In the Trees

 

You Don't KNOW Them!

I've done it, and many people have, so this criticism is aimed at myself as much as anyone else.

These strangers, celebrities, musicians, sports stars, podcasters and other famous pricks who entertain you...

You don't KNOW them!

You might know the people you work with, or go to school with, your friends, your family, people in your community that you experience life with. You might know them.

You don't know these strangers.

It makes no sense to defend them, or love them, or look at them as examples to aspire to. They could be good people, they could be horrible. You don't know them, they're not your friends.

Sometimes I catch myself defending these people, but they're unknown to me. I advocate for devils a lot. That's silliness. We can gather some facts if we so chose, but we are addressing a public persona. We don't know these personae as people.

I'm being fooled and will get fooled again.

Tank Controls are Gross!

                                                    Tank controls are garbage!

        Tank controls are very much a remnant of early horror video games as I spoke about in What Makes an Awesome Horror Game . I'm glad the trait died off as systems would better adapt to their environment. As Darwin always said, Survival of the funniest!

What are tank controls? 

        Instead of moving forward in the direction that your D-pad or joystick is facing it's a bit more complicated. Pressing up moves you forward, pressing left or right however, rotate you in the given direction rather than moving you left and right. Pressing down actually moves you backwards (still facing the opposite direction rather than turning in the direction you are moving).

        Thankfully, this is not really a thing in modern game design. Most modern games use 1st person controls which are more intuitive. Left moves you left, right moves you right, up moves you forward, down moves you back.

        Unfortunately, a lot of games in the mid '90s to early 2000s employ these tank controls, as developers experimented to figure out what would work and what wouldn't in 3D gaming. This makes things challenging if one wants to go back and play some of the classics that haven't been given a modern update. I was playing around with 2001's Alone in the Dark , which looked like a fun B-movie horror game, for the Dreamcast today. Scary dogs, weird mysterious ruins, and crazy robotic spiders oh my.... but... the controls! ARGH! #$&@! (@!#!

        If I really want to tough it out for the experience, I will mash the upper half of the D-pad and kind of snake my way forward. Still, it's not as fun as 1st person control. The trouble is compounded because these controls are often found in action style games where precision of control actually makes a difference. I hope you hackers, developers and re-makers continue to come out with modifications to the old games with proper control schemes!

Cold Sky

 

Friendly Faces

 

Full Faced Smile

 

Cupboard and Faces

 

Parody Inspirations

The following images are parodies. Growing up I was influenced by Mad magazine. The strange humour was a lot more interesting than standard sitcom fare. I really enjoyed the art styles as well, a lot of irregular comic personality.

Makes Me Giggle

That boy ain't right...

It makes me laugh every time I see a dog taking a poop. They have this sheepish hunched over posture. Clearly they're a little embarrassed. I am too when I poop in public.

I try not to interrupt them, it makes me feel bad if I have to cross their path while they're in the office. I try to move quickly, as if that will make me go unnoticed. That probably makes them feel more on edge. Sorry, Old Yeller! Not apologizing to the owner but to the dog.

When they're finished doing their business, it tickles me more how they try to cover what they've done by kicking with their hind legs. You know what you did!

Miss my dog, but not picking up turds with a shovel and then covering them with sand in the yard. I like watching the perfect people with their perfect hair, perfect shirt, perfectly manicured dog having to pick up the offering with their gray green handkerchief. Not so highfalutin now, are ya?!

Surprise

 

Cell

 

Don't Get Chomped On

 

Crazy Swatches and Upside Down

 

The upside down drawing is a practice from Betty Edwards classic Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The book is about breaking your symbolic systems and upside down drawing helps with that. You have symbolic systems in your mind of what a "chair" or "face" looks like which make it challenging for you to capture a subject in the way it actually appears.

The other stuff is experimentation in colour effects.

More Strange Color Experiments

 

Another drawing that I had on here before adding some colour experimentation.

Weird Coloring Experiments with Strange Heads

I posted these on my blog a while ago but without the strange colours I added later. 

Enjoy. 

Laugh. 

Feel weird.

 

Who is Leon?

 

Must We Subject Ourselves to Trauma?

                                                Must we subject ourselves to trauma?

        There are horrible things that are part of reality. I think it is reasonable that adults should have some awareness of the realities of the world.

        Does this have to come in the form of witnessing viscerally disturbing events such as beheading videos. Can someone be aware of these things in print, and not in graphic visual detail?

        If one works in emergency response, law enforcement or medicine there is a necessary desensitization that regular exposure to these horrible events in full sensory detail would provide allowing one to do their job effectively. I sympathize with people in these professions for the life-saving society-stabilizing jobs they do, and the psychic torture it puts them through.

        Personally, scenes of human suffering disturb me and I skip through those in cinema, as I don't find the trauma necessary. I wish I could unsee certain scenes in Human Centipede for example. And I avoid watching beheading videos because in my view it is enough to know this travesty goes on without witnessing the horror.

        Is the argument that it is necessary to experience in the same for fiction, as opposed to reality? In one sense it is fake, in another sense it may mirror an important reality.

        What got me thinking about this was watching the horrific short film Skin. 

       On the one hand it makes important points about racism, on the other hand it is traumatic in a way, I would argue is salacious. There is a scene when, presumably motivated by racism judging by the language used prior to the actions, several men nearly beat another man to near death in a parking lot. This while the victim's wife and child watch from their car screaming and pleading with the attackers to stop.

        This is a revenge movie, and one of the aforementioned assailants gets theirs in horrific fashion.

          These parts I mostly skimmed and skipped through in revulsion, so the details may be a bit off. This is what I gathered from the other scenes I saw. 

        One of the assailants, from earlier in the narrative, is kidnapped in a van. In a garage the man is branded with Swaztikis to mark his racist crime like the Scarlet Letter. I don't know if he is painted or burned to make his skin appear much darker.... but his appearance is fundamentally altered. The man makes his way home and breaks into his own house but his spouse doesn't recognize him because of his new appearance. In fear for her life and that of her children, his spouse shoots the man to death, after which she finally realizes the man is actually her husband.

        Do I need to have that inside my brain? I'm unconvinced. Though maybe I'm just motivated by trying to avoidance of pain.

A Little Bright

Sleep Walk

Sleep walk when I'm awake.

I have these glasses with red frames that have these bulging blood shot contracted eyes open wide with brows lifted beyond the hairline... of the implied face.

They help me out when I'm walking.

I've always been a natural walker. I came out the womb feet first bent my knees and pushed off of the placenta. A little slick but my tootsies have a monkey strong grasp of the earth.

When I exited, the doctor shined a light on my closed lids. He's not responding to light. I was just a little tired, the whole transition outside of Plato's cave was a little overwhelming for a little tyke.

I never was much of a looker, always preferred the unconscious images sloshing around inside my skull.

I found it hard to couple in my spawning years as when in bed. Under the covers I would pedal an invisible bicycle. My perturbed pissed partner would spout WAKE UP, WILLY! I would just keep on kicking.

My teachers in class would say Willy works hard but does not listen. I would yawn and retort I listen with my ears not my eyes. Some teachers would even grab a ruler and try to wedge it in-between my lids. It wouldn't do much. A dry twig trying to pry open a bear trap.

I wasn't cool, and wasn't making the seen. They always say if you can see them, they can see you. I was invisible.

Body Parts

This is strictly about physical beauty. 

A human being can't have every body part be awesome in the same body. Those who have hot stomachs, have no ass. Those who have hot asses have a bit of a gut. Those who have nice arms, have broad midsections. A human being with all awesome body parts all in one does not exist. So pick a couple, that's good enough. You can make some weird chimera of the great body parts but in aggregate it would just look weird.

Awesome Problem to Have

... People being too nice.

What a horrific challenge you have!

What is it that makes niceness seem inauthentic? Too many episodes of Seinfeld? Too many harsh comedy podcasts? Or maybe that is one's own super ego telling you you're a naughty boy.

Sometimes young women around me will greet each other with high pitched shrieks and squawks. What is the birdlike timbre telling my labrador brain?

Does niceness indicate naivety? If they could see reality as it is would they be crying or walking slump shouldered zombies eyes downcast.

Is the sweetness earned? Do people inherently deserve to be treated pleasantly, or should they earn it? I lean towards meritocracy.

To get Freudian, does the feeling that my mother's kindness towards me hid a demon that would uncoil it's wings and attack me when I least expect it have me permanently on guard waiting for that a hah moment of confirmation? And the times that people I thought were close friends betrayed me...

I strap a lie detector to their arm when they start opening their mouth. Hold on! Before we talk, I must strap this onto your wrist! .... Okay go ahead.

Are these intuitions signals I should follow, or just nonsense stuck in one's mind? Or maybe it's a bit of both, and there I go again overgeneralizing into oblivion.

Depression propaganda has convinced me reality is harsh and ugly, and therefore niceness is a veil of fraudulence. Convinced me that the pleasantries hide what they're not saying. Is there really anything else under there to say at all?

Balloons

 

Latest issue of Yellow Mama Magazine

 Check out my artwork in the latest issue of Yellow Mama Magazine:

https://blackpetalsks.tripod.com/yellowmama/id3609.html .

Fishy

 

Cover Your Shame

Only statues look good with their clothes off...

Everyone else is just a lump sack of hairs, meats and cheeses.

I don't care if you're having a hot flash, keep your shoes and socks on at all times. What if there's a fire??!!! Or what if I don't want to see your haggard little piggies wee wee weeing all the way over the grayed-with-dried-bodily-fluids carpet.

When sitting in a chair with your low rise jeans, please wear a jacket over the backside to cover your twin inflamed potato sacks.

I know you're supposed to let your open wounds air out, but please do it in the great outdoors.

Your mouth smells like the toilet. Flush on out of here.

If you must sponge bath another adult don't do it in an ice cream parlour. Do it in the privacy of your own home, or the open air washrooms at the end of the block. Employees must wash hands. No guidance on customers washing each other. But there should be!

If you're a princess at least wear your paper bag.

Shame in our society is underrated. I say, a little shame is a good thing.

Circus Protest

 

Your Empty Lot is Showing

 

Cone

People go around thinking of the skull as this solid helmet. The skull is malleable fibre made of various chunks that fit together and can grow and shrink based on stimuli.

Started stretching my jaw. Fish hooking myself from both sides. Eventually my smile was like a tapeworm. First, a banana sideways would fit, then a plantain. Soon a stick of driftwood. Dogs that carry them would be jealous. It was engulfed in my mandible.

I searched and looked and gazed and glazed for an original look. I started massaging the center of my crown upwards. A lump developed. I saw the doc, it was benign. Pulled it a little more, one hand pushing down on the side of my head, one hand elevating the nub. It was coming up too horn-like, so I sanded it to more of a conic persuasion. Always thought The Coneheads were a novel take on head anatomy.

You're so Vein

... you probably think this leaf is about you ...

 

Television Family

Television Family

Jimmy always pre-empted his alarm clock by 5 minutes. That gave him some bonus time to turn it off, and relieve himself before "Tiger Panther Cats" came on.

The fluorescents sparkled into his brain, as he sat in the dim deep blue light watching. The Tiger Panther Cats solved another crime in their robot final form. TIGER PANTHER CATS UNIIIIIIITE!

Beatrice rolled out of her bunkbed with a slumbering tumble and joined Jimmy. Pupils dilated, in a glazed smile, breathing out her mouth.

Commercials where the mommy makes breakfast, and daddy brings home the bacon, interspersed the new episode of "Possessed SD Puppets." The TV trays sat aside the rump-indented couch. The cats came to keep Jimmy and Beatrice warm. First Juniper, then Jalopy, then Juxtaposition, then Rumproast. Rumproast, was the most portly and slothlike of the felines.

Bill woke up and grunted, slithering along dust bunny hopping houseshoes. Grabbed the grey brown remote and put on the morning news. His posture like a teenager on their smartphone but his pot belly keeping him from getting that usual bend. Another trade from the Flying Hawks to the Swimming Goats. Jill Clingon was in trouble again accused of having sex in the Oval Orifice. "Them politicals is so 'rupt!" Bill patted Beatrice on the noggin.

Jane made breakfast. Instant oats on the tv trays. It was always that way. I don't know why. They Bill changed the channel to the morning cooking show, "Something's Burning!" [exclamation mark part of title not added emphasis]. Each of the hosts wearing frilly "World's Greatest Matron" aprons around their waists. One of the host's opined, "I sure does love serving my mans, Peggy Sue!" as she smiled with teeth that covered two thirds of her face black shark eyes staring at the camera.

After school Jimmy and Beatrice would put on the tube and turn on "Wee House on the Plains." Bill and Jane joined on that couch soon after. They snorted and weezed with fluttering neon vacancy sign eye balls. The couch creaked into the foundation of the floor. The cats piled on. You know when you're laundry is throw akimbo in a pile?

"This is a PBS actor drive. This may be the end of television as we know it. No one wants to act in our shows anymore." A violin was bowed slowly in a minor key. "We need more human flesh for other humans to stare at. I'm looking at you America!" The camera panned back and on the host's back was a gynormus vacuum.

"Don't make me turn this on... America." CLICK.

An airy whirlpool filled the screen. The television set started to shake. Screen shattered into shimmering shards. The suction engulfed the room. First their eyes pulled out of their noggins. Their noggins followed, and finally their lumpy behinds swallowed into the black hole in the television.

Jimmy and Bill and Jane and Beatrice. SLURP! Replacing the characters in Wee House on the Plains.

They didn't know how to act. They just sat on a couch as a family petting the famous television cats Dingus, Dipshit, Duderonomy, and Muffin. Drooling as they looked into the souls of those who watched them on the other side.