so the big news in weirdoworld today is that there’s a bay area artist who lost one of her eyes, and is proposing that her prosthetic eye include a web cam.  HMMMMMM….SOUND FAMILIAR???

okay, i didn’t lose my eye but i’m losing sight in it (which still sucks, BTW), and if i’d have to get surgery to replace my lens, there are definitely several things that i’ve been thinking would be great to install if they were going to be digging around there anyway, such as:

1. nightvision
2. zooming capabilities
3. x-ray vision (for seeing into souls)

the whole installation of a camera thing was less of a request and more of a deeply-pitted fear that the government would use me to survey my friends, which would eventually lead to a weapon-x-style falling out with the world, and me as a 50 year old man with a bad haircut running around the canadian snow in my adamantium skeleton and a loincloth.

but perhaps not everyone has those reservations, so i have noooooooooo problem at all letting this tanya vlach lady test out the beta version of the camera eye before sticking one in my head.  i might even get some perks too, because according to her request, she’s also looking to include these in that socket-o-fun:

• DVR
• MPEG-4? Recording
• Built in SD mini Card Slot
• 4 GB SD mini Card
• Mini A/V out
• Firewire / USB drive
• Optical 3X
• Remote trigger
• Bluetooth wireless method
• Inductors: (Firewire/USB, power source)

are you kidding?? the webcam makes sense (even though it’s in a bad-guy-in-iron man sort of way), but what the fuck are you going to do with a USB drive on your eye?  what word document will ever be that important that you’ll have to search kinko’s for a hole puncher to gauge your eye out?  all i’m asking for is a humble superhuman eye without all the fancy shmancy stuff.

but the reality of the fact is, since tanya and i are both artists, our dingy healthplans (or lack thereof) probably don’t cover operations for cyborg parts.  yeah…they didn’t even cover my tooth filling, so i’m pretty sure they won’t cover my robot eye.

the only thing that sucks is that, is it just a coincidence that there are two artists in the bay who are looking for this or is there some crazy demand for it?  because if i have to get on a waiting list even for an evil robot eye transplant, our healthcare system is definitely fucked up.

needest i sayest more?

okay, this falls under the same nerd category as the helvetica shirt, except far geekier because wearing shirts isn’t necessarily considered geeky (unless you’re hulk hogan or 50 cent).  but a rubik’s cube with pantone colors????  oh, how that makes my hologramic convertable pocket protector tingle.

too bad it looks kinda sorta just like an ill-lit flyer concept that i was drafting a couple of months ago:

NOTHING’S NEW UNDER THEE SUN!!!!!

those of you who follow my musical taste know that i’m hella into atlanta rap.  and if it’s not atlanta rap then it’s spazzy french electro.  and if it’s not spazzy french electro then it’s nigerian lounge afrobeat.  and if it’s not nigerian lounge afrobeat then it’s most certainly crazy ass layers of indecipherable sound that somehow figures out how to work, and that, most certainly, is shugo tokumaru.

i’ve been up on his music for awhile but it wasn’t until today that i checked out his videos, and was like “yo…this is what i see when i’m brushing my teeth with my eyes closed.”

(don’t ask me why i do that)

my favorite track of all time has to be “green rain” though.  there’s a video that’s weird as shit, but i recommend bumping this in your ride.

[DOWNLOAD via Stereogum]

okay, first of all please note that that was not a typo, i did mean to say “color geek” and not “colored geek,” for i am not lindsay lohan.

secondly, i must say that designer luis porem has a lot going for him besides the fact that his first name is the awesomest last name ever.  his RBG Rainbow Glasses combine two of some of my favorite things in the world: thick-rimmed glasses and interchangeable colors!

okay, there’s probably an extensive list of things that i like more in this world, such as irrigation and opposable thumbs, but thick rimmed glasses and interchangeable colors are at least within the top 15.  these glasses are designed to be any color you want and/or can find the ink for, and if they break, at least you’ll have some very colorful shoulders.

but why just stop at ink?  there’s so much more that you could probably store in these glasses that you’ll thank yourself for if you ever end up in the middle of the desert and in need of liquidy things that fit in hollow glasses.  as creative as this product is, i’d like to make some suggestions for other things that could prove to be more useful during a desperate moment than funky-colored ink:

- chocolate milk
- bubble bath fluid
- unleaded gasoline
- the antidote for a flesh-eating zombie-producing epidemic
- patrón

just a suggestion.

not like i’m asking that question, being that i’ve been following for awhile now. this mixtape just dropped so i haven’t had a chance to scan it yet but based on the music i’ve been hearing from b.o.b. lately, it’ll be fire.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE.

and oh, i was soooooo about to post that new weezy mixtape for y’all but the link went down before i could throw it up.  here’s the stream though, and i’ll let you know wassup.  like always, weez serves another amazing mixtape that is thoroughly enjoyable, if you can get over not feeling like a good person after finishing it.

milk bar, sf :: photo by suzy salazar

live via harlem.

the world is different than it was before i left for tour.  when i was last in oakland just 3 weeks ago, it was still a mystery as to who would be our next president.  queer folks had the right to marry in california.  the weather was warm.  lil wayne’s mixtape hadn’t dropped.  SO many things were different about the world, and in mine i had no clue how anyone was going to react to ill-lit’s full transformation into a musical entity.

at times i’m apprehensive about sharing my feelings about the significance of my own art, because i’m worried about coming off as arrogant.  one thing that i’ve learned from the obama campaign is how vital it is for people to be open about their own importance.  but as an artist, what are you trying to do if not to change the world?

almost 3 years ago to the date, ill-lit gathered in a bar in paris called le tourville where we laid out the blueprint for what we were going to do for the rest of the foreseeable future.  the thing about it was, we were spoken word artists, wanted to do spoken word, but spoken word didn’t go as far as we wanted to.  because we wanted to travel the world, and make people dance, and rock out, and not that you can’t do any of those things as a spoken word artist, but just not in the way that we wanted it.

a year ago after one of our first band rehearsals with the hi-lifes, we huddled in oj’s suv, lit the swisher and pumped funkadelic’s “maggot brain” while questionig, did bands like this, and the beatles and outkast actually decide that they were going to intentionally change the way that the world listens to music, or did it just happen?  back at le tourville we had certainly decided that we were going to change the way that we saw ourselves in the realms of spoken word…at the time we were still rookies, names that fell deaf to the ears of people in the spoken word scene (and probably names that still do), but we confronted the fact that this is art.  and whether vet or rookie, the forefront is never out of bounds.

so what is my reaction to all this now that i’m a musician…a role that i yearned for like some unattainable status setting just a year and a half ago?  i just started trying to sing a year ago.  i’ve picked the keys up casually, and am toying with the idea of learning the trumpet.  but i’m definitely a newbie.  so last night, while driving to syracuse for the last show of our first musical tour, almost 3 years from the date that we decided to change the way people listen to spoken word, we decided to change the way people listen to music.

i admit that it’s a huge task, and there has to be a healthy amount of arrogance for a group of ragtag poets to be eyeing radiohead status.

a few weeks ago i had to break the news to dahlak that the renaissance–the pending title to his album that he’s been planning since he dropped his last album–is also the name of q-tip’s upcoming joint.  we mourned the invalidating moment together, and tried to think of another word that could capture the energy and possibility and historic significance of today’s social, political, and artistic climate that’s in renaissance.  and we couldn’t.

during the course of the tour, “ill-literacy, obama, and the renaissance” became one of the soundbites that was tossed around from mouth to ear to mouth.  we haven’t completely figured out what that means yet, but it involves a lot of personal transformation.  and it involves the perpetuation of a worldwide movement that affects positive change in art and politics.  and it involves us kickin it with barack.  basically, we’ve gotten somewhat bigheaded and have decided to try to change the world.  it’s a loose-leaf plan that will find its realization as it comes, but like the rest of the loose-leaf plans that have constructed ill-lit’s history, it’ll definitely happen.

sitting here on a couch in harlem, eyes burning from complete and utter sleepiness, i’m very inspired.  i’m not completely sure where to direct all this energy yet, but all i can say is that i am thrilled to be a part of an effort to write history.  will you join me?

[DOWNLOAD: Sly & the Family Stone - Everybody is a Star]

i’d fall into her gap.

wait that didn’t sound right.

oh yeah that guy from napoleon dynamite is in this too, but he’s pretty irrelevant in a situation like this.

one of the freshest things about being an artist is getting to build with other people who make dope and inspirational art.  in august i hipped you to theophilus london, and we were feeling him so much we figured, why not do a show with him????  boom boom.  it’s done.  if you’re in NYC tonight, come play.

speaking of homophobes, maybe everyone who voted in favor of prop 8 can get one of these…a pocket-sized device where you can get the special sensation and sound of peeling a banana without having to wrap your lips around a long one while kickin it with the homies on the block.

of course, invented in japan where the marriage debate is a bit more complicated.

i’m kind of glad that i’m on tour right now because i’m pretty pissed at california right now for passing prop 8, which bans gay marriages.  i had a great conversation with my mom about this a couple of days ago, who has really made a lot of progress in her race/sexuality politics in the last few years, i must say. GO MOM!

it seems that a key argument against legally validating queer relationships is that “then they’ll make schools teach books about gay people,” and as a writer i think that’s goat shit.  there’s a scene in american history x where a family is sitting at the dinner table and the father is lecturing his sons that if racial equality is achieved then it will “infiltrate” the curriculum, like as if that was a bad thing too.

queer people and relationships exist and play an instrumental role in the fabric of our society, regardless of whether or not you acknowledge them or allow them in the pages of your curriculum.  stripping away human rights simply to avoid having gay people in the books your kids read is not only a violation to those directly involved in the issue, it perpetuates an orwellian and unrealistic interpretation of the world. it’s symbolic book-burning.  civil rights don’t have an MPAA rating and sheltering your children or yourselves from the reality and inevitability of the queer community or anything else that people choose to shut their eyes and ignore.

video via dre poetic.