Did comets cause MAGA?

Currently, there are 12,000 cases of cyclosporiasis throughout the USA. Bobby Brainworms insists it is all under control and contained (within the boundaries of the USA, no doubt). Add to that the highest cases of measles in 20 years, and also the new joy of salmonella in a million eggs, listeria in soft cheeses, botulism in baby formula, and e. coli in frozen blueberries, all courtesy of your Explosive Diarrhea Forever President.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

I read a book titled Ripples of the Cosmic Ocean by Dagomar Degroot. An environmental history of Our Place in the Solar System. The book covers the usual facts about planets and a history of our discovering what we know. I was a little disappointed, as I was expecting to find out new information about the solar system, like the conditions of various regions within the atmosphere of our star. (The part outside of the solar corona and extending throughout the Solar System).

We have a picture of empty space around us, but our solar system is a busy place swarming with all sorts of things, and cooking and chilling in all sorts of interesting storms and eddies and currents and magnetic swirls within a solar atmosphere that extends way past Pluto.

It is similar to how we view ourselves on Earth, walking around on land or occasionally floating on ocean. We forget we are these funny little ape shaped bugs living at the very bottom of an ocean of air, razor thin as it appears from space, building intricate cake decorations resting on top of an icing of crust, with a beautiful layered chocolate cake of mantle covering a chewy or caramel core of incandescent iron. Not just mere land sea and air, but party and parcel of a magnificently complex and terrifiying thing called our planet.

I was hoping to read about that. Alas, no. One thing caught my mind though, and I'll just quote it:

Across the newly formed United States, for example, congregations that adhered to traditional, evangelical Protestantism had dwindled, owing both to the fearsome toll of the Revolution and the steady tide of westward migration. Protestant ministers feared the obvious disinterest of the new federal government in promoting Protestantism, and perceived a steady decline in its prospects. They responded with the Second Great Awakening, a wave of impassioned preaching and conversion that, ironically, fractured Protestant congregations and provided  fertile ground for unorthodox beliefs. 

With the Awakening in full swing, in 1832 the Baptist preacher William Miller caused a sensation when he declared tha the Second Coming of Christ would occur on October 22, 1844. The timing could not have been better. The 1832 apparition of Biella's comet sparked widespread predictions of Earth's destruction when calculations by German astronomer Heinrich Olbers suggested that Earth would pass through the comet's poisonous tail. In early 1843 the shocking apparition of a comet bright enough to be seen during the day seemed to vindicate Miller's prediction that the world would end the following year. The comet's appearance encouraged a wave of apocalyptic millenariansim. When the comet faded and Christ did not make his scheduled return, the "Great Disappointment" that followed would lead a new denomination, the Adventists, to proclaim that a process would be set in motion that would culminate in the Second Coming.

This strange period took what was otherwise a dusty old Iron Age death cult and made it exciting again, with proper encroachment into secular and politcal spheres. All that nonsense about the Rapture, Flat Earth, etc. came from that, and is now part and parcel of the MAGA movement.

This is not to say that comets alone caused MAGA, racism is the primary cause. But still, funny how all that nonsense comes from quasi-informed superstition.

Best In Show

My sculpture, "Free To A Good Home" won the Dean Alan Olson purchase award at the Rockford Midwestern Biennial. It is now part of the museum's permanent collection.

This happened two weeks ago but I was either too busy or not inclined to post. The museum curator, Carrie Johnson, chose my piece. When it was announced and I waved my hand in the crowd to identify myself, right next to me was a fellow artist who gave me the dirtiest, most incredulous look,

I could tell he was thinking "She chose that piece of shit over my beautiful art?"

Yeah, she did.

Another turn around the sun.

69 dude! *deeedle eedle deet*

Be excellent to each other.

And

Party On.

Station.

I cleaned up my cast bronze, ground off the gates, sanded the rough spots, sand blasted the crap out of it, welded the two pieces together, put a brown patina on, and documented it.

And I didn't feel tired afterward. Pretty goddamn good birthday.

Retirement Anxiety

I got my last big paycheck from the college today. An old dread crept into my belly. How am I going to scrape by? This is a familiar fear ever since I quit real jobs. Oh, I'm so not better off than my Jurassic Boomer cohort. I worked and quit many times and so didn't earn a lot over my lifetime (or rather, built and spent some fortunes). I'm so much better off than Gen X folks, with nothing saved, or actually in debt. The thought of a limited income does not sit well with me, nor does spending what I've saved.

The future, always stating from grim and working up to optimistic, may work to my advantage if the world ends before my money does. That's a piss poor attitude, and contrary to my workadaddy nature. Or now workagramps. I got all my metal cast this past weekend.

I can't not stop making things. Especially metal things.

I need money I don't have for that. I need someone to pay me to make my things.

It is not enough to make just one thing, because I always have a postpartum depression after getting done. It is the process. The cycle from imagination to reality. 

Busy Little Creature

Bronze casting this Saturday. I got my wax pieces rigged up and dipped.

We use ceramic shell investment, which is a silica slurry you dip the wax piece in, cover it with sand to build up a stucco around the wax. We burn the wax out leaving thew thin shell, thus lost wax casting. I also made some spin castings of miniatures.

Last Tuesday I dropped off the art piece at Forum 301 on Ohio Street. 20 minute walk from my place to the suburban train station, then another 20 minutes walk from the train station to the gallery. I found out that everyone in downtown Chicago walks faster than me, even the wheelchair folks. And also found out that my winter inactivity made me woefully out of shape. I hobbled around for two days after that excursion.

I did it all again this past Friday night for the show. Hobbled a little less on Saturday, Friday night was a school night for me as I taught artistic welding Saturday morning. Second to the last class and everyone is at their task, I hardly get any questions or requests for help. I just patrol the studio bays to make sure everyone is safe. 

I'm going through angst because today was my last day teaching welding. I've always used the Irish exitr to a party, so I ghosted. I'll see people next week when I do my grades. I've gotten used to this routine, perhaps it is time for a change. The past two weeks I was always busy, and that's how I want my retirement to be. Here's to the future!

Summer Off

I have been employed at Harper College for 20 years; first as a CE (continuing education) instructor, then studio tech and the last 10 years as a welding instructor. Back in March I received a letter indicating that under new educational requirements, I was not certified to teach welding. I did not have an associates in welding. The college suggested I get an AA before May 27 if I wanted to continue to teach.

I said how about I just retire one year early? I'm keeping my CE gig, Artistic Welding, keeping my badge and keys. I'm hustling to create CE classes to teach, because the certified welding instructor pay was chicken salad, and now I'm getting chicken shit. But I still have access to all the campus, so yay.

But time to think about the next thing. So, time to take my knowledge on the road? I know I can teach beginning anything, art and craft wise. I could teach out of the fire arts playbook. I've done it all: metal casting, ceramics, glass, mold making, wax working, how to build a furnace, how to build a lot of stuff. 

One CE class is 3D modeling and mold making. Combining ancient and contemporary materials from 3D prints to plaster to create objects that go on to be ceramic or glass or metal.

I think I could take on the road as a mold making class using clay, plaster, wax, and silicon rubber. The Four Sisters. A kiln would help, to take something home. I would demo with my one hit wonder, which I designed on a computer, 3D printed, made silicon rubber masters, cast plaster from those, slip cast clay into the plaster molds, and a voila. Or just a clay and plaster modl making class would also be fine.

Art Shows

I took a long time off from art shows. I have two pieces in two shows this summer.

One is at the Rockford Art Museum Midwestern Bienielle. Good old Rockford been very good to me. I was in a lot of shows last decade there. The piece is titled Free To A Good Home, which is baby monsters and their caretakers.

The other piece is Happy Family and that is going into the Not Normal show at Forum 301 art gallery

Happy Family I originally titled Mister Potato Chip and Friends.

I also submitted this throuple as Chasse.

I first took LSD around September 1974 and I don't think I've ever come down from it.

Existential Dread

I'm starting to feel existential angst about how long I have left. More directly how long active will I be? On the assumption I will become less active over time, it makes sense to get stuff done now while I can.

The question is what? Metal for sure. That's strenuous and tedious and eventually I will not be able to do the hard parts.

Here are the latest bronzes.

Bronze is getting expensive though. Everything is, and I guess that is because we have consumed the same amount of raw materials in the past 20 years than we did in the prior 100.

Sorry kids. Can't blame the Boomers for this one.

Anyway I want to try cast iron. And maybe cast glass again. 

While I still can.

Living in a Chinese curse

May You Live In Interesting Times. What can I say? The American crime empire ain't trying to hide it anymore. And we chumps? We Munchkins waiting for a Dorothy? We are just going to put up with it. How Russian of us, and I mean that in a good way, like "Russians can handle suffering". Your average candy ass American not so much, except through not so quiet desperation.Regardless, I have to continue to make things. The cool thing about me is I'm a process not a product kind of guy. If stuff I make gets recycled, thrown away, I don't care.

Art is not an escape from living but it helps. I'm retiring, which means I am going to make a shit ton of stuff. Metal stuff of course. Here we got the latest but I want to go big. I want to cast art in steel. That requires electricity, the miracle of the Modern Age, the Monkey Singularity. Anyway, latest wax works.

Same theme, Monsters Are People Too. But miniature versions of earlier works. The monster can be gravity cast with ceramic shell. The figurine needs to be centrifugally cast. Here's my rigging for a flask. 

The flask is too big for our spin caster, so I fabricated an arm for the bigger flask. I think I just need to build a big ass spin caster, which makes me think about a wheel caster with a central crucible, and that is a very dangerous spring. Here's a shot of my kitchen workshop with ongoing shit and unfinihsed business.

Monsters are people too

Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus, and came from the direction of the bright star Vega. Maybe the Vegans are invading Pegasus.

There are three known interstellar obects and who knows how many we haven't noticed.

The really sad thing is each time it happened, people were hoping it was aliens. Wow. Are we that bored and lonely?

When I was a kid and the planets were smudges through telescopes, we all knew it was common sense that there was not only life, but people living on those moons and planets. This wasn't a modern idea either. For thousands of year, we've assumed the universe was populated with all sorts of fanciful beings. Many looked like monsters. Eh.

Monsters are people too.

I wrote a short short story which I will just tell again. 

In 2017, the first interstellar object detected in our solar system, dubbed 1I/2017 U1, later called Oumuamua. The object was unusual and prompted speculations that it was an alien artifact. It sailed on through in a hyperbolic course towards the constellation Pegasus.  

In March 2028, one hundred million Oumuamua objects arrive from the direction of the bright star Vega, and sail on through our solar system at a hyperbolic course towards the constellation Pegasus. The stars making the constellation are all ridiculously big stars hundreds of light year away. The target is undoubtedly closer, probably 51 Pegasi b, which is a known extrasolar planet.

We expected a fleet of Oumuamua objects to split off and check us out, but that didn't happen to the disappointment of some. I guess we were too small to notice.

Oh, also I sold some art. The awkward thing is I was paid a few hundred dollars and was thrilled, while I have a rich friend who just rented his art out for tens of thousands of dollars. One thing I liked about NFTs was royalties.

Free To A Good Home

I know what gooning is same as I know what felching is but I don't care to remind myself all that often about it. The Internet just keeps exposing the nightmare levels of our minds with, lately, the Goonverse.

Don't search for it. Just don't. I don't want to strengthen links to the site. It is a porn site involved in extreme attention fragmentation and extensive masturbation. There are brick and mortar places with giant screens blaring porn throughout a room like a sports bar of porn, and guys will circle jerk there. 

Add in AI and you have private tailored porn that you can take with you into the circle jerk, and I suppose this is where it is all going for humanity plugged in.

Item: 87% of executives use AI on the job compared 57% managers and 27% of employees.

Anecdotal Item: There have been increasing numbers of media interviews where the CEOs seem to be on drugs.

Observation: Maybe drugs, but I think AI psychosis. I've noticed the CEO of Palantir, Musk, and strange correspondence from many including Travis Kalanick who gave us the horrible idea of Uber, who all seem to be hypnotized by their AIs. It's so much better than being in a cult, because the mutual delusion can be tailored to you, your own private goonverse. Instant Clanker Cult Cup of Soup.

This is horrifying.

Other things. I got two more bronzes done for the semester. 

Free To A Good Home

A woman told me they were abandoned baby monsters with their caretakers. She thought them beautiful and sad.

Luxury Agriculture

I've always loved greenhouses. I like spending time in them rather than working in them, so maybe I really like botanical conservatories. Chicago has a gem in the Garfield Park Conservatory, especially now, when you can walk from arctic air into a lush tropical fern room.

I like the greenhouse look, panes of glass overhead, arrayed in minimalist or ornate splendor. I like the controlled chaos of greenery. I like the artisanal nature of horticulture, attempting quality rather than quantity. Sounds like I want a greenhouse.

It's starting to look like we will need greenhouses, as global warming takes a toll on our agriculture. More specifically luxury agriculture. Things like chocolate, coffee, vanilla, etc. Not only is it becoming a problem to grow them, but the industrial agriculture aproach destroys the environment.

Case in point: Brazil has destroyed 20% of the Amazon rain forest to grow vast monocultures of coffee, among other things. A similar thing happened in West Africa for cocoa. Sustainable agriculture of these crops work, but you have to have a forest to sustain them (coffee and cacao being under canopy plants). 

A few years ago I read a story about a greenhouse in Iceland growing bananas. I found a more current article and most greenhouses in Iceland are at the "greenhouse capitol" of Hveragerdi. They grow tropical things like bananas, coffee, cocoa, but they don't do so well. Probably being grown in isolation from their prefered habitat, with all their little forest pals and fungi and mushroom networks is not so good for them. Kind of like being raised on the Moon.

For all the land in Iceland they haven;t built many greenhouses. Maybe because of the elves. The huldrafolk, described as looking like us, only taller and thinner, want their volcanic wasteland just the way nature wanted it . And Icelanders agree. But it made we wonder who does have the most greenhouses? I'm gonna bet Canada even though I know it's China. Yeah, it's China, the Jupiter of the Solar Greenhouse system. Followed by Spain, Italy, Mexico. The Netherlands is interesting, at number 9, their Westland green house complexes make them the 2nd largest food producer in the world.

But I'm interested in the luxuries like coffee and chocolate/ And vanilla. I'd probably nned a Garfield Park sized conservatory for the rain forest I'd need for proper growth. And all the critters as well. Bees like coffee buds, but cacao is fertilized by a tiny biting fly no longer than a few millimeters. I don't know what fertilizes vanilla. Edmond Albius figured it out. Humans are now vanilla's pollinators.

China's Century, if it can keep it

My elder brother called Thanksgiving evening and at one point he asked "Is China kicking our ass?"

Short answer: yes, since around 2008. Longer answer: "It's China's century, if they can keep it. If they can get rich enough before they become old".

Item: During the Russo-Japanese war at the turn of the last century, Russia  naval forces suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese at the Battle of Tsushima, patially due to technology. The coal fired Imperial Russian Navy suffered an 18,000 mile journey from the Baltic sea. Lack of coaling stations often meant almost piling mountains of coal piled up on decks. The modern Japanese ships were oil burners. The Japanese fleet outnumbered the Russians, but their battleships were faster and more manuevarable than the lumbering Russian dreadnoughts.

Item: At the peak of the USA Empire, 1945, US manufacturing was producing one German Luftwaffe (an entire national air force) every 18 days. 

Item: Year upon year, China graduates 3-5 times the number of science and math students than the US does. This isn't just scale, China has a higher participation rate.

Item: US astronauts were stranded on the ISS for 9 months due to lack of trust in the Boeing manufactured space capsule. Chinese astronauts were picked up after their own capsule suffered a lack of trust due to space debris. The new, stranded, astronauts received a new capsule in 8 days.

Personal Item: Construction rehabbing the bridge on my route to and from work over Hwy 53 if it matters. Destruction began in April, and only now are they close to finishing. China would have built the bridge, had it collapse, and rebuilt it in half the time.

So, yeah, China is kicking our ass. It has hegemony over all of east Asia and is pushing pushing pushing the US Navy to move back one island chain at a time. They will succeed if current shipbuilding trends continue. Taiwan? All they have to do is wait. The USA is at the end of a long supply line in defense of Taiwan. We are not so global anymore, if we ever were, despite all the bases everywhere.

The USA still has advantages, imagination, improvisation, a pretty solid high tech research environment, good education institutions and R&D labs. And toys. All of this is being laid waste by xenophobic imbeciles. Science set back 25 years while China surges ahead. Immigration, the influx of new talent and ingenuity, is another US advantage, sadly being diminihsed by short dick thinkers and that xenophobia again.

China has big problems just like us. The whole slavery thing is kind of moot. Their forced labor camps versus our treatment of immigrants and poors. But as long as they keep the money coming in, they have time before the population ages out. Ironic that China and India were the workshops of the world 500 years ago, and here they are now.

Here's a more comprehensive link to China's Century.

The thing about empires, are that empires eventually fall. Nothing lasts, but nothing ever really goes away. The imprint is there. I think that's a spooky action quantum thing maybe.

So if empires fall, maybe try being something besides an empire.  

Oh yeah I also got into the Little But Bold show. Titled Xenophile, but I'm open to better names. Catch might be a good one.

We Should Be Here

 In my last entry I said that Theia, the Mars sized planet that crashed into proto-Earth, was from outsaide the snow line, and formed with lots of water. Turns out, new chemical analysis indicates Theia was an inner solar system neighbor. So, I was wrong. We didn't get water from Theia. And we aren't the feak show planet I pictured.

Or maybe we are. Still a freak show of a planet. A glorious and magnificent one of a kind freak show. I'm good with that.

We had our first big snow and if you have never made a naked snow angel, well, you should at least once. My snow angels have spectacular manly buttocks. 90th percentile buttocks.

I have a feeling this is going to be a snowy winter, and so I have to adjust my enthusiasm towards that. Not that I have to. As a Northern Maritime Barbarian, I thrive in a winter wonderland. As I recall, the last big snowy Chicago winter, 2013, was a fucking blast.

We did another bronze pour. I include this picture because this is how you are supposed to pour , choking the cup, no old man piss trickle. Someone suggested I get a shirt that says that. I also want a shirt that says "Food! Where is food?" 

This was my post-pour meal. Yum.

We Shouldn't Be Here

More and better evidence suggests the Moon's origin was a collision event. The scenario is the proto-Earth was struck by a Mars-sized planetoid called Theia. I don't why proto-Earth doesn't have a name.

Large chunks of an alien material are found within the Earth. Rock samples with an entirely differeent chemistry, proto-Earth rocks, have been found. Not surprising the way the early solar system (or any system) has stuff flying everywhere. So, what about proto-Earth?

Find the mass of proto-Earth. Mass of  Proto-Earth + Theia = Earth + Moon. The Moon is 1/6 Earth's mass. Theia was theorized to be Mars sized and so 1/3 of Earth mass. So, X +.333 = 1.166, subtract from both sides and the mass of Proto-Earth was .827, slightly lighter than Earth, about the mass of Venus. Collisions models suggest not just one strike but multiples from debris before things settled down into what we got now.

If there had been no collision, what would be here? Well, let's talk about the snow line. Infant stars lighting up a baby solar system produce heat and light that keeps volatile chemical compounds and molecules from condensing, volatile things like water. Planets formed within the snow line have only chemically bound water. Planets formed outside the snow line have lots of water.

So a heavy metal planet like Mercury or Venus, a bigger sister to Venus, is what our old girl looks like. 

No life.

If I were an alien, I would not be expecting Earth to be there. Oh sure, it is not an abomination or anomaly, but still quite rare and easy to dismiss or overlook. We shouldn't be here at all.

Other things. I finally mounted a bronze piece I did about two or three years ago. My face sitting at the bottom of my locker. What I mean by that is I did a plaster cast of my face as a class demo, and then used it a few times in slip cast clay and wax-to-bronze before it fell apart. It didn't produce a very good likeness for a rushed demo so I had fun with the casts instead. 

Our Founder. 2025 Bronze. 

For reference, here I am currently.

The Gusto

Yesterday I go to the grocery store. I walk in the cart vestibule and I glance to my left to find a little old lady. She was trapped behind the electric scooters, no doubt tried to navigate in to get one and she trapped herself. 

"You need help. Here" I said and dragged a scooter forward so she could get out.

"I want to use one", she said. I unplugged and pushed out the scooter she wanted. Once she was in, she just stared at the scooter and then at me. I showed her where the power switch was, turned it on, and then showed her how to use the grip handles to steer. 

"Bless you!" she said.

"Off you go!"  I replied.

I didn't have the heart to tell her I am a heathen.

Here's a map of Pascal's dilemna but not really.

I am squarely in the Gusto. Life observation, deep reading, and taking hundreds of hits of acid have put me in the position of No God/ No Soul, the Gusto. Go for the gusto.

I am an atheist and aspiritus. There is no God and I have no soul. Nevertheless I hold in simultaneous knowledge that the univserse is alive. And though I may not have a personality beyond death, others might. So I do have holy and sacred things, things that I myself have chosen. And strangely enough my choices align with the universe. And that is why I call myself a heathen. 

The Big Squeeze continued: Vibe Decline

My brother mentioned to me he had been listening to old Neil Young records and it depressed him. I said, well, Neil did write some depressing stuff but you should recall the time when he wrote and recorded them. The 1970s. 

I've been reading about the British Raj in a book called The Anarchy. Dalrymple, the auhor, spoke about the sense of dread in England in 1780. The East India Company seemed on the verge of collapse in India, and the Crown had just lost the thirteen colonies. Parliament felt it was the decline of the British Empire, but it turned out to be vibe decline. The Empire still had a good 120 years left in it.

Back to the 1970s. Many thought it the end of American hegemony. The Long Boom was over. The Oil Embargo and Energy Crisis. Soviets surpassing us in space accomplishments. Manufacturing threats from rebuilt countries like Japan and Germany. Our own infrastructure mostly from the 19th century, despite the build out of WWII. Corruption and crisis in both big business and government. Stagflation. Sure looked depressing, but it was a vibe decline.The US empire probably has got another 20 years just on inertia alone.

The question is, is the US currently going through a vibe decline or a real decline?

Over at Economics From the Top Down, Blair Fix has an essay entitled The Half Life of  Empire that suggests, yes the US is in decline, and peaked in 1945. China overtook us in 2009, and soon India will join China in supremacy. According to Blair, the halcyon days are over, never to return.

Ironic, considering that in 1780, at the tipping point of the Industrial Revolution, China and India were two of the richest nations on Earth, manufacturing perhaps 40% of global product, most importantly textiles. Mass produced in parallel process cottage industries, and also textiles of the finest quality. Consider also that the bulk of the British Royal Navy's sailing ships were built (quite well!) in India.

The build out of satanic mills and power looms and spinning machines in England (funded by the spoils of India), soon wiped the Asian industries out; at least for the low end stuff.

And now China and India are again the workshops of the world. Does this bode a possible future for the US?

Pobably not. Given we may be in the Spike.

The Big Squeeze

Searching for title phrase in the old memory hut called this blog, I thought I had entitled an essay, but the earliest use of the term is from a January 4th 2013 entry: More 2013 Prognostications: A Lot of Negativity

I've expressed humanity's dismal chances before and this essay considers The Big Squeeze in terms of latitude loss of habitat in a warming world. We are heading for Hothouse Earth or are already in it. Hothouse weather sucks, Icehouse weather sucks, Interglacial Just Right. Well, we are out of the natural interglacial cycle now and the squeeze is coming from every direction.

Consider in Hothouse North America, we lose arable land to the north and south. Southern creeping desertification, and miasmic swamps with toxic metal streams and rivers to the north. Farming moves north but only so far.  Certainly not the scraped clean Canadian shield to plant crops, and the fertile valleys in the Canadian west are already at 100% use. So, a big squeeze.

It is fitting that Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The Gulf of Mexico was incredibly lush, vibrant and a great well of life. Sadly, most of the USA's fertile soils lie at the bottom of this gulf, agricultural runoff feuling dead zones of greater and greater size. Toxic industrial waste and every form of offal and filth has turned the lively and lovely Gulf of Mexico into the grisly dead Gulf of America.

Bug Apocalypse already in progress. Only our vermin survive nicely. Soylent Green overbudget and behind schedule. Another squeeze.

Fresh water, more specically fresh aquifer water is dangerously low throughout the Continental west and central plains. The best example of land subsidence is California's Central Valley with area drops of up to 40 feet. Meaning subsurface rock is getting squeezed like a sponge. The problem is the water is not replenished, and in fact goes to waste into a rising ocean. Many aquifers will be gone in five years

How many more squeezes? Science itself is creating more and more affluent people, with larger and larger appetites, so much so that just the past 10 years has used up more shit than the past 100, and the last 20 years equals the same amount of planetary devastation as the last ten thousand. And the next 20 years a million times faster still.

Can't really put the blame on Boomers for this one, huh kids? You complain about the state of the world we left you and yet you eat it in front of us. Cake of the world on petulant frowns, munching away

Soviet Texas

I had a dream last night I was at the White House and met Trump. Even though I hate the fucker I'm still civil. I don't call him Sir or Mr. President. I just say hey how you doing, and he's all smiling. Invites into his office, not the Oval office but a private one. It's covered in junk his toys everywhere.

Something I say makes him stop and turn and looked at me and said "You're a very positive person aren't you? " I was like "sure why not?" He liked that and we sat down at a table.

Things took a dark turn when Don Junior shows up and sits next to me. The old teeth grinder throws naked photos of me on the table, obviously my home is bugged. Trump tears little squares of paper off a sheet and tosses them on the table. They contain quotes of me saying bad things about Trump. Mostly off of my phone.

So then I woke up. Drinking  alcohol suppresses needed REM sleep.

Absence of alcohol let's the brain make up for lost fun. So yeah I've been having wild dreams and the wildest are the pee frustration dreams, which have become elaborate architectural tours of place and interiors of elaborate patterns and... just a love of material that I get from this built world. From primitive to future sterile and all parts between.

How is this tiny brain of mine able to reproduce this universe and the answer is it does this when awake as well honeybunch.

This is your brain mirroring the universe all the result of evolution.

Late July I got a butterfly fairy woman tattoo and it blew out like no one has ever seen.

My artist was mortified but I was sure it was just bruising. Nope. Frail old sun damged skin. Not her fault. 

So I'm like, this isn't setback. This is an opportunity. We will make weird fairy clouds around her, and I said yes. But we hold off on that until the tan goes away.

I got another tattoo this past Tuesday and she was a little leery, some PTSD. Everything was fine and I got a wonderful coffee branch with flowers and berries. 

No New Bronze until December-

-or at least no new bronze with existing conditions at the college. There are infrastructure projects going on in the foundry area that involve replacing current air systems for the wood shop spray booth, replacing the defunct air compressor pump and dehumidifier, and getting a new foundry furnace to replace the dead one. 

I'm slightly pissed about the air compressor. That thing was a POS back when I was lab tech and told them for a decade it needed to be replaced. The dehumidifier was worthless, water in the lines even in winter, and it turned out that was supposed to be replaced every five years. 

So we had one last bronze pour and this time I made sure we had a cookout. Bought a charcoal grill and we had burgers. I also brought my cocktail mixer and made some hand-dipped shakes*. You cannot have community without food. 

Funny thing little light bulb moment for me was finally equating cooking and art, or rather my cooking and my art making. It is empirical exploration. I had always made a face when I hear artists talk about exploration but that's what I do with cooking. I may follow a recipe but taste is the final arbiter. And so with visual art. I spend way more time looking than I do making and I suppose it is like tasting. This may seem a trivial revelation but it seems to have removed biases and prejudices about art.

I still will often experience imposter syndrome, that I'm not a real artist. But I can cook, so I'm making art, and so I am indeed an artist.

At any rate, no molten bronze unless I break out my mini furnace or help a buddy set one up. I'm inclined to work in clay and grill. Here's some picks from the bronze  pour.

*I have determined from 30 years of foundry work that the best hydrator is milk. If you want to make it fun, chocolate milk. And if chcolate milk is good, chocolate shake is better. The best.