I'm back on a Tori kick. I never really left.

Mother Earth puked yesterday...

This is a picture of Hampton Beach's Ocean Boulevard yesterday during high-tide.

My brother and his son escaped in time before they got stuck there since they closed all of the roads. The dirty foam was whipping people in the face.

More images

So I had a swell time with my nephew Myles. We walked around the neighborhood, making movies, weilding stick-swords and laughing.

While my brother was out, I put him to bed. He likes to be read to and seeing as I didn't have any kids books, I read him the Tao of Pooh, sneaking in my own story into some of the philosophical passages.

I think he really liked the Cottleston Pie Song:

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie."

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie."

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken, I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie."

I hope he never learns how to properly say catepillar, either!

What a cool kid.




Myles is a callapitter

Turn down your volume for this clip. It's loud~

BUTTERFLY

Why Do We Struggle?


A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.

The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us.

We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!


"Courage is fear that has said it's prayers."
~Dorothy Bernard

Me and Bam's new salad creation

Pignolia nuts from pine trees
radishes
baby carrots
red onion
green beans (fresh)
organic fuji apple
goat cheese (optional)
sprouts
olives (green and black)
romaine
balsamic vinegar
crushed pepper
mushrooms

and then i made my own dressing which was salsa, light ranch (optional) and Tuong Ot Sriracha:

Something my friend Mikhaela wrote about the Imus firing, and very well I might add...

I drew this several days ago, when it just looked like Imus would get a two-week suspension. His attempt to apologize on the Al Sharpton radio show was ridiculous, including the lovely phrase "you people." And yes, a while back he referred to black journalist Gwen Ifill as a "cleaning lady" (see her excellent Times Op-Ed on the matter). Some thoughts, in no particular order.


So yeah, nasty hate speech. Totally disgusting, worthy of outrage and protest and probation. But I don't know about firing, and not because I'm worried about Imus' right to get paid $10 million a year for hate speech. I'm worried about the right of left-wingers and progressives and feminists and anti-racists and LGBT people and humanists to push the envelope on the other side without being accused of, say "anti-Catholic" or "anti-Christian" bigotry.
I'm not crying for Imus, or for Ann Coulter for losing newspapers whose editors should have had the good judgment never to run her column. My concern is about these kind of instant massive firing mobilizations in general, which I worry can make it dangerous for left-wingers and progressives to try to make a living pushing the envelope in over-the-top art/comedy/commentary/satire without worrying the rightwing attack dogs will take some out-of-context comment or image they made and turn it into a "destroy him/her!" campaign. By using these same tactics, I think we might be justifying them. And provoking the righties into going after leftwing commentators for "revenge."
Sure we can clearly see the distinction between Imus's hate speech and, for example, the firing of Bill Maher after 9/11 for making a comment that didn't fit the gung-ho patriotic Bush-can-do-no-wrong atmosphere at the time. But the rightwing attack dogs are all about playing the "gotcha" game, and they are happy to cry "hate speech" and "bigotry" at anyone who expresses anti-religious or "anti-Christian" views, for example. Or to cry "treason" at anyone expressing anti-Bush views. Think of the way rightwing Catholic groups launched a major smear campaign against the two feminist Edwards bloggers for their supposed history of "anti-Catholic bigotry" (i.e. feminist prochoice commentary), or the many campaigns that have been leveled against cartoonist Ted Rall. Many people who make a living from left-wing commentary and cartooning have been in fear for their livelihood due to massive campaigns of outrage based on words or images taken completely out of context or misinterpreted.
I completely support censuring the haters and raising voices against hate speech and making it loud and clear that it's not acceptable. In fact, that's pretty much what I've dedicated my entire cartooning career to.
But there needs to be room for radical dissent and controversial content... and it'd be hypocritical of me to say that privilege only belongs to speech I agree with or don't find hateful or offensive.
Not that there isn't a line somewhere, or that people shouldn't be fired for being openly bigoted assholes, and not that Imus shouldn't have been fired. When Trent Lott revealed that he wanted to see a segregationist United States Strom Thurmond KKK style, he should have been out on his ass. Instead he's now Senate Minority Whip.
Sharpton said he wasn't trying to bring down Imus, he was trying to "lift decency up." But is emphasizing that all we want from our media is cleanliness and decency the way to make it more progressive? Or is just going to encourage editors to choose content based primarily on safety?
The market and advertisers played a big role in this, and I'm not going to celebrate that (scroll down for reference). These same market forces don't make supporting or backing marginal progressive forces or voices a priority and they haven't squat to diversify who gets precious TV and radio airtime and audience: the same old bunch of white guys. They were happy to support Imus for years of similar comments, and only bailed when it became a PR problem. Would these same advertisers bail from a gay program if targeted on a massive scale by rightwing Christian activists?
All that said, what I really want to see in the media is real race/gender diversity and some strong progressive voices, instead of a wall of hatemongers like Imus/Lou Dobbs/Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Hannity/O'Reilly and a bunch of meaningless centrists.
Obviously Imus's departure hardly marks the End of All Things Sexist and Racist on the Radio. But do we really want to get out big scrubby erasers and start making lists of who needs to go? And why didn't Media Matters mention Lou Dobbs on their list of other racist commenters still on the air? His crazed xenophobic rants about Mexican immigrants trying to destroy the white middle class certainly qualify as topnotch racism. I still hold that he is an Evil Martian Overlord.
End disorganized bundle of thoughts.
What do you think?



P.S. Join my weekly mailing list by sending a blank message to newtoons-subscribe@mikhaela.net!

This was appropriate today. Thanks Blue.

You made me the thief of your heart
In the name of the Father

I hope you're happy now...
...I could never make you so...
you were a hard man...
no harder in this world
you made me cold and you made me hard
and you made me the thief of your heart

Winter is cold...oh!
But you're colder still
and for the first time
I feel like you're mine
I share you with the one who will
mend what falls apart
and turn a blind eye
to the thief of your heart

Ohhh you lost
Ohhh you lost all
you lost all
you lost all

I'll never wash these clothes
I want to keep the stain
Your blood to me is precious
nor would I spill it in vain
your spirit sings
though your lips never part
singing only to me
the thief of your heart

Ohhh you lost

Ohhh you lost
Ohhh you lost all
lost all

Ohhh you lost
Ohhh you lost all
lost all

Talk to Strangers

Talk To Strangers

Saul Williams

Composição: Indisponível

Now i wasn't raised at gunpoint
And i've read too many books
To distract me from the mirror
When unhappy with my looks
And i ain't got proper diction
For the makings of a thug
Though i grew up in the ghetto
And my niggers all sold drugs,
And though that may validate me
For a spot on mtv
And give me all the airplay
That my bank account would need,
I was hoping to invest in
A lesson that i learned
I thought this fool had jumped me
Just because it was my turn.
I went to an open space
Because i knew he wouldn't do it
If somebody there could see him
Or somebody else might prove it,
And maybe in your eyes
It may seem i got punked out
Because i walked in their own path
And then went and changed my route.
But that open-ness exposed me
To a truth i couldn't find
In the clenched fists of my ego
Or the confines of my mind
Or the hip-ness of my swagger,
Or the swagger of my step,
The scowl of my grimace,
Or the mean-ness of my rap.
Because we represent a truth son,
That changes by the hour,
And when you open to it,
For nobility is power,
In that shifting form you'll find a truth that doesn't change
And that truth is living proof of the fact that god is strange…

Talk to strangers
When the family fails and friends led you astray
And buddah laughs and jesus weeps and turns out god is gay.
As angels in disguise love can come in many forms,
The hallways of your projects or the fat girl in your dorm,
And when you finally take the time to see what they're about
Perhaps you find they're lonely or their wisdom trips you out.

Maybe you'll find the cycles end
Right back where you began,
But come this time around
You'll have someone to hold your hand,
Who prays for you who is there for you
Who sends you love and light,
Exposes you to parts of you
That you once tried to fight.
And come this time around
You choose to walk a different path,
You'll embrace what you turned away
And cry at what you laughed,
Because that's the only way
We're going to make it through this storm,
Where ignorance is common sense
And senseless is the norm.
Infact we're high above the truth
And that you never touch,
And stolen goods are overpriced
And freedom costs too much,
And no-one seems to recognise
The symbols come to life,
The bitten apple on the screen
And jesus had a wife,
And she was his messiah
Like that stranger may be yours,
Who holds a subtle knife
That carves through worlds
Like magic doors,
And that's what i've been looking for,
The bridge from then to now,
Just watching b.e.t like what the fuck son,
This is foul
But that's where [boston?] represents
This fear that we live in,
The world is not a flat screen
I ain't trying to fit in.
But this ain't for the underground
This here is for the sun.
A seed a stranger gave to me
And planted on my tongue.
And when i look at you,
I know i'm not the only one.
As a great man once said,
There's nothing more powerful
Than an idea
Who's time
Has come.

http://www.myspace.com/saulwilliams