Here’s my favorite trick:
Here’s my favorite trick:
It takes a few months to pull off, but it’s a good way to say goodbye and gives plenty of time to spend pulling other cons:
It takes a few months to pull off, but it’s a good way to say goodbye and gives plenty of time to spend pulling other cons:
You move to a new town by greyhound with your wife in a suitcase. You find a job, washing dishes, stocking groceries, used bookstore. Something that you can stomach for a little while. While you’re there you charm the aprons off everyone. You become the most beloved coworker. A good way to build confidence is to call into work an hour before you need to be there and tell them you’ll be half an hour late... then show up ten minutes early. You’ll be a hero.
You move to a new town by greyhound with your wife in a suitcase. You find a job, washing dishes, stocking groceries, used bookstore. Something that you can stomach for a little while. While you’re there you charm the aprons off everyone. You become the most beloved coworker. A good way to build confidence is to call into work an hour before you need to be there and tell them you’ll be half an hour late... then show up ten minutes early. You’ll be a hero.
After a few months you announce your wife is pregnant. Everyone starts jumping for stupid joy. Oh a baby. Oh children just make the world a little brighter, oh children are so innocent, so wonderful, so pure. You get a fake baby belly, and say the wife doesn’t want her belly touched, sorry, she’s a little weird that way, old family superstition.
After a few months you announce your wife is pregnant. Everyone starts jumping for stupid joy. Oh a baby. Oh children just make the world a little brighter, oh children are so innocent, so wonderful, so pure. You get a fake baby belly, and say the wife doesn’t want her belly touched, sorry, she’s a little weird that way, old family superstition.
Someone always has the idea to throw a baby shower.
Someone always has the idea to throw a baby shower.
Then a few weeks later, you tell everyone she miscarried. No one will ask for the presents back and you return it all for cash. Most stores understand that if you’ve just lost a baby then you don’t want or need store credit. Can you imagine the store clerk that tells a woman who just had a miscarriage that she needs a receipt or that they can only offer credit? No one’s that heartless.
Then a few weeks later, you tell everyone she miscarried. No one will ask for the presents back and you return it all for cash. Most stores understand that if you’ve just lost a baby then you don’t want or need store credit. Can you imagine the store clerk that tells a woman who just had a miscarriage that she needs a receipt or that they can only offer credit? No one’s that heartless.
Then you don’t show up for work the next day because you are on a bus with your wife in a suitcase.
Then you don’t show up for work the next day because you are on a bus with your wife in a suitcase.
I’m beginning to realize not everything works out that way.
I’m beginning to realize not everything works out that way.
•
•
I didn’t speak until I was ten. Silence teaches you everything. I wouldn’t change anything about my life, even the bad times helped make me. But I would take back the first thing I ever said. When you haven’t spoken before you need to choose your words carefully.
I didn’t speak until I was ten. Silence teaches you everything. I wouldn’t change anything about my life, even the bad times helped make me. But I would take back the first thing I ever said. When you haven’t spoken before you need to choose your words carefully.
In that instance they are as important as your last words.
In that instance they are as important as your last words.
•
•
Her: “This is confusing, thanks for sticking with me.”
Her: “This is confusing, thanks for sticking with me.”
Me: “Of course.” (My hands feel damp in hers)
Me: “Of course.” (My hands feel damp in hers)
Her: “I don’t think I could do this alone.”
Her: “I don’t think I could do this alone.”
Me: “I know.”
Me: “I know.”
Her: “Is this really going to work?”
Her: “Is this really going to work?”
Me: “It has to... doesn’t it?”
Me: “It has to... doesn’t it?” •
•
This is the last generation and we are at a bus station in Dallas.
This is the last generation and we are at a bus station in Dallas.
I have no idea how we got here but I planned the whole thing.
I have no idea how we got here but I planned the whole thing.
Issue 11 was designed using among other programs listed below: Adobe Illustrator CS2 and InDesign CS2 and printed at Central Print (where I just got laid off ) on a Docutech 6135. Cover stock was from the French Paper Company (mrfrench.com) and the guts were on Hammermill 60lb. Cover Index. The books were bound by hand, while drinking. The photographs were taken with a Nikon CP800 as .jpgs, increased to 300 dpi as .tifs in Photoshop and also taken as 300 dpi .tif ’s using an Olympus Evolt E-300 Digital SLR. Models for the hands included Cat Baldwin of headsuppenny.com and Leslie from cherrypepper issue 5. The barcode was created by barcode-us.com, which I highly recommend. My divorce was brought to you by my ex-wife. Fonts were Warnock Pro, Architect, Adobe Caslon Pro, and Century Schoolbook. Titles were created by printing out fonts and photocopying them a dozen times, each time increasing the copy percentage, then I scanned the result, and converted them to paths using the very much in need of an upgrade Adobe Streamline 4.0. For “Lowlight” I printed out the pages and then using a light table traced the letters, then scanned them and reversed the blacks and whites. The photographs for “Geriatric Decorating” were taken in my grandmother’s house when she was in the hospital. The piece called “Blueprint for the Lonely” was complied from several blueprints which I combined, edited and altered. Cat and Leslie posed for “The Daughters of Chemical”. I took hundreds of pictures of various body parts and then pieced them together in Photoshop, then converted them to paths in Streamline, them edited them in Illustrator. It wasn’t easy but I did manage to get probably the best picture I have ever seen of Leslie’s ass, not included here. The tattoo on the inside of my mouth was done by The Parlour Tattoo in Eugene, Oregon, ironically with a gift certificate from my ex-wife. The tattoo was originally going to be an “X” on the inside of my ring finger, to symbolize my divorce, but I decided I didn’t want to be reminded of it every time I jerked off. I had been looking for an image for a tattoo that represented printing or publishing for years now, and it suddenly came to my attention that I could kill two birds with one stone by turning the “X” into a printing crop mark. Part one to “Incomplete Dialogue” was published in issue 10 as “The Thief and The Liar”, part three may become a novel, or a screenplay that never gets filmed. “Highway 99” is excerpts and never before published photographs from the carbon based mistake issue 5 which was also called Highway 99. Issue 5 is now out of print, but I liked it, so I reprinted it here. I spent an afternoon travelling around town on Highway 99 taking pictures. It’s amazing the strange, depressing things you see on this stretch of road. The barbie doll was probably the strangest thing of all. Someone had taken a knife to it, and burned it, tied it up and threw it into a lake. You have to ask yourself why. The photo that has a fallen tree with spray paint on it reads: “Fuck Preps.” Someone actually took the time to do that. Thanks and inspirations/motivation go to: David Byrne, Howard Stern, Johnathan Safran Foer, Rae Calvary, Diana Halfmann, Adam Calvary, Jeannie Calvary, Robert Mohawk Calvary, Joss Whedon, Cat Baldwin, Mike Lawrence, Eli Markenson, Mike Patton, John and Deborah Butler, Lucas Shibley, Jamie McCrae, Brandon Huigens, Evelyn E., and up until September: Her. Issue 11 was started August 2003 and finished March 2006. Although to be honest about two years went by without anything being done. It was a bad time, what can I say? I spent my youth in California, my twenties in Oregon, my thirties will be in New York. Issue 12 will be created in Manhattan.
Issue 11 was designed using among other programs listed below: Adobe Illustrator CS2 and InDesign CS2 and printed at Central Print (where I just got laid off ) on a Docutech 6135. Cover stock was from the French Paper Company (mrfrench.com) and the guts were on Hammermill 60lb. Cover Index. The books were bound by hand, while drinking. The photographs were taken with a Nikon CP800 as .jpgs, increased to 300 dpi as .tifs in Photoshop and also taken as 300 dpi .tif ’s using an Olympus Evolt E-300 Digital SLR. Models for the hands included Cat Baldwin of headsuppenny.com and Leslie from cherrypepper issue 5. The barcode was created by barcode-us.com, which I highly recommend. My divorce was brought to you by my ex-wife. Fonts were Warnock Pro, Architect, Adobe Caslon Pro, and Century Schoolbook. Titles were created by printing out fonts and photocopying them a dozen times, each time increasing the copy percentage, then I scanned the result, and converted them to paths using the very much in need of an upgrade Adobe Streamline 4.0. For “Lowlight” I printed out the pages and then using a light table traced the letters, then scanned them and reversed the blacks and whites. The photographs for “Geriatric Decorating” were taken in my grandmother’s house when she was in the hospital. The piece called “Blueprint for the Lonely” was complied from several blueprints which I combined, edited and altered. Cat and Leslie posed for “The Daughters of Chemical”. I took hundreds of pictures of various body parts and then pieced them together in Photoshop, then converted them to paths in Streamline, them edited them in Illustrator. It wasn’t easy but I did manage to get probably the best picture I have ever seen of Leslie’s ass, not included here. The tattoo on the inside of my mouth was done by The Parlour Tattoo in Eugene, Oregon, ironically with a gift certificate from my ex-wife. The tattoo was originally going to be an “X” on the inside of my ring finger, to symbolize my divorce, but I decided I didn’t want to be reminded of it every time I jerked off. I had been looking for an image for a tattoo that represented printing or publishing for years now, and it suddenly came to my attention that I could kill two birds with one stone by turning the “X” into a printing crop mark. Part one to “Incomplete Dialogue” was published in issue 10 as “The Thief and The Liar”, part three may become a novel, or a screenplay that never gets filmed. “Highway 99” is excerpts and never before published photographs from the carbon based mistake issue 5 which was also called Highway 99. Issue 5 is now out of print, but I liked it, so I reprinted it here. I spent an afternoon travelling around town on Highway 99 taking pictures. It’s amazing the strange, depressing things you see on this stretch of road. The barbie doll was probably the strangest thing of all. Someone had taken a knife to it, and burned it, tied it up and threw it into a lake. You have to ask yourself why. The photo that has a fallen tree with spray paint on it reads: “Fuck Preps.” Someone actually took the time to do that. Thanks and inspirations/motivation go to: David Byrne, Howard Stern, Johnathan Safran Foer, Rae Calvary, Diana Halfmann, Adam Calvary, Jeannie Calvary, Robert Mohawk Calvary, Joss Whedon, Cat Baldwin, Mike Lawrence, Eli Markenson, Mike Patton, John and Deborah Butler, Lucas Shibley, Jamie McCrae, Brandon Huigens, Evelyn E., and up until September: Her. Issue 11 was started August 2003 and finished March 2006. Although to be honest about two years went by without anything being done. It was a bad time, what can I say? I spent my youth in California, my twenties in Oregon, my thirties will be in New York. Issue 12 will be created in Manhattan.