Random Calculations

(Click on the above image to view it in all its exquisite detail.)

I've always been an habitual doodler. I enjoy the mild form of psychic automatism it allows one to access in the course of everyday life. One doodles without thinking, planning or intending anything. You set your pen to wandering and see what emerges. It's a useful palliative to dull meetings, long waits on phone-ladders, and other obligatory forms of potential boredom.

Most of my doodles end up being faces, figures, vaguely biomorphic shapes, or queer blob-like architectural constructs. Sometimes they resemble elaborate ornamentation--William Morris on acid--expressed in lines of sloppy chicken-scratch. When note-taking, my bullet points nearly always have hairy, tentacular extrusions radiating from them. I have no idea why this should be.

There's probably some psychological insight to be gleaned from the study of such unintentional artworks, but I don't know what that might be. In my own case, I don't think I want to know.

From the TSI Vaults: The Haberdasher's Glug

Above is the cover of my 1988 lo-fi release, The Haberdasher's Glug!, a musical comedy. It features that Halloween party favorite, "Bloody Pumpkins", along with a host of more obscure and irritating tracks, all sort of spliced together in a frenzy of ping-pong recording sessions, abetted by an ambient tunnel of tape hiss. The highlights, as far as I can remember are "Al Corpuscle/Only Kind of Water", "Weight Farm", "Medical Crime" and the instrumental "Catfish".

Below is the complete track listing, credits, etc.:

From the TSI Vaults: A Bell for Wild Birds

Above is the cover for the 1994 Les Amis D'Irving album A Bell for Wild Birds (Une Cloche pour L'Oiseaux Sauvage). I don't think this can be the final version of the cover, as it omits song credits ("I Wanna Be Like You" was written by Robert & Richard Sherman, "1970" was written by the Stooges, and "Jean Genie" was written by David Bowie) and other indicia.

This is actually the second version of the cover; the first, featuring a drawing of a of rabid, saucer-eyed, bat-like creature, remains somewhere at large in the vastness of the TSI/Powerpop Comics library.

Rip Van Winkle