Would you pay $65 or more for a pair of Keds? What if they looked like these?
I've been doing t-shirts and other products at various sites for years now, and I've never seen a swarm like the one Zazzle has had. They aren't talking about it, but if you try to do a shoe at peak hours - patience is your friend! Furthermore, every single pair is being reviewed by humans. Expect delays, and have pity on those poor humans, who are probably dreaming about being trampled by bad designs...
I don't often mention process here - this isn't generally that sort of blog. But it's my blog and I get to mention my little perseverations, especially when they have caused conspicuous gaps in posting.
Well, I needed an excuse, really. Trying to get a coherent political or ethical post out of my feeds for the last few days has been like putting lipstick on an inflatable pig. (Note to Self: T-SHIRT!!!!)
Well, then; time to do chores. This blog doesn't monetize itself! :P And that is how I literally stumbled across the new shoes. If zazzle sent out a notice about them going live, I missed it. By the time I got there, there were already hundreds, if not thousands of designs and several, if not dozens of entirely new stores.
And most - and I'm gritting my teeth saying this - are seriously competitive with MY designs!
I abhor false modesty; I'm good. I'm professional grade good. But I'm not in the same league as professionals who do nothing else - and it's clear that this product has attracted a good selection of truly hardcore graphic artists and designers. The results are stunning and I'm going to have to ramp up my game just to get noticed!
Aside from the silly splatting (we know damn well what D#@*$% means, so it's like pasties on a set of 38DD's), this question needs to be asked by all of us.
God's Politics - Jim Wallis : D#@*$% Environmentalists! (by Brian McLaren) "A friend of mine recalls a dinner-table conversation one day when she was a schoolgirl. Her dad had come home unusually frustrated from his job as a city planner. 'D#@*$% environmentalists!' he said over dinner. 'Dad, I thought you were an environmentalist,' she said. 'Why are you so upset?'
'All day long,' he answered, 'environmentalists come to me with problems and complaints, and business people come to me with ideas and projects. Why can't the environmentalists be proactive and come to the table with some creative ideas to make things better, instead of just trying to get in the way of things they don't want to see happen?'"
McLaren has his own answer - which somehow morphs into faith-based initiatives. Well, Ok - there's no rule that says that you need one huge answer for every large problem. So, with a hat tip to Brian and Jim Wallace, I shall diverge at this point.
For myself, while I am a person of faith, in situations like this I don't see faith as being significant.
Faith is the answer when you are not sure of the facts, the implementation of the facts, or do not have the critical facilities to get from what you see to what you should do about it. In the latter case, you need to put your faith in people who can and have proven that they know what they are talking about, and can explain it with diagrams, models and math.
I've long held that Conservation is the ultimate Conservatism. So is environmentalism. "Fix it up, Use it up, Make it Do" is a virtue I grew up with. One of my personal bugaboos is the overwhelming avalanche of plastic crap that cannot be fixed up, used up or made to do. Hell, most often it doesn't even quite do when brand new.
And as I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the midst of way more "environment" than most folks do, I grew up thinking of it as both a rich resource and my personal preferred environment.
While I value softwood lumber, I hate clear cuts - for the same reason you would hate someone bulldozing three houses across the street for the copper plumbing and leaving all the residue behind. That would be unethical, even had they paid for the property rights that would permit them to do that and even if there were no laws and regulations requiring cleanup. Indeed, those laws and regulations exist in recognition of the ethical requirements and serve as a sort of enforcible morality that applies in such a case.
As a good rule of thumb, if it's ugly and it smells bad, it's probably the result of some form of unethical behavior. Oh, and aside from that, it's wasteful of resources and therefore more expensive and less profitable than it could otherwise be.
When ethics and impact are divorced from the equation, you get both opportunism and NIMBYism. And frankly, much of what passes for environmentalism is some variety of Not In My Backyard. Spotted Owls be damned.
And then there's another point - one that seems to evade people on both sides of any of these debates where taking sides makes a solid resolution impractical or entirely impossible.
Every participant in an ecosystem has an impact; that impact must balance with it's contribution, or the ecosystem will tend to adapt and drive that participant to extinction. And we, our cities and all our glorious and terrible achievements are within the context of a large ecosystem called The Earth, which would get along just fine without us.
These are not matters of faith or ideological conviction, they are matters of fact and the factual, predictable consequences of acting counter to the interests of the ecosystem as a whole.
The only question then is how to go about doing that while preserving, and indeed, improving the parts of the environment we live in while not degrading the parts that other beings require. But none of this precludes change. Without change over time, an ecosystem is dead. We are part of it, unavoidably a dominant force within it, and when we find ourselves choking on our own filth in a silent wasteland, we should be able to come to the obvious conclusion - that we have screwed up and need to change our ways.
In fact, I would have looked almost exactly like this as a child as I was learning to draw. It was my grand obsession and I have little awareness of my surroundings or much concern about how I look. Furthermore, I was profoundly nearsighted. Alas, no longer - I had cataract surgery and now my cheap fixed focus lenses allow me to navigate without glasses. But I can't see in the way I used to without a binocular microscope. Anyway, I do have the right focal length for a computer screen.
I've always been an artist, it's literally how I think. What I can discern of Wawrow's process is eerily similar to mine. If I used crayons much at all, I would look exactly like this. Like him, I never refer to a source or didn't until I started making art directly from photos. He moves the way I did before taking up martial arts, as if a body was a not terribly convenient means of moving a head and hands from one place to another.
Looking at his quality of line, I note that he has similar impairments with fine motor control, and uses a similar variety of dodges. For him, it's crayons - because of the inherent imprecision and the blending qualities of the professional crayons he uses. For me, it's the use of watercolor pencils, or earlier, pencil crayons. Earlier than that, as a child, I used ez-erase paper and number two pencil as well as a white eraser for both erasing and blending.
Now I use a computer, both for original work and for works that are done, Warhol-like, as variations on a photograph. I of course was working to overcome a disability - but the disability was not my appearance as I worked, and that's the point that struck me as I watched this video. That, and the fact that his parents chose to concentrate on celebrating what he could do and not stressing over what he could not do. What I would have given for a moment of celebration as is shown when he completes a picture!
Instead, my art was seen as simply another form of "escapism" and a dangerous reliance upon "imagination," a thing that would be no help in "the real world."
Ironically enough, it's that very capability that would have set me apart; that would have been a real asset to me in finding my own way had it been celebrated and encouraged. It's only now that it's become clear to me how much of our civilization depends on the relatively few people who really can dive into their imaginations and come up with things that are needed. Of course, we don't think of these people who do this as being "disabled." Geeks, perhaps. Or we say, "well, you understand, he's an engineer" as if that explained why that person lacks social graces and all but rudimentary hygiene.
For myself, I've always felt that if you can notice such trivia as hunger or anything less than a true "potty emergency," you aren't concentrating, and I've always been completely baffled by the inability of those who consider themselves "normal" to cope with the idea that one can be utterly unaware of their presence.
I could ascribe my parent's inability or unwillingness to cope with this trait - much less value it - to the fact that both were ... to use my broad technical vocabulary ... fuckin' nuts.
But nuts though they were, it seems to be a very common belief among the neurotypical that if I fail to notice them, on some visceral level, they feel they don't exist.
I had to isolate and hide just to get time to do a drawing, and I had to learn to work very quickly indeed - so many techniques which I loved were abandoned because I would never be permitted the time it took to complete a work.
I now suffer from a learned impatience and I feel shame for "wasting time" any time I fall out of contact with temporal reality. It's only been lately that I've started to respect my process and the way my mind works - and in part, this respect comes from seeing how people who, apparently suffering from greater degrees of autism, are able to function better as they aren't wading through spools of "old tapes" to get anywhere.
I am starting to dislike the term "Neurotypical." First, the term tends to be used in a bigoted way by all "sides." Second, it contains the presupposition that there is, in fact, some sort of standard wetware configuration, and I've come to suspect that such a proposition is not only unwarranted, but that it could easily be disproved - if the implications of the idea that there is no true "normal" did not scare the crap out of everyone who can somehow manage to get by without being singled out as "abnormal."
But study history for five minutes and you will find that there are damn few people who have achieved any notice that were not some variety of whackadoodle. "Normal" people seem to leave no trace of passage themselves, but they do strongly influence those who will have no choice in being some variety of exceptional.
I could never have been normal. But I could have been a cause of pride instead of an object of shame - that was the choice of my parents and equally, the culture I grew up in. Fortunately, I had Science Fiction and various other counter-examples of contexts both real and imaginary where things made sense and people like me would be normal, while the sorts of people I saw myself surrounded by were... not.
Yes, I have a barely noticeable tendency toward arrogance. But with a touch of lime and a sense of humor, many find it to be a charming accent to the confusion that is me.
Ana Voog, writing about herself, and her new baby Lili.
it is interesting to me how what i share with the world tends to either bring out the incredible darkness in others, or the side of light.
here are two completely opposite responses i received today in regards to lili, her condition, and me being the mother of her.it is interesting to me how what i share with the world tends to either bring out the incredible darkness in others, or the side of light.
I won't quote either - suffice it to say that those who approve seem to me to be better people than those who view Lili as a punishment for her "sins" of "displaying her private parts." The facinating thing about ana, of course, is that she doesn't have any parts she considers private - or really, any moment in her life, any point of process in her art (which is both varied, significant and collectable) or the slightest hint of shame about being either naked or poor.
Ana's appeal is not based on the violation of taboos or convention - you can find tons of people on yahoo who get all wet and messy violating socal taboos in many ways, It's not that she's libertine, or transgressive, or even particularly focused on the niche of "Alt Porn."
Hell, anacam.com would probably be a lot more popular if she focused on doing porn. But as far as this non-subscriber can tell, she does not. As a fellow starving artist, I've never shelled out for a membership, and while I subscribe to her newsletter, I've been far too busy with politics to open the images. I can't quite bear to delete them, though. It could be anything - from deconstructions of pornographic images into laugh out loud parody to her latest knitting project to her covering herself in paint and body-printing a wall, not to paint the wall so much as to capture the act of painting it.
She is a performance artist, and is dedicated to it full time, even when asleep. Anyone involved with her is live on cam too, and she hides nothing from anyone - not even family.
Some obviously consider it depraved. I call it art - and it's ballsier art than I can even contemplate. There is no place in my realm for the inclusion of failure in my art. But failure is part of the whole artistic process and is of course included. She simply does not CARE if what she tries works.
I cannot imagine a better person to raise a child. Why? Well, I AM going to quote one viciously negative remark, after all.
"So, this narcissistic exhibitionist, by the power vested in her, brought bad Karma on you for expressing an opinion??? Such self-import!!
I think the G*dess was very wise. A "normal" child would have a miserable life of humiliation and embarrassment that her mother made a living by constantly photographing her private parts for the world. My guess is that when the attention and novelty wears off, the grandparents will be raising the wee one. Sickness; it's what's for breakfast."
It's just stunning how correct this person is while missing the point of her own wordsentirely. I rather doubt that the grandparents will be raising the child, but it's nice that lilli has them. Lilli and Goddess chose well, I think, for ana will never be ashamed of lilli, nor will she be expected to be anything other than who she is. And naked or not, ana is a wonderful example of being exactly who you are, with neither shame, bitterness nor concern for the opinions of those who do not know any better.
And of course, the best thing is that ana has time to be a mom, because she IS in front of the camera all the time, and that camera is at home.
I imagine that ana is an exhibitionist, in a sexual sense. To a degree, at least. But she, unlike most people who have sexual kinks and fetishes, has taken it as a fact about herself, stared into the abyss of her own nature and then asked herself, "well, NOW what?"
Having accepted who she is - she proceeds to explore it with both vision clear ethical boundries, and both respect and concern for others. It has not taken over her life - like such "sins" did for the infamous Ted Haggard - but rather allowed them to be part of her whole.
Another thing about ana that distinguishes her from other "camgirls." She does not pander to sexual fantasies, she involves her viewers in her life - and to an amazing extent, they have become a vast, amorphous extended family. Hm. I suppose I count that way too, a distant cousin at several removes who doesn't drop by often enough. But then, ana by her nature demands a reciprocal sharing that is a challenge and an inspiration to me. I try to be as open and free as her, but it's somewhat against the current of my nature.
This is quite aside from my shrewd assessment of the commercial interest in my hairy pot belly.
No, her peculiar combination of artistic presentation and the astonishing innocence that makes using her breasts as canvas as interesting to her - and her audience - as knitting a hat can be terrifying. She explodes the bounds of context, in which there is a place for performance artists, and fabric artists and webcam girls showing us their pink bits at 9.95 a minute.
She may or may not arouse you on any given day. She may inspire the hell out of you, perhaps even literally. And we could all use less hell and a great deal more inspiration.
As long-time readers may know, ana voog is one of my favorite online people, and she's pregnant. Like most starving artists, she's short on margin for unexpected expenses. So am I, or I'd simply send her some money via her website. I'm sure that a lot of her lj and Myspace friends are in the same place on this and I'm sure there's a bunch of us that have stuff we make or do, so I was thinking, maybe an auction? I've got this astonishing bit of art that I did when I heard the good news.
I'm thinking I could put up some signed prints. Who's in?
i'm glad i got to see the earth when it was plentiful. i'm both happy and sad that i got to experience living in america in the most gluttunous time in history. when one could take a full bubble bath every 5 minutes if you wanted to, full of fresh clean water each time.
i have luxuriated in water, drank from the faucet when it was actually tasting ok to do so, i swam in pools of crystal clear springs in south dakota, i washed my dishes and clothes in as much water as i wanted. hot or cold. i have lived the life of a king on 5,000 a year.
Thank Goddess for friends who say the things we should have, better than we could have, if only we had rememberet that it's the time to do that.
I'd comment more, but everything I need to say, I've said there in the comments.
But make sure and linger a bit to learn more about ana voog.
