The Devil's in the Downward Dog

So apparently “anti-yoga Republican” is a thing now.

The satanic sin of stretching, I guess.

The Remembered Taste of Grape Soda

Doing Photoshop art upstairs, I had a sudden urge to watch Father Knows Best, and wondered why. Not really a great show, after all. 

Then I realized it may have been because I was drinking a grape soda, something I’ve tasted very rarely since early childhood. 

I think it took me back to living with my grandparents in those earliest years, with that warm-as-a-blanket sense of absolute security that never comes again. 

I used to watch that TV show with them on CBS Monday nights, often drinking a bottle of grape soda from a six pack that my grandmother would buy at the neighborhood grocery store just down the block.

When the GOP Dial Got Stuck

I wrote this: “The problem is that at least half the country is being fed a largely fictional narrative, every day, and accepts it to be true. That’s the Fox News Effect.

“I realized 20 years ago that if lying propaganda could be substituted for news, this country’s ruin would follow in short order.”

And I got this thoughtful reply from Mouse Detective on the Washington Post website: 

“Same here professor. Believe it or not, I grew up in a Republican family, and used to listen to Rush Limbaugh every day. I remember during the first Gulf War, he was always enraged at CNN, and wanted them muzzled for reporting what happened, and whined about the “liberal media,’ 

“I remembered what Ben Franklin had written about an informed electorate, and felt uncomfortable. It took me awhile to leave but I have never looked back. 

“That was before Fox ‘News,’ but it was universally accepted by Republicans that the media was biased in favor of liberals. I thought that was BS, and that you had a rich buffet of choices from both extremes to the middle. But I think that was a time when many Republicans began to choose only far right sources. AM radio was loaded with Rush wannabes and I think that’s when my generation got stuck. There, but for the Grace of God go I! I don’t think I’ve voted for a single Republican since about 1995...”

Of Thee I Sting

Our national symbol shouldn’t be an eagle. It should be a scorpion stinging itself to death.

China in the Sky

A sky as blue as

bone china, and a silence

as deep as the snow.

Less Than Meets the Eye

The whole hackneyed concept of being “seen” now has narcissistic vibes.

What we actually need is to be moving toward a principled goal — whether we are “seen” to be doing so or not.

Care for Some Very Stale Pie?

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.

Level and Level-Headed

Kilimanjaro 

can kill, but in Illinois,

no mountains mock you.

The Bird: Do What You Were Created to Do

“I don't know what to tell you. A statement is easy, and here it is: Be yourself. Try to matter. Be a good friend. Love freely, even if you are likely — almost guaranteed — to be hurt, betrayed. 

“Do what you were created to do. You’ll know what this is, because it is what you keep creeping up to, peering at, dreaming of. Do it. If you don’t, you'll be punching clocks and eating time doing precisely what you shouldn’t, and you’ll become mean and you’ll seek to punish any and all who appear the slightest bit happy, the slightest bit comfortable in their own skin, the slightest bit smart.

“Cruelty is a drug, as well, and it’s all around us. Don’t imbibe.

"Try to matter. Try to care. And never be afraid to admit that you just don’t know, you just don't fucking know how you’re going to make it. That's when the help — the human and the divine help —shows up.”

— Tennessee Williams, Interview with James Grissom, 1982

On Finding That You Remain Alive

I find I’m alive, 

and I’m still striving to thrive, 

or at least survive.

When No Wind Whispers

One that makes me think of my friend Jim— 

“When Ryonen was about to pass from this world, she wrote another poem:

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn,

I have had enough about moonlight,

Ask no more, 

Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs.”

— R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature

Ryōnen Gensō (1646-1711) was a Japanese monk and poet who taught poor children.

Who’s Sitting in the Empty, Invisible Throne?

A theist is like the owner of an empty apartment who insists that, on the contrary, his home is furnished with an invisible, intangible throne more magnificent than any mere physical chair on Earth.  He claims to sit comfortably in that chair by the spiritual fire, with his dogma curled up cozily at his feet. 

But an assertion is not a chair. 

A metaphor is not a chair. 

A belief is not a chair. 

Freethinkers are merely those people who observe that there is nowhere they can sit.

A.I.? Aye Yi Yi Yi!

AI art is attracting a lot of bitter Luddite invective these days. 

But I calmly reply that all artists borrow elements of other artists’ styles, particularly when they’re developing. So let’s not get all high dudgeon about AI here.

I have used AI to generate thematic sample comic book images. And it’s a funny thing, as Stan Lee used to say. The reaction to one of my AI images was instructive. 

People asked, “Where’d you get that wonderful image?” 

And when I answered “AI,” several of them immediately replied, “Oh yuck, it’s awful!”

Literally, they’ve said this! Their hypocrisy was instantaneous.

Remember, the comic book industry was built on artistic swipes. 

And style cannot be copyrighted. 

“It’s not always bad,” observed my comics historian friend Joseph Lenius. “Al Williamson was a genius, and he obviously followed in the footsteps of Alex Raymond. (Frank) Frazetta as a comic book artist did so to an extent from (Hal) Foster. MANY have tried to follow in the footsteps of Wally Wood (who borrowed from others and constantly swiped), although few have succeeded.”

Also, there are literally hundreds of thousands of public domain comic book images which can be sampled by AI. 

“AI using that is no worse than a person doing the same,” Lenius remarked. “Again, there are a lot out there who think NOTHING bad about artists swiping, tracing, light-boxing.”

AI’s art’s detractors decry it as “lazy” and “soulless.” 

That’s claptrap.

I’d say it’s the detractors’ hysterical knee-jerk Luddite reactions that are intellectually lazy. And as for “soulless,” well, are blueprints “soulless?” 

AI art is a tool that enables you to visually describe your concepts — swiftly, helpfully and very effectively. 

So let’s just leave the “souls” out of it entirely, shall we?

The Tree Wise Men

My friend Jim Hampton has a strong affinity for trees, so this morning I asked him what he would say are the wise qualities of a tree. 

He replied, “The immediate words that come to mind are: ancient, sage, quiet, patient, watchful, constant and protective.

“To be more descriptive, I think of something that is wise and powerful, yet discerning. They patiently observe without interfering. Taking in our behaviors so they may increase their wisdom which leads to greater, superior silence.”

“I’m curious as to why you asked.”

I replied, “It’s something I thought of while walking George past my personal ‘world tree’ this morning. You gave good answers. I always think of solidity — the immovable trunk — and yet suppleness, branches that bend with the breeze. And they are satisfied just with sunlight.”

We're Surrounded by Selves

Watch for all the commercials in which people talk to various duplicates of themselves, often more than one. These “selves” have all emerged from their smartphones, I think. The algorithms endlessly echo us, even as they manipulate us.

A Thought Expermient about Superwomen

In several of the earliest versions of Superman’s origin, his mother Lara is offered the chance to go to Earth with her baby, but chooses to die with her with her husband on Krypton instead.

But what if Jor-el had insisted that she go? She would have ended up on Earth with her Superbaby, perhaps around the time women got the vote.

And unlike the infant, she would have been fully aware that she’d lost her people and planet, not to mention the love of her life. 

That could make quite a mini-series, a kind of ElseKryptons story.

How Amorality Is Advertised

Let's get a wider view and watch how amorality is sold to our society. 

Once we regarded “Lord of the Flies” as a horror story. Now we treat it as comedy on “Survivor.” 

And children raised on nothing but Hollywood's product could be forgiven if they thought the two most popular professions in America were “assassin” and “prostitute.”

Horror of the Fog Queens

Christopher Isherwood recalled a London cab ride with Bill Caskey and Tennessee Williams in 1948. 

“It is foggy, and Tennessee exclaims, ‘We are the dreaded fog queens!’ and utters his screaming laugh,” Isherwood wrote in his Lost Years memoir. 

“Whereupon all three of them begin to elaborate on the fantasy — how the respectable citizens shudder and slam their shutters and cross themselves as the dreaded fog queens ride by, and how one darling little boy disregards their warnings and looks out of the window and sees the fog queens and they are absolutely beautiful, so he shouts to them and begs them to take him with them, and they do, and he is never heard from again.”