None of the light fixtures work in the darkroom. I reached up into the ductwork to check one of the connections when, Lo and Behold, I found a stash.

This was no ordinary stash. This was a homemade porn stash. Perhaps the rarest of all stashes in the world of stashing.

This stash even had a title: A Lively Experiment.

At first I was suspicious of the fourteen-year-old boy that lives next door. But he couldn’t possibly draw on this level. I’ve seen him draw and he totally sucks at it. He couldn’t draw a tree for hangman. He would’ve had to hire his little brother to do this caliber of work and, last time I checked, his rate was $34 a page. Even I can’t afford a $136 stash.

What makes this stash the most interesting I’ve ever encountered is that it contains a verse of spanish poetry. Who does this mad stasher think he/she is? Octavio Paz?

My elementary spanish skills are beyond rusty, but here is the best internet assisted translation I can offer:

“when five anuses tapeworm, walk my bicycle.

when fifteen anuses tapeworm, ride with the light trucks.

work in the field with the flames. walk in my yes yes.”

(My dear readers, I know many of you are questioning the integrity of this blog. I swear to all things sacred I cannot make this stuff up.)

After finishing the translation I sat and contemplated in silent shock, but the truth occurs to me now: this is either A.) the lost and misunderstood work of the greatest artistic savant of the 21st century, or B.) a serial killer’s stash.

Right now I’m leaning toward B. Although I’m aware that the line between these two possibilities is mired in gray.

If any of you know who created this art you can either A.) offer me a fair market price for the work, or B.) contact a federal official.

Whatever you decide to do, first take a minute to enjoy the stash.

They shook hands and then chided one another. “This is the most beautiful desolate asphalt lot in the world,” I heard one say. Then they each took a turn pointing at the property boundaries and the roof line of my house. I think they came here to build a roost with all the construction equipment they stored away during winter.

While I normally reserve a section of my time for the enjoyment and observation of nature, there is something inherently unattractive about this particular species of migrating bird. They have a habit of building their nests with cheap and gaudy materials and, as far as the animal kingdom is concerned, they are not notable for their architectural abilities. Sitting here right now, I have a view of the trees and rooftops of Ladd’s Addition. I can see the tip of the Portland skyline and the West Hills behind it. When the sun sets it makes a perfect scene.

If the business suit goose moves in to the lot, I will never see this ever again. At least not from this window or any other in my quarters.

When I took their picture, I forgot to turn the flash off. The burst of light startled the clutch and they ran to their cars and drove away in different directions.

Today, I frightened the birds of prey away. Something tells me they will be coming back to breed.

Our report suggests that there are other factors involved as well, like a record number of women who no longer find laziness endearing. As one disgruntled girlfriend put it, “A boyfriend who stays in bed just isn’t any good in bed.”

Stay-At-Home Boyfriends of America have responded to this crisis with a statement defending their lifestyle. Consistently warm beds, reliable mailbox service and codependent companionship were all cited as benefits to stay-at-home boyfriendism.

“Is this really what women want?” said a newly single stay-at-home boyfriend, “To come home to an empty house with food in the refrigerator and no dishes in the sink? These women are going to wake up cold, fat and unfulfilled next winter.”

Women are expected to stick with this new trend and are also set to release a new list of demands for boyfriends this summer. Preliminary data points to higher standards in male life and career planning, the rejection of the term “freelance” as an official employment status and a return to the “male payment” method of dating, shopping and apartment rental.

“A lot of politicians are focusing on the Americans who are unable to make their mortgage payment this month,” McCain said, “but no one is talking about the Americans who can’t afford to make their Hummer payment or to fill their Hummer’s gas tank. These are my constituents, greedy hard-working American assholes, and I am here to help these scumbags.”

Under McCain’s ambitious new plan, the treasury would buy all of the Hummers in the United States at full blue book value. “We are going to get this awful burden off of the American people’s shoulders,” McCain said, “And while I am at it, I am going to use these Hummers to fight the Wars on Terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and to initiate my planned invasion of Iran in 2009.”

“Not only will our troops have the best vehicles to exterminate terrorists and insurgents with, they will also have some great new features in their combat battallions, such as leather seats, CD player with iPod compatibility, air conditioning, 25-inch chrome wheels with spinny disks, and TV sets in the headrests,” McCain said.”Our troops will be better equipped on the ground and will be better prepared to wage the most comfortable, luxurious never-ending wars in World history.”

Little did I know that I had signed a deal with the devil. Now, every two weeks, Michael sends me a copy of his newest publication. Rain, sleet, dark of hangover, the newest Burnside Represent hits my mailbox. I have a back log of issues in my bathroom waiting for perusal.

Keeping in mind that I have now met Michael twice, it is both miraculous and sad that he is my #1 mail sender.

In honor of Michael, I am asking the world to do one thing and one thing only: START MAILING MORE CRAP.

Mail is a beautiful thing. Let me get all of you up to date on proper mailing technique. Basically, you put something in a box or envelope, put some colored money (stamps) on it, put that into a blue box on the corner and… Voila! some dude with burly, hairy calf muscles picks up that envelope or box and walks it straight over to your friends house!

Think of it like email, but with out the “e” part. Imagine the possibilities: instead of sending someone an impersonal email forward of a funny cat hat, you could send them an actual hat for their cat! Now, what do you think of that?!

Bottom Line: Mail is totally the most awesome genius invention ever. Why didn’t I think of mail? I’m always late on the good ideas.

I have set up a makeshift mail station in my home. Please send me your address (or email me) and I promise to mail you some awesome garbage from my awesome mail station. All that I ask in return is that you also construct a postage center in your dining room and mail me something random or valuable.

Timothy Herby Belrose

1539 SE 21st Ave.

Portland Oregon 97214

See you in my mailbox.

lucien heatherstone

On a recent anthropological survey of the Rogue River valley of southern Oregon, I discovered an unknown culture living in the native vegetative structure. The Dreadnecks, rumored to be among the lost tribe of Judah, were sent into exile after the Assyrians totally maimed the kingdom of Isreal back in the dizzay BC.

Bama

They have been living right outside Grants Pass untouched by the outside world for millennia. As an observer of their annual Solstice Festival, I noted many aspects of their culture.

Immediately visible was their self-sustaining organic gardens, meditation temples and feral children. But it was their true nature revealed when the chainsaws, monster trucks, epic wooden waterslides, drunken skateboarding and debauchery began.

One thing was obvious: these Natty Dreadlocks were total Rednecks. Before I met the Dreadnecks, a grafting of two cultures so incongruent, and often hostile to one another, seemed impossible. The Dreadlock stands for everything the Redneck detests, and vice-versa.

What I’ve learned is that a culture left on its own can mutate and change in ways unfathomable. This is mainly for survival, but also for the enjoyment/destruction of nature, the conservation/depletion of resources, and the pure thrill of good old fashioned Hippie/Redneckery.

Eric Von Prizen

If there is one thing I know for sure it’s that you just can’t travel enough. I think of world travel as my civic responsibility. I also have this constant, nagging feeling that there is something really important I need to find and I’m not going to find it unless I keep looking in places REALLY FAR AWAY.

These are some photos from some of my favorite expeditions. Go ahead and click on them to make them bigger. My kickass friend Chainsaw Chad Cheeney took the photo of me playing Putt Putt. All were taken on various trips to California, Oregon and Nicaragua.

I found a REALLY COOL SHIRT in Nicaragua. See, travel pays.

I stopped thinking about the scavenging birds. When the weather got nice this Summer I spent many days staring out my back window. In the evening the trees swayed in the breeze and dropped their offspring into the wind. Flowering bulbs popped up from every median and corner of the lot and shot color in every direction from here to infinity. When the sun fell into the West Hills and blankets of red and orange ran to the opposite horizon, my vacant lot was no longer vacant. Its emptiness was full of beauty.

Monday morning a band of weasels snuck into the lot and erected a chain link fence around it. They are the only animals I have ever seen who will trap themselves inside a cage. Once they secured their new territory I heard the gargle of diesel engines pull through the metal gate at the end of the property.

Like an act of God, the machines that the business suits had stored away last winter awoke loud and hungry. They set immediately to work by eating the old church. The machines had to fight the weasels for the pieces that fell to the ground. The weasels wrestled away bits and pieces and put them into boxes to send home to their families.

The weasels stole chunks of metal, too. Weasels and ravens both collect shiny things. The raven does it for aesthetic appeal and the weasel thinks only of the jealousy he will bring to the blackest of birds. The raven is the enemy of both the weasel and the business suit.

At the end of the day, the lot was silent again. The weasels and the machines were tired from their full bellies and disappeared to nap. The sun rested on the West Hills. A bum pushing a shopping cart full of cans stopped his rattle to look at the demolished church. From my window I could tell that he was thinking the same thing that I was:

Our beautiful vacant lot shall be neither beautiful nor vacant no more.

In the documentary bearing his surname, illustrator Robert Crumb admits that he copies snapshots of the urban pandemonium of power lines, buildings, streets and other infrastructure in his drawings. “You just can’t possibly make this stuff up,” he says.

It’s true. It takes thousands of people working for decades to make the disastrous mess we call our urban landscape. While some approach with aesthetics in mind, others are just trying to move resources, people and communications down the line on the public’s dime. What we urbanites end up with are areas of impeccable taste, function and order, and also places that are unforgiveable architectural and planning catastrophes. No one with any reasonable talent could ever imagine something as brutal, ugly and commonplace as the modern strip-mall.

Using Portland, Oregon as an example, my neighborhood, Lower Hawthorne, is an enclave rich in density. There are apartments, houses, movie theaters, parks, and cafes all around me. The area south of me, Ladd’s Addition, is built on a European grid, with rose gardens in the intersections and an overwhelming sense of composure.

82^nd Street, on the other side of town, is a polluted wasteland. An endless promenade of used car lots, prostitutes, tweakers, and Wal-Marts is all you will find there. I would not send anyone to 82^nd Street for any reason on earth except to use the drive-thru at Don Pedro’s #9 to get me a carnitas burrito, two crunchy asada tacos and an horchata. Folks in the know have told me that the city of Portland has accepted that 82^nd is a necessary and incurable sacrifice zone; the last place where a CEO can build a Home Depot without facing a mob of angry, educated and organized NIMBYs.

I am trying to find the beauty in these landscapes, but all I see is failure. My theory is that we have been duped by our economic security. Mainly what I am thinking of here is the price of gas. We have spent the past fifty years looking at the world through a windshield. Everywhere we travel our humanity has been jaded by this giant metal box that travels incredible speeds and distance, always gathering and gathering. This device has affected everything in our world, most notably its scale and use of space.

Being the glass-half-full type, I have decided to welcome the advent of $4 a gallon gas. Driving is no longer fun, it is literally taxing. What we cannot miss here is the opportunity presented to us: this is our chance to take back our cities. While the automobile has ushered in the modern age of transportation, it is time for it to become the background of the age of Aesthetic Reason.

Think of all the asphalt we can turn into parks and gardens. Just like during the second World War when people donated metal to make into munitions, we can donate our out-of-date vehicles to be remanufactured into mass transportation, bicycles and sweet Jetsonian metal buildings to house our burgeoning population. Humans have officially given rabbits a bad name. The only place left to go is up. And I’m dying to get my hands on one of those robot maids.

Next time you think about filling up your tank to go out alone and buy some cheap Chinese crap at a bloodsucking capitalist strip-mall, instead think about taking a walk, riding a bike or the bus. Driving too much is a bad habit just like drinking too much, but a little libation never hurt anyone.

The point of is that if you change your habits, the world will change to accommodate them. Look at the drawing the top of this page. I would not want to live in the first panel or the last, but somewhere right in the middle looks like heaven on earth to me.

The sun has burned through the clouds of this woody Pacific metropolis after six months of sub-tropical rain. My neighbors and I dry out our wintered bodies on the scraps of grass and sidewalk outside of our apartments. This is our plantation. The sun is warmer than last October’s, the grass is greener, and the mesquite charcoal has taken more fluid to light than I first applied. My bar-be-que pit is black, the only logical color for a kettle style pit. All other colors are lame and superfluous; they will all blacken in time, or else they die lonely, cold and ornamental.

The moment to reflect is rare. The folks across the street in the Victorian mansion have given me a service table from the demolished Hilton Hotel. Stainless steel and weathered chrome, it rolled and creaked through a million black tie dinners. It has come home with me to bar-b-que. It, too, will blacken to match.

It is quiet when I start the pork ribs. Three racks laid side-by-side one another look bony and Paleolithic. The popping and sizzling starts. Urban man steps backward in time to meet his mother fire. He tastes his first warmed kill. The populous has amassed steel and brick all around him but he is the one whom still thanks the flame.

The tribe has come to share. Dogs show their teeth and tear at scraps of meat. A man arrives on a black motorcycle. He is tattooed with stalks of wheat, cannons and a rabbit. He hands me a bag of poultry, lime, cilantro and serrano peppers. The ribs boil in the kitchen where the flesh begins to drip off the bone. The air, smoked and sweet, lures.

Women arrive with drink. Children run and laugh. The sun does not get low, it hovers. Voices gather speed and inflection. The world is welcome on my doorstep.