Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head that may or may not be good but needs to get out of your head.

Skinned, chopped, and bagged a bushel and a half of hatch chilis with my son

"About twenty-five years ago, I made an offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There was no malice intended, it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then to piss people off. I was a troublemaker, a shit-stirrer, feeling most at ease in the role of a societal irritant. Perhaps it’s an Australian trait among people of my generation, I don’t know, but that comment has followed me around for the last quarter-century. But the most interesting aspect of all this is not what I said about the Chili Peppers, but rather the response from Flea, their bass player. On Facebook, Flea expressed how hurt he felt by my remark, but went on to say, in great detail, that he loved my music regardless. He wrote a profoundly generous and open-hearted love letter to Nick Cave. I remember being genuinely moved by his words and thinking what a classy guy Flea was, and feeling on some subterranean level that I was unable to fully grasp at that point in my life, that Flea was a human being of an entirely different calibre, indeed, of a higher order.

Over the years, I would run into Flea at music festivals where both our bands were performing and see him backstage when we played in Los Angeles. Although we didn’t become close friends, my encounters with him were always pleasant – there was a presence to Flea that felt genuine and oddly affecting. On the Push the Sky Away tour, we asked Flea if he could assemble a children’s choir, from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music he founded, to accompany the Bad Seeds at the Coachella Festival. When Warren and I were on the Carnage tour, we asked Flea to join us and play the song ‘We No Who U R’. Watching Warren and Flea perform together with such heart and mutual regard was a glorious sight.

Last week, Flea sent me a song and asked if I’d like to add some vocals. It was for a “trumpet record” that he is making. It is not for me to divulge what the song was, only that it is a song I cherish more than most, with arguably the greatest lyric ever written, a song of such esteem that I would never have dared to sing it had Flea not asked me to. I went into the studio on Wednesday and recorded my vocals. The track emerged as a beautiful conversation between Flea’s trumpet and my voice, filled with yearning and love, the song transcending its individual parts and becoming a slowly evolving cosmic dance, in the form of a reconciliation and an apology.

My friend, the artist Thomas Houseago, recounted a story involving Flea. A couple of years ago, Flea, his daughter, Thomas, and a guide were hiking through the backcountry of Yosemite. They had been hiking for five days and were walking along a densely forested trail when a bear appeared on the path before them. Everybody froze. The bear was about ten feet away from them. It was a large black bear with a reddish hue. Thomas and the guide gripped their tent poles, perhaps to defend themselves in case the bear attacked. Flea, however, stepped forward, stood before the bear, and spoke to it. He acknowledged they were visitors in the bear’s territory, expressed his love for the bear, and requested permission to continue along the trail. The bear stepped off the path and allowed them to pass."

Nick Cave

they are ripening

I bought some watercolour postcards and have been making some this week while staying at my boyfriend’s place out in Ontario country. Ink and watercolour

This is me and Patricia. We are performing as King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival this year. I make my costumes, and you are looking at an unbelievable amount of my free time over the last few months.

Our theme is "heroes and villains" and our characters started the Spanish Inquisition, so our costuming is very Disney-villain inspired.

Guess who is on his DIA bullshit again?
Spanish Revival at Williams & Graham

Ocho plata tequila, giffard pamplemousse, cointreau, lemon, absinthe

Continuing with the new process of editing the source photo to distort it slightly, and then do the drawing. Old process would be to draw from the source, and then alter the drawing to make a caricature. I like the new process better even though it’s more involved.

source: https://www.tumblr.com/pmamtrav...

source: https://bsky.app/profile...

Work by Jennifer Nelson.

“My piece was inspired by Picasso's Guernica, a work that was his response to the Nazi's bombing of the Basque town. I thought there was a fitting parallel between these incidents about the high price paid by ordinary people when aggressive regimes try out new tactics of war, as well as a fitting juxtaposition of the darkness of living such an experience and the light we shone through it in our own resistance and care for one another. The patterns near Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s mouths are actually their last words in Morse code: ‘I’m not mad at you,’ and ‘Are you okay?’”

More seed art for the Minnesota state fair on similar themes at https://www.cropart.com/Resist....

A nearby apple orchard revealed their 2026 corn maze depicting Dolly Parton on Tuesday, hours before her death was announced. It's one of 20 Dolly-themed mazes around the country, all planned and designed months ago to be ready for the fall harvest season.
https://allseasonsorchard.com/pages...

source: https://www.shawlocal.com/northwes...

Much more here:
W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Infographics of African-American Life
https://publicdomainreview.org/collecti...

Rename it yourself!

https://gulfof.mapquest.com/lakeontario

source: https://gulfof.mapquest.com/lakeonta...

source: https://roguetelemetry.tumblr.com/post...

re: https://mltshp.com/p/1RT5B

got this shirt from @drurystephanie’s campaign a while back but never got the chance to show it off.

took a day off, spent the morning wandering across the university campus whilst clutching a breakfast bagel and slowly realizing it was becoming too warm for corduroy pants.

was not raised evangelical but was surrounded by that conservative-supply-side brand of christianity. i spent most of my teen years slowly trying to break free of it… so yeah, the shirt spoke to me. i don’t know if it’ll ever help me win an argument with family when they scowl at me for giving a person change but it’s worth rattling a cage or two.

yesterday was the first chance i’ve had to drop into my favorite record shop in ages.

the record shop guy always gets big shipments of interesting records from Japan, usually audiophile rarities and oddities (japanese pressings are usually of a high quality control) but often other unusual things will sneak in.

this was the first US pressing of “the age of octeen” by local label mud records (more info: https://www.parasolrecords.com/collecti...). it somehow made its way to japan- likely during the band’s ‘97/‘98/‘99? tour there for “frame & canvas” - and then was bought back just this month. coincidentally next week is the 30th anniversary of this album’s release!

anywho, i’m just jazzed to be the one to claim this and have it in my collection again. this album doesn’t have the top tier status in my heart that “frame & canvas” does, but it is an amazing and timeless sophomore effort, full of magic and honesty.

listen along if you’d like:
https://braid.bandcamp.com/album...

source: https://oldshowbiz.tumblr.com/post...

re: https://mltshp.com/p/1RUY1

further down the nostalgia rabbit-hole, found an old international harvester cap, almost exactly like the umpteen harvester and deere caps my maternal grandfather had. for some reason i had to have it, even though it’s snowing flakes of desiccated foam innards everywhere.

Editor's comment from Milo's manuscript.

I used this as my Twitter banner for years.

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem...

RIP Dolly


source: https://bsky.app/profile...

A man stands on a boat over a coral reef in the Dutch Cays of Guna Yala on Panama’s Caribbean coast, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026. AP #Photography #MatiasDelacroix

https://www.worknwomen.com/the-laug...

I would follow you anywhere, my Queen!