LONELY MORNING

Morning comes without

Risk or doubt

That day will come together

Bringing forth another letter

Mailbox sits idle upon the lawn

Its mouth an open yawn

For lack of mail reception

Deceptive in its lack of expectation

Taste this dawn’s breach of nightly rest

A breathe of boring hex

Upon the day ahead

I cannot draw enough of it

Cause without tone erupting

From my telephone I’m something

Less than satisfied

Anxiety ridden

An embodiment of

Something hidden

So toll that bell within my slender phone

A conduit to home

And healthy pleasures

Safety first

Ready measures

For angry thirsts

BINKS!

http://www.amazon.com/Binks-Bizarre-Account-Zachary-ebook/dp/B005J85MME/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314364528&sr=8-1
MY BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AS AN EBOOK! YAY!!!!!

NURSE :)

Etsy stuff on Binks Blog

Added a little etsy thing on the sidebar that links to my storefront and the facebook page for my necklaces :)
Also, THERE WAS AN EARTHQUAKE TODAY!

it went kinda like this:

-me sitting around, making hemp necklaces and shit-

RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE....

Me: "HOLY HELL BEN'S APARTMENT IS EXPLODING!"

-runs outside, sees neighbors all on the front lawn gawking-

Neighbors: "Did you feel it too?"

Me: "Yeah, what the hell is it?"

Neighbors(that might I add that I have NEVER seen up until this point): "its an earthquake, a SMALL one"

Me: "OMGWTF!"

Quiet mouse, still mouse

QUIET MOUSE STILL MOUSE ONE TWO THREE!

shhhhh.... huhhh.... shhhhh... huhhhh....

YOU LOSE!

Breathing doesn't count!

oh ok...

Lets play another game...

what game?

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD!

ok, how do you play?

FIRST, you find a toad, then you burry him in the sand and watch him crawl out again, like a zombie!

ok, where do we find a toad?

They live under the boards by the pole barn, come on I'll show you...

wow, theres like ten of them under there!

Quick, grab one!

ok, what now?

You have to knock him out first... here, flick him on the head and he'll go limp.

ew that's weird...

Ok, now burry him in the sand and in a few minutes he'll crawl back up, its awesome!

wow!

See, just like night of the living dead!

nick?

Yeah

will you be my best friend?

Venting RAGE through art :)

ok, so I was VERY mad at my brother tonight. He blew me off THREE NIGHTS in a row, then when we were supposed to hang out today he stayed like ten minutes and then left expecting me to do his laundry for him. 

SO, I was fuming mad, like wishing I could cleave his skull and dump his body in a nearby ravine mad, BUT since I am far too soft for prison I decided to use that rage to express myself.  Anyone that might actually be keeping up with this nonsensical and pointless blog knows that I've been trying to teach myself photoshop, in fact my last three posts have been about just that.  So tonight I needed a catylyst, something horrendous and foul, some act of cruelity and/or violence that I could draw so I wouldn't have to sit around ruminating on how much of a ginormous douche-fag my dear brother is. 

Then, it hit me like a great knife to the groin... PYRAMID HEAD! What greater way to express my rage than by expressing it with a work of art of an embodiment of anger, pride, and punishment!  Anyone not familiar with the popular and WICKED AWESOME Silent Hill series of video games will have NO IDEA what I'm talking about, but for those that do...

OMFG I DREW PYRAMID HEAD AND IT LOOKS AWESOME! But yeah, good stuff.  Some minor points of interest: the tattoo on his shoulder is called "that halo of the sun" and is seen throughout the series from the third game on and is often used in attempts to resurrect the cults dark god or cause general supernatural mischief, I got the idea for the keys hanging from his waist from that scene in silent hill 2 where maria goes to unlock the door in the alleyway and pulls keys from various places on her person before finally finding the right one... I allways kinda thought that as a manifestation of James lusty feelings and hurt at Mary's degeneration into something, shall we say, LESS than sexual she was afforded certain favors one of which was having keys to any door in silent hill magically tucked away in her clothing so when I went to draw Pyramid head I gave him a belt of keys, there's even a car key on the far right of the rest of them, and last but not least PLEASE don't ask why I gave the patient demon bondage gear and a ball gag :P
THE END!

further FURTHER Adventures in Photoshop

Ok, so I think I'm getting the hang of it, and finding it oddly addictive.  Every time I have a moment I'm pulling out my sketchpad and working on stuff.  Either that or I have no life.  But anywho, here's the latest creations.  ENJOY!

 

I made this for one of my yahoo peeps, she has a thing for Lolcats :)

This is a portrait I did of my friend Colleen, who probably wont appreciate it :P

 

This is me and my best bud Rebecca done off a photograph taken a few years back :)

 

A rather serious looking Goatman, kneeling in prayer.

AND THAT'S IT FOR NOW! come back later for more BINKSY PHOTOSHOP CREATIONS! 

Further Adventures in Photoshop

Ok, for reasons I cannot explain I wanted to do a drawing of Dick Valentine from Electric Six riding a playground pony and pointing skyward...

THIS is the original photograph:

THIS is the shitty sketch I drew in about five minutes:

 

THIS is the shitty sketch touched up and colored in photoshop:

 

The process takes FOREVER though, kinda thinking I'm doing something either wrong or not doing something necessary to simplify it. More on this later...

I'm teaching myself how to use photoshop, and one of the benefits of the hideously painstaking learning process is being able to color in and improve upon drawings you've done in pen or pencil.

That means turning THIS:

 

A laughably bad and uber angsty sketch I did in highschool, into THIS:

STILL laughably bad, still angst ridden, only NOW its in COLOR! :D

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!

The Shag Green Rug

The door to the bathroom shifted out of focus as I rushed blindingly towards it, threw it open, and leaped inside.  What followed, relief... That single epiphany defying moment where everything flowed out and into the porcelain bowl of the toilette, never to be seen or heard from again.  I grew limp, my head lolled forward on my shoulders, and my eyes trained on the one thing directly before them: the green shag bathroom rug directly beneath my feet.

The trails and strands of thick lime green material came into focus in the dim light of my comfort zone and now had my full attention.  All else in life had little meaning next to this moment, time shifted out of importance, anxiety inducing family matters where obliterated in the haze of voiding my bowels, and all that remained was this green mat.

Many have spoken of the transcendent nature of the bathroom, how it can bring a mans problems closure and whiten your teeth at the same time, but none of that came to mind now.  The mat was all I thought of, the mat was all that mattered.  My eyes locked on it so hard they strained and in that near painful intense look the chaos of quarter inch thick threads began to shift almost as if they were alive.  Sea anemone, I thought, its JUST like a sea anemone.

Without me taking notice the already time bathroom light grew darker still and in the center of the shag rug pattern a hole began to open.  From it poured the intense smell of limes and darkness crept from in in creeping tendrils of shadow that defied reason.  I still couldn't look away, I still was in the perfect moment of ease. The rug had expanded outward and now the entire floor was alive with movement with darkness creeping over it like mist and the hole now big enough that I could see through it to the other side, and in seeing madness grasped hold of me.  I wrenched myself from the toilette seat and bolted to the door, but the tentacle strands of lime green shag grasped hold me legs and pulled me to the ground.

GOD I hated that rug. As I fell I caught a glimpses of myself in the mirror and saw that my hair, once salt and pepper black, was now thickly streaked with white.  Nothing to do now, no longer at ease, no longer sane, I went limp on the floor, and as I was pulled forward towards that green maw of sanity shattering green I began to hear laughter.

"Who the FUCK would find this funny?"  I asked myself aloud, and on the heals of that realized that the laughter was coming from me...

My feet dissapeared into the hole, and I felt a chill like icewater creeping up my legs, and a poem from my youth came to mind.

I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor, and I don't like it one bit...  Thank you, Shell Silverstien, for putting this moment in perspective.  The lips of the hole expanded outward and drew me in inch by inch, but there was no pain, only the certainty that I was about to die, and if not die, never ever ever feel comfortable in a bathroom again.

Oh heck, its up to my neck...

Bathroom cleaner...

DEATH smells like...

Bathroom cleaner...

Re-Written Query Letter for Binks

I've taken the time to re-write my query letter and have begun submitting it using the format provided on writersmarket.com, which I've purchased a one month subscription to.  At first I was hesitant to add my accommodations for poetry, but seeing that they are my only claim to fame as far as writing goes I've decided to give it a try.  Let me know what you think guys!

Dear *agents name*,

All my life it has been a dream of mine to have my work published, to write and through writing express myself.  I am a 26 year old male from Charlottesville, Virginia and I suffer from Schizo-Effective Disorder and Scheuermann’s Kyphosis, a debilitating mental illness and painful spinal condition respectively.  My life has been an interesting one indeed, and because of that I have put pen to page and written my memoir.  The proposed title is “Binks: The Bizarre Account of Zachary Peter Jarrett”, and contained within its pages is both great tragedy and uplifting levity.

As hard as this is to admit, I am also a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and as a man it is particularly hard to come forward on such matters.  Men are trained by society to be strong, to not cry or show emotion or weakness, and as such many men when victimized do not come forward.  Statistically speaking you would think that women are abused more, but the numbers are deceiving for they only show reported cases, and because of the prevalent silence of male victims, they are skewed.

My book details the suffering and struggles a male victim undergoes throughout this tragic process, and how I overcame not only that, but my physical and mental conditions as well.  It would serve as a great message to those out there who, like me, had their innocence stolen.

In the past I have excelled at poetry: I was the winner of the 2004 Second Street Gallery Young Writers competition, I received an honorable mention in the 2001 Writers Eye contest, and I was published in the 21st edition of an anthology called the Poet’s Domain in 2005, and more recently, in 2009, I was a finalist in the First Amendment Writes poetry and songwriting competition in Charlottesville Virginia which aired on local television. Renowned author Rita Mae Brown presided over this contest as one of the judges and though she wasn’t present for the award ceremony she said of my poem in her notes that my entry, Syllabic Waffles, had “Real internal rhythm married to condensed venom”.  My hope is that I have used the skills I’ve learned in poetry to be an effective writer of prose, specifically the memoir that I am putting before you.

The manuscript is currently 118 pages, 34,217 words to be precise, and it contains my life story from my earliest memories till when I graduated from Murray High School in the spring of 2004.  I have had it edited by one Spencer Morton, and very soon now it will be ready to show to the world.  Throughout are also various photographs from my youth with drive home the reality of the story, that I was only a child when these heinous acts occurred.
If you would like to know more, or perhaps peruse my proposal, you can contact me through any of the information provided bellow.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Zachary Peter Jarrett   
1307 King Street, Apt B
Charlottesville, VA 22903 (434)293-7158

Soooooo many knots

And so the etsy hemp saga continues.  NINETY FIVE views and not a single purchase, but I feel today is the day!  I created a sister page for Zachary Binks HempCrafts on facebook in hopes of increasing my sites traffic and my views jumped from 75-95 in a matter of an hour.  SOMEONE will buy something, its only a matter of time. 

Been playing around with my mothers idea of a co-op, the chance at having my stuff in a STORE store is rather enticing.  She seems dead set on it, and I've reminded her that she is the one that gets shit done.  I remember being a kid and her pulling off the most outlandish Christmas gifts ever simply by virtue of DETERMINATION!  She is a mover and a shaker, and a force to be reckoned with when she sets her mind to something.  I only hope some of it rubbed off on me...

Today is the day, I can feel it in my bones...

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Zachary-Binks-HempCrafts/133150743443538

ETSY

http://www.etsy.com/shop/zacharybinks19
CLICK IT! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!

Waiting for Scrabble

Today was the first of the month, that means a frantic struggle to spend whatever money I'm allotted before it burns clear through my pocket and into my SOUL.  SO I went with my mother to go help my brother unload the sad remainder of this past weekends yard sale at the salvation army, strange that I was dropping off instead of picking up for once.

We took turns either staying home or going with my mother to drop off, and between we loaded the truck with more boxes of stuff, which I proceeded to raid with increased vigor (of course I'll be moving in a month, but I COULDN'T pass up on the full sized drinking horn nor the silent bob action figure).  This went on for a while, and each time I was there with my brother I'd watch him play video games or catch bits and pieces of a re-run of deadliest warrior he was watching.

When he queued up Marvel vs Capcom 3, a warning came up on the screen briefly:
"contains flashing lights and sounds"

And I'm thinking 'My STUPID STUPID brother, who has been an epileptic all his life, is going to have a seizure RIGHT HERE on his over-sized ratty old couch and I'm going to have to shove my wallet in his mouth to keep him from biting off his tongue.'

So I'm watching him play and he's explaining to me how the game works: He has it set to let an online challenger jump into his game at any time and fight him, but meanwhile he fights against the computer in an amazing display of seizure inducing lights and effeminate battle cries that only the Japanese would find intimidating.  Even I was woozy and I've never had a seizure in my life. 

Amazingly enough he DIDN'T go into a grand maul mid-counter attack, and all was well.  My mother offered to have us come over some other time and have dinner with them, maybe enjoy a rousing game of scrabble.  I can't wait :)