blazin' stumps all by my lonesome....

word up.

today,
i arranged my multicam tactical rig.
(that's gun-person talk for pretend army clothes)
i was very busy repping the molle gear.
threading straps and adjusting harnesses ya'll.
preparedness.
did you just say dorky?
did i hear you right??
yeah, well when the zombies start eatin' ya'll,
it won't seem so muthaflippin' dorky, will it?
i had a whole day to do whatever i wanted.
drawing, gunsmithing, gardening (sorta), and dog playing....
being alone, as in, by myself for the first full day in months.
glad to see i still know how;
however, the tag-team duo is SO much more my speed.
like 'the hitman' and jim 'the anvil',
you already know, ninjas.


our first ripe tomato of the season.
there were two a minute ago,
but olive, my dog, munched one up.
that's how it goes sometimes.
still, it's nice to have some harvest time goodies growing up for  fillin up my bellyhole.
now if the bell peppers would just get with the program.......


some days, kids.
people ask me about what i must really be like... 
(as if i can't actually be the person they are asking)
really, i just be like this,
only louder, and more handsome, and taller, too.
so, actually not really any different than right now.
truth-tellin' and folk life livin'.
a barbarian battle beast not even maxed out at eleven......


be careful in the woods, yo.
you could get crabs....
never quiet, never soft.......

the peril of being a truth-teller

i should probably start being less honest with people.
i'm not saying that i should be more tactful, or more polite,
because i always say please and thank you,
i'm just sayin';
telling folks about how  little i could ever possibly care about their less-than-large, less-than-lived, less loud, proud, and hard make-pretend daily world is NOT making me any new friends.
it's just so hard not to stop them before they get started, though.
i really only want to hang out with the bold-type thunder bringers.....
this profound revelation comes hot on the heels of a repeated mantra of indifference.
long(ish) days at work instead of fast times livin' folk life lead to short-fused conversations.
work, yo.
i need them ingots, son, but that doesn't mean i gotta be all 'whatever ink', 
t.v. babyhead style;
so it goes, more often than not, like this:
them: '....and also, i need you to add a blue rose for my weird uncle, and webbed feet on the labrador, because...'
me (interrupting): 'ummm, yeah, i don't care.'
them (confused): 'oh, well, ok, but.....'
me (again, interrupting): 'at ALL.'
them (somehow undeterred): 'yeah, and also.....'
me (resigned): 'AT ALL, at all. like, not at all'
them (slow realization dawning): 'oh. sorry'
me: 'word, it's cool, the why is not important, only the what and the how, baby.'
them: 'well, as long as it has green eyes to symbolize the spring, because one time.......'
mutha-uckas just don't grasp it.
rudeness and honesty are often mistaken for identical twins by people who don't wan't to hear the real hot fire being spit.
it's okay, because those not-so-perceptive overgeneralizers are usually total flippin' a-holes,
and not bein' down with them is like not liking to get stabbed in the face.....
it's a natural reaction.....

battle bards composed words of praise for worthy barbarian warlords.
'hood ninjas will bust doomsday dis' snaps on weak-sauce waterbabies all day long.
i'm aiming for the best of both worlds.
wise words and hot fire,
blarney stone kissin' and  straight-up sucka dissin'.
an overlap of two worlds,
tryin' to fuel my fire with the best of both,
never quiet, never soft......

hot hands.

i tattooed a volvo on a hippie's ass!
that's flippin' crazy.
her very first tattoo, too.
volvo+asspiece+18th birthday= bright future?
bold, son.
like a portrait of shawn hebrank with antlers,
only somehow less ridiculous..

july is almost over;
i'm wondering where all my ninjas are at.
i mean,
summer is happening,
i expect a crew of houseguests arriving daily,
but you silly macgillicuttys just aren't showin' up.
i got a grill, i got vegetables, i got guns, i got big heads, i got a river,
i got the goods, mad 'hood, in the woods, yo.
where you at?

aaaand,
if my hands didn't feel like burning lobster claws (with hands have teeth-aches),
i would be bringing the art-making fury, right this minute......
as it stands, i have a filthy pile of hard work ahead of me,
so resting my dextrous digits of destruction seems unlikely.
typing, ya'll.
the least painful mode of expression.
i could take it easy,
but instead, i'm takin' 'er loud and hard,
never quiet, never soft.......

open arms and closed fists.

my hands are f'd up.
seriously,
all the tiny drawings, knot-tying twine, gun blasting, and tat-zapping
are taking a hefty toll out of my big goblin knuckles.....
not fun, son.


livin' a ferocious flavorful life is turning into a well-waged war of wills.
me and my time makin' manly moves vs. gettin' paid, gettin' it in, and gettin' the goods.
work is eating my days like the new more-vegan-style mentos.
sorry, bee-loving little babies, they have beeswax in 'em,
so take your uber-veganism and
go suck off a honeycomb somewhere, hivehole!
on the ones, though,
it is not any less important today than any other day to make sure to keep your life valuable.
you are only as dope as your day was experienced....
so if you value your life, make it worth something.
reciprocation.
make that freaky sh!t count my ninjas;
work harder, play harder, love harder, live harder. 
make sure that this summer you use those extra hours of daylight to go all the way to eleven.


you gotta grow.
i mean it.
you are only as interesting as the people surrounding you AREN'T.
so, to be larger than life,
find the biggest and the loudest,
then turn it up to eleven....
i want a jumbo-sized, family-sized, fat american econo-supra-gigantical sized life.
the big kind.

like i said,
the big kind,
never quiet, never soft......

maker. believer. make-believer. believer maker.

sometimes, dead things are beautiful.
at the very least, surprisingly, dead things are not always depressing or sad.

dan found this on the sandbar in the river.
beauteous.
and maybe just a little bit sad.

of course,
sometimes dead stuff is awfully awful, too.

i'm getting new business cards,
a couple different ones, at that....
if my LAST ones were underinformative,
these new ones promise to kick it up a notch,
to ELEVEN.

speaking of going all the way past ten,
have i mentioned how dope my sweetie-pie is?

yeah,
the new hottness of jess guercia.
start buying her art immediately.
contact my baby at:
joonbugartworks@gmail.com
you need to own some,
it will make you look cooler and older,
like smoking,
without the coughing and bad breath......

in related art-making news, and my network of ill ninjas;
steve rovetti is back on it, ya'll.
check out rovettiphoto.com,
he's got the dolls in the woods on that jammie....
go say aloha, kids.


live free or die, b!tch-ass.
see that?
that's a family car driving past the shootin' range.
open air battle-beastliness.
that's what's good (and 'hood) in the woods.....


i'm working today, when i should be livin' woodsly......
i gotta get them ingots, y'heard?
bringin' home the bacon my ninjas,
there will be much in the way of stickin' ninjas for their papers,
never quiet, never soft.......

time blurs by....

sometimes a whole day just goes by.
i mean,
i made pancakes, went to the post office, did a bunch of work (7 tattoos), shot guns some more,
and went out for pizza,
BUT,
now the day is done. 

just be dope.
it's all the know-how you need.....

appreciation of the usual....

we shot SO many guns today.
oh MAN,
i may be a total flippin' a-hole,
but i'm a-shootin', and a-smilin'....at the same time.


preparation/meditation.....
the zen of barbarian battle...

a group effort.
teamwork is very important.
i know ya'll are vibing that jcpenney mom-style comforter, too.
word.


what do you guys know about really big shotguns?
3 1/2 inch magnum shotshells?
the BIG ones?

^^this is the face i make waiting to see someone shoot something so 'tardedly big.

ouch. ^^this is the face made immediately after they pull the trigger.

today was a good day: 
double barreled devastation? yep.
ak-47 thunder? yep.
m-4 mayhem? uh-huh.
yeah, ninja.
.....nice.

.45 caliber hot lead delivery service......
so dope.
(you may notice the 'never quiet...' shirt),
we doo-doo that freaky sh!t.....


the river is the source of a great many awesome things....
we hit that bad mamajama up after boldly blazing bullets.
we took 'er easy.
bullets, baked ziti, banana blueberry muffins, and big fun.

 
tantric shiva lingams...
...said to contain the loftiest vibrations of all the stones on earth.
on the pilgrimage through india,
these stones constitute a reason to stop at the river narmada to reach perfect harmonious equilibrium.
cryptocrystalline quartz, yo; you better recognize.
they are also a very considerate and thoughtful present from my good buddy mitch.
thank you, sir.
i appreciated the n.a.m.b.l.a. markings on the box,
as i'm sure the postal workers did as well.


the commonplace constitutes weak-sauce.
today we brought the thunder.
i am grateful for the time i have been given.
never quiet, never soft.......

new releases

tuesday is new release day.
books, movies, music;
tuesday is the big day...
i, on the other hand, am looking for NEW releases....
besides reading, and cooking, and shootin' guns.....
i need to replace recreational rampaging with relaxing keep-it-realness.
how do you relax when you're a berserker?
oxymoronic, no?
the old time battle bards used to drink.
a LOT.
that's not so much gonna be the way for me i think.
regular people eat pizza and watch sports.
i like pizza.....
but that seems a little low-end for folk-life fury and woodsly ministerial goodness.
i need something suited to my weird woodland realm.
bones, birds, bicycles, battle-axes, hot fire, lava, lightning.....
y'know, stuff that battle-beasts like.... 
new releases.
new methods of letting go of a wholly white-knuckled hammerlock on life.
moves must be made my ninjas.
so far, i haven't come up with anything.
warrior poetry becomes ragnarok reruns when real-life starts interfering with folk life.
time never moves at a constant pace.
and i don't know if time hung out with wilbur or orville,
but it sure seems to be flying these days.....

dan and ram are here. 
bullets are being loaded,
targets are being acquired and systematically eliminated.
banana blueberry muffins are in the oven.
i just finished david sedaris' new book.
reading. cooking. shootin' guns.
more of the same.
nothing NEW.
 
what do you recommend for the sophisticated modern-age viking craftsman?
i'm open to suggestions.....
not as loud as earlier, and also not quite as hard......

suspension of disbelief.

disbelieving in something does not therefore render it nonexistent.
nor does the opposite hold true.
lots of people, i mean LOTS, love jesus......
but he hasn't really made that big comeback world tour yet, has he?
c'mon.
i'm sayin',
since people started recording stories, on caves and rocks, even,
overlapping ideas have rippled out from a collective wellspring.
i'm not saying that this stuff wasn't primitive minds making sense of inexplicable natural phenomena,
i'm just saying that I wasn't there to disprove or disbelieve,
anywhere,
when every single group of previous peoples came up with the same explanations.....
therefore,
i'm calling for a halt to the disbelief in the fantastic.
or at least, to the dismissal of fantasy, myth, and legend as only rennaissance fair weak-saucery.
dress-up reality-escapists are not the hottness, but also not what i'm talking about here.
legendary myth may not be the whole truth, but i'll bet there is some truth to it.
i'm tellin' you, i can usually smell a lie from pretty far off,
and all that these woodland realm whispers are tellin' me is NOT that stinky, y'heard?
now,
 i am a firm believer in flesh and blood, bone, muscle and will.
but those raving raven winds of change and war,
the big bellowing bowl-over blowhardies
are exactly what we rail our frailty against,
trying to explain and make some sense out of.
invisible forces.
nature's inner nature,
time, life, death, misfortune, the whole thing.
hence the need to just be dope.
to wade in, waging an-all out contest against the inevitable.
being BOLD, all the way past ten, to eleven.
seriously,
barbarian battle-beasts participate and make moves to affect their circumstances and surroundings.
that's just what we do.
but,
that doesn't mean that there is NOTHING beyond what we can touch and taste with hammer-hands and tempered tongues,
i'm talking about secret universal plans, ya'll.
destiny? fate? i dunno about all that.....
but i do know that i am elbows-deep in meta-magical woodsly goodness every single day.
and there is a flow of cultivated vanilla-sky coincidences paving a path of purposeful power that i ride like thor's goat-drawn chariot.
hot fire, and lightning.
real world wonders and less-than literal litanies for my life.....
to clarify:
i'm not praying to shinto spirits any more than holy spirits or 80-proof spirits;
i put my faith in my own tacticle abilities,
my headfull of facts and figures,
my bony spiderhands and the art-makiness therein,
BUT my abilities are rooted in the willingness to recognize and interpret the signs and
symbols of the waking world around me.
a real-life documentarian.
it's all really happening.
that's what i'm trying to tell you.......  
i have never seen a fairy, or a minotaur,
but i sure do know a good allegorical metaphor when i see one.......
my disbelief is on suspension.
with the looming possibility of being expelled altogether.

if nature can come up with some sh!t like this......
i live in the here and now,
and those jammers make me believe in monsters, yo.

all histories are just visions of the truth as seen by the chroniclers....
open your eyes.
never quiet, never soft.....

saturday night fever

me, a trio of sharpie markers, and a pretty cool client.
5 hours later,
you get a really big sun.




this hottness appears courtesy of rovettidesign,
and his badass camera.
time is short right now,
but this is my life.
it's all really happening.
never quiet, never soft.....

baked ziti and porcupines.....

so we went hiking today,
with mr. steve rovetti,
who also helped us do some website stuff,
and took a whole heapin' helpin' of photos......
we bumped into a verrrrrrrry limber porcupine,
who scrambled up a tree.
waaaaay up a tall tree, in fact,
rendering the probability of photographing his prickly heinie unlikely.
otherwise,
the woodsly goodness was pretty great.

the mushrooms were numerous, and magical.
i didn't eat any, so just HOW magical is still a mystery....
i had no idea how dope outside is!
seriously,
tattooing does NOT lend itself to warrior-poetry.
luckily, my limited schedule has opened up a whole world of uber-hot fiery flavor.
i may be more barbaric in my berserker brutality than ever before.
i am confronting life on it's own territory.
natural weapons only, in a colisseum of combat....

i make dolls.....

and sometimes, i bring them with me in the woods.....
taking pictures to showcase the hottness is a challenge unto itself,
but making dolls look like woodland guardian spirits,
and NOT stuffed gaytards posed for cutesy gaytardedness is a whole 'nother level of complicated.....

wendy froud does this same sort of thing, only she also created the yoda puppet,
and is married to brian,
the designer on 'labyrinth' and 'the dark crystal', (look 'em up)
i am telling you,
woodland barbarian battle bard business is what's happenin'



i'm baking some vegan ziti explosion.
it's in the oven, and my belly is a-rumblin'.
listen,
you can probably hear it:
never quiet, never soft.....