on the desecration of art

From Downtown to Venice, the city of Los Angeles is stripped of her street art. Gone – it is nearly all gone. Miles of walls once covered with unique and compelling works of art now stand bare. Tens of thousands of graffiti – each one carefully crafted, each one applied under threat of imprisonment – were removed and casually discarded. This was once a city where people came to walk among the street-side galleries, where they hunted for street art in alleys and forgotten spaces, but no more. The artistic bounty of LA's children is trashed and torn; it fills nearby hills in useless and soiled clumps. The beautiful images that once buoyed with raucous passions the hearts of thousands of virtuous human beings are defaced, defiled, and destroyed.

The phaltscape is barren and ravished, a monotonous and boring wasteland. Now, the street art of LA sits hidden from view behind gates and guards, held hostage by museums that whore it out to their affluent and agoraphobic patrons. Graffiti is a meritocracy, the most free of free speech, liberty at her best; it is a realm of endless and rich possibility that rewards those who keep at getting better. As does the soul of a wild-born tiger caught, broken, and caged, street art dies when kept prisoner. Please, City of Los Angeles, stop wantonly destroying the art your people work so hard to create.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on phaltscape etiquette and standards

The urban bicyclist may differ from her fellow mashers in appearance, dress, and hairstyle, but she will share with them standards of smog-riding etiquette as extensive as those of any other professional affiliation. Since it would be inconvenient to list every standard common to the smog-rider, let us examine a few of the more practical matters. To avoid making the drivers trapped in their smoking metal boxes jealous, she keeps all evidence of her bursting exuberance hidden from sight. In order to inform the people around her of her whereabouts, she will sound a series of war-whoops and signaling-whistles piercing and attention-getting enough to prevent unnecessary collisions. She rides with proper stance – shoulders pulled back and chest thrust out – so as to isolate the workout to her lower body while allowing her eyes to scan the environment calmly and with keen interest. In order to stay upright and aboard her smog-sled, she is able day or night to repair and maintain it anywhere and in any weather, and although her conveyance will look dusty and well-used, it will be in good working condition, as she has always on hand tools and spare parts.

Beyond the practical matters just listed, there are spiritual standards common to the urban cyclist. Within his brains is an extensive collection of those routes that are the smoothest, that have the least motor-vehicle traffic, and that allow him to avoid running into pesky and annoying police officers. So as to keep his body in good working condition and to avoid the irritability and dangers associated with dehydration, he drinks regularly of green coconut water, or of other beverages rich in electrolytes. An honorable and virtuous being, he will carry his smog-sled when it can carry him no longer, and since he knows that bicycling is a dangerous activity, he lives peacefully knowing that death is rushing by inches from his tender flesh-bag of a body.

Here are presented but a few of the standards of smogriding – may you discover more, and establish a few of your own.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on B.I.B.L.E

  Last night, in Hollywood, I saw a bumper sticker that read: B.I.B.L.E – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Next to this statement was the NOTW gang sign of those loosely affiliated neo-Christians who do not consider themselves to be part of this world. A book more than a thousand pages long, a work so self-contradictory that within the first few paragraphs it makes two separate and conflicting claims of how this world was made, the Christian bible is not simple, basic, or easy – it is a confusing monstrosity too easily used to keep the weak and the spineless in line, too easily manipulated by incorrigible and vile televangelists. (Furthermore, if the supposedly faithful were to follow the orders of their Yahweh, they would be killing homosexuals and sodomist in the streets, as they are told to do in subheading 20 of a chapter called Leviticus.) I despise the NOTW crowd primarily because they lack the courage to just kill themselves and get to their Other Place already. If you can read these words, you poor born-again fools, you are of this world, and not song nor prayer shall change that.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on plantago lanceolata and street art

  The ribwort plantain, or plantago lanceolata, is a healing plant. When consumed as a tea, it opens the airways and clears up congestion while cleansing the kidneys in a soothing manner. When applied to an external wound, its antiseptic qualities will speed up the healing process and reduce the chance of scarring. For these reasons and for many more, plantago lanceolata has been used as a healing plant since before the dawn of civilization. In caves inhabited by early homo sapiens, we find remnants of ribwort right next to remnants of ocher, and of iron oxide, and of other materials used to make pigments.

  We might deduce what ancient homo sapiens did with the plantain, but did he do with pigments? He used them to beautify his environment. He drew with them upon his favorite rocks and trees, and he covered the walls of difficult to reach underground caverns with detailed pictures of his daily life in a process that would today be called graffiti, or street art.

  We have established that in graffiti lie the roots of humankind's artistic passion, and that street art is the wellspring of its genius. But, you ask, how else does this ancient practice resemble the healing plantain? Both appear as if overnight in underused and neglected places such as empty lots and abandoned buildings, where they thrive and spread. Great bunches of healing plantago are mowed down and landfilled weekly, their healing powers ignored, whereas great patches of street art are torn down and painted over daily, their chaotic beauty lost forever. Both benefit all who take of them, for they give of themselves freely and without ado, yet neither requires attention or maintenance, since each can damn well take care of itself. Both can cure the ills that plague humankind, with ribwort attending to the body's needs, and graffiti exciting the soul. So enmeshed are these two with one another, so vital are they to the vitality of our species, that they will be with us always, or at least until the last woman breathes the last breath.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

graffiti is the wellspring of humankind's genius

rimwort in Venice

plantago lanceolata grows abundantly at Santa Clara & Abbot Kinney

:})*({:

all the recycling and electric car driving and carbon reducing in the world counts little against the pollution created by a modern army at war

on the magical nature of street art | encyclopediamericanifesto

  There is mysterious work afoot in major cities across America – the work of street artists! Search modern urban architecture's unadorned spaces, and you will find gallery upon gallery of cunningly executed and deftly placed works of art. Look in the forgotten and the underutilized areas so common to today's city, and you will discover a riot of forever changing and seemingly self-rejuvenating works all crammed and pasted and plastered over each other. And if you watch over a few weeks time the canvas of urban art shift and change you will begin to wonder who are the persons who put up these strange and colorful pictures, and how ponderous are their cojones.

  It shall remain a mystery what exactly drives the individual to risk his life simply to showcase his artistic abilities; the street artist keeps from sight – only twice in the last two months have I seen street artists at work, and both times were at night. We may never explain why a person starts suddenly to affix his artwork to previously unadorned public surfaces, just as we may never explain why state and local governments hate street art as much as they do, or why they work so hard to cover it up and remove it. (I suspect that governments make street art illegal so that they can incarcerate gang members for spray painting, although these official bodies have in effect criminalized all public artwork other than that found on billboards or on other tax-revenue-generating places, which makes little sense from an artistic standpoint but complete sense from a capitalistic standpoint.)

  The self-directed urban beautification specialist, or SDUBS, works for neither fame nor money – she operates because she knows it is more important for her to pursue her Happiness freely and without restriction than for all the buildings to look the same. She executes her craft with the sole intention of making the urban environment more beautiful, and she can hardly stand to see a blank space go unfilled. Her city and state will punish her for her efforts, not rewared her. They look upon her as if she were vile and incorrigible scum, yet she has already forgiven them both, because her heart is pure, and devoid of malice.

  場黑麥ioanni elymucampus fecit

p.s. go to urbanartuploads.blogspot.com or to urbanartuploads.tumblr.com to see pictures of street art

as dogs do, so shall I do

  A woman is out walking her dog and the beast urinates on the sidewalk ahead of me. I step accidentally in the stream of piss spreading toward the gutter, but instead of reacting angrily I tell myself: The poor beast has to piss somewhere – why not right here in front of me? If the woman had curbed her dog, I would not have stepped in its bowel movement, but since she did not, I must scrape its shit off of the bottom of my shoe.

 I have no problem with the animal doing any of this so long as I might also piss freely into the gutter whenever I want to. As a member of the species homo sapiens and a bowel-moving, food-digesting animal, I shall make water into any nearby gutter if the urge to pee should hit me unexpectedly. Just now, I made water in the street near LAPD headquarters, at two thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, and no persons complained or looked at me funny. (I suspect that people do not confront me because I am tall, and because I look like I could be a mentally insane homeless person.)

  City-dwellers of the world, fight species-based discrimination by curbing yourself and pissing in the street. Do not risk injuring or killing yourself because there was no socially acceptable toilet nearby – celebrate your animal nature by watering the phaltscape with your golden showers, today.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

American heritage desecrated in Los Angeles

  Westwood, which sits in a shallow ravine beside the 405 freeway, resembled not long ago any other college town in America. But today, those of her denizens early at their business – the bums looting in trash cans, the kids heading to class, and the professionals out for coffee – these otherwise unrelated individuals gaped commonly in horror to find their little slice of phaltscape stripped nearly bare of street art.

  What draconian tactics the foes of undirected urban beautification are, and with what speed they move! Not five days ago, Westwood was where people came to marvel and to rejoice at the riot of stickers and posters and graffiti that adorned the empty and the forgotten spaces, where they flocked to gather images to upload to their weblogs, where they rested to gaze at the pictures of free art captured inside their pocket-sized computers. But now, with their town whitewashed nearly beyond recognition, native Westwoodians wander around as if betrayed, while outsiders hurry along shooting about themselves with strange and mournful glances.

  Layers of priceless street art were simply scraped off and discarded. Cunningly executed and deftly applied pieces of unique artwork done by world renowned artists were sprayed over and defaced. From the burning of the library at Baghdad to the fire that raged in L.A.'s Central Library, seldom has the artistic effluence of mankind been so brazenly and so effectively destroyed as in this current action. Imagine if a wing of your favorite museum burnt to the ground, and the pain you would feel; such is the pain that lovers of street art now feel. Picture someone stabbing at your favorite painting and prying it from place with a long metal scraper, and the anguish that would fill you; similarly filled are admirers of this all too fleeting form of artistic expression.

  Not only is the product of thousands of man hours of artistic effort gone from all but memory, but the cruel effort of the courageous and selfless street artist is at this time being dumped into a pit somewhere outside the town of Calabasas. The self-motivated urban beautification specialist never rests, however – she will be at it again, making her rounds and pursuing her Happiness with vigor and daring. As her pen forever flicks so her art forever sticks.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

(pictures of some of the lost street art are at urbanartuploads.tumblr.com or at urbanartuploads.blogspot.com)

p.s. street art found painted over and and similarly desecrated at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue – this may be a larger effort than I had imagined

on phaltscape-withdrawal and dating | encyclopediamericanifesto

  Modern sociologists look with pity upon the smogrider who attempts after years of absence to re-enter the dating scene while she is suffering from withdrawal from the phaltscape, but you and I shall examine her more favorably. For reasons mechanical, spiritual, or otherwise mysterious, she is not riding smog regularly; thus, she is distressed. With her smog-sled sitting dormant, her hands are less calloused, her cheeks have lost their rosy hue, and cheer has fled her moods. This is not an isolated phenomenon: from the urban cyclist orphaned within the last few years to the gear masher with layers of parents, any person who is kept away from something she loves (such as smogriding the phaltscape) will approach potentially romantic meetings gingerly, and with hesitation.

  The physiological reasons for the smogrider's hesitation are clear – since they no longer bathe regularly in endorphin blasts triggered by rigorous exercise, his brains are cloudy and sluggish; lacking their hard and churning labor, his muscles atrophy, and his limbs twitch and jump about at random. Additionally, his speaking is as difficult to understand as his morals are to justify (which we speculate is caused by changes to the physical make-up of the cerebral cortex triggered by conscious epigenetic manipulation). Compared to the physiological reasons, however, the psychological reasons for the smogrider's romantic inability are less well known. Rumors tell that in the hours leading up to his rendezvous he descends into a period of existential crisis that lessens only long enough for him to scream self-loathing obscenities. Other unconfirmed data show that upon meeting his date, the smogrider panics and bears his soul without compunction (from which point onward no modern girl will give him the sex), and that by the end of the date he is on the brink of total personal despair, his failure all but assured, his time and his money surely wasted.

  Denying someone what they love is a crime both cruel and heartless, but keeping whorphan from him phaltscape reek downright of madness.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

a g o t

  For a city to destroy and deface all graffiti other than pieces done by Banksy is similar to it removing from its museums all paintings other than those done by Michelangelo, and burning them.


Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encylopediamericanifesto - phaltscape withdrawal

  The phaltweary smog rider proves her phaltworthiness by bicycling the phaltscape. The evidence of her efforts lie in her callused hands, in her creaking bones, and in gritty, fleeting smiles that threaten sometimes to skate across her youthful and vibrant face. She accepts her station in life so long as she is allowed the exhilarating freedom of gliding around town atop a skinny metal sled. If she can ride smog in the city of her choosing, she has beef with no man.

  But what happens when injury, weather, or mechanical failure incapacitate the smog rider, and keep him from his Rounds? He will descend slowly but surely into the same type of madness that inflicts any proud and majestic beast that is kept away from its preordained way of life. Similar to a tiger taken from the jungle, the smog rider who cannot ride will develop a variety of diseases, among them shingles, bulimia, and long spells of wild-eyed, howling insanity. He will move about the area in which he is confined with increasingly erratic and violent movements until such time as he must be contained to avoid damaging himself. The color will flee from his once-rosy cheeks, he will put on weight, and his overall happiness will decrease markedly.

  If your smog-rider begins to develop symptoms similar to those mentioned above – if she turns cranky, impatient, or bossy, or if she loses sight suddenly of the horrible beauty of life itself – get her onto a bicycle and out in the phaltscape as quickly as you can. Every school-aged child knows that to keep an animal locked up far from its usual habitat is cruel and unusual punishment. She who smog-mashes, her insanity dashes.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on velocipedal locomotion

  Moving your body from place to place on a velocipede has many advantages over using a motor vehicle, or walking. To ride bicycle, to mash velocipede, is to issue a clear and open declaration of your physical exuberance, hurtling, sweaty proof that you are in both good health and high spirits. During your travels, you shall learn the rhythm and character of your region's unique micro-climates (so that you might weather the noon-time heat in a cool and shaded grove). You shall search without pause for routes lacking in car traffic, those newly paved, or routes superior in similar ways; your city will reward you with unique views of treasures previously overlooked. You will see and be able to explore more secret places more conveniently than if you were driving in a car, while covering far more ground than if you were on foot. Your iron horse requires no large metered parking space, nor will you have to pay someone to watch it while you are away. The only exhaust vapor you create is your own vital breath, and the only waste heat you produce drips as sweat from your ruddy and pliant skin. You will sleep well at night knowing that you dragged yourself across the phaltscape burning only the fuel found in your own tender guts.

  As a silent propulsion system, bicycling is similar to the Russian caterpillar drive of myth, identical to it in all ways but that the Commie bastards were fusion-powered. To move your body from place to place without a nuclear reactor takes time and effort, and bicycling is effort simple, honest, and pure. Dust off your old bicycle, you lazy carbuncle, and help us give those stinking Reds what for.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

Mobility-Oriented-Housing-Design - MOHD

  Have you ever had to choose between a great job and a great apartment? Have you ever wanted to just uproot your crib and truck it to a different city? Have you ever clawed your way out of a mobile home while it was being dragged along by a raging and swollen river?

  The new MOHD series from Maison Modular & Mobil* will let you watch out your living-room window without trepidation as the tsunami rips the surrounding structures to pieces. This advanced product allows you to replace your home's roof in a single afternoon; it grants you the freedom to move to any city that has parking spaces and to bring your entire household with you, immediately. The Mobility-Oriented-Housing-Design (MOHD) unit fits in a standard parking space, yet inside it is big enough to seat eight people comfortably. The unit is anchored to a bolt in the ground via a thick steel cable that is accessible only to the inhabitant via a floor hatch (this makes it difficult to move MOHDs unnoticed). Each unit fits onto any but the smallest flat-beds, and its underside-mounted wheels allow it to be towed (albeit slowly).

  The exterior and interior panels (which can be customized in most any way imaginable) of the MOHD are prefabricated in an ecologically sustainable process. At the core of each panel is sandwiched a mesh-like weave of circuitry that is meant to interrupt electronic surveillance. (This mesh does not interfere with the unit's built-in Wi-fi router, or with its send-and-receive capabilities.) The panels are attached to the structural framework in such a way as to form a tight enough seal that, if the doors and windows are too sealed properly, the airtight unit can sustain life while submerged fully (or at least until the fuel cells run out, because air is being pumped in via a semi-rigid, floating snorkel mounted to the roof).

  Conceived for the urban working individual who wants to save time looking for apartments and money on home-repairs, the staff at most home improvement centers is trained to replace or repair MOHD panels quickly and inexpensively; furthermore, the panels are easy to replace at home using a few simple tools. The septic system of the MOHD includes wastewater recapture-and-reuse and a high quality methane-for-fuel scrubber/extractor. Furniture in a variety of styles and shades is available for purchase from individually-operated designers. MOHD units are designed to connect to one another, so you can create a maze-like warren all your own in the unused section of your local strip-mall. (The standard MOHD design resembles in appearance a loaf of bread with a rounded top and corners.) Inconspicuous (most designs) and intrusion-resistant (all designs), each unit has mount-ready external hard-points for attaching cameras (or mini-guns).

  The MOHD is the complete package: it is low in price and it floats, it is partially self-sustaining (with necessary roof-garden and solar/wind upgrades) and simple to relocate, it is easy to repair and to upgrade, and it looks bad-ass sitting in the gloomy section of the cluster of abandoned stores down the street. Buy a MOHD, and never hunt for an apartment, die in a tsunami, fall victim to vagrants, or watch your house get towed, ever again. At select retailers.

*(MM&M llc.)