A Cynic Vexed by Love

Huh?

2007-04-29T01:33:45Z

Someone, somewhere has downloaded the "Shaft Graphic Designer" business card I made for my calligraphy final.

I wonder what they are doing with it?

Learning is fun

2007-04-27T04:50:06Z

Testiculate (verb)

To wave ones hands about and talk Bollocks.

source

I still can't believe I really saw this

2007-04-24T07:30:59Z

Courtesy of tasteslikeevil, who has the comic edwitch. This is almost as weird as when I saw Henry Kissinger on the Daily Show, only good instead of the other-worldly horror that one would normally associate with seeing Hitler having a sit-down chat with John Lennon.

Every so often I don't hate the Internet

2007-04-19T23:58:21Z

Look what I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw&mode=related&search=

Some of my other favorites of his:

"Defenders of Marriage"
"Creation science 101"
"Chickenhawk"
"The war on Terror"

Something new everyday!

2007-04-08T02:52:12Z

I just learned that LSD is an extremely effective migraine medicine and that one, very small, sub-hallucinogenic doses can alleviate migraines for up to several months. Just thought I'd share.

Photos and Imaginary Friends

2007-04-07T23:14:54Z

Some new stuff up at http://skippermarch.deviantart.com/

much of it in here, some of which you guys have seen before.

3trees @ 2007-04-05T19:03:00

2007-04-05T23:10:40Z

Some random guy walking on the railings in the park near my dorm and wearing orange gloves just invited me to something called "Mission Chill" that is going to take place on April 20th in said park at 4:20. So yeah if anyone wants to go a weed-in with a funny name represented by a random jovial acrobat, you know were to go.

Guess what I got!

2007-03-22T17:26:47Z

A deviantArt page: http://skippermarch.deviantart.com/ (some bum took "3trees" and didn't even pit anything there, jerk.)

Wee. Go there and then tell every person you can possibly think of how freaking awesome it is and that they want to buy my work. I need to make some money for next year and, and they only give internships around here to juniors and seniors, and it would be a trillion times cooler to sell prints instead of getting some shitty summer job. But doing that would mean renting darkroom time and I need to know that enough people would actually buy the things before I take that chance. So yeah, spread the word; I will be deeply grateful.

EDIT: I am thinking about charging around $100 a mounted, signed, print. I would like to know if you think that is fair, or not or if I could get more, or what.

A Gangster of the Old School

2007-02-26T04:18:31Z

Two rings I just finished for jewelry class. They made of silver and are very shinny.

There are these two girls in that class who are very affectionate with each other (or rather one is very affection with the other and the second one goes happily along with it) and the obvious conclusion that they are gay for each other does not hold here; one of them has a boyfriend she can hardly stand to leave by himself (the more passive one.) But even without that I would bet any amount of money that both of them are straight. I have seen this thing before, at MIT, and there was about loneliness, not attraction. There one of the girls was even engaged to a guy. But here it is much more tragic because although both of the girls are very nerdy neither one of them is a 400-pound asshole lunatic. One of them even looks like another lonely girl I know. le sigh :*(

Comicy goodn- well, comicyness

2007-02-25T21:23:43Z

Aaaaaaaand go:

This is the page with the Tom Petty song I mentioned in the comments on the last post. I am pleased with it in some ways even though I don't feel it really works the way I want it to. Skipping over the part where I fuck up the rythm and leave words out of the lyrics, and the part where if I tell you I did the "strum" and "jam" last you can prolly pick out the panel where I remember how to draw, their expressions in the last panels aren't quite right for the story. He shouldn't look quite that, er, ummm...sensitive. He, the narrator, drifts into this small town where she works a boring job at the local paper and takes care of her asshole brother and the only bright spot in her life is singing, which she mostly does at this roadhouse bar, since it's the only place she can besides her car. The first place he stays is with some crazy rich lady (or something, I got the idea for this comic while watching Sunset Boulevard) which he finds confining and creepy so at one point he goes out and gets in a knife fight to feel more like himself. So anyway, they meet and she is quite taken by him, he not being like anyone else she's met and much more like the heroes in the songs she sings, and knocks out her brother when he shows up screaming and swearing, and moments like this ensue; here, he is playing this song that he doesn't think she knows, until she jumps in on the first chorus. You will note his approving surprise in the fourth panel. After awhile it dawns on him that she expects him to love her. His last line will be something to the effect of "Everyone expects me to do the right thing, to be redeemed, because I'm the hero, after all. There seems to have been an mistake. I just play the guitar." and he blows out of town. She is, to say the least, upset. but she leaves to and starts a life for herself somewhere else. Yeah, so him less emo, and I wanted her to look more challenging, like she is daring him to know her, but she just looked so fucking adorable I didn't have the heart to change her. She was also supposed to be a slimmer, more bird-like thing but, again, the adorable thing.

P.S. Guitars are a bitch to draw.

A few panels from The Early Trials of Ryllian Best. There was more to this page but it sucked so I gave up and now you can't see it, and you won't what's the matter with him, cause he sure as shit doesn't have the hiccups.

Sketch for the title page of a section that will appear in the back of Ryllian's comic, an index of all the demons that he encounters on his journey and maybe some he doesn't, just for fun. It will have maybe four demons to a page, each with an identifying sketch and notes on it's form and function written in the Carolingian hand, a taste of which you will see below labeling one of the demons that will appear therein.

While not the most painful or irritating demon our hero encounters he is one of the most patient and by far the most terrifying. I might do some pages of him in action before too long.

3trees @ 2007-02-20T23:42:00

2007-02-21T04:52:55Z

I just finished a little move for my Visual Language II class and wouldn't y'know it, it kinda doesn't suck!

So I'm going to share it with you:
In the final cut I learn how to spell "Georgia"

But one thing I want to know is if anyone laughs as hard as I do at the "we know who we gonna kill" part, or has my all consuming loathing of iMovie put me into some sort of hysterical delirium.

In other news: liking Tom Petty as much as I do right now makes me feel like a total dork.

And now I'm going to step outside for a bit, it has been so long since it rained.

I'm tired so you'll want to do your own looking-up

2007-02-13T06:50:46Z

I have a new hero: Roger Bacon

He was a Franciscan monk in the 13th century and a scholar at Oxford where he earned the title "Doctor Mirabilis" or "brilliant professor." His heavy emphasis on the importance of empiricism makes him one of the first advocates of the scientific method in Europe. He proposed to the Pope that the curriculum should be overhauled and based on a encyclopedia of all scientific and mathematical knowledge. The Pope took this to mean that he already had such a book and bound him by papal oath to send him this encyclopedia of all scientific knowledge, which of course, didn't exist; so he wrote it. He used is extensive knowledge and skill with mathematical and scientific tools to not only understand "natural philosophy" but also to study alchemy and make a telescope that could see through time. Now that is fucking SCIENCE!

To conclude:
13th century monk who said: "Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences. …Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world," who then went to build a telescope that could see the future. Epic win.

I Made a Bracelet!

2007-02-05T06:22:38Z

By now I have also made an "amulet" which makes me look like waaaaaaaaay too much like a poser jackass if I post pictures of it in my LiveJournal.

Shut up. It's metal and it goes around my wrist. Therefore it = bracelet.

Also I would like to know if this method of "scanning" with my spiffy knew iBook's "camera" is just too intolerably bootleg or if you all consider it passable for little things I would like to throw up here.

This is the girl from that TV show I told you about last time I posted a bunch of art. She has dreadlocks now and will come to be known as "Little Tigress" in the tongue of the desert peoples.

Portrait of myself done in some lovely brown ink before I knew how to get Photo Booth to flip stuff for me.

Ryllian Best with his new raggedy blanket cloak and me in a slightly Goya mood.

And lastly:

The main character of the greatest love-story I have ever read: Teleco, the Rabbit.

I would make a fantastic rich person

2007-01-19T19:54:16Z

I've been having this fantasy lately of starting just the ill spot for artists of all stripes. We would have studio space, a gallery, offices, workshops, darkroom(s), a printing department, a little office you could go to book a model. And we would do things, publish comics, have shows, design sets, make movies, design posters and brochures, have art symposiums and workshops, anything you need done, we can make happen, or anything we want to do ourselves. We would have designers and illustrators and other such squares on staff and they would get a salary and everything they did would be owned by the company. But if you were a real artist and we invite you you would get your own studio space, access to our modeling agency, a show whenever we have time for it, whatever else you need, we wouldn't pay you that much, but anything you made that wasn't at the behest of the company is yours and you can keep or sell or whatever, and if we need you to do something (paint a mural, illustrate a comic, whatever the hell else we might think of) you have to do that up to the point where it takes up more than a part time job would. We would only take good artists with actual skills who can really do stuff besides be creeps and assholes (I'm looking at you, all of modern art.) First painter I'd call: Jamie Wyeth. First photographer: Archie La Salle if he's still around. It would be a prestigious enclave of the most skilled and meaningful artists in the world setting a new standard for art in the 21st century.

And the name of this glorious institution: "The Batman Foundation."

I should really stop using this place for notes...

2007-01-19T05:15:37Z

"Duchamp's not a hack for using "found objects" to make sculptures, though I would say he would be far worse than a hack if he, for example, bought or "found" the thinker, took a hacksaw to the head and and arms, then added plastic masks and reattached the pieces so it looked like a gorilla masturbating or something to that effect —"

Now mnotacrook at plastic.com is making fun here but if you think about it, that would make a perfect modern art piece. In fact when I start my modern art scam (or I can start now I guess) I will take dares from people to paint pieces based on what they think is to impossibly stupid/obscene to pass as a real piece or they say it to make fun of what modern art is like as in the example above. For example someone will say "I bet you can't sell a painting of a teddy-bear flying a rocket-ship out of a space-hooker's penis!"
And I will say "Yes I can!" and then do it, because rich white art people are fucked in the head.

In other news, Jackson Browne rocks my socks.

And because no one else on the whole internet has said it I guess I have to: "The Chapman brothers (Jake & Dinos) are assholes!"

Nothing

2007-01-05T23:12:39Z

Back in Medford for the winter break. While out walking today I saw somebody with a "Garage Door Games"(or something like that) hockey thing set up. There was a big goalie set up on the garage door, but then when I drew closer, I saw what made it notable: a miniature ice-rink set up in the driveway. Suburbs = WTF.

Lookee what I found!

2006-12-14T20:29:40Z

For those of you who might be doubting that there are beautiful things in the world, take heart! Behold: a music video of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song done with footage from Evangelion!

And lo, all was right with the world.

Fuck Form Study Right in its Studiously Formed Ass.

2006-12-08T19:03:57Z

I just stuffed my last ever form study project into the trash. Thank the Christ. Interestingly enough it was one of my favorite projects to do in that class. It was a big messy thing made out of trash cans and plastic sheeting and bags of marshmallows with paint everywhere, took up half the workroom, lots of fun. Nobody liked it very much. And as I look back over the projects I did, the ones that went over the best were, without exception, the ones I had the most contempt for and thought were the stupidest pieces of bullshit once I was done with them. Now I'm puzzling over why that is. Perhaps it has something to do with their phenomenal stupidity. I dunno. But seriously, they are pretty dumb.

Just a scrap that hit me on the way home

2006-11-30T06:14:18Z

Once upon a time an artist lived by the sea, in the winter of his years. One day in early June his wife left him. He died later that year, nearing the end of September. In the months before he passed, he painted nothing but the far-off figures of birds.

I'm in art school...

2006-11-15T02:11:49Z

Some self-portraiture:

Self Portrait
India Ink on Paper
6"X8.5"

Self Portrait
Watercolor on Paper
6"X8.5"

My watercolors are sloppy:

Lonely Cloud
Watercolor and India Ink on Paper
6"X8.5"

So I want to make a TV show where this chick:

Goes from this:

To this:

And back to somewhere in the middle with the help of this guy:

Teléco the magic cat! Whose only power is the extraordinary ability to transform into an upper-middle-class white guy! Oh, and I guess he can talk. There's more to it than that but I don't have any pictures to go with it.

And while we we're on the subject of art, I was just walking to get some ice cream and thinking about modern art when I thought of probably my best idea for a modern art piece to date: dump a couple different colors of paint on a canvas and then the artist and their significant other would fuck on it. It's disgusting! It's pointless! It's narcissistic! It's perfect! This idea will not make it anywhere near my pieces for my big modern art scam, no amount of money in worth bringing something like that into the world, I just wanted to post it so when someone with less scruples than I figures this out, and they will, I fucking called it.
Now If you'll excuse me I have a paper to finnish bullshitting that I should've been finnished bullshitting yesterday!

I Shall Join in These Festivities

2006-11-09T00:33:31Z

On a different note:
In history class today I learned that white people are insane. The lengths some of them will go to say that racism isn't real is flabbergasting. Just to clarify: the term "white" as I use it here, includes in it's definition: "one with there head lodged firmly up their ass." Not that that isn't an essentially human quality, but whit people do it in a very particular way. Let's watch and see:

(in reaction to a graph showing that in 2001 the median household wealth for whites was over $42,000 while for blacks and hispanics it was $1,100 and $200 respectively): "This is old, it's from 2001!...It doesn't include illegal immigrants! What about illegal immigrants who keep all there money in like a shoe-box!" (I pointed out the unlikelihood that someone picking fruit for $2 a day has a shoe-box with $40,000 in it but the conversation got away from that.)

"A Nazi textbook would be better, at least it would admit it was racist."

"Maybe all the black people prison is just more black people being arrested." (Implying that they have always been criminals, but now the police are just doing a better job protecting us.)

This is my favorite bit:
(the book claims that "Whiteness" is a political position of power while "Blackness" is both a political situation and a culture. Very reasonable I thought, considering like, y'know, jazz and all jazz. But lets take a look at what my classmates said.)

"If black culture is created by the common experience of being oppressed, why doesn't the common experience of being in power make white culture?"

"If white culture is invalidated by just being supremacy doesn't that invalidate black culture as just being the opposite?"

(I pointed out jazz, the teacher added rock & roll, hip-hop, R&B, rap etc. as elements of black culture, the girl he was addressing was shocked and indignant and didn't believe him.)

Wow...just wow.

I would like to end with a quote that will not melt your brain:
"There is no force in this or any other universe as powerful as the human capacity for self delusion."
-Frank Zappa (I think)

Take that, art!

2006-10-27T17:59:32Z

I just fucking smoked my form study project. We had to do a little photo book on some subject, like dots and there would be a bunch of pipe ends and a spotted cow, I picked "ends of things." I spent maybe 6 hours on it, if you include going to pick up the prints at the Fotomat, took 72 shots and was the only who didn't have to fix something, including the insane guy who took over 300 shots. Fuckers!! That is what is called skills, S-K-I-L-L-Z sk1z, motherfucker! They couldn't figure out what my subject was, kept saying things like "perspective" and "scale." That was because the fact that it was the ends of shit wasn't what made it good, and they don't really have souls so they can't really tell what made them good, so they guessed shit like "location."

And speaking of people with no souls they took us to see a Ceclily (Celery? Sicily?) Brown show yesterday. If you don't know who she is, she paints huge, ugly, wiggly paintings of fucking, or at least I think it's fucking or some shit. Everybody says it's fucking. I can make out the odd hand jacking off or pair of titties or some shit but they really just look like huge pieces of painstakingly made vomit. I spent the time my class was in the show down in the basement looking a postcards drawn by Japanese and Bostonian school children, it was much more rewarding. There was even a little thing where you could draw one for them and write on the back, mine said:

"Konichiwa!
My name is Joe!
I am 20 years old!
This is a picture of me with a birdy on my head!"

Then on the front was a picture of me with a little bird on my hat giving the peace sign and squinting my eyes with my tongue sticking out. It said "Konichiwa!" and "I am 20 years old," in Japaneese characters on the front. At least that's what the little binder I was copying said I was saying. I suppose I could have written "Eggplant booger warp!" and "20 karate fish." Whatever, either one.
But this Scali-bread Brown show gave me a good idea. If there are idiots in New York dumb enough to pay a million bucks for these chunks of shit, there must be some way to take advantage. So I made a little list for myself of all the qualities the perfect money-making art work would have:

1.)Must be unique; a painting or sculpture, no photos, everyone knows you can make more prints so they won't be worth anything until after you are dead.

2.)Must be really, really big. Bigger the bullshit, bigger the bling.

3.)Must make absolutely no sense whatsoever. This is the most fundamental aspect of the whole thing. The whole point of the thing is for some rich person to stand in front of it and have the delusion that they are understanding something. If there is a real meaning they can be wrong, it can disagree with them, but if it lets them project whatever horseshit they want onto it then it's "genius!" Like Plato said: "If you make people think they will hate you. If you make people think they are thinking, they will love you."

4.)Must be really, really complicated. Then they can have the delusion that they are understanding something really, really complex. Also helps to obscure the fact that you are totally full of shit.

5.)Should preferably be really ugly. Just seems to be the rule these days. Besides most of the good ways of painting have been taken already and you don't want to look like you're copying. Can be used make you and your work less threatening. Also helps to obscure the fact that you are totally full of shit.

6.)Put cocks in it for no reason. Seriously, cocks, naked people, fucking, cut out pieces of porn, any shit like that, it will make it seem edgy without braking the "make no sense" rule. It will also mean that your work is "talking about sexuality." I don't know what the fuck that means, but these douchebags just lap it up.

So here's the plan I'm to pain like 10 fucking giant canvases in 2 sets of 5, the "yonic" series and the "phallic" series. The "phallic" series I think will be in a mostly pink pallet and the "yonic" one will be in a mostly blue pallet, kind of a little cultural switcheroo going on there (really makes you think, doesn't it?) and they will be of the most absurd bullshit I can think of, a cock leaking teddy bear sperm, a possibly pregnant chick talking to a phone coming out of her pussy, some chick, ass end up with a bunch of flowers coming out of her twat and somebody else with their face in them*, all in some totally fucked up wiggly "expressionistic" style so you can barely tell what the fuck is going on, even after I tell you. Then after the series sells for tens of millions of dollars I'll tell everyone that if you put the paintings all together, in order, with the "yonic" series over the "phallic" series (you like how I'm "discussing gender relations?") turn out the lights and shine a black light on it, a secret message will appear. I could just have it glow in the dark but I don't want someone to just be closing up the gallery and give up the game, or have it in the basement of the auction house and there's this huge glowing painting. The reason it is so important for the message to stay a secret until after the checks clear is because the secret message will be a giant graffiti-type face, one or both eyes closed, tongue sticking out, a huge middle finger on each side of him and "FUCK THE RICH" written underneath. Then I take their money, get a nice house on the north shore, turn the basement into a darkroom, get a couple of dogs, invite all my friends over and laugh for the rest of my fucking life.

*I actually think that this last one could be really beautiful if it was handled just right. But for this I'd prolly make her cooch really noticeable and emphasized. Yechkth!

Words that should never go together

2006-10-25T23:49:08Z

There is a poster up around MassArt (almost typed MIT) asking for a photographer to help with a book someone is going to publish. The text begins, and I shit you not: "Renowned Fetish Diva and Psychotherapist..."

That ≠ good.

On another note I seem to be running into a lot of people I haven't seen in a while. I think I like that.

City Living

2006-10-17T03:47:52Z

I saw two bums in their dirty sleeping-bags and grimy coats. I decided I wasn't quite nervous enough to cross the street but I pulled my hat down lower and squared my shoulders, sang a little to myself. As a passed them this is what I heard:

Bum #1 (to Bum #2): Ready...? (pops paper bag) Goad* bless America.

What an awesome bum.

*he had a Boston accent.

I Know the Answers but Nobody Wants Them

2006-10-11T23:53:03Z

The time has come for me to pick my classes for the spring. Here's what the hope is:

Visual Language II W 2:10-6:30 (Some more freshman bullshit, this time with movies, w/e)

Drawing II (Calligraphy) Th 2:10-6:30 (I'm looking forward to this in a way. Interesting choice seeing as how my handwriting sucks out loud.)

Polaroid 20X24 T 6:30-10 (20X24! 20 by Twenty motherfucking Four!! Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ! I've never even made a print that big. I'll be amped if I can work with negatives the size of a car door.)
or
Photo Techniques M 9:10-12 (They probably won't let me take this class, fuckers. It's all about advanced B&W photographic chemistry and printing methods, basically all the stuff I really need to know outside of color. It shows you how dedicated I am to photography that I will get up early on a Monday to take this class.)

Art History II M 10:40 or F 12:40 (I like art history. It feels cool to be able to tell an Assyrian low relief sculpture from a Persian one. This will cover The late Renaissance to the present, basically all the good stuff. I don't want to get out of this, but if I did I would totally be trying to get into "Marxist Perspectives on Art.")

Literary Traditions T/Th 10:40 (Ugh, fuck this class, I hate it already. If what passes for "thought" in my American Thought and Government class (e.g. national identities didn't exist before Napoleon) this will consist of listening to someone lecture me about some absurd literary theory (Dickens invented storytelling!) all the while thinking that I could shit a better piece of writing than them.)
or (hopefully)
Camelot: Tales of King Arthur Th 9:10 (Prolly won't be going as it looks like the other one is required. Oh, well)

I visited a little art show on campus which comprised A)Shitty paintings B)Shitty paintings on weird stuff like keyboards C)Shitty collage/drawings that involved what appeared to be pieces of porn D)Stupid snarky titles written right on the wall. The title of the show was written all across one wall in red paint: "IF YOU CAN'T MAKE IT GOOD, MAKE IT BIG. IF YOU CAN'T MAKE IT BIG, MAKE IT RED." After reading the comment book full of "kewl" and such like I took the pen and put "Explains why everything is so big" on the wall underneath the title by their names.