Update on my progress in figure drawing class. This woman may seem strange but really this is what she looks like. She has the most beautiful medieval face with a high round forehead. My cat Roshi is a tough critic:

My friend Anna and I went to Forest Lawn cemetery on Sunday to make some grave rubbings. We were looking for names that were also common words, which we recombined into new phrases. Anna had some really good ones, including, and I'm not kidding, "Twitty Valentine Love." Here are some of my results. I'm going to write a very French kind of artist statment about what I think these are about: monumentality, the symbolic register, the proper name as collective category, urban density, self-destroying practices in the buddhist sense as a prerequisite for collaboration and compassion. But first here are the pictures:

"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death." -- Leonardo da Vinci

Not because I want to, but because I've had to, I've been experimenting with what's called a polyphasic sleep cycle. Basically it means that you sleep several times a day in small increments, and in the end you actually sleep less overall, but still feel rested. Leonardo da Vinci, crazy genius that he was, supposedly slept only fifteen minutes every 4 hours. No wonder he managed to become one of the world's greatest artists, engineers, and scientists.

My aspirations are not quite so noble. Mostly it's about being able to party while still maintaining my roles as a student, teacher, researcher, and lab monkey. Here's how it works. I come home from my daily duties about 6pm, sleep till 8 or 9. Then I go out with people who actually have free time, which means that the evening begins around 11 or 12, since they can all sleep in the next day. Okay, so, party till about 3 or 4am, then home again. Sleep from 4-8. Get up, rub red eyes, drag deadweight body to car, proceed through day's responsibilites. Repeat.

How long can I keep this up? My sister worked nights for years, and she actually split her sleep in two. Some at 7am when she came home, some before she had to go in at 11. She maintains it nearly killed her, and thinks she accrued a sleep deficit she'll never quite replenish. She did kinda wander around in a haze in those days.

But this method has allowed me to do all I need to do: plan for class, finish projects, drink prodigeously. Oh, and avoid dreaming (see previous journals). It also gave me the opportunity to join in the Girl Power (plus Steve) Midnight Normal Ave Robin Move on Thursday night. And last night I was able to act like a petulant child watching a man I was attracted to nuzzle his girlfriend, while at the same time rebuffing the advances of subpar dive-bar y-chromos who think if you're wearing a little eyeliner you'll fuck anyone who's mostly upright. It was a full night.

So here's my question, if da Vinci never slept, then how could he believe that a well-spent day brings happy sleep? And what in this world or the next is a happy death?

I'll hopefully find out tomorrow in the cemetery. I'll go rub graves, since nobody rubs me.

John Kerry! Too funny. Bush's home town newspaper says "You're Fired!" Okay, so maybe its a little scary that a conservative paper that endorsed W. in 2000 finds Kerry acceptable, but we all know our doubts already. It's just that when I heard this on the radio this morning, it gave me a hearty cackle! You gotta read the article, it's righteously indignant:

Here's an excerpt:

When examined based on all the facts, Kerry’s voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.
John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

(e:terry), your dream of my momma is spot on [inlink]terry,322[/inlink]. She would ride a snowmobile across a frozen pond, face death, and still come out cacklin'. It was a dream right? I miss my family. Now that school has started and my weekends have been full I haven't gotten to see them. I want to run to my momma and bury my face in her generous snowy bosom. I turned down a trip to visit them all in Ellicottville last weekend to lick my wounds. It would have been better to have gone.

Soon we will crosscountry ski to the moon, you and me (e:terry). and (e:matthew). and (e:southernyankee). and (e:flaccidness). And anyone else who wants to strap some plastic slides to your feet and face death on terror mountain. Really, it's more fun than it sounds, facing death.

It's funny that Terry wrote about dreams, since in lieu of having something else I want to write about here, I was going to write about mine. (It's actually my homework to write about my dreams, for my purgatorial Seminar in the Image class.) Basically, here's what's been weird in my dream life right now. I keep dreaming very literal dreams that are almost scenes from my real life, which I guess is currently dramatic and surreal enough to qualify for dream logic. Usually there is little real world correspondance in my dreams, but lately, it's like I'm continuing waking events.

But here is what is really weird. My dreams insist on being optimistic. In real life I'm realizing once again that pessimism is the safest route. Intensity from containment, and all. But my dreams stubbornly continue to hope. It's almost cruel. To demonstrate, I will tell you my dreams in a Munch and a Chagall:

How my dreams see my world:



How waking me sees it:



Usually we go about our day, burying our frustrations and fears, which then emerge in anxious dreams. I'm scuttering about during the day like a starved brown leaf, while my dreams are full of laughter and warm sun and the fuzzy hairs on the nape of the neck. Perhaps what I'm repressing is my tragic capacity to wish...

So I spent the day hung over, depressed, and unable to do any of the five million firggin' things I should have done today. So instead I watched movies. I saw Dogville, the newest Lars Von Trier movie, and a documentary on the Weather Underground, which I realized I had seen part of on PBS. Both were really great, I highly reccommend them, and both were also critiques of American culture, which we all heart.

Dogville, if you've seen any Lars Von Trier movies before, was in the same stream as Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, with an important difference at the end. Both Waves and Dancer are about vulnerable women who fall prey to the cruel desires and demands of society, and particularly men. The movies aren't critical so much as documentary, I've always thought they were about human necessity and frailty. In Dogville, same thing, a woman in need is subjected to every human degradation you can imagine. But she gets her revenge in the end. Oh yeah does she. Bingo, Grace, bingo. Nicole Kidman was as usual delicioso as the beleagured heroine. You gotta see, basically.

Then, the Weather Underground documentary is a must see for anyone interested in radical politcs and the history of revolutionary acts in the seventies. I think few people know that there was a faction of the Student Democratic Society, the largest youth anti-war group in the country during Vietnam, that broke off and bombed stuff. Like for example, the Capitol. They luckily never killed anyone. And none of them really went to jail since the FBI Cointelpro infiltration tactics had rendered all the evidence inadmissable. They are mostly now professors and political organizers. One guy owns a bar and won $23,000 on Jeapordy. It's amazing to hear them talk about it now, 30 years later, some of them still conflicted about their actions, some of them still ardently committed to the struggle for social justice. If you ever wanted to throw a brick through Starbuck's window, this is the movie for you.

Paul helped me delete my cookies. That worked. Here is the Mark Lombardi image I wanted to include in the journal below (#100).



george w. bush, harken energy, and jackson stevens c.1979-90, 5th version, 1999
graphite on paper
20 x 44 inches

Mark Lombardi Artist Statement from

"In 1994 I began a series of drawings I refer to as "narrative structures." Most were executed in graphite or pen and ink on paper. Some are quite large, measuring up to 5 x 12 feet.

I call them "narrative structures" because each consists of a network of lines and notations which are meant to convey a story, typically about a recent event of interest to me, like the collapse of a large international bank, trading company, or investment house. One of my goals is to explore the interaction of political, social and economic forces in contemporary affairs. Thus far I have exhibited drawings on BCCI, Lincoln Savings, World Finance of Miami, the Vatican Bank, Silverado Savings, Castle Bank and Trust of the Bahamas, Nugan Hand Limited of Sydney, Australia, and many more.

Working from syndicated news items and other published accounts, I begin each drawing by compiling large amounts of information about a specific bank, financial group or set of individuals. After a careful review of the literature I then condense the essential points into an assortment of notations and other brief statements of fact, out of which an image begins to emerge.

My purpose throughout is to interpret the material by juxtaposing and assembling the notations into a unified, coherent whole. In some cases I use a set of stacked, parallel lines to establish a time frame. Hierarchical relationships, the flow of money and other key details are then indicated by a system of radiating arrows, broken lines and so forth. Some of the drawings consist of two different layers of information—one denoted in black, the other, red. Black represents the essential elements of the story while the major lawsuits, criminal indictments or other legal actions taken against the parties are shown in red. Every statement of fact and connection depicted in the work is true and based on information culled entirely from the public record."

—Mark Lombardi

And it's just to say, (e:Paul), the image upload isn't working for me on Mac Safari! I want to add a Mark Lombardi! I still love you anyways. Thanks for giving me 100 chances for ranting and panting on this here (e:strip).

Ah, Peeps there is so much to say... But I'm too confused to say it (and still slightly drunk and/or hung over this AM.) In some ways I miss the Mini:(E:Strip), back in the ole days, when I could post my private thoughts and personal events without worrying about them popping up on Slashdot! 8* Eeep, Peeps! Nuff Said.

So I will tell you all a little bit about Toronto, where I ran away to mid-week, to see some film festival films. I had to cancel like, totally everything in my life, but spur of the moment is always worth it. And those are always the most fun times, don't you think? Too much planning seems to take the spirit out of things. First thought, best thought, as the Zensters says.

Here is the quip I keep making about Toronto (whenever I think of something I think is witty I continually repeat it. Do I quote myself? Very well, then I quote myself.--HJ (WW)) Toronto is like the face of someone very beautiful. You know not to look too directly at it since the more you look the more you are entranced by it. So you kind of have to look at it only peripherally or only a little part at a time: an eyelash, a tower, the upper lip, an art museum. Otherwise you can't resist.

The first film I saw was sadly disappointing, since I really love the other films I've seen by the director, Alejandro Amenabar. He did The Others and Abre los Ojos, the film Vanilla Sky is based on (but is so much better than.) This movie, Mar Adentro, was about a quadriplegic who wants to die, and his family/legal/romantic struggles with said dilemma. It was pretty much a one trick pony. Oh so sad the poignant poet can't move and loves death. We're all trapped in our bodies in one way or another, I say. But then, I've never been paralyzed, so I should probably shut up. But the one cool thing was that the actor in it is one of my favorites, Javier Bardem, and he was there to introduce the film. He's in a great movie about Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas [inlink]holly,9[/inlink] called Before Night Falls. Anyways, he's so grand and beautiful. Even from the high red velvet balcony seat where I was sitting I could see his lovely giant hands. They were as large and soft as fresh loaves of bread. I wanted to inhale their warm scent and nibble them. Too bad he was fakely bald and in bed the whole movie. What a waste of a beautiful man.

Anyways, after the sadly disappointing film I went to the Horseshoe Tavern, a really great bar for live music (and the inspiration for one of my longest journals [inlink]holly,9[/inlink]). The band that was playing was called Divine Comedy, they're from the UK. They were very drole but not ironic. And they hand a banjo. I thought the singer sounded quintessentially English, a cross between Bowie and Morrissey. My friend who is English thought he sounded like Jim Morrison, very American. Mind the culture gap, I guess.

The next day I went to the AGO, Art Gallery o'Ontario, where I had just been on Sunday to see the Turner, Whistler, Monet show, but nothing else. So I went back mostly to see some really lovely Inuit carvings, and works by this artist Mark Lombardi . He makes these really elegant anatomical maps of global influence and corruption. There'll be a little circle that says George H. W. Bush and then lines drawn to banks, sheiks, gov't front agencies, etc. It all has its own grammar and timeline and aesthetic. The future of information, if you ask me. I showed some pictures and tried to explain it to my freshman Critical Thinking class, and they just stared blankly at me. Maybe I'm as confusing as I am confused...

Coming up on hour thirteen since I've been home. My poor cat. Matthew has just informed me that it is indeed illegal to keep livestock in your suburban house. If my sister gets arrested it won't be the first time a Johnson's been in jail! We still love you Daddy, in your great big padded holding cell in the sky.

Okay, a little stream of consciousness from my beleagured brain. I kinda wanna update just because I haven't in a few days. I feel so loyal to you peeps. Plus I want the hits. The hits! I'm hit hungry.

So the first Swan screening was tonight. Our classified ad wasn't successful, but we were able to interview some people from Brian's class since he was there with them to do the taping. Brian rocks, by the way. He gave me some pointers on how to conduct interviews better. I was kinda "reading off a list" in my head, mostly because I didn't want to lead the responses (I tend to do that in conversation, I think, although I've been trying not to fer like years...) We interviewed the men too, since they were very forthcoming with their opinions. Have you ever noticed how men are encouraged to have an opinion on everything, including womens' body images? The women were far more sheepish about it. I'm just a raging femi-nazi I guess. But not all you fellas out there need reprogramming, and I'm grateful for that. And I'm not exactly your typical sheepish co-ed either...

In other news, all is well with my figure drawing class at last. I had a long talk with the head of graduate studies in Fine Arts and he rocked, he was so cool, and he was really into my idea. Why didn't I just get a fine arts degree, whhhhyyyyyyy!!????

Okay, so funny story to end this theme-less journal. I'm teaching a class of college freshman about critical thinking. So I talk to them for awhile about the imprtance of evaluating sources and thinking independently and being sceptical of authority. Then I told them that we were going to talk a lot about current events. So I asked them if they knew what recently happened in Russia, and they had some vague ideas about a hostage situation and the children etc. So I said right, a group of Chinese rebels took over a school, because China wants to be independent from Russia. And then I asked why China might want to be independent from Russia, and people responded, but more and more faces started to look confused. So finally I said, does anyone see a flaw in this logic?. And some girl raised her hand and said "uh, China isn't part of Russia?." So then I told them the real story, about Chechnya, etc. But I said in the end, you're in college now folks. You've been taught your whole life to do as teacher says. When I say think for yourselves, I mean trust your instincts, and when I say question authority, I mean me too. Nobody ever got exiled or sentenced to death for corrupting the youth or being a gadfly, right?