Abandonment & Monsters...

Hey, this Blog has had almost 70,000 page views.  Amazing.

Those of you on my mailing list may know that I have dug up and burned the roots of all my comics and fantasy art stuff.  Trying to go in new directions while constantly returning to draw "sexy" for some extra money was not working at all.  So, it all had to go.  And I'm not sorry in the least.

Some people took it hard, as if I'd abandoned them somehow, or they'd been hustled; other got pretty angry and abusive.  The latter was an especially good reason to get the hell out.

 The newest venue for gross monstrosities, Monster Motel

One thing I did not trash was my Monster U. stuff, in fact I started an Etsy store just for that and have stocked it full of the older items and some new tweaked "remastered" ones.

 The original, unmodified Monster U. album cover art.

Monster movies might be called Horror by some, and therefore "bleed" into the Slasher genre, but to me they have always been about Love, and the Monsters represent our desire for it along with our feelings of ugliness or unworthiness.  Frankenstein & the Bride, Quasimodo, Erik the Phantom--they are all Love stories. 

"Big Frankie", the digitally tweaked version of the first Monster U.'s album cover art. 

 As upset as some people are with me, finally being free of obligations to the Past is real liberation.

Alternate Tomorrows...

I'm on the mailing list for TwoMorrows publishing, whom you may know as the maker of many, many books and mags about Comics.  But they are more than just "about" Comics, they are also creating and propagating certain ideas about the medium, and in a sense writing alternate Histories via a form of criticism masked as celebration.  Let me explain a little.

While there's nothing inferior about Comics as an artform, there is definitely something unhealthy about the Industry today.  First, the somewhat rigidly pedestrian tastes of the readership, because the fans basically want the same experience over and over again, though perhaps with infinitesimally slight variations; second, the pressure from those tastes tend to confine the artists to plough the same territory forever.  They never develop beyond the ghetto, because the audience won't allow it.

TwoMorrows Publishing makes healthy profits from Jack Kirby's work, implying it's somehow a force for positive change in the Industry, or perhaps preservers of heritage, or something.  On one hand, there are lengthy exposes about the poor treatment of Kirby by publishers, but TwoMorrows is also a publisher.  Are they really a kinder and gentler than larger corporation?

New in the emailbox today.

There are basic truths people either don't face or can't perceive about Jack Kirby and the ever-inflating myths about his so-called mistreatment, and that is: he showed up as a victim and co-created any troubles he might have had.  Similarly, Jews and Nazis also co-created a reality together, as distasteful as that may sound.  Kirby was a talented man, but basically, he stepped out in front of a car.

Most Comics readers simply have no idea the level and intensity of work required to draw them.  Today, it's mainly the domain of the young, who have plenty of raw energy and time.  What people generally don't realize while they are ingesting mountains of Kirby is that no one person should ever have done that much work.  But you read a comic in five minutes, and that is the extent of it.

So when it comes to co-creation of awful scenarios of pain and suffering, not only did Kirby volunteer to be abused, but the appetite of the Fans for more and more loaded him down with an inhuman workload.  No wonder he couldn't think of any other options.  If anyone is to blame, it is the audience as much as the companies.

That's just another inherent danger in escaping from reality through Comics or anything else.

Hello Sweetheart...

I scour the local Thrift stores for books and things to paint on.  Anything that might inspire me gets bought or at least noted in pencil in my little spiral-bound "Eye Pad".

"The Eagle's Mate" from 1914.

I found an old book that for a moment I thought had a painted cover, but no, it was a tinted photograph of "America's Sweetheart", Mary Pickford.  I looked but did not buy, and later found these images on eBay along with a description:  Two tough mountain dwelling cousins fight over a kidnapped city lady. She is held prisoner in their mountain fortress.

 This edition from eBay has "no offensive odor"; that costs extra.

 My point in all this is that nowadays a book might be so good it gets made into a movie, but back then a movie could be so good it would be made into a book.

Maybe a lot of what passes for "progress" is just being lost.

Love Profaned...

There are dangers inherent in living in the Technosphere.  Right now, the Technosphere involves three things: people (you), Money and Machines.  The three things are currently all stuck together.  People get all caught up with their machines, and then there's always the struggle for more money, which is basically fear--of not having enough, losing what you've got, and so on.

The most important thing to remember when playing in the Technosphere is that while you're in this falseness, this trance-state, it is all dependent on another sphere that it cleverly obscures.  You could call that the Biosphere. Once, that was all there was.

 The Biosphere met his every need for 50,000 years.

You can figure out where this is going.  Today, an email came in from Apple, Inc. praising the "iPad".  Like the corporation Paypal, which touts itself as "the most-loved" way to get paid, the iPad also is ready to co-opt Love itself to ensure the dominance of the machine and money over your welfare and happiness.

 

Oh, Hoffman, they don't really mean "Love", do they? 

I can think of an infinite number of things an iPad can't do, and one is actually provide Love.  But, Love is becoming a "power" word in Technosphere propaganda, so are you being a good little monkey and falling for it?  Put your head in the noose, now.

The latent power of your own terrestrial life itself has been matched by a pocket-sized machine.

Here's something pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know: drugs don't heal you, they make you sick.  It's actually your body that heals you.  So what do machines do? 

Machines don't improve your life, they take your life away.  

They do this by distracting you.

ADDENDUM: 4/09/13

 

EBay's latest campaign again tries to employ "Love" for its own commercial gain, this time encouraging people to unquestioningly accept the idea that we can actually love "things"--inanimate objects.

The good news is that these sorts of pleas are desperate acts, brought about by diminishing revenues and shifting cultural paradigms.

They know that the human appetite for more "things" is decreasing.

Not in a Million Years...

I make it a point never to read Chuck Shepherd's "News of the Weird", but the following section from it was sent to me recently due to my entries here on Pornography.

Not in this one.

But now you know my feelings on the subject, or at least what they were.  Now my feeling is that this duality concerning sex--its real nature versus our corruption or experimentation with it--is just going to go on until it's finished.

In the meantime, it is all part of the learning program for us, and the key notion concerns my/our goal.  The goal is to graduate, not to try and change the school.  Life is so much easier this way.

A Life Lesson from Uriah Heep.

I'm currently producing abstract paintings in between realistic jobs, the above is one that also features my new "Mars Font".  Below is another...

I call it "The Big End", which is sorta profound whether addressing Art, Dualities or Sexuality.  Below are images that Google says are "visually similar".

Interestingly, or not, most of these images are from Nature and many are cellular in nature. Below is a larger view of image #5.

On another vibratory plane beings are doing this all day long.

Under Attack...

I'm currently being harassed by several "Porn fans" who think that my stance on it is obliquely harassing them.  They're calling me names, like "a hypocrite", for several reasons, the first being that is the easiest for them to reach, the second that I draw and paint women.  But what they actually resent is my argument itself, which is why they feel upset enough to attack me.  But none of them do so through this Blog. They prefer to lurk in the shadows.

 The artist's trained eye sees pose, contrast, shadowing, composition; some others' eyes never will.

If I were them, I probably couldn't imagine any other motivation to protest Porn other than to feel self-righteous, but this is a head-in-the-sand position.  Incredibly, my real motivation is to try and prevent more damage for other people in the Real World outside their diseased dreamland. 

What they are basically defending is twofold: first, their God-given right to masturbate to pornography, and second, their privacy and secrecy about doing so.  So they're howling about this to me, but you can't hear it.  It's a strange and unpleasant position to be in, to have weapons pointed at you that aren't guns.


There's no questioning in their minds about who actually profits monetarily from their "collecting" behavior, or what the the lives might be for any of the "models" they encounter.  I encourage anyone to research the subject themselves, and not take it as a justification that a few women somewhere are wondrously happy with their money-making porn businesses.  No one in Porn is happy, not really, or they wouldn't be doing it.  Most addicts claim they love their addiction, it's common as dirt.

Enter the Online Dream Dimension.

I know about a fellow--let's call him Joe--who became deeply involved with online porn and "hookup" sites.  Joe was as addicted to his behavior patterns as powerfully as any drug, alcohol or gambling addict. He lost his wife after she raided his hard-drive, and she was pregnant and later lost the child as a result of the overwhelming stress.  Before the death of his child, Joe was ready to go on being "a ladies' man" and bear the costs.  Afterwards, he voluntarily committed himself to a program for recovering Porn addicts.

Today, Joe is suffering immensely, and it's no joke.  His daily activites are monitored closely, as is his Internet access.  What I am talking about here, Porn Addiction, is an ugly subject that many turn away from and others refuse to acknowledge.  But the damage occurring from it are all around us and is escalating.

Additionally, Joe has gotten involved sexually with a girl he'd "met" online, and now, in addition to having face his wife's leaving him and the tremendous guilt for their unborn child's death, he is also being blackmailed each month because the girl he met a slept with is a minor.  Their trysts were videotaped without his knowledge. The payments will continue for at least two more years.

Are you good at Math?

There are many, many more horror stories out there as bad as that one or worse, and men, women, boys and girls are suffering.  The human mind was never designed to be so radically over-stimulated by an endless stream of virtual sexual partners, and when it happens lives break down rapidly.  Everyone may then be seen as a potential sex partner, any woman in the grocery store, on any street or at a bus stop, or even children crossing the street leaving school.

Women are not objects to be stuck arbitrarily onto your crotch for some sick ego-satisfaction and a moment of shallow sexual gratification. Just because you can find people pretending to be objects doesn't change that fact.  An inflatable doll is an object.  People aren't.

But most Porn addicts are almost impotent from the continual over-stimulation and their out-of-control masturbation schedules.   Can you imagine masturbating a dozen times a day, and harassing women at every opportunity?  It's ugly but it's happening right now thanks in large measure to online Porn.

In my day it was just magazines, but today you couldn't even begin to turn the pages that fast.

Soldier Porn...

Sometimes something pops up that elicits immediate, reflexive action.  My policy on Facebook recently has been to accept almost any "friend" request without judgement.  I must have accepted one from "Military Pinups" some time ago, but don't remember.  Then I got a message from the artist and all hell broke loose.  I may be too thin-skinned, but I for one find the following kinds of imagery beyond offensive.
 

 Main banner from artist J. Kidd's facebook page "Military Pinups".

As you can see,  I hope, it's essentially soft pornography designed for soldiers.  I'm aware that in the past, like WWII, there was "nose art" and the like which resembled the "pinup art" of the day.  So why is this any different?  I think there are many reasons why, which I find obvious, so I am baffled as to why so many of them need explaining.  But apparently they do.

Consider: there was a time, as in the Roman Empire, when slavery was considered normal and almost universally accepted.  100 years ago, some races were considered to be innately inferior, and this too was accepted.  Today, we know better--at least most do.  The trouble with the treatment of women in our culture, i.e. presenting them as sex objects, is something that I believe will eventually be transcended.  Hell, if I can do it, anyone can.

I'm a little ashamed at having fought with the artist JK over at Military Pinups, but it is telling that after we did he removed the banner from his page and replaced it with another image in which the woman's head was actually higher than her bottom.  I'd criticized the prior picture.  So, I had hit a nerve, but then he recanted and switched it back yet again.

If I was told my older work was pornographic I'd have denied it too, just like JK, but now I see objectification clearly wherever it is.  But I never did anything like this stuff.

 
J. Kidd told me that his model was "very proud" of posing for his artworks, prints of which wind up getting shipped overseas to Afghanistan.  He told me a little about her character and personality, but of course none of that is communicated in the picture.  When Playboy lists the "likes and dislikes" of its playmate centerfolds, it isn't without some humor.  I mean, who cares about the real person underneath?  That's not the point, is it?

My friend Richard A. Tucker rightly pointed out that it's extremely dangerous to be giving out porn to soldiers.  I agree.  My feeling is that "Military Pinup's" work will make almost any young soldier crave harder pornography in about 5 seconds.  The works are basically like a "gateway" drug, only the path is much clearer and direct than pot to heroin, because it's all the same thing to differing degrees.

Other reasons to be wary of giving Porn to soldiers:

• The high incidence of Military Rape
• Incidents of Civilian Rape by U.S. Soldiers
• High frequency of Sexual Assault by U.S. Soldiers in warzones

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the dangerous environment created by objectifying women.  The U.S. Military has always encouraged drinking, as I know well from my father's Army career; they make drinking inexpensive and easy.  Packs of cigarettes were once standard issue with rations, too.  The fact that some people can't or won't see the obvious connections is baffling.

 A dangerous mixture of sexual and militaristic imagery.

Another relevant question is that if one wanted to "help" the U.S. Military effort, there are far better ways than this, like perhaps working to end the wars altogether, or helping educate young men not to enlist in the first place.

Then they can stay home and learn to respect and not objectify other people.