I am amused that the rivers are like giant tubes lying on top of the greenery rather than in furrows carved into it. This is painting six of ten in the series, not counting the cover of the book… Since these are still undercoats, I’d say I’m about 35% done right now in total.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran
Driving across the city, putting up with the terrible drivers that can’t handle a little snow, really makes me wish I wasn’t here in a metropolis… I don’t know if I’d rather be traveling by snowmobile or by sailboat, but as much as I love my life and its many privileges, I wish I could leave the city. Hopefully my father — check out (and get involved — it’s a multi-user site) his project at castlehom.com — gets his sailboat out of US waters so Caitlin and Nefarious and I can go visit him for a while.
And yeah, I’ve had this happen to me — hit by the boom — but only in a little 16′ boat.
I admit that I don’t really know where I’m going with this one… Tomorrow I’m going to stop by the art store to pick up five more panels to do the remainder of the pages on. I’m really liking having this many pieces on the go — it’s nice being able to just switch canvases when I feel “stalled” on the one I’ve been working on. If only I had more room!
There are fourteen new never-before-published interviews up at bodmodsex.com for the book… If you have the time, please check them out and help me get them polished and proofed for publication. More interviews will go up tomorrow as well. And of course feel free to purchase the previous interview book to support these various ventures!
A couple years ago the gadget sites reported on a patent for a water-powered jet pack. Judging by the super-cool video below, it seems that patent has been made good on. So epic.
In less pleasant news, a local bodmod practitioner was just busted here over implant and other procedures… They were threatened with “medicine without a license” type charges, but so far they’re being held only on assault charges (the complainant being a parent of the over-21 “victim”), which to me seems totally bogus. What’s next, getting charged with attempted murder because you go to kick boxing class? Rape over consensual sex? Clearly an assault charge is totally inappropriate when there’s no real complainant and everything is consensual. Hopefully the whole thing gets dropped as an abuse of power…
Time asks, Can Jihadis Be Rehabilitated?, and I’d take that one step farther — can the “terrorists” locked up at Guantanamo become productive members of society? So I was thinking about other terrorists and what’s become of them… Take the much-mentioned members of the Weathermen in the US, who caused riots, bombed and burned buildings — Bill Ayers is a respected professor and civic activist, Jeff Jones is a reporter and consultant, and Bernardine Dohrn is a law professor. Looking at the more violent members — who are still in prison — Kathy Boudin for example has become a public health expert, Judith Alice Clark formed an AIDS counseling program, and so did David Gilbert.
Looking here in Canada at members of the FLQ, who did a decade of bombing and robbery in Quebec, and kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner and killed the Vice Premier of Quebec… Take the four members of the Chenier Cell who spearheaded these acts — Paul Rose has been a candidate for the NDPQ and is a trade unionist who still works in the Quebec sovereignty movement, Jacques Rose owns a contracting business, Francis Simard is a writer. Or the Squamish Five who bombed a factory that made cruise missile components — Ann Hansen is a writer, Brent Taylor earned a degree from Queens University while in prison, and Gerry Hannah is a musician. Michelle Duclos who was arrested in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty has since become a Canadian government official serving as a representative to Algeria.
Anyway, I think people become “terrorists” because they have an overwhelming sense of ethics that brings them to commit extreme acts to help achieve a worldview that they feel is just. Help them mature and understand that there are less violent ways to achieve ethical change in the world, and they will often become agents of positive change in the world. A terrorist is just a person who’s chosen a poor method to try and make the world a better place. As much as I think religion is idiotic (none of the examples I’ve been able to find were religiously motivated, and that may make a big difference in rehab), I am aware that there are plenty of “good” people who are religious… So I don’t see why an Islamic terrorist can’t find a good way to work toward a better world for all of us, given the right therapy.
