i love neighborhood local (LH!) Mike Giant. i love that he just opened a work space/gallery a couple blocks from me. i love that a very generous person bought me a framed MG print for Christmas. i love this new piece (above).

"my name is Costa Dino. my son's name is Costa Dino. my dad's name is Costa Dino. i hate Amstel Light..."

things i talked about while sitting on the stairs with ORTH...

1. skateboarding

2. russian river

3. initiative

4. dana ward

5. women folk

6. daylight savings

7. lindsey boldt

8. lower haight vs. the castro vs. outer sunset

9. senior proms

10. chillin' with tweaker neighbors at 5am on a saturday morning

Reptilian ET/ Cartoon Hater Fail-Terrorist doppelganger thingy...

Alpha DRACONIS



and

Jihad JANE

recently read...

1. Concord- Joel A. Harris

2. Crayon #3

3. Tooth Fairy- Brandon Brown

4. The Grand Piano part 8

5. Room Are Never Finished- Agha Shahid Ali

6. The Grand Piano part 9

7. Blast 1- Wyndham Lewis

8. Stranger In Town- Cedar Sigo

9. Mascara- Will Skinker

10. Morning Train- ed. Micah Ballard/ Sunnylyn Thibodeaux

11. Avid Diva- Garrett Caples

12. Wild Schemes- Derek Fenner

13. Life Of Crime- ed. Steve Lavoie/ Pat Nolan

14. Aevum- David Brazil

15. The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald

16. Sulfur #3

17. Try- Feb 21, 2010

18. The Carrier Of Ladders- W.S. Merwin

19. Temblor #1

20. Can Arboreal Knotwork Help Blackburn Out Of Frege's Abyss- Boyd Spahr

21. O Pieces Of The Sky- Greg Fuchs

22. Dispatch- Marci Nelligan/ Nicole Mauro

23. Lola- Lyn Hejinian

24. Hamlet- William Shakespeare

25. Theory Of Colors- Mercedes Roffe/ trans. Margaret Carson

26. How Many Of You Are You- Philip Jenks

27. Spy Wednesday- David Brazil

28. Yale Younger Poets #1

29. Boston Vermont- William Corbett

30. Combo #1

Dear Family and Friends,

Oh happy day. I just wanted let you know that The Post-Apollo Press has published Maribor, a translation from the Greek done by Angelos and myself. The book is now officially available for order through Small Press Distribution. I received the box this afternoon at the SPD warehouse and it looks great! follow the link to order...


It's been a couple years in the making between the translating and the editing and publishing. But it was well worth the wait, Post-Apollo has done a beautiful job and I couldn't be more happy with having Demosthenes make his American debut with the press.

Below is the official Post-Apollo press release.

Thanks for all the support,
Love you guys,
John

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, February 1st, 2010


Maribor

by Demosthenes Agrafiotis
Translated by John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis

Poetry 86pgs $15.00 ISBN: 978-0942996-70-8

As a North American I can only nod in awe at the dark mystery these poems offer, and the chastening, steel-eyed precision of European thought. In the hands of a master poet like Demosthenes Agrafiotis an old world emerges that is both bone-tired and on the cusp of renewal…

The Europe of cafés, fashionable clothing, insane nationalist wars, & razor-edged critical thought is crisply present; while beneath it all beats a spiritual pulse as archaic as the Magdalenian caves. Into the tiny fractures of modern economy, philosophy, personality, and history, leak the structures of myth. Maribor is Slovenia’s second largest city, riddled with beauty & tragedy, & one site of the ethnic conflicts of the twentieth century. It is also a city that sits at a spiritual center—a center this poem, composed during the tumult of the 1990s, managed to reach. John and Angelos Sakkis are to be congratulated for having brought us a living poem in American-English. They manage to navigate not just contemporary Greek, but French, Italian, Latin, German, and such stunning lines as “the sparrow comes and perches / on the chair and leaves a dropping / all words are available / and suitable.”
⎯Andrew Schelling

“who assigns names? // the name itself” Demosthenes Agrafiotis’s name assigned him a superb origin myth. He was born in the Agrafa, a region historically so remote its inhabitants eluded conquest and were thus undocumented or “unwritten” in the records of the empire, a place that consequently became a refuge for forbidden Greek literacy. Agrafiotis translates the paradox of his inheritances into poetry that collaborates with the autonomy of the sign, animating its multiple lives and orchestrating the resonances of its indeterminacy. Maribor gives us both artifact—of the ephemera of communication, institutions, power—as well as blueprint for imagining an “alphabet of the future.” A master of the c contemporary hermetic, Agrafiotis can bring to light in one stroke both the evanescence and endurance of the writing on the wall.
⎯Eleni Stecopoulos

Demosthenes Agrafiotis is a Greek poet, visual artist and performer living in Athens, Greece. His book Chinese Notebook, also translated by John and Angelos Sakkis is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2010.

John Sakkis is a poet and translator living in San Francisco. He is the author of the book Rude Girl (Blaze Vox 2009). Angelos Sakkis is a translator and painter living in Oakland, California.

listening to this week...a new feature!

Aesop Rock Coma
AC/DC For Those About To Rock

A Tribe Called Quest The Love Movement
AC/DC Back In Black
A Tribe Called Quest Bonita Applebum/ I Left My Wallet In El Segundo
ABC How To Be A Zillionaire
Aerosmith Greatest Hits
AC/DC Fly On The Wall
Aesop Rock Float
AC/DC High Voltage
Aceyalone Faces
A Tribe Called Quest Scenerio/ Oh My God/ Jazz
ABC The Lexicon Of Love

Omegle conversation log
2010-02-09

1. You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: Hi
You: i'm not a teen
Your conversational partner has disconnected.


2. You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: Hey
You: looking for hell
You: 2km?
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

3. You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: hallo?
You: yassou!
Stranger: pimwii
You: totes!
Stranger: (what does yassou mean?)
You: gnar-gnar...sort of.
Stranger: iiiiinteresting
You: i know, totally...
Stranger: totes
Stranger: okay okay question
Stranger: what is
Stranger: your favorite
You: uh huh...
Stranger: childhood tv show
Stranger: *was
You: SKATEBOARDING!!!
You have disconnected.