The Softest Person

Pickytown

2006-06-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

I wanted to leave everyone behind, but everybody in this town looks familiar. Many of them are carrying what may be mangled dolls in their arms, scratching the heads of the genius children as they parade through town. The urban planning seems distinctly unamerican, more like Dresden than LA, more like rat poison than the colliseum. Nevertheless (or thusly) I always know what way to go.

Genius Child Orchestra

2006-06-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

Alicia tells me of her other friends.

She treats the Genius Child Orchestra as if they were a video game.

She wants them to play our song, which is "Margaritaville".

I hate that song, our song.

The Genius Child Orchestra

2006-06-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

Nobody can play it like Alicia with her leg cut.

Friends on the Net

2006-06-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

http://myhousearrest.blogspot.com/

I have discovered that my old friend who I feared had gone crazy has his own blog too. He still lives in a world of hallucination and illusion. It's true that I received various tweaked message from Alicia, but I haven't kidnapped her. Last thing I heard she cutting her leg open in a motel.

Poor, friend, his ties to the world have all but collapsed. I am a "mediocre doll-maker"? I am a lot of things, but never mediocre. Perhaps I will make him a final doll. It will be called The Final Doll.

Strangers on the Net

2006-06-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

I have discovered that several of my customers have been depicting their struggles online.

For example this man:

http://brimsassemblage.blogspot.com/

It's hard to see how I can be blamed for leaving the doll-brains in the little dumb-dumb village. Their heads are stuffed like the head of deer.

Video Games

2006-06-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Instead of dolls I have decided to make use of my college training as a computer programmer.

My first game is called "The Genius Child Orchestra." The players each take on a character from The Genius Child Orchestra. The object of the game is to assasinate famous political leaders of the 20th century. So for example, there is one scene in which you infiltrate President Johnson's farm and try to drown him in the pool. In another one you try to sneak some arsenic in Chairman Mao's beer.

The second game is going to be a whodunnit. You collect evidence in a Museum of Natural History. You are a taxidermist. Also, the murder has to do with plagiarism. You have to learn how to forge things. I'm not quite sure yet, as I'm still working on the Genius Child Orchestra.

Also, I'm planning a game that kills your computer.

My New House

2006-06-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

I have a Victorian mansion. A dollhouse, said a crackhead who walked by on the sidewalk as I stood outside looking at the house.

No, not a dollhouse, I replied. A human house.

He wanted to tell me all about his own house. He was moving it "out of the ghetto" because his father-in-law was giving him trouble. Move it all the way out in the country.

Right now I'm sitting upstairs, tilting like the house. An ice-cream truck is jingle-jangling its song down the street.

The reason I'm quitting dolls is that I'm sick of having to deal with children. And the worst part are the other doll-makers with their Napoleon complexes and Melville complexes and oral fixations.

Goodbye Alicia (and the rest of your hooligans)!

2006-06-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

I'm moving north. I'm writing this from a Days Inn. A kid is sitting next to me in the computer lab, playing a game that seems to involve gouging. Tomorrow I will be in a new town and the only way you will ever hear from me is through this makeshift "blog."

I've had it with the doll subculture. A bunch of nerds sitting around trying to recreate childhood or the first time they read Keats. I will continue to sell my merchandize but I will have nothing to do with those silly buffoons. My next line of dolls will be the gouging line. That or the kid-on-the -computer-next-to-me line.

Strange Messages

2006-05-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

I've been receiving your messages, Alicia, but I can't understand them.

Who's barefoot? What does it have to do with me?

You haven't contacted me for days and then this?

The Mammalian Series

2006-05-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

While I believe my most important work are dolls like Tug Christ and my Max Ernst series, I do create a number of dolls for children because they are easy to sell to toy stores. This is my Mammalian Series. I don't necessarily do animals so much as I make dolls that have mammalian qualities - soft, boggy, milky, toothing.

These are dolls with dolls inside them and with a glass shard inside the inside-doll. Parents must remove the glass-shard before giving the toy to the child. I am not responsible for what a four year old may do to his or her own anatomy or the eyes of a friend with this shard, for these shards I gather in the street after a home game and they are terribly infected.

Fortunately only very rich people can afford to buy my mammalian toys, and these are the kinds of people who can afford to have maids look over their children. Sometimes a maid intentionally leaves the shard in the doll and a legal battle ensues. However, my packages clearly say: Remove the glass shard from the inside-animal before giving to child. Thus I am not legally responsible. Usually it's the maid that's responsible and usually she's fired for neglience.

I secretly think that the maids who leave the shard in the inside-animal secretly want to torture the eye out of their little prince anyway and my toy gives them the opportunity to do so without being put in jail.

I also have a series for poor children. I mass produce this series in a sweathshop in Asia. It's called The Truth. It's very popular among college students and other such mayhem.

I want to give one of the Mammalian dolls to Alicia and not tell her about the shard.

Busy

2006-05-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy. I've even been too busy to figure out who wrote me the strange letter about Alicia. Too busy to really truly figure out once and for all who Alicia is. Where did I meet her? How did she get so involved with my friends and customers? I fear I've scared her to the point where she won't ever answer.

Mostly I've been busy making a wide variety of dolls - classic dolls, deformed dolls, religious dolls, molly dolls, animals dolls, shrapnel dolls, music dolls. What has made me even busier is that in each one of them I include a clue, a deformity, a hidden object which will solve the mystery of why these dolls were made.

I have often felt that the problem with consumerism is that all meaning is obliterated. I am a firm believer in craft and meaning. All else is perversion. And my dolls without the proper understanding is nothing short of perversion. So to save my customers from utter perversion and depravity, I have begun to include clues - either in the doll or on the packaging. Alicia understands the clues and that's what gives her such power.

A strange email I received

2006-05-09T16:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Sir,

You don't know me. I don't expect you to have followed the progression of my art through the easily lost medium of the Internet. Besides, I am unsanctioned, so I cannot claim authority when I ask you to refrain from posting these terrible misives regarding our mutual obsession with Alicia. Regardless of the obvious differences in our view of this woman, I will attempt a thorough examination of the evidence, hopefully in my favor, so that this wonderful addition to humanity might be relieved, despite her obvious lack of concern on either of our parts, of the burden of the evil fem.
Where can I begin? Describing her scent and color as cinnamon seems tacky and cliche, but how else can I speak of this gingerbread holy? Where her corruption ended our hope began, and if you were not privy to this side of her nature then I can only hope you can pity me for having received its dangers and bargains in full earnestness. She whispered 'true' as though she were the ruler of veracity, and when I lay before sleeps' pleasant escape that word rings through my essence. Leave her alone.
She spoke of you well, and I hold no grudge toward you, despite her habit toward the end of our affair of mocking practically every portal from which her delivery to me was assured. When she met my friend the architect I felt the cold chill of lies as she manipulated time for the advantage of the conventional escape. I did not care, until I found your angry complaints. Now I must confront my lack as provider and lover, while you are free to imagine her as you wish for the sake of a false poetic fortitude that my own nature, alas, has denied. She weighs no more than 101 lbs., and I don't need to inform you, I am sure, of her penchant for black silk underwear, a favorite from my most plastic days.
I do, however, feel the urgent need to request you cooperation in the removal of any public discussion you may harbor regarding Alicia, as our acquaintances include some individuals with the authority to send your apparently unemployed and, without even a hint of bitterness, married self out of this country for more egalitarian and less American locals. I hope I do not sound threatening, as I have been acquainted with the Paris '68 crowd and admire them as much as the next obsessive.
Alicia has denied both our corporeal fates her own, so the next best thing I can wish is the removal of proof from any accessible medium I might find. I happen to be very skilled at finding mention of her, by the way. Enable both our escapes. Burn her memory from your mind and manuscript. She deserves the loss. She forgot the sensations.
Your most reluctant yet sincere Friend,
Tristan E.Cochrech

Doll Conference in Mississippi

2006-05-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a trip to Mississippi for the annual Crucial Doll Exhibition. I don't know how to link, so you'll have to google it. It was held at the Southern Miss in Oxford, MS.

As fate would have it, the conference took place at the same time as two similar events. A special bichon dog exhibit and a conference on Scandinavian literature. The dog show had an old-fashioned southern band playing for the dogs. I hate those dogs. The people next to me in the motel had little yappers with them in the room and those damned animals woke me at an ungodly hour.

The doll people, though I go every year, disgust me. I think they are all perverts who secretly build fuck dolls. They have the eyes and shuddery hands of masturbators. Their hands are clammy. It's a wonder they can work the needle at all. And no creativity, no vision, no awareness of the spiritual potential of dolls. They are obsessed with recreating the same dolls year after year, trying to perfect a dead style. The style was really was invented in the 1960s, but these people treat it like a timeless truth. It makes me sick. While protesters were struggling to end the war in Vietnam, these perverts sat at home in front of their televisions subliminating their desires into these bland dolls. Sublimination style. That's what I'm going to call it. It reminds me of the bichons.

Anyway, the Scandinavians seem equally impressed with playwrights from the 19th century. One of them apparently believed that having sex drained his creative powers, so he would abstain from sex for a month and during that month complete a masterpiece. According to the journals (these perverted scholars will dip into the most private matters), it was a real struggle for him. He seemed to like sex even more than writing plays.

What these things have in common is that for several years I've been developing a theory of doll-making influenced by Artaud's "Theater of Cruelty."

One last warning

2006-04-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

Alicia,

You will not get away with this.

You will not run around in that little tennis skirt, behaving the way you do with lipstick on your mouth.

You will be exposed as the fraud you are.

Alicia

2006-04-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

I first met Alician through my friend who had met her while drinking with a marzipan pig in his cheek. That shot is called the costume drama. It makes me puke strange colors. I met her and then I met her again and now she is going after all of my friends sowing her hallucinatory glow her old boyfriend set himself on fire in the garage and left a note she won't say what it says she says I'm asking for too much that I have too much that I must be hollowed out

and that's why I'm making Alician dolls and more Alician dolls until every person in this great country of ours has an Alicia dolls that they can pull the plug out of and pull the insides out of and then we'll see then we'll see how happy Alicia is with her doll body her doll-doll body her urinary tract body her bong-bong body.

Then we'll see who's laughing, Alicia.

I think it will be my bestseller.

Alicia

2006-04-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

Leave me alone!

Stop torturing me and my friends!

I have never done anything to you!

You are not a dog!

Your insides may be gray but you are not even a crayfish!

I am making a doll for you! It is gray in the stuffing and I will put out my cigarettes on its face!

I am going out to buy a pack right now!

I am back!

I bought Marlboro Lights!

I am going to stop smoking tomorrow!

But first I am going to burn you a doll!

Someday I hope to be the president of the united states!

But first I am going to read an encyclopedia entry about the president of angola!

Soft Update

2006-04-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

I sold Tug Christ, Infested Blanket and Seizures on the Net.

I think Seizures was an especially good doll and it brought a good price. A woman must have bought it or a strange man because this is a doll that works particularly well if you want to use it to apply mascara to your eyes.

In other news, I've been trying to help my crazy friend. It's draining. I have to be very quick. Such is the nature of his screwed up head. He does react well to my dolls, so I may try to make him a crazy person doll. Afterall, we all need dolls! Even crazy people! Or people in juvie! Or people who drop their babies on the floor! Or Santa Claus! Or the president!

I've made a doll called the Tearapart Doll for the president to help sooth him in his trying time. Its made in part of paper towels (for the hands you know).

But most of all I'm working hard on a doll that I'm going to send to my scabby musical hero. I'm using a pink-colored insulation material that makes my hands all rashy. That's to symbolize my hero. He makes your hands rashy if you touch him. That's fame for you! I'm lucky to be toiling in obscurity while making a good living. Now I have to go smear my hands up with some kind of fatty material.

Another Friend of Mine

2006-04-02T12:15:00.000-07:00

Another friend of mine is sick, mentally. His mother says he's soured in the head. Isn't the a rap song?

He thinks he's in a coma or in house arrest. He thinks strange women are trying to liberate his mammals.

This makes him not testy so much as confused. There's some major negative capability in that response to being wacko and having women come through your house. I brought him a rope for whatever good that might do. With rope I mean a doll I made of rope. It's the kind you burn at one end while holding it in another.

Today I had a steak.

Yesterday

2006-03-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

Ronald Reagan asked for his heart back.

I told him, I have already sold that hosed-off doll and I can't get it back.

I didn't tell him, but I sold it to a famous contortionist and I think he ate the entire thing, stitches and all.

Some people like to eat dolls. I find it reprehensible, but I do it too.

New Project

2006-03-26T17:18:00.000-08:00

My newest project is a religious doll, Tug Christ. Its based on a midieval Jesus sculpture from northern europe. They hammered in a whole bunch of nails into the life-size figure and then covered it with drops of blood. Recently scientists determined that the blood was real human blood. I'm not sure why it's called Tug Christ but it may have something to do with the way this blood was either collected or applied to the sculpture. It's a wooden sculpture and it was not destroyed in the Iconoclastic Riots. The doll version is not made out of wood but it is nailed full of metal and it's supposed to have real blood on it. Unfortunately I'm really scared of blood and needles and such, so I'm thinking I should just use nail polish or possibly blood from my cat. Or maybe no blood at all. I can't decide. I was commissioned to make it and I think maybe the customers will have to supply their own blood. That might even make it more meaningful. It's stuffed with insulation. When I stuffed it my hands became itchy. I still have rashes all over the back of my hands.

My friend, the novelist

2006-03-24T09:07:00.000-08:00

Last night I had drinks with an old roommate of mine.

We used to live in a rundown old bungalow with spiders and cockroaches that ran over my body when I slept at night and neighbors who carried around shotguns.

Now he lives in a big mansion built as an homage to “Gone With the Wind” in the 1940s. His landlord has been renovating it for ten years, and is renting it to him for cheap. His landlord also owns the taco restaurant where he works. Once his landlord gave him a pack of underwear because he had bought the wrong size, but mostly they don’t interact that much. The mansion is perfectly secluded and, when he doesn’t work at the taco join, my friend likes to sit out back on the lawn and read novels.

Don’t you get scared living alone in an old mansion, I asked him.

Yes, I hear noises all the time at night and I have this frequently reoccurring dream in which this little girl grabs one of the broken light fixtures and gashes up my dick and then I try to chase her down by jumping out of windows.

You should write a novel about that. It’s so southern, I told him.

There’s not enough to it, he said. There’s no theme, nothing socially redeeming. Besides writing about one’s own life is cheap. It’s not like Pynchon wrote about his life. And I’m not a good writer yet. I don’t have control over the language the way Pynchon does. Everything he does is perfect. I need more practice.

(He really said that.)

So I said: You could contrast your current mansion with that trailer you used to live in when you worked at that horse farm. You could talk about the guy who lived there before you, how you found the stain from his suicide under the carpet. And you could talk about those ladies who employed you, how when they got pissed they would ride out and whip the shit out of the horses.

I can’t believe you remember that, said my friend.

Yes, and I also remember when they had you out in the middle of thunderstorm trying to keep a tree upright with a truck and you were scared shitless. And the fact that their dogs kept getting mangled in the farm machinery.

Yeah, those were some fucked up dogs, said my friend.

You could talk about your brother’s stint in Iraq. Then you could finish it with that story your told me about the beach in California, about those guys who stole the RV.

My friend wasn’t convinced.

This is the story of his brother. They grew up in the rural south and were home-schooled by their mom. When they graduated from their homeschooling, his brother went into the army to make some money for college. His brother was promptly sent to Iraq where something happened to his knee. After he was sent home, he promptly went back to Iraq to work for a private army. Now he’s back again, dating a photographer. The extended family is always asking him over for dinner and asking him to spot them some of the blood money. “You know your mom always wanted to be a country singer,” said grampa.

This is the story about the beach.

Having graduated from homeschooling, my friend fixed up an old motorcycle and drove out to see his uncle who lived in California. The last time he had seen his uncle, the uncle had just gotten divorced and they had bonded by getting drunk in Sacramento every night for a week. This time the uncle had married again and sold the truck. He didn’t really have time for my friend, so my friend drove his makeshift motorcycle out to the beach. There he met two pot-smoking guys who were staying in an RV. After a couple of days a van showed up. A redneck couple and their four kids poured out. They all spent a couple of glorious days on the beach drinking and playing poker.

One night after my friend won big in poker, the husband went to sleep in their tent and the stoners passed out. My friend and the wife went down the beach to drink. Soon he was having sex with her. It was the first time he’d ever had sex. He was totally wasted and everything was spinning. He was 18 years old. Then he looked up and the husband was standing above them cursing and crying. Then the husband pulled the wife by her hair away from my friend and up to the parking lot. As my friend lay there drunk in the dark he heard the couple gather up their crying children and tear out of the parking lot. They left the tent. He saw it the next morning when he was awakened by police officers handcuffing the stoners. The stoners cried and cried as they were shoved into the cop cars. "You're hurting my arm," one of the cried.

No, my friend said, that’s not good enough. Besides I don’t have time to write it down, I’m working two shifts at The Taco Shell. So I told him I would write it down. But I promised him some things I would leave out, like the one about the night he spent with the famous punk rock singer’s girlfriend, how he wiped her clean, how she showed him the famous bullet.

The truth

2006-03-19T16:05:00.000-08:00

is that I'm not very soft physically speaking, not a superhero or a doughboy. The Softest Person is just the name of my company. Right now I'm working on a doll with bullet-holes for eyes and a mouth sewn with a nail. Head pillows are great fun. This one is the presidential pillow. My girlfriend is asking me to make a Genet doll. It has an iris in its chest. My girlfriend loves carnations. She works in an office building and drink gin-and-tonics. She loves me for my money and I love her for the iris in her chest. She's a great swimmer. Once I almost drowned and she saved me. Once she almost drowned a kitten in a pond but I stopped her. She's a great swimmer, but she doesn't particularly love animals. She has a tattoo of a bled eagle right above her right butt cheek. She says this is a reference to her patriotism. She's very patriotic with a knife, but most of all she's patriotic with her hands inside the cabinet. We both love Indian pop music that sounds like the Beatles. Especially that song from the only Bollywood film set in Sweden. The actors look cold. That's what we like about that movie. And the music.

Hello Blog

2006-03-19T14:25:00.000-08:00