Between trying to digest Foucault (because of Umberto Eco's huge joke), I've been reading bits of Charles Bukowski's Tales of Ordinary Madness. As I'd run out of blacks suitable for club shooting this weekend, and Patagonia Stand Up Shorts aren't suitable for work in the office, even in San Diego, I went to wash my dirty clothes at the local laundromat. For those of you who have been here, you know there's an interesting diversity in the inhabitants of this neighborhood.

As I was sitting reading Madness waiting for the spin cycle to end, a really old guy with a cane, sandals, a scraggly beard, a really dirty tweedy coat and what would politely be called a weatherbeaten face, sat down next to me. I was thinking "homeless" and figured he'd hit me up for spare change (of which, in a laundromat, there is no such thing). He didn't. He put a pair of Woolworth's reading glasses on his nose and pulled out a book of Bukowski's poetry.

I'm going to be like that guy some day.

Anyway, Bukowski was a drunk, a waste and and maybe the best working-class writer ever to do time. He's intolerent of pretense, and, as he illustrated in his book, made his poetry because he had to. "Writing chooses you; you don't choose it." Beyond that, though he talks around it, he doesn't try or want to analyze it. He does vomit alot though.

I've led many discussions about the nature of art and beauty on various fora. None of them have ever accomplished anything except disagreement and antagonism. They have been fun. A good word brawl never really hurt anyone. But analyzing anything to death, without achieving some kind of consensus, is frustrating. At best, they have encouraged people to think beyond the confines of film type and bra size. At worst, they've confirmed that no one really knows much of anything and forcefully impressed upon people that I'm either one of those pantywaist intellectuals or maybe psychotic and in need of professional help (which, BTW, I reject for reasons best described by Foucault in his exploration of power and its institutions).

Anyway, the DJ from Nightfall, Debb (aka dj demeanor, in the picture), who is also a tattoo artist has agreed to work her craft on my inside left bicep in exchange for some photography. I haven't decided what to do yet, but it's been about 28 years since I got my first one, and I figure it's about time for #2. We'll see. But I don't have any real reason NOT to get another one, and I hardly ever go to work without a shirt anyway, so I'll smell like Bag Balm for awhile and have something interesting to show those special few...

And I'll go on making photographs or something interesting.

I've been substantially gone from here for awhile. I haven't had much of anything to say, as a close reading of the above will confirm, but I've also been going through one of those periodic self-examinations. With no results, I might add. Maybe the process itself is important. I don't really know.

Anyway, it looks like I'm getting a pretty good response to the signonsandiego.com work - at least enough that I'll be shooting two more clubs for them this weekend. The lucky clubs aren't confirmed yet, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to wear my leather pants to at least one of them. And a short-sleeved black shirt - for the tattoo, you know.

So what does everyone think about models with tattoos? Or piercings? I've seen alot of those navel thingies in the slug of mainstream fashion mags I picked up at the PO Box today.

-Don