So Long, Milada

In Czech, milada means "my love." I first saw the Milada squat from the Libensky bridge on the north side of Praha. It boiled my blood. A crumbling mansion in the shadow of monolithic glass skyscrapers, holding down a scrap of wild brush. I ran the rest of the way there.
The second time I went, it was night. The squat had no electricity, so I blundered into the sunken yard, pitted with contraptions that could have been booby traps, ruins, sculptures, or all of the above, and stood outside in the orange gloaming of a winter city night for a long time, studying that building, dense, mad, and morbid as a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I've forgotten his name now, but with that dutiful hospitality I associate with anarchists and good Christians both, a young man came and took me inside and we went up to his room where we talked into the night, me attempting to use my dozen or so Czech phrases while he sallied bravely into English to meet me.
I was stunned by Milada. It was the antithesis of so much I hated. It was absolutely to the last speck of neon graffiti inimitable, savage, brazen, unconquerable, and palpably fragile. I listened in awe to the tales of Milada's past, victory after victory against the powers that be. It was a fortress literally held together by the violently creative force of its denizens, past and present, epic as Heorot and doomed as Troy. My host kept a little butter on the window sill, to keep it cool, and a dog to keep the bed warm. There was no running water, but his room was separated from the sky by a mere skin of tiles, so he caught rainwater in buckets and piped it down through the house. It was without doubt one of the most exquisite and terrifying places I have ever been.

Milada is no more. The government contracted a security company to remove the squatters, who were relocated after a long battle and negotiations to an apartment complex. Then they leveled the house.
Goodbye, Milada. May the ground you held remember you.

Postlapsarian Love

A buck and a doe. Entered the doe under the oak tree and a three day old horned moon. Insides poured out like flowers in a time-lapse clip. Pink nipples four in the white fur. Tore through blue cloaks of tendon to the mortal red fount. No fat to speak of. Less edible material than a labrador. Hours, hours of cutting with a dulling knife, separating gristle, bone, organs, air. Gorged. Flesh from her back dries in the kitchen.
Dreamed of love in the shadow of swords, without a sword.
Morning.
Went back to the sendero where the corn was laid out and sat on a bucket with my back to the rising sun. Gun in lap. Read those sections of The Second Sex entitled "The Lesbian" and "The Mother." No doe. Came home. Got my grandpa's shears out of the cabinet with his steel gray hairs stuck in them and shaved half my head. Only half.

The Answer to Your Big Question

There's been a lot of debate lately on a number of important issues. Obviously, though, one question has risen to the top, a question the importance of which cannot have escaped you. So when you find yourself asking yet again, "Really, though, what is the best squash soup in the world?" you know where to look.

1 big winter squash (butternut, Mother Hubbard, whatever)
a lot of carrots
thumb-sized chunk of ginger, minced
5 or so cloves of garlic
spoonful of bouillon concentrate dissolved in water

Bake all of the above together until soft. Toast a cup+ of pecans at the same time, but on a separate pan. Meanwhile...

1 red onion
maple syrup
black pepper
nutmeg

Sautee the red onion until it's almost done, brown. Add a bit of maple syrup, not too much, because the other ingredients will already be sweet, but enough to candy the onion. Cook a while longer, until the bottom of the pan is sweet n crusty.

Mix in some almond milk, say half a cup. If it boils a little, that's good because it will boil the tasty crust off into the mix. Chop up as finely as possible (grind might be the word for it) the toasted pecans. Mix in. Should come out thick, gooey, and unbelievably tasty. Puree all the oven stuff, including juice, in with the sweet gooey in a pot. Prepare to eat yourself sick.

DUUUUUUUN.

In one four hour, triple run marathon: that shit is printed. And it looks pretty much how Brandon's mock-up showed it. Not bad. The detail on that polymer is fairly mindblowing. If I like you, I'll send you one. Haha. No actually, if I remember your address, I'll send you one. So if you don't get anything, I still like you.

The early stages of the next letterpress adventure (polymer!) can be found here, as told by Brandon.

The Dead

Ode to Our Lady

This is the cover that will be on my paean to Betsy that I am attempting to set in type, (which is so much more trouble than I thought possible; I could write out a dozen copies faster than I could print them). I shouldn't be giving away the cover... but I couldn't resist. I did several color combinations, so each of the books will come out different.

Heavy Machinery + Beer = Hell yes we did.

Brandon, the owner of the Blue Barnhouse, brought the beer. I'd Vandercooked a thousand prints already, it was dark, and I was starving, but I agreed to stay. We shifted that monster C&P, just the two of us. Cranked up the jack, put rollers under 'er, and moved two thousand pounds of steel through several doors, around a paper cutter, and into the back. Dented some shit. Drank some more beer. Then tried out the NEW COLOSSAL PAPERCUTTER OF SUPREME DOOM. This is a machine that would sever your arm like a kid pinching off an ant's head. And let me tell you: it slices that paper smooth. Chopped another couple thousand sheets. And that is how we roll at the BBH.