Things That Last

Things that last:

bourgeois entitlement via private school (very long-lasting)
vinyl records
ex girlfriends
Tao Lin's concept of 'two year lease'

Things that do not:

orgasm
guacamole
guacamole-flavored orgasm
solar system

Vidi This

Sasquatch Music Festival 2009 from Erik Stinson on Vimeo.

No Music

h8 Camping

The wind rises out of the Columbia Gorge. Fills the campground with dusty lashes,
lashed down tents. Music shifts across distances. I feel tired, and sunburned around the edges.
Not sure what to say in the windy heat. I wish for the calm of night, up-valley, water across river stones, the comfort of my parent's summer homes.

Someone says they feel old. I try to feel ageless. But fail. We are both 21. I know this.
My childhood is complete. Summers out of town will turn sepia and fade into
cool darkness at the back of my mind on lonely warm nights.
What will remain seems callus, inexplicable, dangerous.
Like music festivals, alcohol, sexual relations.

Watching windmills across the valley. Feel vacant, eclipsed by the day. My friends ate some mushrooms and now they fade in and out of the afternoon sun,
hair dusty in the light. Listening to Air featuring Jarvis Cocker,
soothing waves of synthesizer music. Other sides of many valleys more distant now.
Sun lower. "Let's face it now, it's over," coos Jarvis.

Might be withering, dying at the same speed as the sun.
Only a few billion years until solar system becomes obsolete
via expanded sun, implosion. Feels like slowest outdoor party ever.

Juggalo

4233 Promotional Video

'4233 7th Ave' Promotional Video from Erik Stinson on Vimeo.

new book by Menthol UP: 4233 7th Ave

In the last few weeks I've been wrapping up my thesis and thinking about moving away from wild, woolly, rainy, drug-addled Seattle. I wanted to have some kind of tacky scrapbook or keepsake to remember my college days. I was going to edit some stories or finish something. Instead, I decided to just publish what I have, in chronological blog order, using copy and paste. It's 223 pages, dated from newest to oldest, no pictures. No editing, and including multiple versions of works in progress. The entire VACATIONS / MENTHOL UNIVERSITY PRESS blog from first entry in November 2007 to May 2009. Here is an older excerpt newer readers may not recognize.

In death, the men seemed to cuddle, their arms reaching through one another and into the pockets of their over sized jackets. They were a tangle of billfolds and cellphones, legs at odd angles and eyes partly open. I wanted to see something peaceful in their eyes, but I believe that the peace I eventually felt came from myself alone.

My partner and I escaped the Belltown loft and clung to each other hungrily. The sea air swept up the hillside as we ran to a bus stop. A car would have been too much trouble. Dianna, especially, had been apposed to using a car.

On the day I met Diana, she and I were the only members of the Club. Actually, she couldn't be a member. So I was the only member. The Club does not allow women to join, vote, or attend secret meetings. Women are only allowed to visit on lastday.

At first it was only Diana and I. I remember beautiful hair in the wind on the water front and my leather briefcase, wet from the rain and casually flung over my shoulder. On my lunch break I used to leave the office on 5th and Madison and walk all the way down to the water. It didn't leave me enough time to eat but I liked to see the water in all seasons and smile at the tourists discovering historical landmarks and charming curiosity shops.

On that afternoon she discovered me leaning on a pier, pulling on a menthol cigarette, because it was almost warm that June and because my employer tried to deny me health insurance because of my smoking. I knew several other smokers at my firm and not a few cokeheads, but for some reason I'm the kind who is picked on by superiors for bad habits. The world is not fair.

Buy directly from Lulu for $12:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/4233-7th-ave/7166117

Or message me and I will give a steep discount if you are local (Seattle or Oakland). There will also be copies at my Graduation party in Redmond on the 13th of June.

Thanks for the support or something.
Erik, CEO MENTHOL UP

EW GROSS!

High School Japanese Teacher Suggestion

Thesis Screenshots

SF SCENE??!

SF SCENE?

Just read a bunch of old blog posts by me

Did not remember being such an aggressive asshole. Sorry everyone. Also found that I have actually live blogged about "clearing the dace floor" which is something I though only Sam Russo did. Embarrassed.

The First Thing I Ever Posted To This Blog

Fucking In The Streets (November 2007)

The Paris night is a textureless, dull incandescence spreading slowly over a centerless compound of warehouses. Buildings without faces hide boxes of children without faces. Every blank concrete edifice is perpendicular to lines crossing the side streets, cutting into the heart of the city and dragging filaments out across Europe. These sinews nit together special secret paces on the edges of cities—places where the torn seam of a forgotten dream opens holes into something deeper, something that existed before cars and planes and trains made their commercial trails through densely populated regions of our memories.

Two figures stand in an unmarked doorway. They have walked for an indefinite time, finding their drunken way from a remote bus stop.

For Jason it was another warm callus evening in the streets of his Paris.

For Steve the night was an exhilarating collage of darkness. The bus ride had been a narcotic crescendo, familiar in its haste, oppressive city aesthetic driving into the massive industrial blackness. Here, the old city is unrepresented, displaced by the thorough corporate planners.

“Can you believe there are people out there who want this to end?”

“What do you mean?” asked Steve.

“You know, the Puritans, the bureaucrats, the monotheists, the people who still watch broadcast television.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re totally baked.”

“Oh Steven. You don’t remember all those history classes. I was high but you were asleep, a much graver condition. I must tell you: there are still people out there who believe in all of this.”

“Yeah cockmuncher, I’m one of them.”

“You don’t believe in anything you can’t fuck.”

“Fuck you,” and Steven emphasized his point by stamping out a cigarette and punching Jason in the ribs in one fluid motion.

Finally someone opened the door. The light from the interior flashed across their faces. Inside there were fifty people in various states of deconstruction, dancing an unsettling rhythmless movement, talking around long foam lounges, or staring intently at A/V projectors.
Large, semi-permeable projections transpose themselves into the thick black warehouse depths. On a wall, two people are falling in love, silhouetted against a tropical moonscape. Tropical palms dance in what must be a cool tropical offshore flow.

Another screen shows a colony of ants. They consume a small cow that has become sick and fallen into their path.

In another square of light, a mountain range endures a heavy snowfall.

Nobody knows—nobody cares—if they perceive these things in the proper way. It’s a proper party where life becomes uncomplicated in a terrible, horrifying carnival of unfeeling, of antiseptic surfaces in the moonlight. The young men and women are wrapped in themselves: only together for the sex, only having sex so they can be together.

“Do you want to dance?” asked Dominique as she drugged Steve’s drink.

“I don’t want to see you alone.”

“It won’t be a problem for long, Luc is coming back from La Defense soon.”

“I would expect that. It’s his party.”

“He’s just making sure the party lasts.”

A giant World War One-era biplane floated across the back of the warehouse. Jason could hear pornography and two young nude Vietnamese boys lip-syncing to a song by Elvis.

***

Frank watched his grandparent’s ancient TV set. He stopped blinking. His eyes did not move, instead welling with tears that dried into a yellow paste. The corners of Frank’s eye became caked and his lashes were black grates of silvery liquid.

What was this filth he watched? He learned that the geriatric day includes a wide selection of boring television. Sitting against an orange colored couch, Frank had seen three talk shows, two nature programs, and an hour entirely devoted to the sale of walk-in bathtubs. What Frank would have traded for a sex tape, something on VHS that would work with the ancient media cabinet of wood-grain veneer and long panes of glass dyed burgundy.

He imagined a nubile pornographer sitting next to him and sizing up the room for its movie making potential. They might glance at the lacy curtains on the window, eye the chandelier, and laugh heartily about the shag carpet. The young woman would invite him to share in the modest profits of the video and then ask him to take his clothes off, in a firm if cheerful voice.

How do you feel about naked women trying to kill K. Reeves? I feel OK about it.

What the fuck is happening. Watching Tintin in my apparent. I can't believe Spielberg is doing a live action version. I think my roommates are all making love to their various hobbies/passions: computers, magic mushrooms, video edits, and becoming a woman. Does not feel like a college vibe. I feel like a quiet ball of calmness in a sea of irreverent, unwashed dishes and just a little bit of resentment. Working on thesis, obviously.

4real need to 'work on thesis'

Meeting An Old Friend On My Flight Home

The plane was bouncing, but not in a dangerous way. It was rhythmic and slightly nauseating. He and the airplane climbed together through the thick clouds above Marin county. His ears popped. I could hear a noise coming from his headphones, a hiss, above the sound of the engines. We sat over the wing, still, hung over the ocean. I wanted to tell him not to worry about grad school (he wouldn't), or about the girl he had been visiting occasionally, who might leave him, finally, just as he was able to join her in California. They had not met on the internet. And they were both very attractive.

He was so high. We were both gone, really. Drinks in the terminal. Seven dollar beers. And I felt like I should say something. His face was too calm, his hand too steady. I wanted to tell him something, anything.

I knew I shouldn't say anything because he didn't need help realizing that this easy streak might not last forever. But it just might. He knew it very well, as intelligent as I then believed him to be. But in those days we all heard this deafening sucking sound of collapse and decay, among other things, which had some effect on our ability to love simply and in reasonable slices of time: darkness, the night, your own body, and a sea of endless faces in time.

"You know she's not just a beautiful woman," he said.

"I know," I said. "It's obvious. And quite secret and astounding. I can't wrap my mind around it. Maybe that's something, just on its own."

"You can't wrap your mind around anything," he said.

"I know," I said.

When the plane reached cruising altitude, above the clouds, I felt uncomfortably exposed, like a martian astronaut who has hiked up to a nice spot on an alien mountain, only to find that the area is unsuitable for camping. Did anybody even like camping? The seat was too hot, the air too cold. My friend seemed to be drooling on his expensive shirt. I could not wake him. Then the flight attendants passed with drinks. He was still. I read a book and tried not to be jealous of him. There's no way to unpack your callousness on an empty plain of whiteness, infinite on all horizons.

Got In

Moving to Oakland. Already have Sonic Youth tickets for August.