Thank to anyone who visited my hallway extravablandza at the city wide open studio armory weekend. For those unaware, I was holding an intensive two-day research project in which I set out to determine if people like free candy, occasionally taking breaks to pick up art prints that mysteriously would not stick to crumbly bare plaster walls. The results may choc you.

I do not know “art people,” I do not have a lot of understanding of how to use big spaces or how to enlist help to seem organized or “legitimate,” so the attention I got a from a few visitors, who really seemed to CARE that I was there, even though I am a terrible carpenter, am not in touch with my heritage, and am trying to amuse rather than shock or guilt or whatever, that means a lot to me, even if I barely cover my expenses. The genuine interactions with real people are more important than the money (though money is more important than plenty of things), or having to get 150 pounds of nonsense up and down two flights of stairs and in and out of a building with no doors in convenient places. That makes me think, perhaps this IS going SOMEWHERE not 100% disastrous, or potentially could if I became able to do more of the things I said I could not do.

And YES, I do sell art prints! Alas I do not have an order form up and running as of yet but I will make that my project for this week if not tomorrow and you see if I don’t. Any objects in the awkward art page section can theoretically be printed and sent anywhere but you will have to contact me directly such as at ears@bimshwel.com

Also if you took pictures of my paintings and walked off without taking a card, writing in the guestbook, making eye contact or in any way acknowledging I existed, as if this is “found art” that nobody made and you are great for discovering, or alternatively like I am a goon for daring to show silly nonsense in your serious art converted squatter mansion, then you won’t see this message so I do not need to say what I hypothetically think of that, which is good because I am usually exaggerating when I have thoughts like that.

I probably did not make as many sales as last year, but I was definitely more organized; compare the size and shape of my post-show tape ball from this year with last year’s.

Hilary Branske is dead. It is very relevant to me, and also to this website! Some of what follows is roundabout and redundant, but I had difficulty organizing my thoughts on the matter, so watch out. Also, it is roundabout.

I knew Hilary since 1999. She was the closest thing to an “idol” that I had at a crucial point in my life, and unlike the others that came before and later, she was and remained a friend. I liked knowing that even though we were not currently conversing, she was always possible to reach out to, and would have a unique and sincere thing to say. Outside my immediate family, I have not known, that I was able to stay in contact with to any degree, anybody longer than Hilary, and she had a profound impact on me as a consequence. Every year I remembered her birthday. I could not even reliably predict my mother’s birthday until fairly recently. Which I assure you is not a slight against my or anybody else’s mother.

I never was much able to keep up with ANYbody over facebook, where our primary contact was after a certain period, and I wish sincerely that I had worked harder at making that possible, with Hilary and the people I knew through her; this here would be a more informed piece, and less fixated on what I assume is a fairly narrow aspect of Hilary’s personality, and I might have fewer regrets overall, but nonetheless what I DID experience was very important to me. Most of what I know goes back quite a while, back to when I insisted on calling myself “roneldo,” which I assure you is not something I would ever like to be called again, but Hilary was welcome to call me that. I also took turns at being volcabbage, transfestunerix and eels macinstrudel when I knew Hilary, but she was always Hilary, with one L, from New Lenox with one N.

There were online nicknames like “spam,” (a hilarious word in the mid-90s) “Krunk” (which predates and is dissimilar to the contemporary conception of “crunk”) and “Annie Lennox” with (two Ns) but she was not hiding from or afraid of anybody.

Hilary had a a way of thinking about things, and of speaking, and a gift for functionally absurd statements that I had up to that point not seen from anybody else. For example, an instruction page for creating a soft drink called “Froofy” directed readers foremost to “Find and capture a wild santa claus.” Yes whatever it looks stupid HERE, but I didn’t realize that sort of statement EXISTED. I could not fathom it.
And Hilary had refreshing sort of darkness, a dissatisfaction with the insincere, commercialized happy face put on by the dominant culture. I had never known anybody who openly criticized the religion-based social conventions I had always struggled with. She also always wrote little messages on pictures, that you could only see by hovering your mouse cursor over them. There would be a picture of a largely incidental person holding up a piece of cheese and the hidden text would say “this cheese is on sale.” So stupid, and yet to me that was just perfect. I still do that. I might be the last person on the internet who does. And those are often the best part of my pages! Of course having said that, the one on the next picture is lame so this is a bad time to start looking for them.”

I didn’t know anybody else who watched Conan O’Brien’s program either (I possibly learned of her existence via her old website about the topic) so that might speak more to my not knowing many people, but what is important is that I shared interest with Hilary that I was not able to share with others who were not on the internet. And in those days, a lot of people were not on the internet!

I wanted to have a website because of Hilary’s websites, The Spam Headwound, primarily, with such a ludicrous title that very much appealed to the me of the period, across its various urls, nlenx.com/spam, twne.com/spam, spam.towne.net, and gigglebounce.com. There was also lincolnway.com, which she registered specifically to annoy the Lincoln Way high school she had attended, after having been punished for other students loading her relatively outrageous personal website on school computers. As best I can figure out. I still use html code that I copied and eventually memorized off of her pages more than half my life ago. Most of the old, admittedly nonsensical pages are still acknowledged at the gigglebounce vault but some do not work quite properly, and many are simply not there at all! The archive.org version unfortunately got confused by the netscape-style frames and only has a single page saved multiple times, with none of the frame data. But I will always remember.

Also: from june 25 1999, this watery screenshot of the site not displaying correctly in America Online, from a thankfully brief period during which I thought it was a good idea to save my screenshots as jpegs.

In fact, my oldest “normal” website entries here are ripped directly from the source of gigglebounce.com during a period when Hilary granted myself and a few others the ability to place updates on the website, and it appears that the earliest dated one has a picture of Hilary in it, which I had quite forgotten about. Likewise I cannot remember how long that version of gigglebounce lasted, but I, plainly, kept going, without much considering why I did. Records indicate I may even have been the last person doing so. This does not get me money or recognition, but I like making these things, and Hilary got me started. But I am here to talk about the GOOD things she did.

I didn’t know art people growing up, or until quite after I was mostly grown. Between those points I apparently found something of a muse in Hilary’s uncompromising distinctness. I did not develop my technical skill much but I think the ideas are more important, even if they are very stupid. Hilary helped me want to be stupid in a new way.

I believe this was her livejournal avatar, derived from an inexplicable default mouse cursor in certain versions of windows, fighting the Yellow Ant from the computer game Simant, which I must have made a big deal about at some point. Neither is being considerate of the environment.

I still use phrases that Hilary used, probably only once, that I thought were funny, such as “thank you for your time and consideration in these matters” “yes, very much so, “mein augen” and “laeta bovis.” One of the characters that I draw is even named “laeta,” based on that, if not pronounced the same way. I still think the name “Gretchen” is funny. It seemed to be a recurring element, quite apart from that picture I just showed. For example, there was a page titled “temporary gretchen fix” with just a picture of notebook paper from what looked to be a high school writing assignment, with a teacher-written criticism of “inappropriate sentences.” I apparently transcribed it, because it was hard to read, and still have THAT, though the original image seems to be lost.

1. Aegis – protection, sponsorship
Gretchen was happy Lincoln-way was the Aegis for the Nazi dance.
2. Amazon – A female warrior
Gretchen was proud to be an Amazon.
3. Aurora – The dawn or similar luminousity
Gretchen took many pictures of the aurora borealis.
4. Odyssey – Extended journey
Gretchen packed some digestive bisquits for her odyssey
5. Paean – Song of thanksgiving
Peetah sang a paean about the Spanish Inquisition.
6. Palladium – Safeguard
Gretchen kept a statue of a Palladium next to her bed.
7. Plutocrat – A wealthy person
Bill Gates is a plutocrat and Gretchen isn’t.
8. Siren – A bewitching or irresistable women, fascinating
Gretchen acted as a siren by luring the small children to the fire.
9. Valhalla – hall of feasting heroes
Gretchen was not invited to the Valhalla.
10. Ambrosial – fragrant
Peetah could smell the Ambrosial children boiling.
And now it will have to be a permanent Gretchen fix.

Gretchen was also the name of the lion tamer in “The Spam Story,” which I also cannot now locate. Although I learned that as of 2007 Hilary had been a vegetarian for a year, which is almost as impressive as convincing lions to do your bidding.

I started writing this without even realizing that my facebook name IS Gretchen. That is how deeply ingrained Hilary’s influence is. And I used gretchen as a sound effect in a completely unrelated long-standing unreleased project of mine. Certainly I would have liked to be influenced by the later, responsible Hilary who examined patents in her spare time and achieved a G-13 pay scale according to federalpay.org and perhaps have made something more of myself.

Although threatening people’s sparkle dots amidst serious (ninjas notwithstanding) results for your life as a Washington DC national government employee is Hilary Classic on a grander scale.

She had ferrets as pets; I believe this is based on a photograph of one, and the wood sprite that I opened this site entry with.
we never talked as much as I wanted to afterward. I never showed her much of my artwork but she was always supportive when I did. Again, I didn’t have many people to show it to, and was slow to develop what skill I had. In a very rare gesture, in December of 2007, I mailed a pencil drawing strikingly similar to the one near the top of this entry, that I made of/based on Hilary to her home address, and several times afterward, without my having mentioned it, she claimed to still have the dumb thing, having put it in a frame, even, and I wish I could have sent something better, later! I made up one of my crummy holiday cards more recently, and included some tiny bizarre drawings whose inspiration I can no longer recall, but never got around to sending it. And maybe I should hold on to it, since it is the only physical space souvenir I have that is Hilary-related (also, I eh lost it again). She had mentioned across a few years having a box that she meant to send to me but could never get around to it. I wish I had asked what was in the box!

I keep showing these things. On Hilary’s website there was a “webcam” page, but the image only updated once a week or so, and generally showed a staged viewpoint. I saved a bunch of them, I wish I had saved more! Maybe it makes me seem like a creep, but in fact the more I have worried about coming across as creepy, the fewer friends I have had.

Right, just what I was saying.

I believe at one point three other people named Timmy, Lars and Jose also had similar webcameras featured on the page, plus the webcam of the not-yet published icon to misogynists who didn’t realize he was kidding Maddox, hotlinked off his own website, until I think he specifically disabled that on his end.

before I had my run-in with the Shipyard Brewing Company, Hilary had viewed and commented on the original version of the troublesome article, and I had meant to ask if she had for some reason preserved the pictures I deleted in a paranoid panic after the cease and desist letter, as if other people did that. Parts of that experience made me question if my work had any real value, but anything I did that Hilary liked was something I had done right. She was also the first person to sign my orenthal, even though it was a ripoff of her elf.

From 2000 to 2002, maybe, Hilary ran a message forum “The Blabby Board,” and I can honestly say that was my most positive and probably longest consistent internet message board experience. It was not without complicated points and eventually ceased operation, but I had always wanted to have something like that again.
The last time we were both available for what could be considered a conversation, which sadly was in April 2016, I mentioned some of the screwy things that have been in MY life and the sort of people I dealt with since the two of us had been regularly acquainted. And Hilary LAUGHED (in a typing sort of way). She didn’t get worried and declare in seriousness that I should give up and get away from everything, or get bothered and set to justifying every other parties’ actions, like I am a puzzlewit with no empathy. She knew why I complained the way I did. Sometimes life is just frustrating and ridiculous, and you want to share that with somebody who sees it for what it is. With Hilary, I momentarily went from being the only person who had a problem to one of an uncommon few who did not.

We were “planning” to make a video game together. I do not know when; one of us was always too busy. It was already eating me inside that I had not done real work on it beyond sketches and descriptions of circumstances, just for myself, but now I need to, for both of us. Right? If that helps me get it done, sure. I pledge to give it a much better gretchen sound effect.

I was always looking forward to a hypothetical point in the future when we could exchange ideas freely. I wish I could asked about more of the circumstances that inspired the strange things she wrote about. I did not realize how much time had passed until I started writing all this. 1999 to 2003 seemed like a huge expanse of time, then 2003 to 2007 was another, and suddenly I misplaced a whole decade without noticing. I wanted to resume what we had. Or more likely, start over entirely. Hilary always lived in an interesting way, and fixating on what had already occurred was unnecessary.

We never met, unfortunately. We came tantalizingly close, but to be brief, for once, since it hurts just a scrap too much, a meeting was not feasible. I was quite sad, in fact sadder than I expected to be. But I imagined there would be plenty of opportunities to arrange a proper meeting. I ought to have tried to arrange a visit earlier but for many years I was not very mobile. Was this a form of love, perhaps? I think it was, and I wish that I had expressed it. I did not think I was worthy, perhaps. I certainly was somewhat to highly jealous of any more forward or proximal person that she seemed to hold in favor at any point across a longer span of time than is usual. I loved dumb old science fox but do I care who he likes now? Probably, a little bit, but I am not going out of my way to find out. Not far at all. I am glad that I was able to tell him how I felt so that he could do something to no longer deserve it.
Hilary would have been the first person that I really developed that for. “crushes” I might have had momentarily in grade school were based on nothing more than me seeing tv shows and thinking I was supposed to do that.

Hilary was engaging, mentally, and I think I wanted to look like her. I still want to look like her. Not like a… but to be elegant without making a forced show of it.

Could I pull that off? Absolutely not. Yes, otay, this is from 2007. I don’t feel like I am entitled to show pictures that I only saw years after they were taken or uploaded, by people who might not necessarily have any clue who I am. I barely have any clue who I am so it is not like I could introduce myself.

Alright, here is one from 2015 taken by Hilary’s close companion Bobbert Hyman, don’t tell. Yes, I would very much like to meet the person in this photograph. Also, I consider little bowls of rice and beans to be people, but I would also like to meet the person eating the other person.

I have had such a mental connection with somebody, or thought I had, perhaps nine times, and as I became older it seemed more like love. And love is good, supposedly. This was a very difficult thing to write, especially so soon after the last one, (aw BEANS look at the line I ended that with, I had no idea) but I suppose this is preferable to my being indifferent and not wishing to write anything. In fact this was more difficult to write, in a way, because while I have more regrets about my father’s final years than I can list, I believe that he forgave me for my role in that, and I knew where I stood with him, and I was able to get some degree of closure. And also he was 65, not 34. Hilary liked a few things I did, but did she like me, as a person? When she laughed at my tragic adventures in fuzzyland, was she really laughing at ME? When she said I made her terrible day ten times better, did she mean ten times better at being terrible? I will quite possibly never know. I even just said I wanted to look like her, for beets freeps. That might have been deemed a hilarious notion. But I would take it, if she wanted to give it.

Oh well that’s just rude!

This is a great original idea. You see, some people are WHITE, and they’re STUFFY and UPTIGHT, but now there are people who are BLACK and they wear BASEBALL HATS and they listen to MUSIC. In fact I don’t think we’ve ever had a political candidate who wore ugly red hats in public and said stupid garbage to get attention that didn’t become president while this show was in production and invalidate its already played out premise that being an obnoxious moron who SHAKES THINGS UP solves every- or anything.

In fact there was even a feature film in 1998 called Bulworth about a politician who started rapping and dressing like he couldn’t afford clothing, but of course he was white and does not count. And likewise our president now is not a black man. We did have a black man as president but not a loud moron who said things like “I’m dropping a V-BOMB on this budget!” but having to explain that he did not literally mean using explosives after seeing how many WHITE people got freaked out, ooh!

However, there was a Chris Rock film in which a black man became president and declared that “the roof is on fire!” and then had to clarify that the roof was not literally on fire while white people got panicked and looked old. What is funny, if not the clips deliberately chosen to represent these things, is that Chris Rock himself is one of the less-moronic 1990s comedians to star in feature films but has to pretend to be one in order to be allowed to star in films. And apparently to write and produce them, even.

Through my illicit use of wimpod‘s markers, a mildly inaccurate Techno (pinkish bipedal raccoon-fox-person robot) wards off an incredibly inaccurate lope (pathetic amphiboid) with the power of corn. If ever you wonder why all my internet-displayed art is digitally created: otherwise it takes twice as long to make and looks like I have twice as many mental disorders as usual. Which is probably more accurate, but concealing them is the first thing I ever did right! However, after I die from a dope overdose, these ought to be worth almost half as much money as my prints, which counts for something (between $5 and $7.50).
More distressing than the length of lope’s legs: my initial twitter post said “a mildly inaccurate Techno wards of an incredibly inaccurate lope.” I assure you Techno is not the ward of lope. Lope is not fit to be the legal guardian for a potato.
One final matter: can you find the pine cone in this picture? Secret hint: I drew it after this photograp was taken, so you cannot!

The task of reformatting/relettering/rewriting pages has reached the second basement section, its most troubled point, that I knew would be troublesome, and had meant to tend to even before I thought it feasible to print a book with that in it. And I think I will not finish the book in time to have an example copy for City Wide Open Studios Armory Weekend on October 14 and 15 in New Haven Connecticut, but just having it done at all will be a major relief to me. Someday I will finish all my ancient projects, and then I can die. Or live. Undecided.

The dialog is crammed in ways it should not be, and characters, pog especially, say things they should not say. the Short Circuit robot in the background, which I left in, is not the same thing as pog specifically mentioning Don Knotts. but then i went and had kumquat do it, despite that being a more serious character whose illogic can be less excused, so what am i even trying to accomplish? You know what, I have never watched Three’s Company or Short Circuit. I have no business making inappropriate references to either.
The saturated purple being subdued is a natural byproduct of me enlarging the base in Adope Illustrator, which I would correct were Adope Illustrator not generally better informed as to which colors will actually print out the way they look onscreen than I am.

Also a problem: where I had meant to split two pages into three, I seem to not have enough dialog for a full third page, even with it decompressed to be less forced where it does not belong. I could definitely add frames to the elpse dream session to fill in the gaps, but considering how immersion-breaking it is, after already having a problem with that, i would like to keep that on one page only!

Elsewhere, the meddling screws up the panel placement. Some things that are funny midway through a page seem less so at the end of the page, where they come across like i think they are funnier than they are.

and some things that are funny as page conclusions are easily ignored if placed midway through a page, since I need the next frame to seem to follow from it. Even in a fully continuous comic strip, page boundaries have a magical power, where time is imagined to have passed, so that not everything need be shown and stated. And in this particular example what formerly started the next page now needs a transition before it, so the “oh yes of course!” doesn’t seem to come out of nowhere, pog’s closed eyes are noticeable both times, and the creature does not appear to be sleepwalking, also. But still, the viewer’s mind filling in what should be there is more efficient and more effective than me forcing on in. Alas, my action is necessary. As are panel boundaries. Amazon assures me they will be arriving any day now. Isn’t it nice that with five massive hurricanes and two earthquakes in three weeks and our president all but daring North Korea to shoot nuclear missiles at us, this is my biggest problem? Not at all; having my computer on this desk hurts my neck.

I wrote something about the Charlottesville riots a few weeks ago, but nasty stuff is always happening in the world, and I don’t keep up with it all, so I felt like maybe the matter was dated by the time I would get the post out, but retro is always the rage somewhere.

[one of those] awful website[s] that I am always complaining about despite continuing to use happened to institute a “code of conduct update” and announce that to all users. the “update” is of course totally pointless; the core rules, treat each other with respect, should cover everything. So the update primarily serves to remind people that they can argue about what “is” hate speech and who is more victimized by hate, themselves or the people they hate.

This completely unremarkable announcement prompted an endless series of arguments by opposed parties accusing each other of being fascists and nazis that resulted in the topic being closed for further remarks within less than a day. Which I suspect happens on EVERY site-wide update, and usually I try not to look too close –this manner of futility is nothing new in the history of the internet– but I have a terrible habit of skimming them in search of ludicrously long, petty comment threads, and happened to end up on this statement:

and I think that cuts to the meep of the matter. Not so much of what people argue ABOUT, but how they are able to continue arguing forever about ANYTHING. Once the previous pseudodiscussion is no longer hot, other dorks want to argue about the argument.
This post is NOTHING except a prompt for more people to agree or get angry at it. The BASE matter, white supremacists feeling more and more empowered and acting accordingly, is not one where “both sides” are equally at fault. But when you engage in jerky acts, you make it seem like it is. How can you claim to be peaceful when you go looking for pointless fights? People like that getting involved in peaceful movements, daring others to hit them so that they can hit back and claim self-defense, they allow the “other side” to isolate their abrasive behavior and apply it to the group as a whole. I am not making a “few bad apples” argument. This is a bad tree, and the tree IS on “both sides.”
I think there is an extremely small group of actual fascists, and legitimately violent “anti”-fascists, but the amount of fear hype about has drawn uncommonly large groups of folks with no clue what is going on into aligning themselves to fight something that doesn’t really exist, or at least promoting the fact that they think they do.

Comments like this accomplish what? Nothing at all. These people see that the arguments are pointless but would rather smirk at the camera like Ferris flippdippin Buehler than contribute in a meaningful fashion. And they will do it anywhere, not just on dumb old furrafinity. And I admit to also going in here primarily for my own amusement, but I don’t gloat about it. I recognize that I have an unfortunate habit. I don’t ENCOURAGE this to keep happening.
The earliest remarker doesn’t even understand the matter, seeming to think that “Antifa” is a person, presumably conflating it with “Anita,” the name of somebody who was at the center of the “gamergate” ideology furor a few years ago, whose contributors were equally unwilling to have solved. And I didn’t talk about it, since it wasn’t relevant to my life. But every social conflict looks like it now. My understanding is that antifa is a loose organization of abrasive folks but not necessarily out to break anything.
I think it is a misconception that protest marches are organized with the specific purpose of theft and vandalism. But then there are sorts who claim to belong to protest movements who are only in it because they like breaking stuff and/or stealing stuff, which means they are anti-everything, and not worth trying to please because nothing will ever be enough or more fun than feeling camaraderie while smashing things. It comes to the same thing as “getting popcorn,” except they grab it from somebody else. I do not think that will help them achieve their goals, assuming they have any. But there is not much I can say to somebody who has already given up!

Whoever you are, you can’t win by trying to get revenge or by telling your opposition it is stupid, because you have to share the planet with them. No, killing them is not an option, and “punching” them will only make them less rational. “But THEY would kill ME” I often see as a reply to this, and I do not believe that they would, on the whole. To use criminal outliers as an excuse to demand zero tolerance and pre-emptive punishment for anything and be abrasive forever seems to me like ultimately the same thing. That creep who backed a car into people on purpose, HE is a murderer, as an individual, even if a few people in the car’s path probably WISHED he would do it. Those wishers are also individuals, and not helping themselves or their friends, but not responsible for a murderer’s actions, either.

The “alt-right” movement exists by fixating on the most ridiculous and aggressive “liberals” and painting them as terrorists to distract from its actual irrational and unattainable root values, that non-straight and/or non-whites have to go, which is only deeply considered by a very small group. I guarantee you most of those “right wing” people don’t follow it to the core; they wouldn’t actually kill their target if given a chance. They claim that isn’t actually their goal, and I think if forced to admit that it WAS, or was the goal of their leaders, they would be embarrassed and go back to being privately jerky.

If modern day confederate support is not about hate, it is about ignorance. Enemies of the union should not have monuments to them on union land, and nobody should die for having a problem with that. The dumb old statue is just an excuse to reignite the fight. At the same time, I believe in self-preservation. The driver who killed a person and injured others plainly was out to cause damage, and is rightly being charged as a murderer. But unprotected people should taunt at cars driven by people who want to hurt them, since the car has all the power in that scenario. If you sincerely believe somebody to be a nazi, you ought to believe they have a nazi’s regard for the lives of those they disagree with. I just said I don’t think there are many who truly believe in killing for this, but there certainly are some. Having a person die as martyr does get attention to your cause, but I wouldn’t want to a belong to a group that encouraged its members to put themselves in danger needlessly. This is not China, this is not Afghanistan. We do not need to do that. From my perspective, white supremacists seem to be losing in this country. They are dying out and getting more desperate, and behaving like cornered rats. But they are human beings, and have legal rights that rats do not, so there is no situation where it makes sense to corner them that is in aid of peace. Somebody is going to get hurt, and it will be a crime either way. If your goal is to remove the entire legal system which grants equal rights in this manner then that is another matter entirely.

My thoughts drifted to “Crispy kat,” a proud nazi cartoon artist, who I mentioned several years ago. Yes these are the people that I know about, unfortunately. I had to check and sure enough Crispy has a predictable opinion on all this. I didn’t even guess that Crispy was pro-confederacy, but I guess just IS by default since that looks controversial and gets people annoyed. This person appears to think that since there were Union supporters who owned slaves, the confederacy should not be treated as emblematic of slavery. But it is only the south that fought to protect slavery. The northerners with slaves may be analogous with multinational corporations now, that exploit workers, don’t pay taxes, and don’t clean up after themselves, but that doesn’t mean that a lesser, more isolated injustice should be permitted, because that just keeps the powerless fighting each other. Crispy also feels that since soviet Russian imagery is not stigmatized, neither should nazi germany’s be. Again trying to confound the issue instead of taking responsibility. Instead of protesting offensive imagery, they present counter, deliberately offensive imagery, and then act smug about it. I must confess I don’t encounter people “who proudly fly the hammer and sickle,” but then I only know about Crispy’s proud swastiking by weird chance, and will believe that other inappropriate use of oppressive dictatorship imagery occurs. But the hammer+sickle are not iconographic in the same way that nazi swastikas, or “stars and bars” are (in fact Crispy, as much as she loves to change the subject and get off on a technicality, doesn’t even realize that “stars and bars” HISTORICALLY referred to the first national Confederate flag that nobody uses now since it looks too much like the Union’s flag). Since soviet Russia continued to exist with the same symbol for decades after its worst atrocities, the symbol became somewhat normalized and almost comical, when it became synonymous with cold war absurdity. And of course the current non-soviet Russia has its own issues with oppression, and also with neo nazis, as it happens. I, personally, would accept the swastika becoming innocuous and laughed at like that, and I think the confederate battle flag is well-designed. But they aren’t innocuous now, and probably are not going to be soon, and I would solve nothing by conspicuously enshrining them. I wish people could, or would, see where they stop fighting for justice and start fighting just because they like fighting. Crispo correctly identifies overpopulation and carelessness toward the environment, palm owls notwithstanding, as primary factors in the sad state of the world, so why continue to do stuff that gets people bickering over inconsequential symbolic issues?

At one time I considered that nazi furry-artwork was poorly executed satire, but now I just think it is mental illness. There are people who call themselves “furry raiders,” a group founded by somebody called Foxler. I cannot accept political rhetoric as sincere from somebody who role-plays as Adolf Hitler as a cartoon animal and wears a nazi-style red armband with a paw print instead of a swastika. Such a person has a very slight grasp on reality, and it would be irrational to argue with him. He even missed calling himself “Adolphin Swimler,” after eh. In a sense, it is unfair to ban him or his adherents from any conventions because most of your attendees in general are going to be people who live a weird fantasy. Although he also supposedly practices bestiality and sexual predation toward minors, while simultaneously criticizing furries who are outwardly perverted for giving the fandom a bad reputation.

When you experience dimwitted political conversations, somebody will often expound on what they think Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd would do or say in that situation, and can probably find a quote to fit any viewpoint that is antithetical to his actual viewpoints. Imagine if we talked about what Hitler would do. He would have EVERY suspected furry shot and shoved in a ditch, regardless of whether they pretended to be a cartoon fox allegory of him.
And so, I think, this gang actually aren’t Nazis, but they get off on being able to sport nazi-like regalia and attitudes in public and claim that isn’t what it is. They are enrapt in the petty sub-fight, of complaining about media bias and non-existent conspiracies targeting their heritage or whatever. Gosh the English lost the war of 1812 and nobody has a problem with THEIR “heritage” displays, because this isn’t really about that.

My older brother reads a lot and knows a lot, but expresses his knowledge in a way that gets people angry at him, and call him a fascist, and post nazi-punching memes at him, so he doesn’t really solve anything, and I fear that he enjoys not solving anything and feeling targeted. He wouldn’t go full crispy but if he put a backwards swastika on a bag and called it a manji and carried the bag in a flagrant manner so somebody would try to put him in the hospital, that would STILL surprise me but it is more plausible. And my other brother has his own frustrating ways about that. It is very challenging to untangle the whole mess because there is always another story to shift focus to that I haven’t heard of and therefore cannot dissect, and half the time they turn out to be completely made up.

I do believe it is counterproductive to “tell it like it is” in a way that hurts marginalized people. That is not my goal. There is criticism about those who “crawl into a victim space” and in truth heavy conservatives were doing it first, with their wars on Christmas and assault on good old American Values talk. It may just be human nature to view yourself as the most wronged, and I would prefer to live with the less violent of the aspiring victims, if I had to choose, but I think I am stuck with both. Negative lifestyles cannot be magically changed, only eased out of.

What do I stand to gain, really, from talking about this? Nothing, probably, but I hate seeing people pat themselves on the back and solicit donations for saying dumb trash like “WE don’t support HATE” and “punch a nazi today!” and selling little trinkets with slogans on them. That, as usual, doesn’t help anything and it doesn’t take any courage to do that. And it doesn’t take courage because nazis are a minority and there is an extremely low chance you will run into more than one in any location where there isn’t a greater number of people who ostensibly advocate punching them. And so they will feel justified in using terrorist weapons, like automobiles against you. The real problem is people acting without empathy, and taking easy actions based on what their support groups, families, churches, whatever, encourage. Our president exacerbates this. He is seen as a hero by white supremacists, but since he can point to the fact that he never openly endorsed white supremacy in itself, he thinks doesn’t have to DO anything to stop it. He won’t take charge of a role he has but did not choose unless it serves his desired image. This is somebody who looked straight at the dumb eclipse (which I didn’t see at all but never mind) three times while everybody told him not, and he did it just BECAUSE everybody told him not to. He might do himself permanent damage, he might not, but he got to show off people who act like they think they are smarter than him.

Consider this: I have a niece, and sometimes I am asked to look after my niece, even though I am terrible at it and have things to work on. I could say: I don’t drink beer, I don’t do sex, I will never have children, and know I should not have children, and consequently there is no reason I should have any role of responsibility over this or any child. That would be “fair” in a sense, but it would cause animosity, hurting my family and alienating me from them, and in the end it would be my fault.
I say let the “nazis” have their rallies. The low turnouts speak for themselves. You can get a few thrown in jail by provoking them to extreme violence but never win in that manner.

This reminds me of Boromir in Fellowship of the Ring. When he tries to steal The Ring, even knowing that the point of the quest is to destroy the ring and the evil it permits to exist, he starts fantasizing about NOT destroying the ring and using its power to lead great armies. He wants to fight great wars forever, not prevent them, since that is all he understands, and all he enjoys. And I almost removed this bit of text, thinking it was better to refer to real acts by real people, but nobody I know seems real anymore, so perhaps I should exclusively use fictional examples.

This is the only thing I know how to draw now!

unsightly | How to lose a guy in (4) days | !

page 49 of that, redrawn. compare to that if you need proof this was justified.

I had to remove some visually interesting details from the exterior shot for more consistency, Even with all the silly nonsense going on it seems to be important to me to have some basis of what is and is not so. and so also i have filled in interior details which i only established existed when i first drew the page after this one, and unconcerned about consistency as I was then, never made so.

But now I wonder about the validity of a medieval watch tower on kumquat’s “property,” since everything else inside seems to be either dirt or industrial, as if kumquat is dwelling in an abandoned, converted factory. I re-considered the tower to have a shoddy sheet metal exterior, but that contradicts earlier shots of the spiral staircase whose specific mood, with the presence of a torch, was dependent on the walls being stone.
I could retroactively claim, if I ever “reveal” that kumquat IS in an old factory, that the tower was bought at a yard sale or was inflatable, but that would mean going out of my way to clarify an inconsistency that most people would not notice. And therefore I would need to show kumquat buying something ELSE at a yard sale with the tower there incidentally, which would be too strange to be funny unless it were the focus. And so i would need to show kumquat inflating a different stone structure, but I do not know when that would ever come up.
I COULD indicate that -all- the exterior details are fake, as if wallpaper or an exceedingly eccentric paint job are involved, but i would still need to redraw the interior of the spiral staircase.

Additionally, the next page shows pog emerging from a body of water that plainly is not the one near kumquat’s house, because that is full of blue dope goop and the dope was not able to climb out of it easily, despite having, presumably, greater reach than pog does. But THIS page shows pog in a little boat.
i could remove the boated pog, but that is the only interesting background detail here. Although the dope pond is shown to be a short distance from the house(s) rather than immediately beside and certainly not behind them, so this may still work. The other vessels behind pog on the following page are disconnected enough from “serious” details that I do not need them to seem plausible.
I wish I had given half as much thought as this ten years ago! Or just never thought of it at all since on further reflection the “i am known by many names” frame makes least sense of all and I never considered changing that.

this ought to be the last page which requires a complete redrawing, since I never really finished drawing it to begin with. and doing this brings me back mentally and it makes sense that i was looking for ways to not draw it. But it is not the last one that needs loads of work on it. And if I want to be able to show an example issue at the one art show I attend, in october, I will need to get through fourteen more. oh!

I ruin some middling to decent material by talking about it too much. But I feel I must explain here that this is meant to be funny, even if, had it potential to succeed that it now lacks through my saying so, and I am not wanting of ways to block stupid banner advertisements. If I couldn’t do that I would have dug a hole and lived in it ten years ago. This is not a desperate depressed cry for help. I could not GET help by doing that.

What brought this on: I started my a web-browser which happened to have an unfortunate part of my image-posting routine in it when I last closed it, and the ad-blocker did not load fully before the ads did, and so there was PREGOO right in front of me. Necessary to share with others in some manner but too stupid to speak about. Immediately the above illustrated situation struck me, and I refreshed the page about 20 times to see what else might come up that I could also include. And some in there are from YEARS ago. I would see those things inadvertently and save them for a reason that I did not yet have. THIS is not the stuff I am tormented by and hide from. This trash is so stupid that I enjoy how stupid it is. It is not likely to fully engulf the culture around me and ruin my life for a year. I can complain about this without being silently shunned by the small amount of supporters I have. I think. If it turns out I can’t, I am better off without those people, since pretending I didn’t care how stupid this was got me nowhere for eight years.
How can an energy drink be inherently “furry” without having fur in it? And how can music, for that matter? Without being full of animal noises? Which it wouldn’t be because the whole point of furries is that they take themselves seriously and magically disassociate themselves from the inherent absurdity of their preferred visual subject matter. These advertisements are aimed squarely at an extremely narrow range of people who are religiously devoted to the thought of talking cartoon animals and are looking to spend ludicrous sums of money just to buy products from other people that they believe reinforces their own outward appearance of being an enthusiast. “Gamers” have even stupider stuff targeted at them but for the time being I have no audience deep amitz them, and so I am spared awareness.