I could really use some wisdom on the whole Moving To Chicago question.

I am pretty sure that this series of pictures make somewhat compelling arguments against moving to Chicago.  I mean, here in Atlanta, 5 of the parties I've been to in the last month have had bouncy castles.  2 others had slip n' slides.  If I move to Chicago, I won't be really warm for at least 5 months.  Is that something I can deal with?  What do I need to be happy?

I have a decent job waiting for me up in Chicago. The job starts in late January, which is also when the lease on my current place ends.

Plus/minus:

+ the job pays twice what I currently make.
+ I could probably stay with my Uncle Karl for free.
+ Karl is one of my favorite relatives.
- The job is not in an industry I'm interested in. (It's IT work connected with assisted living communities)
- It is cold in Chicago. I wouldn't be able to ride my bike until at least late June.
- The job would involve sitting in cubicles for long periods of time.
+ Relatively little supervision at work. (ie: I can come in hungover and spend lots of time working on my own projects as long as the work gets done.)
- The work is really boring. Spreadsheets boring.
- Karl just bought a house with his long term boyfriend/life partner/whatev. I might be harshing their domesticity.
+ If I worked in Chicago January through late summer, I could save enough to pay off my student loans. I would also have a lot of extra money.
- I know almost zero people in Chicago. I know zero people who are into the industries I'm considering (fine arts, photography, writings, etc)
+ Chicago is one of my favorite cities.
+ I would no longer be living in squalor.
+ My roommates would not be insane.
+ There's a pool I can swim in during my lunch break.
- I would be abandoning all the projects I've been working on for the last year, just as they're starting to show potential.
- I might be trapped at the Chicago job via complacency for a lifetime.

The + and - I've listed here have different weights attached to them, obv. Still, I would appreciate any advice you can give me. Also, feel free to text your advice to me: 404.754.9469. Especially feel free to text me on Tuesday and Thursday between 4:30 and 9pm EST, when I will be at work and bored.

Also, considering hopping a train for a music festival in Richmond next weekend (August 21-23). Holla if you're in Richmond/DC.

Saw a band called Ga'an last night.  They're amazing.  I took some pictures - I'll put them up soon.

Now I'm drinking sake and reviewing life's most notable recent events, last to first:

That's the end of my notable things.  I haven't been having many adventures lately.  We threw parties at Fishmarket these last two weekends, and they were the usual good times.  But I haven't gone exploring, and that makes me unhappy.  I haven't had a good conversation which also involved walking long distances for a few weeks.  I haven't been deliriously happy since some time mid-last-week, and that makes me unhappy.  I feel like I'm coasting, and I hate that.

Temporary solution:  I am forming a costumed Jenga league and tournament based loosely on the luchador tradition but with more drinking.  If you'd like to get in on that and you live in Atlanta, lemme know.  We're having a preliminary practice tournament this Monday at 9pm.  Bring tequila.

* I don't think we've been seeing each other more than two or three weeks, so I was sort of expecting this.

Busted up my leg last night, now I'm all Frankenstein* limping along.

On the other hand, the leg busting happened while I was DANCING, which I do not do very often at all, so I am pretty happy about it.

I'm going to go shove Chinese food into my hangover.


* Frankenstein's monster!  I know!  But Frankenstein is the generally accepted term!  I don't know whether I should go with my listener's familiarity, or the truth!

I am making a poster for the concert coming up next Friday (the 24th). I believe the second image passes my personal design test (something I haven't seen before, simple), but it's pretty low on information content - I need to figure out how to add additional meaning to the poster without making it even more jumbled than it is currently.

When I type "okay," I generally use the spelling "Ok."

(uppercase O, lowercase k)

I did not realize until now, but some people may read that phonetically, as opposed to sybo...lically? As a symbol. A glyph?

What if there is someone running around reading my lj, and everytime they get to one of my famous "Ok" paragraph breaks, they read "aahk?" What if they are confused? What then?



(Healing is going good. Mainly I am bored, and I still can't type or mouse w/ my right hand. People keep offering stuff to me; like, this guy I went to middle school with, who I haven't talked to in a few years and is a bike mechanic, offered to look over my bike and give me his discount on any parts that needed replacing. (Does that happen when you crash your car?) And other people are just offering general "anything you need," which is a conundrum, because mainly I need money, sex, entertainment, and another band to play the show I'm trying to book on the 24th. Also I've been trying a lot of natural cures to speed up healing, like buttermilk baths, and yogurt bathes, and honey baths, and tonight I tried combining all three along with rosemary, olive oil, and normal milk (just to be safe). Not recommended. Now I've got gobs of buttermilk/yogurt/seeds all over me and the bath.)

I am being held hostage by a sleeping girl.

She's curled up to the left of me, unconscious butt pinning my leg to the bed. Her tail-less cat is watching me, purring slowly.

I don't have any books in arm's reach. I can't fall back to sleep.

Pretty sure I'm going to try "accidentally" waking her up.

So hungry.

I think I feel enervated.

I also think that is a word that I learned from some old SNES JRPG.

Things I am nervous and excited about:

first day at on the job tonight (I start in 68 minutes)
possibly adopting a kitten
new pants
first wedding photography job coming up
the four pet baths I'm taking pictures of this week
writing less?
going camping

I did a pretty good job at dancing last night. I hardly felt nervous, and I didn't run away when girls danced at me. Also, I wasn't very worried that people were criticizing the metronome like tick of my ass.

I'm going to be serving food at an upscale pub in College Park (a few miles straight South of my place). The pub is really awesome - built in a converted country house, owned by a team of British guys from Manchester, and the manager (who interviewed me) spent a year in Turkey!

So that's exciting. I'm already making a mental list of Things I Can Now Buy.

My buy priority:

1. a pair of boots not salvaged from post-Katrina wreckage.
2. 2 new pairs of jeans.
3. some sort of cyclocross style bike, with mudguards!
4. bus tickets to everywhere.

And, far in the future, I'd like to buy a better camera and a really fancy lens. But that requires untold wealth.

I hiked around this mountain for a bit yesterday.



( More photos... )

Then I spent the night wandering around crashing parties, which turned out to be difficult because every time I showed up at a party half the room would inform me (to my surprise) that they had been at my party the previous night. Sometimes I wish I had a better memory. But it is also really fun when someone says, "Ben! What's up? How was [shared experience]?" And then I get to spend the rest of the conversation trying to remember their name and how we know each other.

I have been telling everyone I meet about how we're building a jungle descending from the warehouse ceiling (complete with real fruit) for Em's concert in a few weeks. I don't know how that will happen. Please help.

I mentioned that one of my roommates is dating a 17 year old, right?

It's generally not an issue, because she's honestly more mature than I am.  But every few nights she'll come over with a half dozen friends, all ranging between 16 and 19 years old, and that part's starting to get on my nerves.  They're all fine kids, very enthusiastic and not even close to as annoying as I was at that age... but they're still kids.  There's a real lack of the cynicism and hatred/love for humanity which I value in my closest friends.  They don't understand that I don't mean what I say.  They all have bright futures.

It gets on my nerves.

Anyway.  I am staying over at my parents house tonight, along with a dozen boxes of clothes and three beds.  Because apparently our landlord was serious when she said our warehouse wasn't zoned as a residential space, and there's a city inspector coming by tomorrow to check on us and all of the neighbors who are also living in their "studios," "workspaces," and/or "gallery/offices."  We've spent the weekend removing all of our personal effects and otherwise making the place look legit.  My bedroom is now an office (I was previously working from the open space downstairs, where I had set up my desk and reference shelf in the middle of things), and I am actually thinking of keeping it that way and just sleeping on the floor for a few months - that's what I did last night, and it was really cozy.

(When I was 19 or 20 I hitchhiked around Japan for three months, sleeping in a one man tent in whatever city park seemed accomodating.  So for me, sleeping on the ground is like returning to the womb.)

Welp.  I have 1000 words due at midnight, so I must jump jump, jump on it, jump on it.

( What I Wrote at Five Thirty This Morning... )

-----------------------

I'm out of my ADD drugs, and it's been making these last three days difficult.

Ran into Betsy on the Critical Mass ride, and we had a good conversation about being a atheist-who-was-raised-Jewish on Christmas.  I meant to ask her about what she was working on - last time we spoke she had just finished designing the cover for a new issue of a magazine we were making with some other Atlanta art people.  The cover was an old board, pasted over with signs and graffiti, which she'd written on by burning letters with a blow torch.  It was a fantastic effect.

I've also been watching a lot of X-Files because one of the roommates has the first two seasons on DVD.  The show is amazing.  I watch it, and it's so entirely alien to the way TV is now, or the way people are now.  And only 14 years old.

One problem with trying to rehabilitate a space using only found materials - it is very hard to get your hands on good paint.  Surprisingly, it is hardest for us to locate white paint, as that stuff is almost never thrown out. 

I'm painting my bedroom red, white, and blue.  For patriotism.  Sergio is drawing drafts for some fish murals.  Samantha just covers everything with that lime green paint.

And we have kittens now!  They've got big bobbly heads.  I will post pictures of them ASAP.

I've drunk way too much coffee today.

I am very happy to have friends who do not think less of me just because I occasionally call them up and ask them to come chop down and transport pine trees.

There is a suggestion that certain roommates in the new place should pay less, because they'll be using the space less.  The argument is that, while one roommate will need a large well lit space for painting, and another will need a good wall for green-screens; the other three roommates (including me) use less space for our work and should therefore pay less.  I am against this.

I think that different pay scales will lead to an inequal attachment to the collective space.  I do not want to feel like I am intruding when I step into someone's workspace.  I want this place to be modular and happy.  I am calling it Dollhouse.

I have gotten my hands on some window sashes (that is, windows which do not open).  There are seven of them, and they are 28x32 inches wide, which should add some light to our rooms.  I have also found a bed frame and mattress, as well as a few mirrors.  Sergio has several 10-gallon drums of paint.  Matt has a shitload of books.  I want to see what we'll make.

From D-12-S

From D-12-S

From D-12-S

From D-12-S

It does need a bit of work, but it is a huge space and fantastically cheap - $240 per month with four roommates.

(the guy with the camera is Sergio, the first person I've heard a "yes, definitely" from.)

I am so excited, I am already thinking of a cutesy name for the place:  "Welcome Home House," "Fun Fun Cube House," "Picasso House," or "Creeping Doom House."

EDIT: Em K say she wants to help organize a house show once we're settled - she's got this plan to have attendees wheatpaste one floor-to-ceiling section of wall, which should be freaking amazing.  Em is basically a combination of Tinkerbell and Mary Poppins.

[I tried to post this last night at 2am, but my connection died and I was left with this partial draft]

Not normally something I'd care about this early in the evening, except:

1)  I am supposed to be at the set in three hours and fifteen minutes, and will be working for twelve hours.

2)  This is the first time in a few weeks that I've been unable to sleep because of my work. 

I met up with an artist named Squanto today to take some pictures for an article I'm writing about her solo exhibit this Saturday.  She was sewing an eight foot tall teepee with two friends, so I spent the evening asking her off-the-record questions (she says interviews make her nervous, but agreed to answer questions through email) and taking pictures of her gang at work.  It was a lot of fun - they all kept masks on for most of the shoot, and the lighting was really great without me having to move anything around (which I don't do for that kind of shoot).

I only took about 200 pictures, but I am meeting her at the gallery tomorrow to take some more shots as she paints everything and sets up the teepee.  Her work is a really intriguing mixture of installation and standard gallery hanging, with all sorts of detritus piled, nailed, and suspended around her framed art - the whole exhibit space becomes an integral part of each piece, so it's actually really hard to imagine the effect her for-sale pieces would have when hung in someone's house...

[this is where the draft cut off, but I wrote another two paragraphs about how awesome her stuff is and why I want to write an article that will drive people to see (and buy) it.  The shape of that article, and ideas for future photography of her setup, were the things keeping me awake.]

3)  I can't find a good position for my junk.

4)  Or my arm.

[So that's why I couldn't sleep last night.  I eventually got to sleep at three, woke up an hour and a half later, and went on to spend 12 hours as an extra on Road Trip 2: Beer Pong.  It was not at all like Entourage.]

I guess things took a short term turn for the better today:

Got a call from a lab at Georgia State saying I'd been accepted for an alcohol research test on Thursday.  Totally awesome deal - They feed me booze until I reach a pretty damn high blood alcohol level (the interviewer said it was the equivalent of three to four drinks), I take tests for about an hour and a half, and then I sit is a comfy room with videogames and movies for a few hours waiting for my BAC to get down to sober.  Pay is $100 and I should be there for 6 to 8 hours.  Awesome!

Then about an hour later I got a call from a film that was hiring extras.  I will be on set for 12 hours tomorrow and maybe Wednesday.  They feed me, and the pay is $12 per hour.  I figure I will be very bored and get a lot of reading done.

Then, for no reason at all, my grandmother emailed, saying that she'd found $2600 that my grandfather had meant to give me a few years ago, and would I like it now?  I said yes.

And then nothing for a while, except some promising job openings (one for a gallery associate, which would be cool, and somewhat up my alley).  But then the mail came!  And there were two checks in it!  One of them was $19 back-pay for that dishwashing job I had in my freshman year at Oglethorpe.  The other was $45 for an article I'd written for Pine, received without having to send more than two "please give me my money"-type emails!

So things are looking up.  I am trying to figure out what to do with the surprise $2600.  This might be a good time to try investing a few hundred bucks.  Or, take those few hundred bucks and go running for warm New Orleans, which is another type of investment.  And then there's finally moving out... I guess I could do that now, while the market's awesome for renters.

Oh, and pants!  It's been years since I had non-secondhand pants.  Are pants an Investment In My Future?

"Hey, good to meet you - I'm Ben."
"Oh... yeah!"

This response freaks me the fuck out. I don't want people knowing who I am before I know who they are. It makes me try and think of all the memorable things I may have done while drunk/drugged... was it spending five minutes figuring out how the patio gate worked? Trying to convince a certain pixie-esque* keyboardist I could only communicate with her through osmosis? Pushing bouncers out of the way so I could take a photo of something?

I'd like to think it's because lots of Atlanta people are reading my writing, but I have a feeling that's not it, as informal quizzes show me to be much more recognized as a photographer.

Maybe it's a sign.

* can anyone point me to that essay about annoying pixie-girls in movies?

Augh. Been running around to interviews today. Woke up, started putting on clothing combination, had to cut a notch in belt because apparently I CAN get skinnier. No biking yet, but soon (my pet).

My tie was amazing.

I'm going to interview the guys who run this mysterious boutique/art gallery on Monday. The interview is for a story, and I am being paid cash money for that story. It came about because I asked my editor, "what's up with that place that always has the secret Black Lips/Deerhunter/King Khan/Liverhearts/No Age shows?" and she said, "I don't know - want to write about them?" I like that sort of editorial decision making process.

The weather has been fantastic today: overcast, with shards of sunlight. Windy, with slips of still. Rainy, but the rain never falls.

It shouldn't have to be restated at this point, but sometimes I think my entire life is tied to the weather around me. I like heat and sunshine; mainly hate everything else. I went to Turkey during one of this decade's hottest summers because I had been in England for three months and I needed the opposite of that. I think Atlanta's weather is changing, and, maybe (hopefully) the silence I've been in all summer is changing as well.



I'm going to spend an hour or so trying to write about this tonight. It's the first time I've ever written about abstract sculpture. I'm pretty excited though. I got a chance to wonder* around Whitespace Gallery taking pictures yesterday. You can see all my best shots here. I don't really understand something unless I've taken pictures of it, which I think is similar to the way that some people don't understand or remember a concept until they've written about it.

Two bands to recommend:

The King Khan and BBQ Show (sort of two bands, but they almost always play together. Currently out of Berlin. They won't tour here until next year.)
Cohen and the Ghost (from New Orleans, Baton Rouge-ish. Lap steel, and violin.)

I'm way more excited about one of the jobs I interviewed for than the other.  They're both editing positions, but the one pays really well** and provides medical and dental insurance.  Also, is in a vaguely internet related office, which is cool.  Anyway, even if I don't get the job, you should probably check it out.  Send me an email or reply in the comments if you'd like info.

*  This is a typo, but I'm keeping it.

**  "Really well" is still less than $40,000 a year.  I worked out recently that $26,000 per year could keep me pretty happy (as long as I didn't get sick, have a car***, need to go to the hospital, or have kids).  So anything higher than 26k is good, and anything way higher than that is a A Fucking Miracle.

***  As others have pointed out, having a car is a really crazy stupid gamble, especially for young not-rich people living in the city.  I tell this to a lot of people.  Sometimes I tell it to complete strangers and then offer to build them bicycles.  Not sure if that is a Good Habit or a Bad Habit.

TTYL, gonna go watch Olympics.

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex:

A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world's seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model.

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the "nonprofit industrial complex" and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt politi-cal movements? Activists or -careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden expos of the "nonprofit industrial complex" and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.

Amazon link.

---

I was helping some friends move this morning, and one of them mentioned this quasi-word-related-job that her company had open. It doesn't sound amazingly fun or anything, but I'd be working downtown, be insured, and have (to me) fantastic amounts of cash. My current to-buy list includes a big doggy and a new bike. The to-buy list is also a pretty damn good approximation of my mental age.