treehouse poem

some one has hung a net at the entrance to the tunnels, for minnows.

this is me and the treehouse i built when i was small, with friend david

the tree has since grown around the wood (which was arsenicized) like gums around an ancient toothpick.

i remember pounding these nails in

and when david dropped a bord on my head and i thought i was dead from nail brane

i hope my son becomes a famous musician with fancy hands and a trademark smile, some day. Marin's eating my brane.

but for now he can stare at the multi-colored plastic things we have to make his brane grow

Abstract Gay Poem for John Berndt, on his birthday

I like how you sit in front-row,

your hair in an ambiguously dry flop,

lips puffed askance the projection screen,

legs extended into the performance area,

for shows that you approve of,

or curated.

Writing Sample for City Paper

BEST PHO RESTAURANT: THE ONESZ IN CATONSVILLE

As the ancient war-philosophers said, know thine enemy. The enemy of this paper is unrighteousness. What is this in the context of dining? It is restaurants that use hype rather than ingredients, sub-contracting to "reefer-truckers" rather than making an effort to go out and forage locally. In short, our enemy is a restaurant with an ego-complex.

The autumnal mowing down of enemies was known best by Mao, who's favorite season was Fall, because of all the cleaning away of life-scum. The campaign-pogrom-idea of "letting the thousand weed-seeds germinate, then plowing the field", became a standard motif in Post-Maoist China.

So we go into choosing the best Pho restaurant with great trepidation. Best not to let a restaurant become so hubritic and full of itself, that it goes and gets decadant, allowing the broth, man it's the broth, to fall into ruins. This is the autumnal cycle of Pho restaurants, get famous, then fall to the sickle again in sloppy brothing.

The best Pho restaurant is the one in Catonsville, past the Hon. Don't go there. Let the natives enjoy their stainless steel bowls of fresh ingredients, discussing simple, Vietnamese pleasantries. Don't make this Pho restaurant have to stock your highly-hopped, dog-themed beers. It's better in a post-Maoist sense to try to see some reason here, to not plow them into the ground.

Actually, do go there. That's what made California great, is the blend of hipsters and Asians. Any noodle house in "San Fran" will have a wide array of funky-dunk beers. Or even look at the success, as a franchise, of "California Pizza Kitchen"-- i remember as a kid, looking at the menu, and immediately homing in on "Peking Duck Pizza", and salivating at the thought of a nice crust, plum sauce (!) and greasy crunchy duck with fresh leekslivers, roasted in a hot brick oven.

That's what might save us from this endless Mao-ist cycle of pump up the restaurant and let them deflate, all the while spewing fowl anise juice that has not been correctly blended with the other 8 spices that go into a Pho bowl. We don't need the seasonal aesthetic anymore in critical restauranteering. Rather, something meta-seasonal, or perhaps shall we say Californian, may be the solution here. Allowing the seeds to germinate, get famous, appropriate hipsterdom, and fully culturate into a thriving, fusion restaurant, in a post-modern perpetuity of hyper-color plus simple Asian ingredients, with hipsters as "lead programmers" of farmers' marketeering.

-Peter B, for the City Paper (not)

Peter B: "I use MSG b/c it's like Computer Music"

Mayor Martin O'Malley has become the first Mayor in History to be "Abstract Gay"

Baltimore City Municipal Poster Design, as viewed in Jurors' Waiting Room, City Courthouse

note: technically it is illegal to take photographs in the courthouse. this was done surreptitiously with a webcam, because these posters are the most interesting part of the waiting room for jurors, there are scores of them there. they represent a unique history of design decisions, and are reproduced here in order to discuss this history. this article is bending rules, not breaking them, by using only lower-case; it is a "lower-case" piece.

many of them feature a design of "dialectic" as well as "razzle"

the 90's held much critical dialectical debate on topics such as what is art? of course, there still was a certain pizazz in the slicing.

neo-futurism is observed in hyper-color vests, mimes, and fonts, against a truly"theater dork" city-lights and monumental stage.

silhoettoes are a good way to transcend raceism. this is the kind of message-poster that i would stare at as a kid, trying to understand it, and eventually getting a headache from it. always, my friend, always- note the font.

this photo was in the same name as the others, so i brought it out here. look at that wonderful tokyou lighting on kii-kun's face.

this poster is the worst! i love it. the musical notes have a french horn in pink, right next to my ear you see it;. you know, baltimore has always had crabs, and now it has "hon" officially accepted by the mayoral }{ and municipal gov't ":}{[[]l,; [thus] we have crab-hons,'; clowns ;;] mimes,}{:" ice cream }{';';';';' flashback to now we have a thriving silkscreen and experimental jam band scene.

you know, my friends, when i was a kid my parents took me to baltimore, and we went to the aquarium. i may have seen one or two cos-play kids down there by the harbour, and you know that's all it takes in a kid's head, to trip some sort of switch or lever. since then, for many years, i thought of baltimore as the following:

"a hairy, but compassionate looking, man, his hair in curls and capped loosely with a jazzy french hat. the man is playing bongoes in a room full of crazy art."

turns out this came alive when i was about 22, when i met twig harper and moved to baltimore... he is totally such a man and there are many others here, it's like i have discovered an imaginary land that was leveraged in my brain a long time ago... he also has designed many posters which i like, and he would appreciate these posters here if not for he were ;']['.;'][';.;'

Geography of London, powdered data

When I think of my designs, or my computer programs,

I think sometimes of the geography of London,

inn muddy 9th century, and more importantly,

in the 19th century, with its modern veins and arteries

of people, money, goods, water, gas, telegraphs, church bells.

and yet the odd angles, following the Thames or the whim

of an ancient mythology.

programming a law, in various ministerial buildings,

pontificating, yet ruminating of

the psychogeography of bricks, urban exploring,

various pubs where legal opinions can be

discussed over ale and wood paneling.

i approach the barre,

a barrister,

a powdered wig

data,

the powdered man

powdered data

steam powered,

powder powered

steamship

legal decisiones

powered data

POWDROID

powdered android

starship whig

ceremonies

data

powder

Quick note on meta-technology

Attended a few minutes of Henry Flynt's lecture at the Red Room, before taking my son back to watch black and white mickey mouse.

About meta-technology. An idea, if it's good enough, can spread faster than any material known, being known by only thought and lightwaves makes ideas much more powerful than physics, chemistry, and botany combined. Even better than mathematics.

The problem with mathematics is sublimation. It sublimes every paradox it comes across, integrating it but also warning against it. Irrational numbers, for example.

Related topic, of course, is meta-materials, however, meta-materials build on top of material, while meta-technology can transcend material. For example, any internet meme that has caused virtual traffic jams.

My friend Melissa Moore has started a company which I think epitomizes meta-technology. Nikuu makes lamps. When I asked Melissa, do you use wood or metal or plastic, she said "well, it's complicated"... Observe and understand that she crafts in ideas, and the lamp is an ephemera of the idea. This is the ideal state for the artist in a global economy, for, the idea can be "border-less propulsion" and the lamp can be a token of wealth.