“Great Lakes Now checks in with Duluth mayor Emily Larson in an update on the improvements being made to the Lake Superior city’s waterfront, which resiliency efforts were featured in a ‘Resilient Duluth’ segment in June. “
At age thirteen in 1981, I made plans to take over the world. I would form a military organization with a network of secret bases, to destabilize the nations of the globe so I could seize power. The Reagan administration had me scared of nuclear annihilation — a civilization gone mad. The only moral response was to end war by taking over the world. So I wrote a manifesto, detailed my plans, and designed superweapons. I kept these in folders in a three-ring binder in my top dresser drawer. Today, four decades later, one of those folders survives. It is titled “SULTAN: Bases, Robots, Missiles.” It contains my megalomaniacal manifesto, my plan’s diabolical steps, and some blueprints. The other folders are missing. I have a good idea what happened to them, or should I say, who happened to them.
The opening page reads: “This is a highly-classified, top secret notebook, full of my plans for world conquest, and absolute domination of the planet. Anyone (without whom I have first given specific directions) reading this book shall be dealt with accordingly. – Jim Richardson, Future Earth Emperor.”
AP: University of Minnesota, Duluth – The UMD observatory at the Swenson College of Science and Engineering has recorded a planetary distress call. The audio has been obtained by the Richardson brothers of Duluth, shared here. God help us all. (UPDATE below!)
Three of my Lake Superior videos are included in this exhibit of “video dress sculptures” with “looped video playing in three places on each dress”: The Invisible Woman: Videodresses. All dresses and skirts by Genevieve Davis of Wisconsin. Videos of Lake Michigan by Genevieve Davis, except the above: #1 The Politician, #2 the Mother, and #6 the Composer, which incorporate three of my Lake Superior videos from here. This digital exhibit will be at the Gender Museum in Karkhiv the Ukraine from January – March 2022.
One of the hazards of living in a house full of props is getting cops called on your casket.
Documenting all extant media coverage of my exploits since 2005. Sharing them here. Articles, interviews, TV, radio, all the things:
When my father died, I had a surrogate dad waiting in the wings: the work of Ray Bradbury. I was obsessed. I felt I would devote my life to him, a feeling common to loves which last no more than a couple years, as this one did. But they were timeless years. Between my 13th and 15th birthday, with my adult future on the horizon, I was still young enough for summers to last forever.
Now in my 50s, I retain the suite of Bradbury paperbacks I collected back then. I have no use for them, although no library contains merely useful books. I quit re-reading them decades ago. But there are many reasons for books to be collected. I moved on to obsessions with writers less old-fashioned and less overly lyrical, although not before his lyricism infected my own style. Yet even for me, Bradbury is too breathless and too wordy (although not chatty like Harlan Ellison). He wrote terrible poetry. He became a cranky old man. Film and TV adaptations of his work are, by and large, bad. I now consider him (along with his contemporaries Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein) to be a branch of Young Adult (i.e., children’s) literature. But I still give his books a treasured pride of place on my shelves, which overflow with his successors. Strangely, most of my adult favorites also begin with the letter “B”: Burroughs, Ballard, Borges, Bowles … but Bradbury got to me first.
My complete 13-part comic strip originally published in Duluth’s Transistor circa 2008. Much information from E. Jean Carroll’s book, Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson. In addition to ripping off Frank Miller, I copied several panels from X-Men comics, and some Hunter photos.
I woke up this morning and said to myself, “I’m going to Park Point to take pictures of mushrooms in sunbeams,” and indeed I did (some sunbeams not included). Along the way I saw many strange and wondrous things, it was like The Odyssey. Pics below the fold:
“Bob Dylan got away with murder.” —John Lennon
October 1960. Nineteen-year-old Bob Dylan takes the bus from Minneapolis to Duluth under a cloudless sun. With a head full of songs, he steps off the Greyhound carrying a backpack and two guitar cases. One case has a sticker saying “Ten O’clock Scholar Coffeehouse.” The other has blue words painted on it, “the Tombstone Blues.” A cab drops him at the Kozy, a desolate shithole even then. He rents a room. Placing the backpack and Ten O’clock Scholar on the bed, he leaves with the Tombstone Blues.
Bob walks a few blocks to his childhood home in the faded warmth of dim memories. Then he heads toward the Owls Club. He tries not to look at St. Mary’s Hospital, where he was born, as if he holds a grudge. Entering the club he walks past the bar to the pool room. Cigar smoke fills the air. He is greeted by the Scaletta family: Louie the King, Frankie Mineshaft, Mack the Finger, and Sammy Gaspipe. Several other made men and tough guys haunt the shadows. The King shakes his hand. “Good to see you, Bobby. After this, your debt is paid. But it’s too bad we gotta lose you. Sure we can’t convince you…?” Bob feels the menace of the question but he knows the King respects him — and maybe even fears him a little bit. “No thanks Louie, I got something else in mind for myself.” “Well I tell ya kid, it’s been a pleasure to watch you work.”
I successfully transplanted these phallus impudicus (“impudent phallus,” aka the common stinkhorn) from one end of town to another in my diabolical plan to expand the range of this deLIGHTful species.
Glensheen Mansion still has not denied the story of their denial, which if you think about it, confirms its veracity. Meanwhile the occult community has found the story — perhaps through a crystal ball! — and for the most part, they ain’t havin’ it. Four examples:
THIS IS A JOKE WE ACTUALLY LOVE MERYL STREEP. One night I dreamed my step-brother Martin in Kansas City called Meryl Streep a hack. When I told him about it, we both thought it was so funny, and cracked jokes about it for days. The result is this probably misguided video making fun of Meryl Streep WHOM WE ADORE
