There are probably some of you out there that have given up on me.
"Haven't received any Life of Kai letters recently.  Kai must have
finally lost it", you're thinking.  "He's up and grabbed a house in
the suburbs and he's working on financing a Minivan."  How dare you!

So let's see how wrong I can make you.

Actually, now that I think about it, I probably haven't written since
I got back from Budapest!  For the sake of brevity and sanity (and so
this email doesn't get so long that no one reads it!) I'll stick to
recent events.  Needless to say, however, wandering Eastern Europe
with Weishi, Krista, Tara, and Mike was a blast.  (I only had horrible
bronchitis for the very end of the trip!)  We managed to hit Prague,
several small towns in Czech, Vienna, Budapest, Vienna again,
Salzburg, and Munich.  Even got the cool local tour with Krista
filling us in on all of the sites of various riots and revolutions.
She hasn't been beheaded or beaten in a riot for freedom yet herself,
but now that she's graduating from an Eastern European University
she'll be getting bored and looking for something to do.  I'm sure
it's only a matter of time.

More recently I just kegged another batch of homebrew.  A brown ale.
Decent, but not one of our best.  In my opinion it's about time for
another hearty, fork licking good stout.

Did a performance art bit a while back.  The theme for the night was
"panopticon".  I took the first definition I found and did a dark
little beat number about a jailer that goes insane in a panopticon
prison.  The panopticon prison was designed by Jeremy Bentham, a nutty
English guy who thought that having isolated prisoners under the
impression that they were under constant surveillance would be a
wonderful technique for reformation.  Later an even nuttier French
dude suggested that this would be a wonderful model for the working
world and would be certain to increase productivity.  Studies done
more recently demonstrate that this, in fact, does little more than
increase stress and lower morale.

My performance was pretty straightforward.  It involved yours truly
sitting in the middle of the room in a black turtleneck and beret,
slowly rotating, thumping a drum and repeated this gothic poem.  The
final stanzas of the poem were read in bound and gagged prisoner
position and ominously spoken into the resonating drum body.  All
around me people dressed in suits danced in circles and shouted into
paper-cup telephones while a photographer from the 40s slowly moved
around the room snapping pictures.  Of course the audience was just as
much fun and various people came by to stand over me and nod slowly.
The next one is this Tuesday.

July 4th weekend turned out quite well in spite of my missing the
fireworks.  Up until the last minute I wasn't sure if I was going to
go racing off into the great wilds of Texas with my camera or help out
a friend with his film.  As it turns out I stuck around and was able
to fill in almost all of the little mysterious roles in the credits
(grip, gaffer, AC, boom, best dude) and run some sound as well.  I was
scampering about setting lights, waving mikes, checking meter readings
and holding plastic female bodies over the camera when shooting in the
rain.  I couldn't have had a better time.  This was something I gave
up long ago, but once again I have been reminded of something that I
truly love.  Sadly, I have also been reminded once again that
everything I truly love involves incredible amounts of work and
results in little or no income.  Idealism meets starvation.  It's yet
another love that must remain a hobby for the time being.  Two more
years!

Barely patient, 
Kai

P.S.

Oh yeah, and the film is about love and construction sites.  The zine
is, of course, called, "Appetite for Construction".

Note: If for some reason you are locked in a cell somewhere and have
nothing else to do you can catch up on all of the old "Life of Kai"
emails at:

http://www.jedi.net/kai/life

Also: A lot of people gripe about getting these group letters.  They
don't want to share me.  Well, get off your duff and write me some
email and you will receive your very own personal and unique reply
directly from me!