On the Page

A few nights ago, my online friend PacBilly hosted a stream on YouTube. The poor guy had been laid up due to what sounds like severe tendinitis, so he grabbed his MacBook and said, “What the hell; I’ll go online and draw a picture.” What resulted was an amazing expression of community talent.

PacBilly started out drawing a cartoon in Paintbrush, the MacOS equivalent of Microsoft Paint, using only the trackpad on his laptop. I tell you, I wish I had this guy’s right brain, because his ideas are out there, man. He wound up drawing a picture of a mad duck, a sniffing banker, and a bumblebee with the head of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs. Listening to his creative process as he constructs this crazy drawing is as much fun as looking at the drawing itself.

He didn’t stop there, though. As folks gathered to watch, PacBilly decided to turn his bedridden impulse into an art showcase. He asked his viewers to draw and send in their own pictures, which he would then share on the stream. The only rules were that the drawings had to be done in Paint or a Paint-like program (no layers), using a mouse or a trackpad (no tablets).

Drawings poured in from everywhere. As PacBilly revealed them, I felt as though some peculiar curtain was lifted. The sight of these spontaneous sketches suddenly gave faces to these screen names, and put me in touch with something real, something true. I realize that’s the whole point of art, but when I go to DeviantArt and look at something like this:

Well…I just don’t feel it. There’s expert craftsmanship on display for sure, but I don’t get anything honest from it. On the contrary, I get the sense that the artist is hiding from me.

Looking at this stuff, however, I felt like I was seeing the souls of real people, shyly bared. Sure, the pictures are rough due to the limitations set by the rules, but that adds to their purity, I think.

Many viewers expressed apprehension about submitting a drawing, because they didn’t think their efforts would be worth sharing. PacBilly wouldn’t hear these objections. He told them that this activity was not about impressing anybody, but about the simple joy of creating.

Then he meticulously pored over each drawing, and gave them all due attention. He expressed curiosity on their inspiration. He saw personality in their details. He recognized the qualities of their designs, and mulled on where he would place them as printed copies.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

He didn’t stop there, though. As conversation continued, it was discovered that two of the stream’s viewers lived near each other, another was a skilled ukulele player, and yet another was about to celebrate his wedding anniversary.

That’s right, the morning PacBilly chose to host his stream was also the morning of this fellow’s anniversary. His screen name was The Highlander, and he was up late while his wife was sleeping. In PacBilly, this inspired a new mission: he was determined to get Mrs. Highlander to draw a picture for the stream.

More ideas followed. Hey, let’s hear some fond memories of The Highlander’s marriage, and get the viewers to draw pictures of them! Then, when Mrs. Highlander arrives, we’ll show them off to her! Better yet, let’s commission LogrusUKE, our resident ukulele player, to perform a cover of The Highlanders’ wedding song, and play it for her to hear!

The memory drawings didn’t happen, but thankfully, everything else did. The Highlander managed to get his wife out of bed, and she did draw a picture. She named it “Fowler,” and it touched PacBilly profoundly. He described it as “minimalist, but evocative,” and he believed that it would make a fine album cover. I have to agree.

Meanwhile, LogrusUKE quickly recorded a cover of “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers, the song of the Highlanders’ first dance. As soon as he was done, he shot an .mp3 to PacBilly, who then played it on stream for the couple. It was truly remarkable.

But that’s PacBilly. He knows how to pierce the fog. He has a deconstructive humor, and he embraces the imperfect. He has a playlist of videos called “Analog Anecdotes,” which are stories told on old-school, 4-track cassettes, and mixed over footage recorded on VHS. The videos are wracked with tape hiss and tracking lines, but that only makes them feel precious and human. I really admire that.

I regret to say that I missed this amazing stream, but I’m glad it’s uploaded to YouTube for posterity. For the hell of it, I took a stab at the MS Paint challenge while I listened to the video, but I don’t think my drawings really fit the spirit of the situation. It was a fine exercise, though, and I think it helped me get past the creative constipation I’ve been dealing with lately. Bless ya, Billy, you’re a hell of a guy.

387.44 Million Miles

While walking my dog today, I came across something weird on a playground sidewalk. It was a word written in chalk. A single word that I’ve seen many times in YouTube comments, but never anywhere else: the word “Libtard.”

Yeah. Somebody actually took the time to scribble the word “Libtard” on the sidewalk next to a park in chalk.

This perturbs me. It’s not that I take offense to the term. I don’t consider myself a liberal, or at least, not when it comes to most issues. I agree that some liberal stances, especially where I live, are impractical and even dangerous. I’m also not concerned for whomever the hell the word was referring to.

No, what bothers me is that the word was so near to the front of the writer’s mind that he or she felt inclined to write it in a public park. They’re obsessing over it that much.

Those YouTube comments I mentioned? They weren’t for videos that had anything to do with politics. They were posted on clips of Warner Bros. and Beavis and Butt-head cartoons. Using the most tenuous of connections, people crafted insults about Biden or Trump, or else Biden supporters and Trump supporters. If these people were just trolls, then they weren’t very good trolls. No one took the bait, and the comments had that sort of pouting indignation you usually see in political posts. These people were honestly mad, and they felt the need to let strangers know it.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being mad about politics, but when it gets to the point that you’re thinking about it while watching Road Runner cartoons, then it’s probably getting out of hand. You watch cartoons to forget about those things. You move on, you relax, you try and enjoy life. If watching cartoons gets you this pissed off about evil Democrats, what are you doing with the rest of your time? Are you just stomping around all day, muttering to yourself, “God I hate Democrats! I hate them so much!”

Now that I think about it, maybe that is what these folks are doing, if social media is anything to go off of.

Whatever the case, it’s unhealthy behavior. To put your political rage on your sleeve reveals an obsessed, contentious personality. You look like one of those smug douchebags who wear those “I’m an atheist. Debate me” shirts. You’re like one of those people who introduce themselves cause-first.

“Hi, I’m Ethan. I’m a vegan socialist pansexual.”

Yeah, that’s great. For you. Fact is though: I don’t care, and it makes me uncomfortable that you think I do. Things like that are personal, and require at least a few minutes of conversation before they’re appropriate to trot out. Even then, you’re kinda pushing it.

So, can we all just chill a little bit? Put the self-righteousness on the back burner, and remember what it’s like to interact with each other? There’s a lot of shit we can’t change in this world, but we can at least try to treat each other like human beings. Besides, you know someone’s profiting when the people turn on each other like this. Why play into those libtards’ hands?

Polite Society Strikes Back

What a great time to be alive! I don’t care what anyone says about surveillance, the nanny state, or the “cancel culture” — and just what the fuck is that, anyway? A culture that says, “You know, your behavior reflects poorly on the rest of us, so we don’t want you around?” Weren’t we always like that? I swear, these people only give names to stuff when it doesn’t help them — the ability to call out and shout down the assholes is exactly what’s been missing from life for centuries.

How long have decent people shoved their bile down while morons, douchebags, and jackoffs have thrown their weight around, acted like children, and expected everyone else to eat shit and like it? Unlike these walking scraps of semi-sentient garbage, the rest of us were taught that a civilization must remain civil to survive. We had parents who took us to the car and smacked us when we screamed in the store. We had people tell us “no” on occasion. We managed our emotions in positive ways, such as in the gym, or on the track. Most importantly, we learned that we couldn’t always get what we wanted, and that sometimes life sucks, and the reason that life sucks is that there are so many morons, douchebags, and jackoffs in it.

And by God, we can only turn the other cheek for so long.

I’ve come to realize that there are two major types of people: those who take responsibility for their own behavior, and those who blame everyone else for calling them out for it. Well, with the glorious new hashtags of #karensgonewild and #kevinsgonewild, the latter folks are finally starting to understand that it’s not just the people calling them out who have a problem with them, it’s the rest of the fucking world.

It amuses me that the Karens and Kevins of the world are so mad at the camera-holders. They don’t like being held responsible for their bullying. The way they see it, they’ve been allowed to shit on anyone they like all their lives, so why is everyone getting on their cases now? It’s not fair!

Now I know that the punishments we’re seeing, such as lost jobs and ruined reputations, might seem a little extreme. Let’s get real, though: how hard is it, seriously, to not make a selfish, racist tirade in public, especially when cameras are rolling? If these people had just kept their mouths shut and walked away, they could’ve gone right back to their high-paying jobs, their prefab homes, and their 1.5 children, all while maintaining their fitter, happier veneers.

But no: these spoiled filth need to yap. They need to remind us — and themselves — that they are the superior class of person. They need to feel that their particular position in life has earned them some unwritten privilege to step over and intimidate the peasantry.

So I can’t help but smile when I read about another Karen losing her job, or another Kevin issuing a public apology, because of some “But I’m special!” tantrum that he or she threw. I have no sympathy for these people. None whatsoever. They needed to learn a lesson, a lesson that they should have learned when the consequences for failure were not so dire as they are now. I can only hope that these trending hashtags will remain more than just trends; otherwise the assholes will come crawling back, and all opportunities for the growth of our species will be lost.

We Want to Believe

About a month ago, I started a new job helping out at a local high school. I work with teachers who have to wrangle huge numbers of kids. Growing up, I had a reverent opinion of teachers: they were important figures who knew far more than I did, and their knowledge and authority were to be respected without question. Now that I’ve gone behind the scenes and tinkered with their tools, I’ve realized something else.

These people don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

They’re barely keeping things together. Organization is minimal, and buck-passing is common. They talk a big show to keep the students in line, but they don’t have any real power beyond vague, abstract threats. Nevertheless, the kids cower from the dreaded “referral,” and inevitably submit.

Now, I’m not saying this to knock teachers, nor to praise the rebellious nature of teenagers. I’m saying it because seeing the truth of the situation, and extrapolating it to the macrocosm of society, led me to a revelation: no one knows what the hell they’re doing. Not our parents, not the government, not even the faceless black shape we grimly refer to as “the corporations.”

Why do you think corporations pour so much money into lobbying for laws that benefit them? To hoard gold and power in their greedy quest to dominate humankind? Doesn’t that sound a little silly? They may be giant businesses that exist to turn a profit, but that doesn’t make them Sauron, Dark Lord of Mordor. No, they don’t lobby to harvest riches from the middle class; they do it because they’re terrified of losing everything. Remember what happened in 2008? A handful of morons made some dumb decisions, and the whole system nearly collapsed like a house of cards. Some of the biggest banks in the world, perfect representatives of the “evil moneychangers” we despise but won’t stand up to, broke under the strain. If you knew that you could lose all your money because of some idiot’s bad behavior, wouldn’t you try to protect yourself, too?

When Bill Clinton got grilled over the whole Monica Lewinsky thing, people got pretty pissed at him. It was adultery, it was deceit, it was illicit, dirty sex. Behavior far below what we expected from the leader of our country.

Why?

Bill Clinton is just a man, and men get horny. They cheat, they lie, they sleep around. Commonality shouldn’t excuse such behavior, but it also shouldn’t make it shocking. So why were so many people so upset? If someone lives in the White House, that makes him or her a saint? Why did we load such unrealistic expectations on some dope from Arkansas?

Fake crises are bad enough when it comes to public weirdness, but once you get to real, nation-shaking events, things go absolutely batshit. When John F. Kennedy was shot, and the World Trade Center towers were annihilated, conspiracies cropped up everywhere. There was no way that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. It didn’t make sense that terrorists could overtake planes with box cutters. The towers couldn’t possibly have fallen because of burning jet fuel. It goes against everything we’ve been taught. Such chaos simply cannot happen in the world we live in. Clearly there were Other, Darker forces at work. Right?

I don’t like to instantly trust official stories, but come on. We’re talking comic book super-villainy here. People whisper about Satanist celebrities and cabals of arcane cultists without the slightest bit of irony. They honestly don’t realize how ridiculous they sound. The outlandish idea that the Jews and the Illuminati are building and destroying lives at will somehow seems more plausible to them than what is far more likely: that the people we put in charge fell asleep at the wheel.

Look at what happened on 9/11. Look close. What you’ll see is the repetition of a perfectly normal human response: freezing up at the prospect of getting caught in a mistake.

How many times has your boss entrusted you with an important task that you went on to fuck up? How did you feel about it?Weren’t you desperate to correct the matter before anyone else found out, or at least to hide it until you could sneak away?

“Well, yeah,” you might say, “but that’s just my stupid little job. I’m nobody. These guys have real responsibilities. They’re supposed to have things in hand.”

Ha!

Get real: the more responsibility one has, the more hesitant one will be to admit that one dropped the ball. And that’s what happened on 9/11. In that case, the ball dropped very quickly, and fell on all of us. But hey, if you don’t keep an eye on the guys in the cockpit, then you have to accept that sooner or later you’re going to crash.

You think this country is easy to keep a grip on? With all the information and knowledge flying around these days? Folks complain about the government getting bigger, piling on the bureaus and filling in the committees, but this is only happening because our world is growing so fast, our hapless leaders can’t get their arms around it. They might as well try to keep an angry bear in a half-nelson; without increasing efforts, that sucker is going to break free.

Very few people are comfortable with this notion. It’s hard to accept the idea that the high kings above are just stumbling in the dark like the rest of us. It’s much more comfortable to put our faith in the guy with the slick suit and white teeth, even after he’s demonstrated, on multiple occasions, that he’s not worthy of it. We believe, with a fervor that borders on fanaticism, that the confident man must have everything under control, because the alternative is too awful to contemplate.

Our society thrives on false idolatry, the veneration of the televised. People like Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, Lebron James, Sofia Vergara, and Taylor Swift are held up and presented as gods, and we buy into it like rubes. Our own lives and experiences are played down as dull and insignificant, while all the excitement we hear about only seems to happen to “everyone else.” So we relinquish our power to institutions and symbols, beg for their scraps of money and property and credit, and willfully make ourselves theirs to play with, to reward and to punish, to herd and to slaughter.

It’s a lot easier than understanding that not one of these people is better than anyone else, and that each of us is responsible for his or her own fate.

Now, I realize that I’ve written about some outlandish things here. Spirit guides, God, machine elves, and such. The difference between myself and the idol-worshippers is that I don’t claim to know the truth about these entities, nor do I put much faith in them. A mighty force may have created this universe, but that doesn’t mean It has any kind of plan. For all I know, It’s dancing us into creation because It doesn’t know what else to do. Despite all the evidence I have that spiritual guidance occurs, I remain skeptical, even of my own theories. My chief complaint here is that too few people are willing to examine themselves, to explore their consciousness, to consider their experiences, to recognize themselves as reality, and the idols as illusory. If an individual must break away from society to remain sane, what amazing things could happen if we all became individuals?