invertednegatives

Bat Woman, silver art nouveau match safe c. 1905

American Oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus), parents and chicks, family Haematopodidae, order Charadriiformes, FL, USA

Mountain Scops Owl (Otus spilocephalus), juvenile, family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, India

This love of painting is innate. You can hand a baby a bunch of finger paints and they'll bang something out, delighted at their ability to alter their little corner of the universe. Just don't let them go for too long, because then they'll develop performance anxiety about having screwed up the simplest goddamn composition I mean I am eighteen months old, I should be past this kind of mistake.

Folks since the dawn of history have been enjoying smearing brightly-coloured shit on darker shit. Or maybe you're supposed to be going light to dark. I can never remember. This feels right, and if it looks right, it is right. At least, that's what I'd say if anything I made looked right. Either way, that's how we got cave paintings, which everyone really likes to look at. Everyone, that is, except for the original artist, who if they were alive today would probably be dying of embarrassment at how many obvious errors in anatomy they made.

The most famous cheese in American history is the subject of this letter. A gift of the dairymen of Oswego County, New York, to Andrew Jackson in 1835, it weighed 1,400 pounds, was four feet in diameter and two feet thick, and arrived at the White House in a cart pulled by twenty-four horses. Deposited in the vestibule, it remained there two years, aging; whereupon Jackson announced that on Washington’s birthday, 1837, at his last big reception before leaving the White House, he would hold a cheese tasting…   I intend to have eaten on the 22nd instant, my large cheese, presented by my friends of the state of N. York - can you… be here & partake of the feast… & any of your friends who may wish to accompany you - it will be my last & only possible day.   On the day of the cheese tasting, Washington closed early and, seemingly, then descended on the White House. The crowds were such that those who could not get in by the front door, entered by the windows. Every possible place was filled, with the widest variety of people: rag-a-muffins mixed with diplomats in full dress. Jackson, looking thin, emaciated and exhausted, left early, and President-elect Van Buren had to take over the handshaking. Within two hours, mercifully, the cheese was devoured.  Likewise ravaged was the White House itself: its floor and carpets were demolished, and the mansion reeked of cheddar for months.

And a subset of people and active voters love that shit. Even if the WH is destroyed and/or smells like cheddar. The more remarkable thing is that this is taking place after the 1920s, and how very much the trump admin is double dipping on crypto after using taxpayer $ to host it.