Where the Hell Have I Been?

Good question. Like I mentioned, I've been living in Denver the past two years, and the amount of gross stuff here in underwhelming. It's nothing like LA.

I've tried to get back on the gross boat, but it's hard. While the neighborhood I work in has its share of disgusting (after returning from the dumpster one day I couldn't get the scent of human excrement off my shoes), it's just less compelling than L.A.'s yuck.

Anyway, I'll be back on here off and on. If I see something fantastically disgusting I will definitely post about it. If not, then I'll be waiting for something else to sweep me off my feet.

Forever Let Us Hold Our Banner High

30th and Welton

Last night the streets of Denver flooded. Water flowed over the hoods of cars, blew manhole covers off the street, and washed up some delicacies like this Mickey Mouse diaper above. What once was simply full of urine and/or shit, is now also saturated with the dirty, oily storm water that cleansed our streets. Its bulging, effluent spirit spoke to me so clearly from the sidewalk.

Though it whispered so softly, I listened with an intensity reserved for moments like this. In the most delicate voice it implored me "Come along."
"Come along where?" I asked
"Come along and sing a song."
"What type of song? You are so wise, yet so mysterious. Please! I am listening for your message."
"Come along and sing a song and join the jamboree."
I leaned in closer, yearning for more. Please, I thought, I am ready. I am ready to receive you.

But there was only silence. A bitter, bloated silence.

Moist Clippings

Between Intelligentsia (on Abbot Kinney) and Venice Beach

It's not that I don't endorse public haircuts. Quite the contrary. I feel like shedding those extra dead cells in the middle of the sidewalk is actually probably a pretty good idea. What makes this picture so delicious is the wetness of the clippings. Sitting on a dry sidewalk, this clump of hair has embraced its neighbors. You know, if its neighbors were pebbles, dirt, twigs, and probably a few strands of wayward dog fur. It's not like this hair is going anywhere either, and that's the mystery of this image. It was a professional haircut, by the looks of it: someone spent a lot of time ensuring it was cut with neat straight lines, then considerately swept it into a little pile afterward. So why did they leave it on the sidewalk? To make me hungry, that's why.

This is why I love you

Friends, lovers. I apologize for such a long, long vacation. I was busy giving girls rides in my dusty Chevrolet coupe. Sure, I'm sort of known as a ladies' man. And yes, I do like to get my brewsky on, especially when I'm driving through Iowa with a trunk full of meth. I meet all kinds a girls. Short girls. Tall girls. Girls with ponytails. And often times they're so drunk that they do accept my offer to give them a ride home. But you know what? You'd be surprised at how many give me gas money.

Rat pact?

Nguyễn Trọng Tuyển in Phú Nhuạn district, Saigon
(photo by Sarah Grant)

I'm lucky to know people who travel to Southeast Asia. While I've spent several months in Thailand, my friends and colleagues from graduate school have committed themselves to academic work in the region. This means that I, and you, are privilege to a new kind of gross. I don't know if it's the chokingly hot weather, different health standards, exploding populations, or what, but there is some great gross stuff in that part of the world. Of course there are also areas that are painfully clean, like the Siam Paragon mall in Bangkok, one of the fanciest malls I've ever seen. But what you see above is the carnage of a mass rat death. Who knows if these cunning scavengers unwittingly nibbled on some poisoned pork or if they died at the hands of an angry shopkeeper with frying pan (I can't help but picture a cartoon person running around chasing a smiling cartoon rat). Either way, they have found some peace together, at the foot of this dusty tree. I look forward to more gross stuff coming from Sarah in Vietnam, and from Luke and Kelly (of the condom canal) from Bangkok. Remember: take your camera with you all the time so you don't miss golden opportunities like the one pictured above. And send the pictures to me at grossstuffinla at gmail dot com.

Will somebody bury her already?

21st/Stout/Broadway, Denver

There's something horribly, horribly wrong with this Barbie. Last week she was dirty and naked, sure, but this week her proportions are all wrong. Look at her enormous face. Her eye is bigger than her hand, probably even bigger than her feet that have since been ripped off. Someone stole those shiny red Converse hightops I was so admiring last week. They must've found a shoeless Skipper down the street, clean enough to salvage. The snow has melted on the ground around Barbie, but it still clings to her greasy hair. The sash that was lying near her last week is now loosely wound around her torso. But my god, that eye. It will haunt me.

The morning after the saddest night on earth

21st/Broadway/Stout, Denver

It's not terribly gross, aside from the gutter grunge covering Barbie's body, naked except for her red Converse hightops. Her feet are coquettishly turned in, like a Catholic school girl. Her wild mop of blond hair cloaks her features, floating around her head in a tangled, filthy mass. The sash from her dress lays next to her, just within reach of her gnawed little fingers. Poor Barbie. Poor, poor Barbie. I like to imagine that she's not dead, just sleeping. Yes, that's it. She's just sleeping.