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The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders (Matt. 7:24-27) literally states it’s better to build on rock than on sand. That when storms come, houses however fancy above ground, built on rock will survive those on sand won’t. Let’s set aside the theocentric allegory therein and look at a more capitalist one. The stereotypical builder these days is a corporation owned by capitalist stockholders…

These posts are all just squiggly lines. Some of those lines are drawings, others are words. I arrange them so they re-present ideas that occur to me. They are, of course, meaningful to me, I don’t only draw and write to pass the time. And I believe they are as well to you to the extent we share givens and takens, nature and culture. Therefore, not as much. No one is exactly like me or you. The…

Some time ago a naive frog felt he could tell us from them, nobodies and somebodies alike, in the admiration bog they all lived, could know who was a kindred spirit—others like you enough to like you and you them—and who was not. But it was just the times making it easy, they wore they were old, we were young; they wore one uniform and we another. Consider the mid-20th century Russian fable, The…

I’m so tired, hurt actually, of all this. So hurt that I’d settle for him “The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous” (Dante’s Inferno, Canto 34, line 28) just going away—no purgatory, no paradise, no righting the wrongs, no making laws where norms once worked—So hurt, that in spite of knowing better, I seek relief in nostalgia, I long for the good old days even though I know they weren’t all that…

 “Creatives correct, computers corrupt” —R. Beit If left to its own devices, human intelligence wanders down roads less traveled (R. Frost) where while it will stumble if not careful, it will find something new. Artificial intelligence can’t do that, it only marches down roads more traveled by, even though they bend into the underbrush. Only Humans can do what has not been done. Devices can…

This caption explains the metaphorical nature of those near ubiquitous stores that sell flat-pack assemble-it-yourself furniture. They are an always-crowded warehouse-sized labyrinth that pretends to be a maze where you explore many sidetracks, seeking new ways to express yourself, but you are actually being led down the aisle towards an inevitable result: spending a lot of money. These stores…

“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth” —Pablo Picasso,1923 Artists create the illusions of depth and understanding. Art is a paradox, a thing between people that simultaneously connects and separates. Artists use self-costly talent and hard-learned skills to try to create these fabrications. They are often neither satisfied nor successful.  Art is easy if you were born with the talent and…

But it’s neither yellow nor do “we live a life of ease (a life of ease) Every one of us (every one of us) Has all we need” (Lennon–McCartney 1966) No, Ringo, our submarine is a high-tech surveillance and destruction machine, a device that can cruise undetected, observing constantly and able to destroy life as we know it in a moment at the push of a button.  Metaphorically that is, as it’s not…

I don’t usually comment on the scandale du jour as I’m not trying to earn a living drawing anymore, not that I ever did as my careering has always been as much pragmatic as it has been creative. But this story line is too much (weird yet typical) to pass by. Most of you-know-who’s antics are partially concealed, enough so that there could be a bit of unknown that could legitimize the obviously…

“If the world were clear, art would not exist.” ― Albert Camus This one is not a mise en abyme effort. Yes, the screen is in the center and is empty but it doesn’t repeat itself ad infinitum. The version of it you are looking at is only 400 pixels wide so the white space in the middle is only about 60 pixels wide so there is not enough room for enough detail to create an image in an image as…

We are, at the same time, infected by a nervous system and affected by a system that’s nervous. On one “side” there’s a body that reacts to its cultural and natural environment, often mixing to two up, then tells us what it did, or at least what it “thinks” we want to hear. On the other is an authoritarian capitalist culture that must grow or die without any concern for the bodies that ultimately…

“Mewling and puking…Full of strange oaths…sans taste” —Wm. Shakespeare Babies are, they say, muscular tubes that noisily move stuff from one of its ends to the other—converting nutrient to excrement. What’s shown here is that process enlarged to a national, even international or global scale. And where normal babies have got natural charm that neutralizes the gross facts of their existence this…

Some artists are mostly opportunists; their making of art-like objects has, ahead of all others, the goal of taking as much money as they can from rich people by whatever trickery they can come up with. These artists are usually in the group called “fine” artists. Commercial artists use a talent they were born with and developed over time into a skill that enough non-artists find useful,…

This drawing is based on NC Wyeth’s painting of a “Wild West” scene where invaders take shelter behind their deceased vehicles against the unseen onslaught of outraged locals. I can’t find any info about painting, but it looks like one of the 100s he made for popular periodicals in the early 20th century.  My homage is a “politoon” where the main invader becomes you-know-who, his horse becomes a…

The playground changes, but the players don’t. Nor do their tactics. Winning on childhood playgrounds comes naturally or not at all. If you were not up to “league” standards as a kid, chances are you won’t be doing any better when you are older. The winners usually in youth become the winners in adulthood. Of course, I don’t mean the quotidian winning of the bullies and jocks. But rather the…

It’s obviously You-Know-Who as a jailor here—and self-appointed judge and jury, but not executioner—we hope. And the incarcerated is Uncle Sam; he’s counting the days ‘til his indeterminate custodial sentence is ended. I want to believe Sam will outlast his corrupt prison guard. Sam is an allegorical, therefore deathless, representation of a nation founded with good intentions and You-Know-Who…

Friendship is contingent. That’s not meant to diminish friendship, it’s just a statement of how it seems to be. Pairbonding is not. That’s not meant to promote pairbonding because that’s only the theory—the myths, the propaganda—in practice it seems just as contingent as friendship. Friendship happens when you find yourself among others like you enough to like you and you them. Whereupon you…