The Sock-Monkey As Alone

 so here we are another day in the grind of ambition and loneliness. all these beautiful things are going to die and here i am making jokes trying to look into gods eyes and find what i see. the fascists are in control and it's our fault for letting the ignorant control the reflection, the one that lies to our face as we stare into the mirror. how can we help people when we can barely survive? or when the interesting and beautiful people we meet justly questions out intentions? the psychosis is deep man. it makes you feel like your the limo driver for death. his diamond rings and nonchalant fascination with things he doesn't understand but still we serve him rather then the life giving water we are offered at every moment of kindness. i ask him a stupid question "why do you want me to drive you around?" and he with his empty bone socket eyes stares at me and says "this is as close as you are going to get to heaven." i laughed defensively trying to make it

  “You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.”    ― Guillermo del Toro pan's labyrinth is a fairy-tale about the choices we make. it's about the way that life wants to take away from us what little we enter this world with. and most of all it is about how we may find liberation in disobedience. Ofelia has it rough, her mother is marrying a fascist named Vidal. Vidal is insane and at the very least has a severe case of o.c.d. and has a bad tendency to kill people. ofelia follows a fairy into the woods and finds a labyrinth garden and the doors it opens are what the film is about. later when she returns to the labyrinth she meets a faun who guides her through a series of trials that will allow ofelia to reclaim her immortality. the trials are complex and the choices not always apparent but what she finds is a redemption for the rest of us through her sacrifice.  the film is savage in it's violence bo

The artist job is to frame reality, like a picture-frame frames a painting. all we can aim for, at best all we can hope for is to not distract from the inherent beauty of the subject. because by being nothing more then a frame it is also a reduction: both limiting and limited. the purpose of the frame is to communicate but the communication by being expressed kills the potential of what could have been said. a painting is given form by exclusion. by excluding things it creates for itself a identity. by saying here i am we create a negative space of saying what we are not. we as artist exclude from our work the things we don't like or identify with and so create a world that is not as rich with potential as the one we live in. at worst this creates propaganda: using media, be it literature or water-colors, to impose a frame on the viewer instead of allowing them the opportunity to add to the work some of the things we have chipped away. in co-production the meaning of a moment is

 their is no way for me to exaggerate the importance that hunter x hunter has had on my life. it quite possibly the greatest piece of writing in any language after the gospels and is only rivaled by Jim Dodge's book stone junction for second place. i honestly am at a loss of words in trying to explain yoshihiro togashi masterpiece. it's wonderland with rules. it's nostalgia fighting it's way out of the grave. and above all it is a child's adventure story that will haunt you for the rest of your life. the premise is simple gon wants to meet his father and becoming a licensed hunter is the most immediate way of doing so. but the trials and tribulations of a life that involves "giving up what you have so can get what you want." is more complicated then the little boy can understand. he befriends a motley crew of associates that includes killua, the heir to a clan of assassins who is looking for a way to salvage his soul from the cruelty instilled in him for

  "Poor Woof... I know how you are, you tried to help them... You told yourself that you wouldn't let them come to any harm, that you'd be there to protect them... I know, boy... But that isn't what actually happened. The kids are gone. And you... You couldn't do anything... You're here... alive and well. Who do you think you are? Did you think you'd actually be able to make a difference? Well Woof, you were wrong boy... completely and utterly wrong... There's nothing anyone can do... There's nothing anyone can do..." - Jade. What is a hero? Do we need another savoir? and is it all about judgement? these are the questions that most come to mind when i think about beyond good & evil the game. one of the most lively charismatic games ever created. first and foremost you play as jade a women who is struggling and barely scraping by to help orphans of a cosmic conspiracy of liberating if confounding proportions. jade for us is a theme

 So I made the mistake of discussing race as a issue on twitter...yeah. But one thing i took away from it was how convenient it is to gain value by looking down on situations that we are no longer a part of and taking the moral high ground over the dead. The whole process was fascinating because the primary discussion was over one thing i might be wrong on, can you judge every one based off of them being born into a system that encourages evil? The woman i sent the messages to said something along the lines of no confederate slave owners were good people. i don't even disagree with this so much as am fascinated by the lack of congruence in implicating one group of people you disagree with in the past and trying to make people who were born in the same state carry the sins of their for-fathers. When you could easily state their were no good husbands at the time because women were not allowed to vote. or for that matter casting the modern enlightened liberal that champions social j

 Cringe verb (used without object) , cringed, cringing. 1. to shrink, bend, or crouch, especially in fear or servility; cower. 2.   to fawn. noun 3. servile or fawning deference.  Hi how are you? today children we will talk about judgement of ugly survivors and how people like me and my kind influence every day culture of the successful people of people like losers like you. All in the pursuit of my desire to celebrate the ugly average that is looked down on by the "intelligent" and the "pretty". why because what is common is the average and the average is getting tired of idealized-anime-style fetishistic reduction of reality to exclud