Visual Linguistics vs. Divine Table-scribblings

"You are very lucky to have such God-given talent!"

I take offense whenever someone makes the biased assumption that one's talent is bestowed upon them by some unseen hand rather than the culmination of long hours of singleminded determination, trial and error, toil, sweat and study. It trivializes everything an artist aims for, in that we would rather our talents are seen as something worthy and noble, rather than the luck of some cosmic draw.

I, for one, am getting tired of people looking at my profession as if it were some sort of goofy hobby-horse, meant for after-hours or phone table scribblings. Artists are linguists, in visual form. We learn to speak through repetition and observation, not through the unseen willing of some otherworldly force... some of us master spoken language in ways that can only be seen as stirring, lyrical; full of pith, meaning, depth. Nobody would say that our mastery of spoken communication is due to the intervention of God, Jesus, Allah, or Pat Robertson.

...Visual linguists, or 'artists' are the same. Not that I do not appreciate the obvious regard for my efforts, mind you, it's just the compliment strikes me as backhanded.

I use the term 'artist' in parentheses due to the lack of a better term. It's a little broad for my liking.

Pinched!

Now my wallet, pants and watch have been stolen.

I went for a nice relaxing swim and came out to find my lock hacked, my trousers pinched and my billfold and timepiece purloined.

On a happier note, the malaise of winter is lifting, and, I have decided to buy a washer and dryer for my solitary use. No longer do I need to socialize with angry loners and college students, I can wash my linens in the comfort of my own lair. My gradual descent into full-blown hermitism is near complete. If i can find a method of growing bean sprouts in my bath-rug and mushrooms under my refrigerator my goal of pasty-skinned introversion will be attained.

This weekend I will change my muffler, which I regret as the warm, friendly glow of the police car will then be left behind, and going about my day unmolested will seem out of sorts. Next week I will then attempt to wash the winter off my car, albeit I fear whatever i may find. I imagine the soot and grime of yet another over-long winter may be the only thing holding the poor rusted dear together. I do intend to clear the trunk and make space back there as soon as I'm able. How else will I transport the beaten and battered bodies of those who raided my locker and spirited away my goods.

The washer and dryer will then come in quite handy as well, blood is not something that goes un-noticed in a launromat. At least not in my neck of the woods.

Jailbirds and Hungry Bees.

"They are infants, they are not even walking and they are still in diapers," she said in Fredericton.

"And adults are having sexual intercourse with them. There are pictures with animals."

The above words stopped me dead in my tracks. I could not finish the rest of the article for fear of a welling resentment that would make the remainder of the day unbearable. Suffice it to say, I applaud the officials in charge of infiltrating, tracking and busting the internet ring that was trafficking in the aforementioned heinous acts of human cruelty. Those involved in the operation must have spent some awfully fitful nights as their minds ran those horrible images over and over… a job I’d wish on no-one, but one I’m glad is being done nonetheless.

This type of depravity is almost unfathomable to me. I’d love to close my eyes and ears to this, but I cannot. It has to be discussed out loud, in front of everyone if nothing more than a mirror to all those who partake, they must be drawn out.

Full article here.

Those implicated should be locked in a room without food, together. With sharp implements. And bees. Hungry bees.

Paved Paradise

There are times, such as the one I am about to account, that I have serious doubts about the sanity and lucidity of humanity as a whole.

As my previous post states, I have a deep, nagging concern that perhaps there is hole we are blindly digging, one that perhaps has gotten cavernous enough that crawling out has become a nearly insurmountable task. The following is an account of such an event unfurling in my home province of Quebec, Canada. Keep in mind that I am cobbling this together from radio, newspaper and television accounts. It’s about as accurate as I can manage, considering they sometimes present conflicting stories. As is, it is an event ‘in-progress’.

The last few days, the news-station I listen to in the morning has been reporting, to my disgust and utter horror, the salacious and despicable efforts of the provincial government to cut swaths out of a provincial park at the base of Mount Orford in the Eastern Townships. The intention is to sell the tract of land for $15 million dollars to a private developer in order to build condos in this pristine, undeveloped area. Many residents, in the recent past, donated countless hectares of their own land to public trust in a valiant effort to stave off the creeping development of this area, as the encroachment threatened the very ecological health of the area. The donors got nothing in return for their forward-minded deed, nothing besides a promise from the government that the land would be held in stewardship for future generations to enjoy. Now, that very body has turned their backs, ignored their duty and, in an act both callous and vulgar, has begun plans to dismantle and sell off this rare, precious resource. It is a bad day indeed.

Quebec, surprisingly, has only 3.5% of its land in public trust or in provincial parks, which should be a complete source of embarrassment considering that lesser-off Costa Rica has about 35%, and Australia has 18%. It is no secret that for some time, Quebec has been ‘for sale’, with every precious resource cut up, sucked dry and farmed out for mere pennies, with little or no consideration for future generations. What this amounts to is a land grab for the rich, fat hogs that sidle up to the governmental trough, stumbling glassy-eyed over each other as they greedily try to mop up every ounce of runoff from the wasteful, bloated governmental machine. The lies being offered in earnest by the Premier, one bloated and poorly-coiffed Jean Charest, are bordering on sociopathic, in which the admitted governmental intention is to sell off part of the park to buy another area to expand on the further side. the government promises to use the proceeds to almost double the size of the 5,200-hectare park to 10,000 hectares. Experts are crying foul as the area that they intend to purchase would estimate towards $150 million, a far cry from the $15 mil they plan to take in for their efforts. So, somebody is getting a deal, and it ain’t us… unless you count ‘raw deals’ into the mix. Helps to be a buddy to the Premier...

It gets funnier. Or sadder, depending on your sense of irony. Thomas Mulcair, the previous minister of the environment, was pushed out in an unexplained move during a cabinet shuffle and demoted, irregardless of his spotless record of good service and pro-active policies toward sustainability and conservation. He was replaced by, yep; you guessed it, the previous minister of ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, Claude Bechard. Almost immediately, before he had a chance to warm the seat, he announced the plan to dismantle the park would go forward. Needless to say, Mulcair quit in disgust. You see, Mulcair had been against the project and held by his principles. The project, now in the hands of a mock-environment minister, is defiantly moving forward, a gesture so brash and disgusting one can nearly see from afar their swollen, ruddy cocks defiantly jutting skyward as they traipse about, their forward vision obviously obstructed by the immensity of this towering, pulsing righteousness. They answer reporters’ questions with the air of disinterest and malice one sees only in pro athletes, who know at the end of the day that the ‘little people’ do not truly count, they are merely pests to be tolerated.

An act of good faith has been sullied in a manner most undignified. The water table will be poisoned; the lake near the mountain will be awash with diesel fumes and waste. The trees will be cut, and nothing will be the same. One of the opponents to the project, Orford County Mayor Pierre Rodier, said yesterday that the community's water supply could not sustain such a major development.

This madness must stop. They dance on their rooftops as the city burns.

Thoughts

This past weekend I went through a particularly bad spell and wound up in a dark place. My sister fell ill, I had a heavy run-in with business partners, my womanizing collided with my world, commitments went unfulfilled among other things.

So, in this tender, exposed moment i took a look about me for solace... and found little. Since then, Things are coming 'round, but after a bit of hand-wringing I have decided to lay my thoughts bare in this forum.

I might be anonymous, but I am honest. Now, Iam no poet laureate... more akin to a pimply 14-year-old railing against the sodding planet, but it should make some sense. Feel free to comment.


Today I awoke to find the world crying.

I realized that not only have our children and fathers lost their way, but the return to the proper path may be difficult as it is overgrown and difficult to find as it is no longer in use. But the path is not yet effaced. A trace may still be left, but one must look carefully, and if it does not become well-worn once more I fear it may be washed away in the acid rain or taken away on the poisoned breeze.

The massive industrial expressway, black as death, seems our only future.

I wake in the morning to not a new dawn, but to a permanent midnight. It goes deeper than the self, deeper than the flesh... it pervades the bone, the structure, the shape. Looking out the window to the smudged horizon, the lonely grey towers, the failing trees, I feel little hope. We see no further than the now, and who can blame these poor souls, when tomorrow seems like suicide?

We rape our young for material gain. We are the pornography generation, twisting and perverting the beauty of youth until we are nothing more than a writhing mass of poisoned flesh. Our children deserve more hope than this.

The soil is giving up on us. The glaciers retreat from us. The ocean rises against us. The air wheezes and gasps above us. The food poisons us. And still we defy them.

We lock our doors and suspect our neighbors. We lock away all we covet from the world in hopes that these items will give us happiness. It is an empty house and an open heart that will bring happiness.

We covet. It is us, we are inseperable from this desire. We fight wars to maintain the levels of greed and waste we are accustomed to. We view competition as strength, cooperation as weakness and condemnation with passive hearts.

We defecate where we sleep, we foul the water we depend on for life, we inject poisons in our precious veins and we spew death into the air we breathe. Because we covet. We covet material goods, so industry murders us with kindness, greedily catering to our unnatural desires. What good is it to devise a burning iron box to visit nature if it is that very paradise that is fouled by the process?

Those tasked to represent us dance in some macabre masquerade, in which they do not represent us at all. The cancer grows as they wear their tattered robes of public office, through which we can see the corporate branding, and they make deals with the devil behind closed doors, selling our children’s blood for plastic baubles.

What good is it to find new lands and usurp them? To force them by political and economic means to adopt our ways? To force them to give up their soil due our mismanagement, to give up their water since we have used ours as a public toilet? We go not to other lands with the open arms and laurel as friends and equals, but as conquerors and parasites. We stick our steel spikes in and suck the earth’s blood beneath their feet, force upon them our shoddy goods and beads, rape their children as we have our own, push our icons… and recoil in horror when they push back.

We brutalize the earth, our neighbors and friends, our families and ourselves because we covet. The deeper we look within, the wider the abyss, yet we stack broken furniture and old clothing against its walls in a feeble hope to fill the mocking emptiness, instead of lighting the fire of paradise and filling the void with the warmth and light of human understanding, love and compassion.

We cannot love paradise because we do not love ourselves.

now, back to happiness!

Live Action Simpsons!

D'OH!

Mars is Attac- er, Pissing on Us!

On 25 July, 2001, blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western India. Now, at first scientists speculated that perhaps it was dust... swept up in the wind and trapped in a rainfall, but it seems that perhaps it could have been of extraterrestrial origins.

Read the entire account here.

Personally, I would not be surprised. If 'aliens' have been coming to earth for decades for what seems like the sole purpose of gleefully sodomizing gap-toothed yokels, it stands to reason perhaps they'd probably get a further kick out of pissing out the passenger windows of their saucers on the rest of us.

If you find pods growing in your attics, remember where ya heard it first! Odd news. Then again, perhaps 'tis a sign of the impending Apocalypse... The proverbial 'Rain of Blood'? (Nah, I don't believe that crap either.)

'Meinert', Not Merely a Bizarre Name

This is my friend Meinert's (yeah, it's a real name, isn't that nutty?) blog.

ha ha. I knew he'd get addicted to blogging. It's like crack, but without the false sense of invincibility. Which reminds me to buy band-aids.

He likes to rant about typical old-dude stuff, such as the weather, space modules, adult diapers and 'How the kids of today are going wild, but I can't stop looking at them'. He is also an artiste and interested in space to a degree I find not only unhealthy, but downright frightening. Also, his dog eats cat turd. What his cat eats, is anyone's guess, but I bet it's particularly tasty if it's that delicious a second time 'round.

I recommend you all check it out. Not only is it a frightening portal into meinert's mind, but it is also a good half-assed way to see if he is still alive, without having to actually pick up the phone, or climb a tree and look through his bedroom window at 3 in the morning!

Read, and be nearly amazed!

420 Ft High, 120 MPH Down...

With a record-breaking height of 420-feet and record-breaking speed of 120 mph, Top Thrill Dragster delivers on its promise of thrilling riders this summer at Cedar Point, Ohio.

I like roller coasters as much as the next simian, but perhaps this time they have gone too far? Are they trying to scare people to death??!! Check it out. I particularly like the last snapshot, I think it should be used to advertise the ride.

One thought occurs to me. These harrowing pics were snapped in what appears to be the bone-numbing dead of winter. To replicate what must be the feeling, blaze down the highway in the dead of winter in an out-of-control convertible. Now, wet yourself.