office supply in the tri-county area couldn't turn the wrong head.

More Blogs about Buildings and Food

This month I've sampled some of Pittsburgh's sleaziest bars, like an Entemann's chocolate box. In today's gold doily is Rigg's, where all three of the other patrons are over fifty. The wallpaper's flocked and intricately patterned in a style ironically appropriated by more self-conscious bars. The lampshades are red and the macabre nightly news is loud, presumably to accommodate middle aged ears.
Last time I came in here to buy a six pack the soundtrack was "In my Room" by the Beach Boys and the patrons stared in a way that loudly declared me an Outsider.
You've gotta go inside to check this stuff out. The place could have a creme de menthe or cherry filling.
Offputtingly high prices ($3 a Yuengling) for how crappy Rigg's shapes up to be. I've been told there are neighborhood laws that preclude the sale of dollar beers to keep an unsavory element out of the area. This is the kind of jurisprudence that drives me into the arms of anarchist ideology, or worse, supporting my local militia. Let the invisible hand regulate the market; Let it unscrew the cap from the cold bottle of life at its leisure.
Half way into the trip my fellow drinkers start flinging change across the bar into glass receptacles. The weather's on now, calling for snow today and Saturday. One woman recounts the fun they had last year going on a snowmobile bar crawl. A lady in a puffy coat buying a pair of pounders asks if the bar will be open on Christmas. The barkeeper, an ancient woman with a beak-like nose, confirms that indeed, it will.

The Poets

The poets at the Carnegie Library loved the word "cocoon."
They had that distinctive, even-metered, cool-headed poet's cadence-- low and slow to savor detail.
They were polite and nostalgic, confessional but clever.
They were sophisticated but homely: that last girl said "washrag."
They probably use forks and knives to eat pizza.

In a little more than a week I will be publicly performing my writing and am trying to exorcise the "This American Life" intonation from my reading voice.
It's hard.
I've been practicing the classic tongue twisters:
Unique New York.
Red Leather Yellow Leather.

Gunner says to recite Ludacris raps as often as possible. If I can hear my stupid voice, just turn up the volume.


Danny Mac says I should scream at least once.

Games We Can Play

1. Blurb Generator
I met a gentleman last night whose gay porn novel, Backwoods, featured some heavy-hitting blurbs on the back-- from no less than the likes of Dennis Cooper and Kevin Killian. I was impressed. Blurbs are one of my favorite formats to read and shouldn't be left in the hands of laymen.
This includes band blurbs. Bloomington show flyers are notoriously plastered with some cringe-inducing sonic descriptors. It's a shame that terms like "epic," "blackened," and "blistering" get so overused when this could be a chance for the town's aspiring word nerds (your humble narrator) to step up and offer some more inspired interpretations.
This is why I have created the Band Blurb Generator.
Show promoters who are unsure of how to sum up the sounds on their bill can look no further. Take one word from each column. Mix and match!
This thing could definitely be expanded.Consider creating a band to fill the genre you've just created. Build your culture, up the punks, etc.

2. Twilight Telephone
In Twilight Telephone I describe what I understand to be the plot of Twilight (violent vampire sex, unlikely gestation periods, something with werewolves) as it was told to me by my friend Catherine, who has seen the movie, to somebody else who is unfamiliar with the movie/series. Then they have to repeat the plot to the first person (ex. Catherine) or somebody who IS familiar with Twilight.
Then we all have a laugh about how this distorted recap is still not as fucking nuts as the original article.

3. Mating Failure
This is the one where I retroactively use context clues to come to the conclusion that the rando I gave my number to is in a pretty seriously relationship. Examples: Rando and girlfriend making plans together, kissing.

Play smart, play safe,
Love,
Erin

McBarfer's Park

What I said in my letter to Matt...is trumped by the sentiment in my text to Ian: "Today Pittsburgh smells like pee and broken stuff."
I've been walking between garbage bars, intermittenly getting very fucking lost. Now so fucked up from a five mile walk that my legs wobble. Feeling like a bruised banana. I ate a cupcake I found in a smashed up box at a bus stop.
I might be dying.
What I said to Matt was that this trip might mark my unmaking. I start out as a hip but poor tourist--buying a beer here, a beer there--but wind up fucking destitute, wrapped in a nest of quilts, leaves knotted in my hair, loitering at the library indefinitely.
My mind is getting weird. I'm responding with interest to catcalls. A creepy hook-up can't be far around the corner.
I'm not sure if I believe in vibes, but I bet if I'm giving any off...that they're bad.
This depressive spike might be a chemical pendulum swing from yesterday's pot brownie. Wherein I merely lay crumpled on a stranger's couch at 3 am, mind racing, so horny I wanted to throw up.
If you believe in ghosts, pray for me.
If you're more practical, send mail and/or money:

EKD
1200 Boyle Street
Pittsburgh PA 15212.

Fake Jail

My head's been scattered this past week. It's been too gorgeous out to think-- the peak of fall is somehow rendering me impotent. There's no way to ignore it and just no good way to drink it in. Stare at a tree all day? We watch the season's progress from the jail-like basement window at Soma. Our fave leaves have alreadt burnt out and fallen. They were electric red!

I imagine asking Liza to switch rooms so I can write from somewhere a little more miserable and evocative. My room's better, really. The south side of the house is lit by the morning sun and my closets are so big that Drekka could play in them (which might happen next month). There are bars on her window and a subtle Victorian print (like texture on a roll of paper towels) on the walls. I'd imagine I was Oscar Wilde, imprisoned for buggery. Oh, how the desperate romance would propell me! I might even don a ball and chain. Anything to distract me from the goddamn trees.

Where's Worldo?

Bloomington, IN is at its most Bloomington when the middle aged people who own the place don their Peruvian alpaca hats and twirl into the streets for the world music fest known as LOTUS. Consequently, my co-workers at a popular local coffee shop/juice bar and I set to task identifying some of the trappings. Behold: Lotus bingo. Saturday, as I tipsily left the Bishop and filtered into the cool night air, I was accosted by a shirtless young man with a digeridoo perched on a fire escape above me. "What's your name??" He cried to me. "It's Erin," I muttered. "Erin! You're radiant!" he crowed and tooted his digeridoo into the night sky. It's his world, we're just living in it.

#FSDC

This is where I go to cry/my online gang tattoo

Blogstars

Mirrors of self-promotion. Extreme Appearances' auteur pictured swappin business cards at Austin Radcliffe, a big wheel in the blogosphere.
His blog Things Organized Neatly is handsome and popular.

Feather Float

(Text by Austin Reavis of Idldriv)




Bunch of dumb artists made a mess at the Flower Factory. Or did we make a drawing??

The annals of type

My years of cohabitation have yielded ample opportunities to explore the unsung and intriguing Vernacular Typography of the Passive Aggressive Sign.
Common among this genre: cardboard or repurposed garbage bases, multiple expletives, exclamation points.

The award for my favorite sign ever, and possible best collective house rule, goes to Emelda's text from my first house:
"If you eat too many cookies you won't have room for C@KE! (ed- Anarchy sign for A)
FUCKERS!! EAT THE CAKE!!"

Unmegalithic

Crush List Obelisk (Public Art Proposal)


The only good thing I've ever drawn


Timeless, tasteless, and eternally flaccid,
EKD

Neolojizm

Expanding the lexicon when and where I can:



Dudiphone (dood-eh-fon): n. an instance in which a man repeats what a woman says right after her, but louder, and everyone hears him and laughs or goes "yeah!"
v. to repeat what a woman says in a louder voice than her, esp. a joke or insight.
Ex. "Don't dudiphone me, mothafucka."

Toys

Relevantly, I attended an art opening last Thursday of new work by Judith Levy. Installed in the fishbowlish atrium of the IMA is her Memory Cloud, consisting of individual slide viewers hung from the ceiling that can be accessed and examined by art patrons. Inside these viewers: 128 unique photgraphs of anonymous Midwesterners, circa 1960s. Faded colors and wedding cakes. Female experience. Et Cetera.


My last excursion to the Museum of Art was for an event with relatively similar equipment. The Vladmaster Experience featured four short viewmaster "films" shot and soundtracked by certainly the shyest and dorkiest woman to ever adopt the flamboyant surname "Vladimir." She distributed individual reels of film packed in precious silkscreened boxes to each audience member alogside an oldschool Viewmaster toy. We were then subjected to our own individual viewing experience, atop Vlad's soundtracks.


One criteria I use in distinguishing art I condsider "good" involves questioning if the artist used their chosen medium to do things they couldn't do (better) in another. If they chose animated film, did characters in their narratives turn inside out and walk through walls? (Gumby = good art)
It might have been more interesting if, given our isolated viewing contexts, Vladimir's experiences would have drastically differed between viewers-- If she had had a few different reels circulating amongst us, to later attempt to compare. This would have played on the strange anti-social experience created between crowd members, instead of just hingeing on the novelty of flim made for a retro toy.

Meanwhile, I hear some dudes are hosting coloring contests to get other assholes to emblazon their business cards.

An infantalizing bunch, these artists.