natural pantheism

I just realized that apparently I never shared this series here on Tumblr??  

I call it Living Paintings, as they are recreations of extinct animals that some artists actually saw and painted from memory, a long time ago.

Now that SAG-AFTRA is officially joining the WGA on the picket lines, many of your favorite shows and films you’re looking forward to that were already facing major delays will now face even longer delays.

Don’t blame the writers or the actors. Blame the studios for refusing to compensate them fairly. I’ve spoken a bit about what studios are trying to do to the profession of screenwriting in my last post about the WGA strike, but I’ll be focusing on acting in this one. 

It’s easy to see the headlines about actors striking and go “Why are the actors striking? What the hell are they complaining about? They’re all millionaires. They don’t need more money!”. And if SAG-AFTRA was an exclusive cool kid’s club with only A-Listers amongst their ranks, maybe there’s a point there. But it’s not and there isn’t.

There are countless working actors in SAG-AFTRA either making an honest living or living paycheck to paycheck like so many in the country are right now. Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to know and work with some incredibly talented actors, and even dabble in some acting myself. It’s not easy work and they deserve to be fully compensated for it, whether their famous or not. And the working actors just trying to make a living like everyone else deserves it the most.

While writers are the backbone of film and television, creating worlds and characters through treatments and scripts, actors help tell those stories by bringing those characters to life through their performances. With no script or actors, you got nothing.

While I’m not a member of either guild, as an aspiring writer who does some acting every now and then, I stand with both 100%. Writers and Actors deserve to be properly compensated for their work. 

Please show your support for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA on strike! 

Solidarity forever.

Excerpt from “Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan, page 232

A key tool is the so-called ‘cold read’, a statement of opposing predispositions so tenuously balanced that anyone will recognize a grain of truth. Here’s an example:

At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary and reserved. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety, and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. Disciplined and controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. You have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantage. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you.

Almost everyone finds this characterization recognizable, and many feel that it describes them perfectly. Small wonder: we are all human.

The list of 'evidence’ that some therapists think demonstrates repressed childhood sexual abuse (for example, in The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis) is very long and prosaic: it includes sleep disorders, overeating, anorexia and bulimia, sexual dysfunction, vague anxieties, and even an inability to remember childhood sexual abuse. Another book, by the social worker E. Sue Blume, lists, among other telltale signs of forgotten incest: headaches, suspicion or its absence, excessive sexual passion or its absence, and adoring one’s parents. Among diagnostic items for detecting 'dysfunctional’ families listed by Charles Whitfield, MD, are 'aches and pains’, feeling 'more alive’ in a crisis, being anxious about 'authority figures’, and having 'tried counseling or psychotherapy’, yet feeling 'that “something” is wrong or missing’.

“There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.”