It is really becoming irritating to see so many people writing about how much they are suffering financially when they have chosen to live outside of society's typical work/pay scenario. There are certain choices that you make, and you have to live with those choices. If you choose to be a street mime or operate a Michigan turtle rescue, you shouldn't complain that you are broke or hungry, that your bank is screwing you with overdraft fees, or your electricity was shut off.

I'm not talking about people who are involuntarily impoverished. I'm talking about white American males who could get a job and pay the bills, but choose not to go that route. I'm certainly not suggesting that there is anything wrong with trying to live outside of the system, or at least the daily job grind. In fact I highly recommend it, and have spent many happy years without steady work. The only difference is I never complained about my poverty, and I was living way, way, below the poverty line most of the time during those days.

Why would I complain? I was doing what I wanted to do, and I knew what the cost was. I knew it meant that I wouldn't have all the things other people had, no guarantee of comfort, security or even food to eat. I went into the situation with my eyes wide open, so I wasn't surprised when I went through lean periods or a day with no food. That was the price of admission.

But now that the internet has blessed us with 800 million blogs, we get to read about everyone's misery, and how they scrape and scratch to survive. And maybe 1% of them are fucked by circumstances outside of their control. The rest of them are a noisy gaggle of whining bitches, throwing a tantrum because the world hasn't sufficiently rewarded them for their genius. The man is out to get them! What indignities they are suffering at the hands of Babylon!

Spare me. It's all very ponderous and leaves you with a sick, ugly aftertaste. Reading these mewking children is not only unpleasant, but they are making a mockery of real, societally-imposed poverty.

So, my new year's message of encouragement and love to you dudes - you rockers, flower collectors, actors, surfers, starving writers, balloon animal clowns and semi-professional poker players is a simple one; get a job or shut the fuck up.

There is a great forum over at bukowski.net. I have participated in a lot of forums and online groups, and it is unusual to find one that is interesting and informative and not just full of bullshit and posturing. Part of building a good forum is pure luck, but a larger part is a lot of tedious work. One determined knucklehead can run almost any online group off it's rails in a surprisingly short amount of time. A handful of knuckleheads is almost indefensible. They will win, you will lose.

So I take a certain amount of pride in the bukowski.net forum. It's been up and running for almost three years now, and so far we have avoided any major meltdowns or carnage. We have suffered a few knuckleheads and effectively driven them off. People come and people go, but there is a solid core there that cares about the subject and keeps things interesting.

But that god damned forum drives me crazy sometimes.

I am not the ideal person to run a forum. I am opinionated, short-tempered and generally do everything I can to make things to go my way, whatever way that may be, and whatever that takes. When someone give me shit, I give it back in spades. Both online and in the meat world that your grandparents live in. I'm vindictive and devious and hold a grudge for a long, long time. So how has the forum survived with a hair-trigger lunatic and idiot running it? Well, it survives because I stepped back and gave the reins to a handful of moderators who are much more patient and understanding than I am.

But issues still crop up, and you have to balance a million things on the tip of a fucking needle. The whole mess is constantly in danger of tipping over and falling apart, oftentimes due to my own outbursts or idiocy. If only I were the sole idiot, things would be peachy.

So here we are. I often wonder why I do this shit. Web sites and forums and groups and things. Projects and projects and more projects that, when all is said and done, do nothing but suck me dry. What am I trying to accomplish? I shut the door on the old smog.net, got rid of an art magazine, a huge email service, a floundering web hosting service, but I am still up to my neck in this world that is not a world at all. What am I doing?

I have tied myself to this box and I don't think I've really gained anything from any of it. Where am I? What happened to the world that existed 15 years ago? Before this internet ingrained itself into my existence. What good is any of it? More importantly, why can't I just observe and dip my toe in, like everyone else on earth. Why am I so god damn involved?

---

Send any answers you may have along with freshly baked cookies, bottles of expensive scotch or bourbon and any prescription painkillers you feel comfortable sending through the mail to: Michael Phillips, PO box #218, South Pasadena, CA 91031-0218.

Thank you.

These Obama photos are in Time magazine this week. Taken at a Los Angeles college in 1980 by fellow student Lisa Jack, I heard speculation this morning on NPR that had these photos been published last summer they would have had a negative impact on Obama chances of becoming President.

I don't doubt that. Half the people who saw them would see a degenerate punk negro, the other half a steady mobbin' pimp who would make a great thug president. Both would be wrong, and therein lies the rub, as the kids say.

I don't think it would have mattered had these pictures come out last summer. I wish they had. They humanize the guy a bit. All I see in the modern Obama is a robot politician, and I've seen enough of those.

This is for Tom. I don't usually do these "tag, you're it" things, but as it turns out I did it once before, so here we are again. Image number four from the fourth image directory on my computer:



That's Carol at the Space Rabbit Ranch in the desolate wilds of Joshua Tree in February of this year. Buddy was with us, but I don't see him in this picture. He is probably out of frame eating coyote shit or chasing a tortoise.

Was it cold in the desert in February? Yes. Though it's been just about as cold in South Pasadena lately. This morning I got into the car to go to work, turned on the wipers and heard a sad crunching sound. It was ice on my windshield. Southern California, go figure.

Carol is working on a new book, and in an effort to make it as labor-intensive as possible, she is actually typing out the text on each finished page (hundreds of them) by hand on an old Underwood typewriter. This makes a clack clack clacking sound throughout the house, that was probably a very familiar sound years ago, but it pretty unusual these days.

So she was clacking away and I walked up and stood in the doorway to her studio to narrate while she was typing. "Dear TV Guide," clack clack clack, "I wish to complain about your latest issue. I found two errors in the listings..."

That made her laugh pretty hard, so I thought I would share it with you to bring some joy to your dreary football Sunday.

To celebrate Thanksgiving my dog Buddy took one of the hardcover copies of Riding Out the Dumb Silence out into the yard and ate it. Well, he tried to eat it all, but he choked on some of the words, came back into the house and told me that I really needed to work on my similes and metaphors.

Whatever. I've read his work. It's just gibberish. Every stanza ends with "...and man, foolish man, tries to starve the dog, but the dog prevails!"

Asshole.

So, I'm sitting here at the kitchen table listening to KPCC, the local public radio station, and of course they are talking about the fires that are burning down half the county. At about 10:40 they had a conversation with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He said the typical things they say when these fires happen every year, then to wrap up, the host asked, "Mayor Villaraigosa, if you could say just one thing to the people of Los Angeles right now, what would it be?"

The mayor let out a dramatic sigh and said, "I would say that everyone should pray for the people who have lost their homes..."

Huh?

Dear mayor, if my house burns down or is flattened in an earthquake or a riot, please - please don't pray for me. Don't ask JESUS, Allah, Joseph Smith, Guru Nanak, Buddha, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Yahweh or Meher Baba to help me. Don't ask the Smurfs, don't wish upon a star, don't leave a note for the tooth fairy. If you're going to do anything, call Jimmy Carter. At least that fucker knows how to swing a hammer and put up a new wall.

Seriously. Pray? That's what people who were just burned out of their houses need? Prayer? Is everyone in America mentally retarded, or what? "Those fires, yeah, wow boy, that is awful. Well, I did everything I could. I prayed."

Yeah. Okay.

You may remember art con man Charles Walker from the Who is Lonnie Tolliver, and why should you care? post. Well, that was a few years ago, so I thought you might want to catch up with Mr. Walker.

He no longer tries to foist fake Lonnie Tolliver paintings onto suckers. Maybe because searching on Google for Lonnie Tolliver brings up smog.net and an everlasting copy of his blog where he admits to "Lonnie Tolliver" being a con job. That could have something to do with it.

So let's see if we can do the same for "Grandma Clementine Reynolds," Walker's latest stinking minstrel show con.

Poor Charles Walker. Imagine spending your entire life believing you are an artist, and then it finally and painfully dawns on you that that no one wants to buy your paintings of stripes. What do you do? You can't get a normal job because you have no skills. That, and art school has instilled a sense of entitlement into you that you just can't shake, so a real job is out of the question. You could become a whore, but one has to be at least marginally attractive to pull that off. So what? What was Charlie to do?

Voila! Paint some fake "outsider art" and slap a fictitious name on it! Not only that, make up a little "outsider" story and use it in every auction!

Clementine Reynolds is my maternal grandmother. She is 76 years old and has lost her ability to speak when she was very young and she didn't learn to read and write until very late in her life. Since she was a child in Pinedale, Alabama she has been using her colorful and expressive art to communicate her feelings, often staying up all night to paint for hours on end, painting on found boards with acrylic paint, tempera and even egg yolks! Recently she has been interested in painting the town of her youth, where she lived until my family moved out of Alabama in 1941, as well as images inspired by the Bible.

I think her art is amazing and incredibly expressive and I asked her if she would let me try to sell it on Ebay, so she could get extra money other than her pension to buy herself whatever she likes. She was very excited about it and even had ideas on how to make her Ebay page look nice to better showcase her amazing talent. Her art is beginning to garner attention and a few collectors are becoming interested in her work, which makes her very proud. I hope you love her art as much as I do. Thank you for supporting outsider artists and thank you for looking!

The Grandma Clementine Reynolds auctions run under the r4398b4 eBay user. He apparently used that ID to sell video tapes of television shows (wait, isn't it illegal to sell copyrighted material? Charlie?) before he had to switch away from the capability-brown seller ID that he used for the Lonnie Tolliver auctions.

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