William “Bill” Edward Latham, 1982-2017

Bill was a truly amazing human being.

I’m trying to go through every public online blog entry he ever posted, starting with his Diaryland in 2001, and repost it here. There are a lot of gaps, because the internet is a very fickle place. For example, his livejournal has been purged (almost) completely, and appears to be unrecoverable. However, there are many other sources.

Additionally, I’m posting and sharing some things that Bill emailed or texted me privately (although nothing that I believe he’d have a problem with me sharing). If you have something like this that you’d like to add to the archive, please let me know by sending it to keef@keef.org.

What does exist from his old blogs is very of its time. Some of it, reading it now, makes me wince a little– the language Bill used as a teenager twenty years ago is very different from the language he used in his thirties. I don’t know how he’d feel about this stuff being yanked out of the depths of the internet and put back on display. He might wince, as I sometimes did. He might find it hilarious (as I often did). I feel that it’s important to make this as complete as I can, and the blog entries I’m posting are all out there to be found in the wild already (if you’re willing to use a little elbow grease and some sleuthing skills).

More details and information will be added as the work continues.

As of June 21, 2017, the archives are complete from:

DIARYLAND (2001-2003): COMPLETE
LIVEJOURNAL (2004): COMPLETE (at least, as complete as it’s likely ever gonna get)
OLD BLOG (2010-2016): COMPLETE
OLD-OLD BLOG (2003-2010): INCOMPLETE. Done through Sep 1, 2003.

-keef

WATCH OUT THE WORLD’S BEHIND YOU

He was wearing a tie and sat down at the counter next to me. The bartender pointed to him and he said “I’d like a bud light draft, sir.”

It struck me as very formal. Especially for a building with bats in it.

He drank his “bud light draft” and walked off briskly into the night.

A better man than I, I’m sure.

JEALOUS COWARDS TRY TO CONTROL, RISE ABOVE, WE’RE GONNA RISE ABOVE

It’s official. Photoshop 7 is my new favorite toy.

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon playing with it off and on. A few weeks ago, my former high school journalism teacher asked me to do cartoon art for her wedding invitations. I had been the cartoonist for the school newspaper in high school.

It was a fun gig.

So I did the invitation art and she had it scanned so I could add color to it. You can view the images by clicking here, here, and here.

The resolution is a little low on the pictures as I had to turn them into JPEGS so no one would have to download them. The final ones are TIFF. I don’t know why I felt telling you that was relevant.

The original artwork was black and white and done with pencils and ink.

Soon, I’ll get some of the other stuff I’ve drawn lately scanned. I’m just a combination of lazy and busy and they mix kind of funny.

I BELIEVE IN MR. GRIEVES

I had a really weird dream after I went back to bed.

I was driving my car on the interstate when all of a sudden, on it’s own, it accelerated to over 100 mph. I kept trying to brake and I removed my foot from the gas pedal, but it kept going faster.

There were lots of hills on the interstate and my car kept flying over them, much like that chase scene in the movie Bullitt.

Finally it was too much. My car was going up a very tall hill and at the last moment, I dove out the door and rolled onto the interstate before landing on my feet. Apparently in my dreams I have ninja-like reflexes.

I watched my car crash at the bottom of the hill in a smoldering wreck.

It was then that it turned into a fifty foot tall, sphinx-like, marble statue of my car. There were State Troopers flocking all around it (I wonder how they ended up in my dream? Ha ha.). Then I had to call my dad and tell him what happened.

“I crashed the car and it turned into a 50 foot tall statue.” I said.

He hung up on me.

That dream was awesome.

THIS IS NOT A PRAYER, THIS IS NOT A CANDLE

“How long could we maintain?” I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car?

If so, well, we’ll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere, ’cause it goes without saying that we can’t turn him loose. He’d report us at once to some kind of outback Nazi law enforcement agency and they’ll run us down like dogs.

Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?

-Hunter S. Thompson

WE’VE GOT OUR FINGER ON THE PULSE OF AMERICA

“Look out the window. And doesn’t this remind you of when you were in the boat and then later that night you were lying and looking looking at the ceiling and the water in your head was not dissimilar from the landscape. And you thought to yourself why is it that the landscape is moving but the boat is still?”
-Crispin Glover, Dead Man

“I haven’t slept for ten days because that would be too long.”

“When I was on acid I discovered that margarine is better than butter. I saw through the bullshit. I saw beams of light and heard things that sounded like car horns.”

“Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only disease you can get yelled at for having. ‘Goddamnit, Otto, you’re an alcoholic!’ ‘Goddamnit, Otto, you have lupus!’ One of those does not sound right.”
-Mitch Hedberg

“You know, David Hasselhoff has that look of constant confusion, like when dogs get bred too much.”
-Henry Rollins

“Back in 1991 I used to hit old people with folding chairs. Now I am a rock and roll superstar.”
-Wesley Willis

HOW MUCH STRYCHNINE WAS IN THAT ECSTASY YOU GAVE ME AN HOUR AGO?

I haven’t updated too much lately. I guess I’ve been too busy doing things. So, I’d apologize but I’ve been having too much fun to feel bad about not updating.

I’ve been drawing a lot again. I get bored looking at webpages at work and constantly find other ways to entertain myself. In the past couple months I’ve tried sculpting things out of tinfoil and play-doh (seperately, not together) I purchased at the dollar store before work.

The last few days though, I’ve been drawing cartoons again like a mad man. I’m pretty proud of them. As soon as I have a chance to get over to my folks house to use their scanner or one falls out of the sky and shows up in my room, I’ll post some of them.

I went to a Lesbian bar last night with my new pal Kira. There were a lot of tough dykes there. It was cool. I played all the John Mellencamp songs on the jukebox.

I don’t have much to say right now, but the last week’s been pretty good to me.

LOOK AT ALL THOSE STARS, LOOK AT HOW GODDAMN UGLY THE STARS ARE

Mr. Night sky, can you come a little quicker? I don’t feel home in the day time, and I never will. There’s just always something missing from my world when the people are out scurrying.

Give me a town where everything is shut down, save for a dive on the corner where I can hang my hat.

Give me a town where the people have gone to bed, and won’t complain when I come stumbling and howling.

Mr. Night Sky, Mr. Night Sky, I’m on fire, can you hear me?

Mr. Night Sky, Mr. Night Sky, why’d you leave so soon?

I was behind the wheel of the car, and though I could see what was going on, I couldn’t get comfortable at all. My back was too arched, my feet were too far up, and the steering wheel seemed to far away. And I was dreaming of you.

Mr. Night Sky, I drank too much last night.

Mr. Night Sky, I didn’t say some things I should have said.

Mr. Night Sky, in the mornings I feel good as dead.

I’m a day late and several dollars short. I ate rice for a week to soak up the whiskey and sew my stomach back together. Every night I stand on the front porch looking for your stars, but they’re too dim to see in the street light.

Mr. Night Sky, I thought we were friends.

You stick with your friends no matter what. No matter the situation. Otherwise, what else would you call them? I’ll make no mistake and offer criticism unless it is due. And if it’s my business.

Mr. Night Sky, I dreamed about running away.

I got in my car and drove a thousand miles to the desert. When I got to the desert it started to rain and I took my clothes off and walked straight through it all. The cacti smiled and the vultures offered me my share. But I walked straight through it all.

I kicked every sign of life I saw and pissed in every oasis.

I took the sand in my hands and swallowed it whole, excreting powder for days, not caring a bit.

I fought a Gila monster in a race against time.

I came out just fine, Mr. Night Sky. I came out just fine.

Finally, I came to a house that had been made just for me thousands of years before by people I never met. You called them Anasazi, Mr. Night Sky. I called them family, the same way I call you brother. And we are brothers, Mr. Night Sky.

You can call it walking away, I’ll call it surrendering. Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.

I’m waiting, brother. I’m waiting.