January 2017 – TransverseAlchemy

When you do a Google search for “Merkley” most of the results feature Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) from Oregon. Which is ok, but frankly, he’s not exactly my definition of “visually appealing”. So let us question these results, in triplicate exactly, and we wind up with MERKLEY???
Which happens to work a bit better, especially if you’re fucking sick of politics.

Merkley is a photographer/artist who lives near the Haight district in a giant street-level apartment in a building that he also owns. That means he doesn’t pay rent and that he’s free do whatever the hell he wants all the time. His daily activities vary from month to month, but they almost always include taking pictures of naked women, drinking liquor, listening to DEVO, and thinking about his idol, Flavor Flav. When he’s not busy with that, he’s hanging out with his dogs, Snortzle and Butterface, or painting super-intricate pictures of old men in suits playing accordions on donkeys and shit like that.

“I know these people. Guess who doesn’t know them. The Robot Camera Machine.The Robot Camera Machine is a dirty rotten box of bolts that don’t know shit. The stuff it does to people with it’s ten billion watt flash is nothing less than barbaric, freezing them, killing them, exposing their zits and warts and clogged pores and such. The Robot Camera Machine LIES.Fuck The Robot Camera Machine and it’s cruel robot camera machineness. “

“…influences…not necessarily in order:
Devo
Dr. Seuss
Vargas
Norman Rockwell
Wes Anderson
Jim Henson
Apple Computers
Adobe
Pixar
Gary Larson and the one panel cartoon format.
Glamour Shots (you know from the mall)
The entire lowrider aesthetic
Post Mormon Repression Correction and perhaps most significantly and despite my staunch atheism, these three words: Do unto others…Jesus stole that line I bet.

…excuse me for sounding like an idiot hippie for a second, but is a giraffe inspired by tall trees? Is a pelican inspired by wiggly throated retirees? I have always felt the need to make stuff and ultimately I just feel like I am obeying my instincts.”

Violet Blue:
My friend dressed up as you for Halloween to try and get hot girls back to her apartment and get their clothes off. It didn’t work. Do you have advice for her?

Merkley???:
Are you joking? Every year I get a handful of people threatening to dress up as me for Halloween, which makes it very confusing when I encounter beardy homeless dudes on/near Halloween not knowing if they are one of my asshole friends or not. Tell your friend that unfortunately it’s not my Texas/Bee Gees/homeless oil tycoon look that gets the clothes off. If that is truly her goal, next year she should dress up like Photoshop. – SFGate