more inky thoughts

Yes, still on my mind, but not on my skin... just wanted to share some cool tattoo links
Birds flying out of their birdcages here here and here
Birds flying across backs/arms here here here and here (that last one is an interesting Banksy knock off).
Plus, think he's faster now, for having wings on his heals?
If you hadn't noticed, I have a thing for birds, so I was delighted to find these flickr pools; tattoos with wings and my tattoo can fly.
Now since I also have a thing for swords (and am thinking that having a sharp blade hidden somewhere on my person might be a good idea) her's caught my attention.
Oh, and since I love a lady tattoo artist, I heart her and her.
And lastly, just for the heck of it, a few horror podcasts that tell tails of disturbing ink, Orifice and The Valknut.
Enjoy!

comic challenge + zombie walk

This Saturday I"m going to have to do some balancing between two awesome amazing events. It is the 18 hr Comic Challenge, but I have also discovered that it's the day Tucson is having a Zombie Walk (complete with Michael Jackson Thriller dance along).

So, I'm tailoring my Comic Challenge just a bit, to make room for a walk with the dead. I'll be doing a 12 hr draw (5am to 5pm) but still hoping to put out 24 pages (the Eastman variation "noble failure" may be an option).

Then me, the hubby, the kiddo (and maybe the dog?) will apply fake blood and head downtown. We'll watch the local undead do the Thriller Dance (in sync with thousands around the world) donate canned food to the food-bank, then meander downtown in a zombie-ish way looking for fresh brains.

Wow, what a day!
Pics of both will be uploaded throughout :)

winter is my discontent

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That opresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes...
-emily dickinson (full poem here)

Perhaps it's seasonal depression, perhaps it's the pressure of holiday season, perhaps it's facing a dying year and another birthday (Capricorn!) and fears of growing older... but whatever it is, Winter is my down time. My off season. And I start to feel the first strokings of this right about now, the Fall. (Which sucks, living in Tucson; Fall is such a relief from the heavy summer heat. I LOVE Fall and Winter!)

The past few years the off-ness has actually been a heavy crash, a fairly burdensome melancholy. But this year, I have a plan, and lists of little things to jumpstart out of a downward spiral if I start down that path. Little rituals and routines for my salvation. Heh, I started to list what my rituals are, but they are so benign and boring, sufice it to say, I have them, and they are easy, and I think they will work. We'll see if they work, if I can embrace this season of death with hope. (Hehheh.)

Meanwhile, for your viewing entertainment, two absolutely delightful music video's which a friend shared with me, and BOTH of them touch upon the dying times of Fall and Winter.
The short animated "Rain" and the most exquisit Emilie Simon's "Fleur de Saison" (Sorry, couldn't embed them, but do go see them; pure amazing.)

Fob Bible

I'm in love... swooning away wrapped up inside of these insideout tellings of old testament tales contained in the Fob Bible.
I'm a sucker for a good twist on orthodoxy. I can't help myself. (BTW, CLHanson liked it too.)
A few of the "plain and precious parts" are online here. Among those my favorites are Blood Red Fruit (a captivating conversation between satan and the snake), Genesis (the rib and the fall), Capitulation: Forbidden Squirming (childbirth and the fall), How Long Till Two Times (a newly fallen yet still ignorant Adam and Eve) Abraham's Purgatory (a horrifying, provoking take on the sacrifice of Issac), and Faith of the Ocean (Jonah as you've never seen him before).

This was just what I needed this morning, to get my creative juices flowing, many thanks to the Fob Family.

Analogy Fail

Elder Oaks just took the cake for serious analogy fail (not to mention audacity and hubris) when he compared the recent backlash against the church's (massive) financial involvement in the Prop 8, to the persecution of people of color during the Civil Rights movement.
Um... where to even begin!?
Really?
Seriously?!?

To Quote University of Utah historian Colleen McDannell "Were four little Mormon girls blown up in the church at Sunday school? Were there burning crosses planted on local bishops' lawns? Were people lynched and their genitals stuffed in their mouths?"

(Not to mention the era he is referencing is during the time when the church forbade extending the priesthood to members of color and Elder McConkie was teaching that black people had been less valiant in the pre-existence.)

The following video was shared with me by Lessie. The stunning musical gift of Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. It contains graphic footage of real life lynchings. Watch at your own discretion. But also, if you choose to watch, realize this is what elder Dallin H. Oaks just used as an analogy for Latter Day Mormonism.




I wonder, and am concerned, that Elder Oaks (speaking to a predominantly LDS audience) assumed that members are so conditioned to never question a church leader that he could spout such a thing with impunity. I am hoping that this serious Analogy Fail raised little warning bells in more than a few listeners in that (and the wider) audience.

temple of food storage

I went to the cannery today, was signed up for rice and sugar and dried onions. It's been a good long while since I have been to the cannery. Not sure why I never noticed it before, but I got a trippy sense of deja vous looking around the room and seeing everyone wearing aprons and funny caps on their heads. To be standing side by side in rows all wearing the same drapery and hats performing the repetitive motions of canning... a ritualistic ordinance producing row upon row of shiny cans filled with non-perishable food items.

It's been forever since I have been to the temple. Hell... it's been a good little while since I have been to my ward. Not sure why now I suddenly saw symbols of the endowment all over that wide open warehouse space. But get this... It was FUN! I have a soft spot in my heart for food storage. (Well... more of a paranoid conspiracy-theory driven urge for post-Apocalypse survival, but same thing, sort of. BTW, can't wait for The Road to come out.)

First we canned the wheat, then the pinto beans, then the rice... other tables were canning oats, dried onions, sugar. There was so much powdered milk (weird yellowish stuff) that at the end all of the tables were working hard in a powdery haze to get the last of it in cans.

A ritual of food. (not good food, to be sure... but still.)

No problematic creationist myths with misogynistic undertones; Just food. In cans. I am cool with that. (Well... perhaps a tiny tiny bit sexist in that somehow only men seem to get to operate the big machines that screw the lids on the cans...) (And yes, I am aware of how controversial food is in general. I'll grant you that. But still. Yah.)

And now I have row upon row of shiny cans in my pantry.

PLUS!! Just next door to the cannery is Nimbus Brewery. So I took the opportunity to drop by and grab a six pack of Monkey Shine.
Bonus!

Anyhoo... just a few thoughts for this morning.

Invitation to 18 hr Comic Day!!

Please Join Us!!!! On Saturday October 24 2009, Me, John Remy, Catgirl, and a goodly handful of other friends are going to do our own version of Scott McCloud's 24 hour Comic Challenge. Here's a quick rundown of McCLoud's "official" rules but for the purposes of our comic challenge we're being flexible. (Hell, we already decided that we are just too old for the 24 hour version.)

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A COMIC ARTIST!!
Or even able to draw for that matter: comics are diversifying in very cool ways, for example: consider storytelling with Legos, or cookies, or paper cut-outs, or photo snapshots, or stick figures. One of my favorite artists sometimes just takes his iPhone for a walk (just turn it into a 'story' of some sort, and voila!). You can PAINT a comic. You can Sew a comic. There doesn't even need to be words (wow, SO in love with that last link...!!)

More info will be forthcoming, but part of the idea is to foster the community aspect of it by sharing, discussing, tweeting, (etc) both heading up to the 24th and also posting real-time updates, panels, (etc) on 24th.
(if tweeting, consider using hashtag #18hrComic for easy searching)

If interested please leave a comment on john's post, or send an email.

We understand if you need to tweek the day/duration a bit to fit your own circumstances, THAT'S OKAY!! It will still be awesome to have you and we'll find ways of including your work throughout the 24th.

Pleeeeaaaase say yes :)

Growing Up Straight

(continued from here...)

[WARNING; some pretty horrible stuff is said in this book about homosexuals. I'm reading/writing about this out of my own morbid curiosity and a need to delve into the roots of my culture's homophobia. But please be warned, it may be upsetting.]

"The possibility that one's child may become a homosexual seems, to Americans, as remote as it is repugnant. Yet the unpleasant truth is that homosexuality is surprisingly common in our culture..." -Stanley F. Yolles, (Director, Nat Institute of Mental Health 1964-1970.)

Thus begins this fascinating/disturbing book, written in 1968, no longer in print and sadly NOT found in the Goodreads archive. Which disappoints me... every page contains some shining example of sexism, homophobia, misogynism or whatnot, and I REALLY wish I could do those little 140 character updates that Goodreads allows for.

I'll just have to blog about it.

The two major assertions of this book: 1) Homosexuality IS a mental disorder. And 2) Homosexuality IS curable and preventable. And the bottom line is that Mom and Dad need to drop their drawers and bend over for a really good spanking for the sin of making their offspring gay. "Bad Mom!!" (for being seductive, incestuous, overbearing, and overprotective.) "Bad Dad!!" (for being a weakling, unable to protect the child from the ill effects of Mom.) Thus the authors delve into the parental pathology that created such a revolting aberration in their children. (Except where the authors do a bit of head scratching over the cases in which parents who where not "severely disturbed" somehow produced homosexual sons. The authors seems to feel that if the psychoanalyst probed deep enough, some parental defect would be found.)

Well, I'm reading this book mostly because of Elder Hafen's recent talk on the subject (a response to the APA's removal of homosexuality from it's list of Mental Disorders.) His own wording is much more circumspect, more sensitive to the feelings of the person with same sex attraction than is the tone of Growing Up Straight (and he thankfully leaves the sins of the parents out of the equation). I don't think he ever once refers directly to homosexuality as a disorder, no... he tiptoes back and forth, weaving in and out, bending over backwards in the sharing his personal feelings of sympathy for the suffering individual. Then goes into his conviction that homosexuality should NOT have been removed from the APA's list of mental disorders.

See... the operative word through out Hafen's talk is SUFFER. The poor individual has this terrible burden, sorrow and misery etc... which is fitting if the individual has a Mental Disorder. They SHOULD be suffering. If they are not... well then, what the hell does that mean? For although Hafen is much more sympathetic, like the authors of Growing Up Straight, he has no language to discuss the happy well adjusted homosexual person. (In Growing Up Straight, the authors briefly mention Hooker's research indicating homosexuals are as well adjusted as heterosexuals, but didn't have much positive to say about it, viewing it as an anomaly and poorly researched).

When I compare this to the recent efforts to de-stigmatize homosexuality, even in middle school, to help kids make the adjustment, gain the knowledge, gain the confidence and the understanding etc... all the stuff that DECREASES the suffering...
/sigh...
I have a feeling that's sort of inspired-by-the-advisary activism Hafen indicates should be avoided.
Because... damn,
If they aren't suffering...
Then... maybe... (/hushed whisper...) homosexuality is NOT a Mental Disorder....?!

meet Eve

Okay, so BiV beat me too writing about this (and OF COURSE, she did it way better than I could), but anyways; I'm drawing a story about Eve. Yes, drawing, because really, I'm better at images than words... though we shall see if I can jump into the sequential nature of graphic novels with any success. Now I'm still working out the particulars, but the general run down goes something like this: After the fall, Eve returns to the garden to have it out with that angel who was placed as guardian. Whether she beheads him or just beats him to a bloody pulp I'm not real sure, but as with Virginia Wolf, she has to kill this angel to get on with what she needs to do. She also takes on the apple (see above, inspired by Brooke's delightful poem on eating the apple). Now I'm still not sure the exact outcome of all this, but Eve's bottom line here is to have a deadly serious conversation with God (who, of course, is also her husband Adam, because Brigham said so. Oh, and Adam is also Michael who helped create the earth. Yah, serious schizophrenic identity crisis here. Utterly fascinating.)

So here's the thing, several people have asked me why this isn't a story about Lilith (the usual suspect for uppity aggressive garden of eden variety femaleness).

It's because I was endowed in the temple and, as a woman, was a stand in for Eve. I was dressed in her name, said things in her name, did things in her name, I was her and she was me.

And she was this silent and passive thing, created to please Adam. (Absolutely LOVE Lynnette's take on the subject. Wow.)

So instead of despising her (a strong tendency, especially at the end of the temple movie when Adam is pontificating and her role is to hang insipidly on him like eye candy) I wanted to re-invent her. To give her a quest. Give her a sword (she takes that flaming one from the angel). Give her a mind of her own and the grit to do what she needs to do which is different than what the 'authorities' are telling her to do.

I guess feel I owe it to her. And to me.

So that's why it's about Eve and not Lilith.

Oh, and btw, I've written before about my artist's block and my neglected studio...
Well lately I'm back in the paint again! and it feels good. Just had to share :)

Killing them with love

In the book section of a Deseret Industries I found this outstanding gem of 1970's homophobia: Growing Up Straight, What Every Thoughtful Parent Should Know about Homosexuality. A guide for parents to be able to "help prevent homosexuality from developing in youngsters" and "spot incipient homosexuality and... take steps to alter it's course." I bought it in a heartbeat. To have it as proof that yes, people actually DID once think this way.

I kinda forgot I had it till I found out about elder Bruce C. Hafen's talk on overcoming homosexuality (discussing how God "has the power to remove your unwanted same-gender attraction" but he might chose not to, but still...)

I guess people still do think that way.

(BTW, if you haven't yet, check out ECS's superb breakdown of Hafen's citation problems.)

My main thought, upon hearing Hafen's words; How many individuals went home after hearing his 'loving' rhetoric, and seriously thought about opening a vein?

I wish I could say more about this, but time is short and my words aren't coming the way I wish they would.
Maybe later they will.