"Bund"

Satan, and token Colored GI Joe on the Iranian Border.

It's something how emotion runs through it's litany in uncertain times. From calm to extreme everything in the middle then large doses of extreme. Rather exhausting. 

This has been a bad month. 

Just bad. Health meds diet my home loss of old friends, and facing my own mortality. The world run by literal insane people wars being stumbled into all that drama, and madness, and folks happy with it. 
I mean all smiles if the Trump Bund Rallies are anything to go by. 

I was watching Mecca on their local live stream news. There they were gleeful at the chance to strap bombs to themselves.

Swell huh.  

I mostly just sleep.

Till the nightmares kick in.

"...luck"

In wandering the web over the Memorial Day holidays I kept finding videos of racist hostile shit all over the place. Black people immigrants gays being harassed by cops, and white people generally.

A black family chased out of a park by white vigilantes.

That sort of thing. Some settler culture whites feel seriously empowered to act out on their feelings. This from the highest level of the current government. Been going on since election night over two years ago,...yeah they got the message, and are doing the deeds.

This is all to be expected. 

Trump's rise, and the push back. I'm surprised it took this long. The last 70 years of social progress for the usual suspects has been the reduction of power for the white settler culture,... decent white folks.

Sure they were doing their evil shit all along. It's just for maybe 30 or 40 years it was considered bad manners. It is now open season. So it will stay for the next 30 years or so. 

This as time ages elder whites out of power. Trump rallies are elder angry white Woodstock's. There are some millennials with the same feelings,...however just not that many,...not enough.

Whites as a hegemony are aging away.
They'd still be around in tens of millions. Just not everywhere, and not in absolute control of the republic. Less of them are being born. That, and more of literally 'everybody' else.

It's really that simple. Yes they installed Trump. I expect several more Trumps to the middle of the century. After that,...well.

They could try the old South African plan of a small white minority ruling a majority Colored America. That or attempt genocide. White nationalists openly speak of a "Defensive Genocide" to protect their existence.

I expect local attempts.

I can easily see in not many years local mass murders or at least attempted acts as this in some parts of the country. They won't succeed. However they will wound the republic, and it may take another century to recover from.

In any case simple numbers, and time dictate a shift in the power arraignments across the country. This as the old hegemony literally ages out to be replaced by others. I say "others" because just being Colored don't mean we like or trust each other,...com'on this will still be America.

I won't be here for it, but the 22nd century will be interesting.
The effects of our changed climate will be profoundly overt. 

Plain to the eyes of all.

Massive shifts in population around the world. On going food, and fresh water crisis. Constant border, and religious ethnic wars the works. Killer heat waves hurricanes, and blizzards. The un-ending hyper extremes of every kind of weather.

Basically all the worse parts of the Bible. ...from now on.

Americans of that grim era will look back on our mere culture, and race wars with nostalgia. "...it was such an innocent time" they'll say. 

Good luck.

"We're Gawds"

I don't think I'm an artist never have. 

Even though like you, and everybody else I've been doing one kind or other of creative mayhem all my life. Still I don't fit any description of them guys,...not one.
It could be that the only descriptions I've ever run into are about semi-existent mostly guys doing weird shit then getting insanely rich, and or dying broke. Anyone can die in the gutter, but it takes creds to do it as an artist. 

The artist caste is as insular as any other. 

However unlike any other everybody more or less is one kind or sort of artist. So a few guys figured out the only way to make the racket a going business would be to limit membership.

Which they did with amazing completeness.

Art creds are hard to come by. Well okay sometimes they get a bit guilty about it, and clear a few square inches for "Outsider Art" or Comix book folks, but that's about all.
Meanwhile Seven Billion folks are out there creating stuff all the time all over the place.
All unrecognized. Maybe our crap to "official" artists is unrecognizable as "art". Like so much of their crap is to us.

The business of being a "Genius" has a similar limiting culture. 

Clearly you can only be one if you invent some weird shit that kills people or can be sold for zillions. I mean just look at who we call geniuses.

Okay maybe a few nice folks, but still...look at 'em.

Btw there are Seven Billion of them unofficial geniuses too. Using their creativity to develop all manner of swell jazz. You don't know about them because none of it makes money or at least no one yet knows how to apply it to make money. You know the deal.

'Course there are Seven Billion jerks fanatics assholes morons, and complete idiots too. Our last election, and world political mass delusions religions wars, and regressive cruel customs show that seriously well.

So to conclude we're a world of brilliant creative artistic geniuses with a strong habit of grand delusions vicious stupidity, and extreme violence.

Yep made in the image of da Gawds alright.

"Dinner"

"Dinner"

Heck I feel just like this old Chevy. Well actually it's a model of a I think '53 or so Chevy made up to look old, and beat.

Still there I am.

Be back tonight I think...cooking dinner now. Yes yet another Chicken stew...I just loves when I can afford it. Granted it's rough on the chicken, but in the larger scheme of things I'm sure she understands.

Despite the grand extinction were living in ya still as to eat,...when one remembers. 

You Cultural Veterans out there  will remember "Paradise Now" as the name of a Swell Brave Brilliant Fun Life Changing play by the "Living Theater" back in the Sixties. That plea kindness, and sanity still echo's in our society. 

The "Blue Wave" of Women when they took control of Congress in the 2018 elections was the latest expression of that desire. A world where all is shared, and introspection is a given. 

In the West we've been trying to bring such a world about for some centuries now. At least since the Peasant Revolts of the middle ages.  

Thanks to the Enlightenment the founding of the United States of America is an inconsistent ongoing try.  The attempted revolutions of the 19th, and 20th centuries...sadly just made things worse.

The 17th century Diggers of Britain. Google them folks. Perhaps the Great Grand Parents of assorted Utopians since...Abolitionists Suffragettes Beats Hippies early Civil, and Sexual Rights movements, and bunches of weird artists, and various visionaries', and nutters with hearts of gold.

Hakim Bey Ralph Chubb Allen Ginsberg James Baldwin Walt Whitman, and Harry Hay among many others known, and unknown come to mind.

Them diggers like the recent Beatniks Civil Rights folks Hippies Occupiers, and Blue Wavers just wanted the fucking Peaceable Kingdom.

They all wanted the goods produced to be held in common,...the land too. 

Basically all should be happy, and free with no one should living in want. The whole messy lot of us should share, and help all around us, and basically have a good time.

The Christians started out this way sort of before they became a religion, and started burning books, and people at the stake.

Pessimists would say that "We can Dream it, but still can't Do it". I think that Paradise is hard. Hard to dream, and Hard to make...not impossible, just Hard.

Making the Atomic bomb was hard too. 

However with total dedication, and the use of vast resources they made the damned thing,...and then plenty more of them. The maniacs have been refining it all ever since.

Imagine...remember the song?

Imagine if that sort of dedication vast resources, and some Pixie Dust were put towards the "Paradise Project".

I like that: "The Paradise Project"

Unlike the Manhattan Project nothing would be secret it would all be out in the open for all to see, and if they wanted to help with it. 

"Hey what are you folks doing?"

"...eh,...building the Golden Age,...I think...wanna help?

That's what we're doing. That's what thoughtful folks have been part of for all these centuries That's what we have to keep at no matter what. Just fucking do what you can, and hook up with others when you can. 

We'll get there.

"Oh, but the Dreams"

"Oh, but the Dreams"

"From my 2010 Archives,...I think"

":>I<:"

"Showing Off"

Okay I feel like showing off. I posted this a few years ago,...I think. The top image is a drawing by French artist Jean Giraud aka Moebius.  The Angel is by your esteemed Editor. I met Mr. Giraud at the former "Science Fiction Shop" in downtown Manhattan in the early 1990's.

He was a seriously swell guy. Funny kind generous all the good stuff. I shoved one of my small books of Queer Angel porn at him. ...see above. He was delighted!

(Name dropping ahead.)

I did the same to Quentin Crisp whom I got to know from his visits to that radio station I wasted 30 years at. Anyway he dug my crap too. "...delightfully naughty." said the Queen of the Lower East-side!  

However to Moebius.

He was in town pushing his latest books, and a show of his stuff uptown. However he had a reputation of encouraging new artists of which I was one at the time. Hey I had no shame so like I sez I shoves my stuff right at 'em.

To the annoyance of the big shots around him, but to my delight Mr. Giraud dug my winged scratches. Though he said I needed to study more see the works others, and try different mediums.

I was just doing pen, and ink at the time.

He gave pointers about the variability of line the brevity of content neat jazz like that. He also spoke of the tools of the trade. Types of pens inks brushes assorted kinds of paper board canvas, and such.

He even,...get this. 

He even said the he noticed that I liked the "boyish form". To which I heartfully agreed. He said there were,...at that time anyway, a number of artists in Europe exploring the same subject.

He actually wrote down, and gave me the addresses of a few. One of whom remains a dear friend to this day. (...I lost that note sadly.)

Well that's pretty much the story of my "Moebius" encounter. The store guys, and Mr. Giraud's handler gave me a polite bums rush...fuck'em, but never mind. Before I was shoved aside Mr. Giraud made a personal drawing for me, see top illustration, wow! It was cool to hang, and get an impromptu art lesson from a Master.

Ain't life Something.