Blanca Nieves y los Ocho Enanos

The Third Person

I've been reading a lot of fiction lately. Last night I realized how strange stories told in the third person actually are. Basically a story is being narrated by some omniscient being that can see what everyone sees and feel the emotions that all the characters and he reports these sensations to the reader in a detached 'this is how it happened sort of manner'. You're being told a story by a schizophrenic. I guess God with a capital G is a schizo.

Anyway, I just envisioned this falconer guy as being the archetypical third person. He uses the falcon to get the zoomed out everywhere at the same time sensations used to construct the story. The two are joined through a very special human-bird mind meld. The matador in the foreground is the classic first person, passionate, single-minded, and lovable.

The shirtless boy is a shirtless boy, the writer of the future. Interpreting the experiences impressed on him by his surroundings and beaming them back to the rest of humanity through his electrotactile network interface.

What Memories Are Made Of

Ahh yes the business of storing memories. We have entire industries that scrape shit out of the earth to build technology that allow us to store our personal memories. Men have made fortunes allowing the sentimental make more and better sentiment.

I'm using that technology right now. Yes, we've come a long way from chipping lines into stones to communicate the past into the future. Everybody seems to take it for granted that this is an entirely positive endeavor. But should we have all these memories stored?

There are benefits undoubtedly. But I've learned that benefits always come with unforeseen costs. The two can never be decoupled. One thing I've learned is that surrounding yourself with sentimental artifacts makes overcoming emotional trauma more difficult. The cliche movie scene of throwing the ex lover's photo into a fire illustrates this idea well.

It seems to me having these constant glimpses into the past makes it more difficult for individuals to live in the present. It makes it harder to move on from unpleasant events. I've noticed from my own experience that when I'm out in nature away from any human creation away from anything symbolic I can just be. I can turn off my memory and my imagination and I feel peaceful and accepting of whatever happens.

I wonder if the goose getting its titty honked in front of all the readers of Hairy Doodle will come back here one day and be reminded of the moment that began his downward spiral of self destruction.

Bonus question: Are the sentimental more prone to psychological problems? Is this their own doing? Can an individual change this?

Bio Cam

Pretentious Art Professor: It's man's battle with his own mortality which is the mother of true artistic expression. The process of birth and death is creation. True art mirrors this natural cycle. Without mortality man is cut off from art's essence and will disappear into the mechanical logic of an indifferent clockwork universe.

Insightful Lunkhead: Yeah! Art would just be all circles and cubes and shit.

Writer Of This Nonsense: I'm ready for winter to be over so I can get out of my head and back into the world.

It's Not So Hard

You can do it while practicing but when it's time to show the town your new tricks will you choke? Don't think because we support you that you've let us down if your performance is less than perfect. Remember perfection is the enemy of the good!

Luxury-Time-Desire-Dimension

Oh the things we want! Yes we want objects that are the embodiment of other people's time. The giant emerald encrusted globe doesn't do anything useful. It wasn't anyone's labor of love. It's just a symbol of power and coercion. It's other men's focused energy, and that's the appeal. The owner of the globe can impose his will on the world of men, and yeah that's kind of sexy.

We want to be close to the people with power. Power is a shortcut to having people dependent on you in a relatively clean and simple manner, the alternative being the messy confusion of emotions and love. Power builds nations and love only tribes. You can't have a king without a crown. Walt Disney used to make movies about this sort of thing while simultaneously building his nation in a Florida swamp.

Oh It's Overwhelming

You can isolate yourself all you want. Live in your ivory tower. But are you prepared to deal with the loneliness? Are you strong enough to live convictions that no one else around you shares? Will you succumb? Go with the flow? Will you become another self medicating, comfort at any expense seeking, self destructive American slob? I sure hope not. I hope you can live your ideals and find the people who share them. They're out there somewhere.

I have noticed I lose friends once I start holding myself to a higher standard. This isn't imaginary. It's a real social dynamic. The man with the most friends is the one who is most accepting of other people's flaws and doesn't mind being dragged through the muck with them. And if you don't have your health and friends what do you have? Hmmmm tricky. How do you balance this situation?

Your Parents Shadow

Ah young love. Fresh, pure, innocent. Two naive young lovers join, two blank slates, two kindred spirits who discovered each other. Oh but there are ghosts in the room. They're loving in their parent's shadow. There are no blank slates. Mom and dad have written the rules of each young lovers love game just as grandma and grandpa wrote theirs. Are the lovers playing by the same rules? Can they write new ones? Will miscommunication drag this newfound love asunder? Only time will tell.

Caught in the Act

Busted! American divorce rates continue to climb. Financial inequality is climbing also. We have day traders and we have one night stands. Fidelity is becoming an antiquated mating and child rearing strategy. It's also the name of an investment bank. Is there a connection?

Hey! Join the Party!

Yeah c'mon in. Have some wine. Bobby is coming by and he's going to bring the Spanish exchange students he just met. Those girls know how to party. You ain't goin' to sleep t'night kid.

Love Meat

We all love meat. Some of us like to eat meat. Everybody loves to touch meat. What man doesn't like putting his sensitive meat parts in-between a woman's fleshy meat parts. Did you know women can grow meat inside of them? Ewwwwwww!

But we sometimes overindulge and eat too much meat and become too much meat ourselves, don't we? We need to keep our meat consumption in check otherwise our meat won't be able to stay meaty very long! We'll meat ourselves out to the max!

If we reach peak meat and don't cut back all meat may disappear from the planet. If meat disappears we'll all be bones and we won't want to do anything, because nothing is fun without meat!

The Good Times Are Back

Hooray! Boy it was rough back there. We were forced to face the consequences of our actions. It got ugly, but it's over now. We've made the sacrifice and now we can bask in good fortune.

We have a new day, a new frontier, a chance to make things right! The past is behind us now! We're free again! We won't spoil things this time! We're so much wiser now! We'll keep our impulses in check this time we promise!

City Of The Soon To Be Dead

This city was once a beautiful one. In its main square people gathered and sang and danced and ate together. People made friends, memories, love, and then children. But today it has lost its liveliness because of too much life. The city has become too crowded. With so many people sharing so little space the people have become suicidal. The group survival mechanism in each individual's brain has been switched on. The socially disconnected and emotionally weak are eliminating themselves.

Some have moved from the city and built their homes on the hilltop. The first inhabitants of the hilltop were quite comfortable and happy but soon the hill became crowded too.

The great trees once so visible in the skyline whose dew covered leaves were once the source of water for the city have died. Their withered branches and crusted bark no longer give life but seem to draw any life from the surrounding soil and keep it hidden in secret compartments in their trunks.

The women of the city no longer have children and the few that do are forced to raise them without the help of their neighbors. While the women are still pretty they are no longer beautiful. The current circumstance makes living selfishly the easiest path and selfish living has dulled their natural charms. Most spend their time grooming for a special event which never arrives. Nearly all their smiles are false ones.

The men roam the streets like lone wolfs. Frustrated by their own uselessness. Some escape to the countryside. Some escape into their own imaginations in the bars and casinos that now line the main thoroughfare. Men forced to compete with thousands of other depressed and wandering men for the hearts of the city's fickle and directionless women have sex only to momentarily kill their desire for a woman in each of their pasts. A woman who they imagine, wrongly, to be free of the emotional disease which has infected all the others.

The local government has adopted and enforces a secret policy it uses to keep the populace sedentary and sexless in order to keep consumption of natural resources low. Now people line up in the square and stare up at the night sky with telescope glasses. They stare at the surface of the moon and mars through the lenses and imagine gathering and singing and dancing and eating on those barren landscapes.

A New Kind Of Man

Our enhanced cognitive abilities are the result of our predatory instincts.
With them we will build a new man.
One devoid of mysticism.
One who does not need to self reflect.
One who is certain of his place in the Universe.
One who fully accepts his destiny.
One who acts completely, certainly, and without pause.

But who's going to build him? Some 9 to 5 slob? You can't have him without an even finer division of labor. Even finer specialization. That's going to leave a lot of people a bit emotionally unbalanced. It seems a bit unwise to me.

Yes deny the self is what people tell you. You want to get ahead you deny yourself now so later you can really start living. Yes, deny thyself but then satisfy thyself. Satisfy thyself greatly.

We're a nation and soon becoming a world of 9 to 5 ascetics and leisure time hedonists. That's the problem. We think we've earned the right to lose control. We've earned the right to be self destructive . We've given ourselves over to you vultures for half the day. What about us? What about what we want?

See I tricked you. That's a fool's question. We should be asking what do we really need. Most of us don't even know. Most of us don't even bother to ask that question anymore. So many questions that need answering. But what if we do answer them? It's not gonna change anything! Stressful to think about, huh?

My advice take a deep breath, eat dinner with the family, and then go walking through the woods or desert alone.

Give Yourself Over To The Divine Universal Power

No, I'm not religious but I've come to realize it's foolish to think that my life is completely in my control. Free will? I'm not convinced I have it. I have the illusion of it I suppose which makes my life ride a bit more interesting. But I do believe that we live in a chaotic system that can never be fully understood and hence can't really be controlled. Things happen, stuff moves around and collides with other stuff. That's the universe in a nutshell.

This sounds like the talk of a loser, but it's not. It will be the ones like me who have made peace with the universal rollercoaster who can enjoy the remainder of their life when they discover they have a terminal illness or after beloved family member was unexpectedly killed. It will be the Type A, controlling, egomaniacs who will have the emotional breakdown and fall from their lofty perch into the horrible abyss of insanity.

I think everyone becomes aware of this sooner or later unless you die young. If you're elderly and your body starts falling apart through no fault of your own you tend to make peace with this fact. I suggest you teach your children this lesson as early as you can, not with a lecture, but with a ceremony like the one depicted above. It may be hard to find a particle accelerator, a mayan ceremonial mask, and giant grasshoppers near your home so yours can be homespun if you like.

Camels... Uh... Diver

Usually I try to come up with an image that tells some kind of a story I understand but this collage's meaning is beyond me. I think it has to do with latent sexual urges and self identity but I'm not sure...

Masters Of The Universe

Not to make you paranoid or anything but you're most likely a pawn in some preternatural power game played by the masters of the universe. You may think being crowned Madison Wisconsin's Ice Princess has nothing to do with the all female fascist militias that are on the rise in South Korea but you'd be wrong. We're all working to realize the secret plans of the Bildeberg group.

In all seriousness though. I think the idea of a global conspiracy is actually comforting. What I think is the truth is much scarier and that is we're on a runaway train. Nobody knows what we're collectively doing or really where we are headed. Most people are just trying to stay alive and the lucky ones who aren't just concerned with survival spend their waking hours simply finding new ways to amuse themselves, which is kind of a comforting thought now that I think about it.

Giant Cowboy Invasion

Empowering the individual through technology often times has unforeseen consequences. Paradoxically what is good for an individual of a species can be detrimental to the species as a whole. Human beings are dealing with this phenomenon now more than ever. Most humans think we have to choose whether to live a life of selfish hedonism or selfless duty. But there aren't just two options. I think we can all find the creamy center, what eastern religions call 'the middle path' or 'the way' which will lead us to personally fulfilling but responsible lifestyles. It just takes resourcefulness and the willingness to endure a few hardships in the beginning.

And a blahdiggity blah blah blah. Aaaah there's nothing like a collection of decontextualized images to get your brain lubricated. Issues of National Geographic are a useful introspective tool. They have much to teach you if you are willing to listen ( and to cut them all up ).

Operaverse

Tastes like Bollywood.

A little FYI... I'm no longer a programmer. Sitting at a computer screen all day was killing my eyesight, my attention span, and my self-esteem and that wasn't making me happy. I'm now willfully unemployed. After my trip to South America and the West Coast in September I will be drawing and painting full-time ( until my savings run out and I need to get a straight job again ). What this means is I'll be posting a lot more! Check in here to see my progress and if you think I cut the mustard you can pay me for custom illustration work. Or if you see something you especially like you can buy the original.

Space Sunday