go ride a bicycle

with friends for mas fun

port of the land

like many land bearing creatures without the ability to sustain a pliable living situation under colder conditions, when it rains, the humanoid tends to find its way to various structures of habit that will supply the humanoid with warmth, sustinance, and even an intellectual stimulation from time to time. while perusing our way through the greater northwest coastal states this weekend, my travel companions and i found ourselves within the gentle grasp of a beautiful region known as portland, oregon. in our temporary residence there, we noticed how these regions were consistently more moisturized than our southernly comfort zones. the light rainfall that settled there seemed to softly nudge us to the focal points of the city, where warmth eminated from within the buildings. downtown portland swayed like an ebbing tidepool, back and forth the rain escorted us out of the streets, whilst the indoors wooed us towards their presence. like the dust covered moths we travelers were, we fluttered aimlessly until confronted by the brightest luminescence to grace our eyes. delicately bumping and shuffling until huddled inside, we shed ourselves of our soggy coats only to find we had stumbled upon the dustmop of dustmops itself: powells books! the scent of aged pages eeked its way through the walls of this castle until reaching our nasal olfactory receptacles. nostrils flared, eyes focused, ears perked, the journey into bookdom had begun.
taking up one city block of portland, and rising up four stories above the ground, powells becomes a land much like an oasis; a plentiful source of wonderful attributes, yet there is always a barrier that will not allow for full enjoyment within this paradise.
as mine eyes begun to wheel around the room they rested on certain titles and signs projecting what the rooms contained; 'self help' section, 'pulitzer prize' winners, 'sandwiches for mutes cookbook' sections. my mind galloped through the aisles like an adolescent great dane. slow down marmaduke. i centered my canine chi, and collected my thoughts as i walked past the 'helpless cats that should be eaten by dogs and/or robots 'books section of powells. onward my legs ambled, head and neck turning into a sprinkler. what was that last bright book, maybe i should go back and check it out, it could be a winner. no, move forward, focus. but that one is on sale, i should buy it, oprah would, easy kyle, easy. spinning and spinning, people began to quietly look at me and tuck their kids behind their stable parental legs, whispering the answers of the universe to their seven year olds as i careened down the stairs away from the gawkers. it wasnt until i reached the literature section that i knew something was wrong. sweating profusely by now, one sock long gone to who knows where and clutching with sheer terror to a clump of duck feathers i ran trying to seek refuge close to the floor. for a while there was silence, and faint footsteps became a metronome off in the distance, calming the heart rate until it reached a reasonable pace again. something once again caught my eye even in this maddening state, but this time it wasnt an oprahs book club badge, it was something very different. i raised my head slowly and looked towards the source just as i had when i fluttered towards powells in the first place. the light this time yeilded an unfamiliar face, one of a ghost, a ghost with little words. joseph heller, is that you? what are you doing here? mr. heller looked at me and without a stutter explained to me the secrets of the universe. you see young kyle, he said, for this is the curse of powells; your love for books is infinite, yet when surrounded by all the books in the world you cannot seem to grasp a single book of which you'd like to purchase. i cried a little as he exploited the truth deep within my lungs, loins, and estomago, and then i walked out of powells and down the street and enjoyed me a nice macdonalds half pounder of meat and watched some ultimate fighting championship reruns.

on burritos and liberty

when approached by the situation of being stranded in a specific place for the rest of my life, there are only a few things that i would need to survive: food, water, and a mental capacity to resist specific hallucinatory states over a period of time due lack of human interaction. the latter skill of resisting insanity would take such a toll on ones body and mind that the stranded would need to replenish their glucose levels by introducing systematic regiment of food to their energy converter (gastrointestinal system). taking into consideration that i would be stranded within the confines of a solitary location, my situation would only permit one type of food for the rest of my waking life. and what would this eternally satisfying food take the form of? within the criteria of the situation, the food must be able to provide nutritional value that coincides with the spectrum of healthy living. by stating the term healthy living i hope to corral my food into an all encompassing 'well balanced meal'. let us focus on what we have knocked out in the process of creating these perameters i have set up thus far. first and foremost, vegemite, you are out of here! why, oh why would you kick ye olde vegemite out of the running for the coolest... ahem... excuse me... greatest and most sufficient stranded island food so early in the contest? well let me tell you why compatriots. beginning with the most obvious reason, vegemite is bland and is more boring than the white bread that you spread it on. when you introduce it to a room of new, non-vegemite saavy humanoids, it becomes obnoxious, and creates an interruption in the comfortable lifestyle at hand. the only thing louder than its light hansa yellow label is the taint that it leaves on your mouth after invades your house and leaves a mess behind in your kitchen. if there was one positive characteristic of vegemite, which may or may not exist within reality, it would have to be its cute, malty accent, that seems to make anything it is spread on much 'softer' than if it was ordinary old american margarine.
but hold on their mate, if vegemite isnt the greatest food that you could happily spend the rest of your life with, than what is? well, for one, the greatest food was invented in america, duh, and was assimilated by the mexicans who we stole the whole idea from in the first place. need i proceed with the argument? i need. i need. to all the bogans out there that need it spelled out for them due to their lack of freedom of education throughout childhood, the greatest and most wonderful food in the entire world is the burrito. packed with diverse ingredients, ranging from rice, beans, meats, vegetables, and cheeses, these wondrous blocks of the food pyramid are thrown together into a melting pot created by the hot barrier of a tortilla where they all work in unison to create a wondrous, flavor infused, dining experience. the burrito then goes on to dominate every and all taste buds in its way until it gains total control and domination of the deployment centers for the 'tastes fucking delicious' hormone.
now if you still cant understand the reasoning behind why burritos are not only my deserted island food but also the greatest food ever invented, it may just be due to the fact that you are either australian or that you have no soul.

dont let this happen to your country

listen to milt jackson

vibes

from the grave pt. 3

when confronted with a fear, the human brain has the ability to create situations that transgress the limits of what most may consider reality. in the city of diversity, these byproducts of my cranial activity manifested themselves before my eyes, and became the last things my looking balls would ever process as visual stimuli. in my viewers eyes there may be some loss in the credibility of my words after stating that what i culminated in my mind came to life. so i shall prove to our visually dependent culture that my words are true with the final photographic essay... from the grave. on a side note; as i walk through the valley in the shadow of death, i find it comforting to know that there is wi-fi, because i would be pretty bored in the afterlife without an internet connection, and you wouldn't have this deathly wonderful piece of writing genius to enjoy.

upon return to our prison we wilted our way back into the ever-so-slow process of succumbing to our foreordination. visions of a land in which we ran free within an artistic hotbed had fluttered away as quickly as our desire to live another day in the house on nevins and dean street.

but why? where is the threat? why give up in a city so great as new york? one may ask these questions if one has never been to the land of nevins and dean. for within the confines of this well insulated home holds a danger that i would never have associated with my own blood relatives. and without further adieu, i will open pandoras box in the simplest of terms. my cousins are zombies. and these zombies ate us. and once they ate a walrus. but that is another story for another night.

innocent as it may seem, the relatives seen in this picture were housing us for the sole purpose of quenching their childrens thirst for californian blood. here they are pretending to read, but they were just at the table to make sure we were keeping our flesh pristine by filling our intestinal tracts with foods such as puffins cereal.


while appearing docile, meg creates a special meal that will preserve the flavors of our skin to the utmost degree, and fully satisfy her zombie children.


again, readers may find disbelief in my words after the last two shots, due to the extremely gentle looking hosts, but one cannot deny the words any longer after seeing the zombies themselves.


do not believe for a second that the smaller zombie may have a softer side and can be coerced out of eating your flesh, for she is the most dangerous of them all.

ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!


notice the pure joy of the zombies as they walk away from the killing floor. i snapped this pic off just before rigor mortis compelled my body to take on the characteristics of a fallen willow tree. the zombies saved my upper body for mastication later on when they were hungry again.


and so i say to you dear reader, when traveling to new york, remember to pay your respects and spend three days straight in mourning at the foot of ground zero. or else you too will be wishing you had... from the grave.

from the grave pt. 2

after arriving at dean and nevins street we were allowed a few free days out of the cells to roam the land of new york. being the cruel trick by our captors it was, we enjoyed swooning in its offerings, letting our eyes run free in the land of diversity even if our bodies would never escape the city on the eastern seaboard.
when trapped in an urban jungle and struggling for life one seeks those who survive in the harshest of conditions. survival becomes contagious. our journey brought to attention the struggle of trees within new york. few and far inbetween, they become an interesting creature emerging from the concrete as a testament to nature.

tree of nevins street struggles to be seen by the metropolitan citizens, in the dead of winter it is difficult


tree of madison avenue buried thick in the central layout of the city disguises itself from the viewer by pretending to be an art nouveau lightpost


although the city harshly ostracizes the subtleties of nature within its buildings and vehicles, there are several moments of hope. the central park haven supplies the drowning new yorker with all the nature they can handle. central park was an island within an island on our trip, it was our final fleeting moment of life, before we headed back to the cells for rations.


of course on the way back nature began to take a back seat again.


organic turned to mechanical


and industry taunted us with imitation. two mechanized trees stretch out to us with cold steel branches


harrowed by the trip outside seeking refuge, we were drawn back to our future grave. was it the loss of hope within the city walls that drove us back, or just the call of our stomachs for food, i dont know, but it was our last dance with the outside world. and i didnt even get to see the symbol of freedom that every immigrant looked to as a beacon of light for new lives in the early twentieth century; the statue of liberty!

oh wait. yes i did. and it renewed my faith in the united states of america.

from the grave pt. 1

last week i died. before i passed into the afterlife i traveled. before i transported my flesh pod across a country's fertile earth space i shaved, but that is another story within itself that you will understand when you get older.
they say that there is a land that stretches a very small length of the eastern seaboard, they being people that own maps. i trust them, or should i say, trustED them. this land contains within it a social factor that i had forgotten about, a benefactor to human interaction, a beauty via aknowledgement and acceptance; this land contains the definition of the noun diversity. having hailed from the central pacific region of califonia for the past half decade, i had forgotten of this ever-elusive crown jewel of humanity. feeling absent of the conglomeration of viewpoints of the world, i set out to find this fabled land they call new york.
when traveling, i always seek an intrepid companion, so as to avoid dying first when faced with a potentially fatal situation. and so a woman by the name of laura krifka was chosen to mobilize with me. how i tricked this innocent flesh pod to walk into her own grave willingly and close the casket is a long and complicated story. i told her that we were going to see artwork and stay with my relatives. thats actually all i needed to fabricate verbally to coerce her, and thus it actually was not as long and complicated as i had presented two sentences ago. did i believe my own farce story myself and dive into my own demise? maybe so, but i like to think of myself as a braniac, so no, i did not believe such a tall tale. and so begins the tale from the grave.

we caught a metal bird on december twelfth two thousand and seven. very approximately six years, three months, and one day from when several drunk metal birds deviated from their godsent paths of transportation. but that is another story for another night. we arrived in jfk and found our way to the land of brooklyn, where my relatives lived and invited us to stay with them.

a brooklyn doorway that is not exactly where we stayed but close


we were whisked away to our quarters upon entry to the house, and found quickly that this wasnt exactly the blissful visit we had expected within our nubile brains.

cell #1

cell #2

view from cell #1


the location of nevins and dean street would be like a mirage to us, so inviting and perfect, yet we would come to know it as the last place on planet earth we would ever know.

continued when i dont have to wrap presents... from the grave of course