“”Unmonumental,” reinforces the mixed messages of the building itself.
A postscript looks at the architecture one year later, with delightful help
from a parody (URmonumental) by Howard Saunders.”
Month / September 2017
New
AxeMan’s Bucket List
What’s with names ending in OFF? These guys deserved what they got, except maybe Markoff who never did go to trial. If you don’t recall, he succeeded, after three tries, to end his life in his cell onthe anniversary of what would have been his wedding day. And Jack Abramoff? He’s selling kosher pizza at Tov, as in Mazel, in Baltimore. And then there’s Bernie. We are waiting for his reality show, Surviving Isolation.
Slovakia says goodbye to David Duke
AxeMan follows David Duke to Slovakia, Germany and Iran. Duke attends Holocaust Deniers conference in Teheran. He sees Duke, but more to the point, he sees a very strange pair embracing. What gives, he wonders?
Later, Duke is thrown out of Slovakia. . He was not welcome. What a shame. Those Jews, always pushing. AxeMan says Kaddish for the fallen hero.
AxeMan and Sisyphus: Dead Press Walking
On February 27, 2oo9, the Rocky Mountain News closed its doors. The small market paper had won numerous prestigious publishing awards. It was the beginning of the end, and a brand new beginning as the publishing industry, lemming-like, plunged into the World of Tablets.
AxeMan hones his skills
AxeMan’s skills have gone a bit rusty, but he is anxious to get back in a groove. He doesn’t want to rest on his laurals. He tried writing fiction for a number of years, was even published under a pseudonym, but he felt that telling the truth would better serve him. So, back to making ‘art’ which is a very risky business these days. He has read 
that the National Endowment for the Arts has been tracking numbers of artists in the workforce (including self-employed). There are roughly 2.1 million fine artists, illustrators, photographers and animators in the workforce as of their 2011 study. He wonders, why bother?
Slouching Toward Twitterland
AxeMan grumbles about having to pay to read the NY Times on line, whilst he also trudges to the local newsstand to buy the pulp version. There are other redundant activities, some of which he is hoping to purge. But this Twitter thing; this could be a 
big mistake.
Why would he go there? Hypocrite? Pragmatist, more likely. He hates the whole idea (he has of late been wishing that everyone would shut the hell up), but an editor at a publishing house specializing in graphic novels and art books told him he wouldn’t have a problem getting published if he had 5,000 followers on Twitter. He didn’t say he would publish it, butsomebody would. Of course, he could try to self-publish again as he did in 2010 (with funding from Kickstarter – AxeMan Who Will be70 in the Year 2010), but where would that get him? Two hundred books in hand, half of those in remainders. So, only 5,000 followers. Oh, and you have to make a blog, he said. Post at least three times a week, and tweet like crazy. Anything and everything that comes into your axe-head, share it. That’s how it’s done. So if you see this, the AxeMan has gone off the deep end. Stay tuned.
AxeMan enters MRI; develops x-ray vision
AxeMan’s physician, after a routine
checkup, suggests he get an MRI.
It’s covered by Medicare so he
figures, why not? Inside the black
hole, his claustrophobia is
overwhelming. He imagines writing on the wall. Cogito Ergo Sum? I think, therefore I am? What the hell is that all about?
Never much of a philosopher, AxeMan is confused when the procedure ends. But, when he reads a piece in the NY Times Sunday Review section (formerly called Opinion) he has second thoughts. The story (which is actually called an opinion) is about aging and exercise. The writer seems to suggest that overdoing athletics produces an overly uncivilized character, and perhaps a less literarily dumpy fellow. Since AxeMan has neither aim in life, he is not overly moved. Still, he does have his pretensions. And he is grateful that His Creator has deemed fit to provide him with this wacky new x-ray vision. He will embrace his expanded role as The Knight of the Living Dread; Behind the 8-ball. (to be continued)
Knight Vision
Putting logic aside; Descartes before de horse.
Do things in their proper order – if you put the cart in front of the horse, you won’t get anywhere. Descartes used circular logic to explain things (like God and the evil genius). The arguments that establish the trustworthiness of reason (the Cogito Argument) themselves seem to depend on the trustworthiness of reason.
So AxeMan knows about the derivation of Cogito Ergo Sum, but his search leads him elsewhere. Because the effing NY Times won’t allow him to apply the link he has posted about Plato, he beat the dead horse and turned up another Descartesian bon mot.
Dualism! How better to consider his faux doppleganger,
his split personality now trebled; yet another Holy Trinity. The Creator, lurking in the background, AxeMan hisself (as George Herriman might have said), and now,
The Knight of the Living Dread. The dark warrior whose special vision will haunt him, sensitize him to the potential threats of all matter entering his body. He doesn’t recall asking for this inhuman potential. Better to be able to see through walls than to see the walls of his organs as they threaten to deteriorate.
AxeMan clotheslined by the Clear Line
AxeMan, on assignment in Paris, monitoring the presidential elections for Crooked Line Journal, ventured into several Librairies de la Bande Dessinee (Comic book stores, in plain English). Just a wink or a nod was all he had hoped for, but he received nothing.
Unnoticed, he sunk into a minor depression. Could it be because he is American?
Double indemnity? In the home of the Clear Line he understands that he will never be recognized. Not in France, and probably not in the U.S. Either.
So, while awaiting the election results, in search of the familiar, he looks for a jazz club he knew from a previous journey.
7 Lezards was one of the great venues; a tiny, smoky basement in the Marais. He finds the address but no sign of the club. Damaged posters say the buiding has been designated for social housing.
How bizarre, he thinks. Still, the working poor should be able to live in the city where they clean the streets and provide many of the basic amenities for Parisians. For the rest of yet another rainy day he will await the election results.
Howard Saunders 