Monthly Archives: April 2007

Stories you've already read

So this is the first weekend of the spring/summer that I've had my camo Porsche 996 on the road. I was going to sell it, but it's just too much fun to drive because it's so fast and handles so well. I've been tossing around ideas about expanding the paint job a little but I haven't come across any ideas yet that I think I'll like long-term.

I'd forgotten how funny the car is to drive… Every day a couple people pull up beside it while I'm driving and snap pictures of it. Most people either like it at face value, or at least think it's funny. The best though is people who are stuck up enough to have a problem with it. They really need to get over themselves. Life is supposed to have a sense of humor.

Anyway… Things I've read recently that I thought were interesting…

  • Student arrested over violent story as well as being denied entry into the Marines. Some kid writes a story for creative writing class involving murder and necrophilia. He doesn't get a bad mark for writing it — he gets arrested and expelled. Seriously, telling people that the only way they can express negative thought and action is by full-on snapping and going on a killing rampage is a mistake…
  • Drug test cowboys and hacking your body's bacteria, both in WIRED and both just skim the surface. The second one I think we'll see a lot more over the next twenty years both as we start to understand the bacterial extinctions we've caused and the resulting damage to our own biological functioning. I think we'll also see a lot of stories about regeneration of various types over the next few years.
  • Beef flavored Prozac for your depressed dog. Why are dogs depressed? Because they're slaves, active outdoor animals trapped in small, sterile environments. If you want your dog not to be depressed, move to the country, or at least spend a ton of time with your dog. If you can't do that, then you shouldn't own a dog.
  • Marijuana shrinks tumors and even destroys them. It's been known for a long time that THC effectively fights lung cancer, breast cancer, brain cancers, and more — and the US government has been actively suppressing that research. Why? Because not only are people dying of cancer very profitable, it's also expected that they'll die. Now that's an easy business… Making a ton of money watching people die slowly. The medical cartels have no interest in cures — their primary drive (by law) is to extend injury and illness as long as possible (so basically — keep them alive, but don't let them get truly better). It's why in part we have a medical system that focuses on dealing with illness, rather than focussing on maintaining health and avoiding illness.
  • Only 3% of Pakistani Muslims believe Osama/Al Qaeda were involved in 9/11. I thought this was interesting — the vast majority of Muslims (in a very Muslim country) believe not only that the attacks were unacceptable — that's not a surprise — but that they were not even conducted by Muslims, and that instead they're part of a larger conspiracy to wage war on Islam.
  • House prices are starting to crash and as the US dollar continues to crumble, another “great depression” is looming. I think I probably agree with the quote in the article — “Every few hundred years in Western Civilization, there occurs a sharp transformation… Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself – its worldview; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world, and the people born can't even imagine the world in which their grandparents live and into which their own parents were born. We are currently living through just such a transformation.

Quickie Painting ("Devon's Jungle")

I finished off the painting based on a doodle by my brother and his son (he drew the bird). This is painted on a 24″x48″ canvas that Nefarious and a friend used for fingerpaints. When those dried and cracked up, I sealed it all underneath a thin layer of plastic. The figures were stenciled in place and were then painted with acrylics over the spray paint backing…

There's a bigger picture in my art gallery on my IAM page as well.

In the next week or two I should have the ability to do all my own framing here, so I'm going to go on a framing binge and get all of these paintings set up… Sometimes I want to do a gallery show, but I worry that the art world would so brutally reject my silly paintings that I might rather not bother. Mostly I paint for my own amusement I think.

That's an ugly baby

The father who was in charge of this stroller didn't seem to mind that a squirrel was eating all his kid's snacks. He was sitting at the edge of the park reading and his out-of-sight three year old was trying to slide down a fireman's pole by himself (I went and helped him so he didn't break his neck)…

Paintings

She won't see it until she arrives, so I think I can safely post a picture of Rachel's birthday present without it ruining the surprise… I got it all framed and have packing stuff for her so she can actually bring this back to her place in LA (the last painting I made for her is immense and can't really be shipped).

I'm sad to see it leave here because it's one of my favorite paintings.

Along the same lines, I am 99% sure my brother (who's a far better and far more intuitive artist than me — his work is very flowing and natural, almost like cavepaintings) doesn't read this blog… So I can also mention that I'm working on a painting for him based on a drawing that he did that's kind of a pseudo-self-portrait. When they sent Nefarious's birthday present they “packed the box with monsters” (ie. drew them inside the box) and this was one of them.

I've been playing with damaged canvases and not bothering to refinish or prime them with anything other than clear polymer (so I'm basically painting on a garbage surface that's behind a thin layer of plastic). I hope it doesn't have longterm issues with peeling or anything like that!

Anyway, I probably won't have time to finish it this weekend but I will this weekend (I think we're going to the Science Centre or something)… It's a really quick, fun painting. Jon just got a place down the road, so I have a little more workspace here and am going to get a router and tablesaw so I can start building frames myself and finally get everything I have framed.

Seedless Avocados Are Next

If I was this avocado, I would be embarrassed about the size of my nad. That said, avocados are neat so I won't tease it before it's brutal end in my belly.