Portrait

dug this one up from the archives

"Grantasm" by Mike Stueben

Brainwash

New track, called Orbiting Thoughts
Orbiting Thoughts by Silhouette Sounds

Ninja Spacemonkeys Chapter 5

* this post has been moved to its proper location in Short Stories

The next Ninja Spacemonkeys

*  this post has been moved to its proper location in Short Stories

An Unprecedented Dilemma, A Simple Solution

We as Americans today face an unprecedented challenge.  For all of the lifestyle which surrounds us and was promised to liberate us from the degredations of animalistic challenges has become a thin, yet intricately webbed net designed specifically to demean and entrap the lives we might live.  For the promise of  ease we have allowed the slow moving political mechanisms of our supposed democracy to become so vastly complicated, that they can only be unwound and dominated by intricate liars and those with a desire only to dominate their fellow man.  For the promise of safety we have allowed the officers of our great nation to become highly militarized, heavily armed, and given them the ability to lie, cheat, and steal as badly or worse as the thugs we hoped they would arrest and remove from the public sector.

But even these glaring, seemingly irrevocable issues are naught when compared to the growing troll, the consumerist capitalism which is rising to eat alive not only the populace, but the soul and meaning of our great nation.  Step by step and day by day, a sense of what was once wonder at machination and items which add to the "ease of life" has developed into a nasty and bitter sense of entitlement and an addiction to resources like petroleum, corn and all its derrivatives, and the power to control our own existence in a world where the laws of nature say: "That will never be possible."  In a sense, the laws of capitalism, which were once supposed to allow the darwinist nature of our species to coincide with its monatary system, have replaced those same governing principles.  They have created a world where stupidity is rewarded, and originality is punished harshly.  People have changed the meanings of words so basic, like "person" to include corporations and the capital they bring.  We are, no longer slowly, loosing every bit of humanity we once hoped to uphold with ideals like liberty and justice.

That is the complaint, that is the issue facing us, that our government, our monatary system, and the people supposed to protect us all together and singly desire to dominate and enslave us for the benefit of themselves.  What can the American do?  What can individuals hope to accomplish in the meatgrinder that has been produced for the benefit of few and the dominion of many?  The answer is simple, and to all but a few, frightening.

Every day I see them, men that can still be considered men, and women who can still be considered women.  Those whom wake and work.  They walk the streets and catch the public transportations to their existences which the wealthy and powerful would call meaningless or demeaningly simple.  Those people who still work with their hands, who build something in their day, who still strive to better their world instead of profiting from the work of those "beneath" them must be emulated by all of us.  The days of calling "middle management" a career are over!  Commanding and harnessing the work of others is not a job, unless you produce proficiency and provide for an environment more conducive to excellence.  Corporations must be downsized, the overbearing size and influence of places like Target, Haliburton, etc. is a destructive and damaging element of our society.  America must return to the workforce, and produce!  Instead of outsourcing all actual labor and production to less affluent cultures. (That is why the economies of places like China are dominating our own).

The political sector must change as well.  The represenative democracy that has evolved into the monstrous aristocracy we have today must be removed.  Democracy must be restored, in absolute!  So that the voice and vote of every last american actually carries the weight it should always have.  The more complex a system is, the more prone to failure it is, and our system is dominated and controlled by those failures.  Lobbying must be abolished as a crime, if we are to survive this economically turmultuous time.  The rich must be stopped from comitting actions which to them may seem like clever ways of producing more income, but to the poor are considered acts of economic warfare.

Clairvoyant

Cards cascade across parquet

floor, a simple invitation

to a hymnal, or perhaps a beheading,

shadows quivering into skin within

shifting peripheral visions.

Slip into the scenery

slowly, as if hollowed and hovering

wholly towards some historical

unknown. A duvet groans,

garrulous as collective

unconscious, as the seas in which

we drown our conscience. Scylla

and Charybdis huddle in the metaphorical

floorboards for warmth, their memory

fading in apathetic future. Atheistic

tunes flutter in the distance, afloat

in Technicolor madness, in the striations

of rabid persistence. Listen, the spaces

between us have shifted. We are not

what we present to ourselves

pillowside, nor the reedsongs

sung steadily beneath our lies.

Flatiron

Our pupils sketched

the horizon-lines,

the somnolent zig-zag

of jagged rock

and waning day –

alighting upon

& abandoning

all the half-starved

epiphanies

(which remained in

their original packaging

as if cardboard and plastic

could become

a softer kind

of love,

a sturdier sort

of faith. )

The night taught us

more than patience.

Back from the Snow

Stumble Frames #11

Wake up
at a salt flat
and touch the ground-sky

hold clouds
and earth-sea

salt caked
into snow-covered mountains

watch as the water moves
from green spring
to white stasis

One lake was a gift
from the cave-god to
another,
a graveyard
for old trees

the lake was a piece of
a goddess' mirror
108 pieces in total

Fire on the Wire Wraps

Treble Clef:  The Ewer
The first of the new wire wrapping endeavors which have been occupying a vast portion of my artistic effort is the result of solid luck and rock finding.  My girlfriend and several others, (including my parents after a trip to Santa Fe) have all contributed dozens of crystals to a collection which has a fantastic variety of both geometry, shape, size, color, and purity.

Amethyst Micah

This extremely fragile piece of Micah was wrapped solely with the intent of adding a slight measure of structural integrity to the crystal which has some linear stability, but easily flakes off even with the use of fingernails.  The finished result is sound enough to act as either key-chain or pendant.

Update: Finished With the Monochromatic Man

Its taken quite a while, but I finally finished my latest piece of brushwork.  Given my involvement in murals, and the start up of my own wire-wrapping pastime, this piece sort of fell to the wayside.  However, my brother and his department at the Colorado School of Mines showed considerable interest, and have decided to hang the piece in the new building and robotics lab on campus there.  The figure has been finished, and the form holds three dimensions, also significant detail added on the head.  Final info: "New Creation," 48" x 36", Acrylic on Canvas.

Green Windows w/ Vocals

So my colleague and collaborator the Egyptian decided to put vocals on my new track, here is the result:
Green Windows Minimal Take Track 1 by Monkey Chicken Parade

Summer '11

Alright guys, I've been somewhat negligent and have left the blog to the devices of others for some time now for a variety of reasons.  The first most being that I have been incredibly occupied with a plethora of tasks including working at the liquor store, volunteering time at the FOE 215, and spending time with my new girlfriend.  However, I have been working hard on all fronts on creative endeavors including wire wrapping, mural painting, introductions to both tattooing and glassblowing, and more to come.  Here is some of the stuff from the end of the summer, enjoy.


The Elephant :

 The Butterfly:

This was the first real wire wrapping piece I worked on, and I am extremely proud of the clasp on it, as well as the durability of the piece.  The finished product is 5"x3" and made of copper, brass, and pewter bead.

The Dragonfly:

I find that I am both obsessed and fascinated by both the fidgeted compulsiveness of the activity of making jewelry and the idea of creating objects that resemble insects.  This is derived from the near ineffectual manner with witch we regard insects.  Wearing one around the neck to me is almost as if to say, "look at what good fortune has found me." both in the capturing of the insect, and in the sense of "look at the productivity of my ecosystem to yield such a beautiful item."  Final product: 4"x3"

The Room:

Last but not least is the 8'x13' wall of my friend Sierra Weast's bedroom which has been generously donated for my artistic perrogotive.  I started only with the idea behind a dream catcher, wanting to produce dreams of magnitude and complexity, and progress has been slow, but we are approaching completion.

Snow Music

Just recorded this song, its a little chilly outside:
Green Windows (Minimal Take) by Silhouette Sounds

Widowed Scribe

The Widowed Scribe

Where are the wrinkled

forebears, the fabled pallbearers

playing Atlas with table-scrap castles,

those false rascals

of whom you coo and spew

paltry praise? You speak

in arcane phrase, your prior purpose pawned away.

Our lazy ramparts will not dry. It has been

days; the walls fashioned of gum and imitation

clay sag and shudder in the rain. You abstain

from raids to forge a future from the fallout,

but your recycled paste of ash and glass laughs

at its past, this last homage to eunuch ancestry

nothing but a failed retreat.

Weave me a revolution, son,

lay civilization at our feet.

We’ll flabbergast history

and filibuster empires

(hands tied behind our backs);

although you have tired of the torment

of triumph, our ascendant dynamics

will not relent – your strategies

slip across my pillow, and night-ready,

I empty pauper’s pockets & prince’s petticoats,

I’ll burn bridges and banknotes.

I leave my name engraved

on the throat of paler gods,

pausing to admire the slopes

of vowel and consonant,

the intrinsic arithmetics

of muscle and mercy.

I could drizzle diamond and jade

on the cloud-caught remains

of Father Time

(a celestial array of age spots

and varicose veins). If you will not

stay for me, then remember your able hands, marred

by history; reclaim those moonside coups you’d promised me -

all in vain.

For this, you taste the

shame of man’s fairy-tale fall.

A Messy Divorce

Hello chums, it's been awhile. I hope Boulder, the Gulch, Steuben's mountain town, and Alyssa's present location are all awesome at this present moment. If not, I'm sorry. I can't say Littletown has been awesome, that's why I've been away from Littletown and overseas in the UK and Amsterdam. But I'm back now and have a silly sarcastic piece to contribute. It's my take on the restaurant business and a possible answer to why the restaurant industry loves cocaine. Enjoy, I hope.

I could spot them right away. They were angry, pissed off. Talking in hushed voices about alimony and child support over their juicy, red steak and salad. But none of it was touched. The wife hadn’t even moved her silverware. The husband, he just waved his fork around, stabbing the air at every point he was trying to make. I knew this because I wanted to go on break. But I couldn’t because of these fucking squatters. That is, leaches who sit and hold a table and prevent other customers from giving me tips.  I had been watching over this table for almost an hour and the only thing that changed from when it had been set was the little puddles of red wine spreading across the absorbent white tablecloth. I mean, I knew this guy was leaving her, but she didn’t have to make a scene and drink two bottles. 1970 was a good year for cabernet sauvignon, so what if he was cheating on her? I didn’t care, as long as I got my break. Nothing tears me apart more than having a gram of nose candy and not snorting it. Finally Silver, the owner, sees me in my desperation and says I can take five. She has no idea I’m a user, I explained my twitching as a bladder problem.

Euphoria. That’s the only to describe the feeling that comes over me the moment after I rail a line. Euphoria, in the handicapped stall of the bathroom, Euphoria, with the diaper changing board down and my tips receipt rolled up. Too bad that poor sap with his fork couldn’t feel euphoria. Too bad waterworks with her wine couldn’t feel euphoria. Maybe I should’ve offered them a bump. I felt so powerful. I felt so perfect. Of course it felt dirty to finish a line on a baby changing table. The foul odor of the recent diaper change invaded my nose. But it didn’t matter because my nose was numb. The kind of numb a nose gets after the cold weather punishes it for an hour or two. We’re talking no feeling whatsoever. I couldn’t quit snuffing. This always happens, and I hate it when Silver notices. I told her I have allergies. She’ll believe anything.

So I walked back out of the bathroom and back to the bitching couple. The same fork was still as poignant as ever. The white table cloth was ever so blotted with red wine stains. At that point I seriously considered walking over and offering them a line each. They would feel better about their situation. After all, I hated them before, and still hated them just as much then, but I didn’t care. They would’ve looked at me like I was crazy if I had offered them relief. I would’ve lost my job over euphoria. But shouldn’t I look at them crazy? I know I was a deviant. But so was she, with her two near empty bottles of cabernet and tears, and he with his near empty soul and infidelity.