Stupid doctors, crappy healthcare.
Dressed in head-to-toe gowns
In the air
There’s a forced feeling
of Christmas.

People sick
People passing
Seeing people out of work
and on every street corner you’ll hear

We’re in hell, we’re in hell
It’s Christmas time in the city
Ding-a-ling, Republicans
Soon it will be Christmas day.

Throngs of homeless
Under stop lights
In soup kitchens it’s obscene
As Walmart shoppers rush
home with their treasures.

It’s a cash crunch
Kids without lunch
Glen Beck makes a scene
And above all this bustle
You’ll hear

We’re in hell, we’re in hell
It’s Christmas time in the city
Ding-a-ling, Republicans
Soon it will be Christmas day.

Bill Clinton spoke about us, as did Maya Angelou in her inaugural poem for President Clinton, and I was electrified to hear it again in Barack Obama’s inaugural speech. The lyrics of the classic Nina Simone song, “Feeling Good” sprung into my head while I sipped champagne on the cusp of the election being called for President-Elect Barack Obama.

What I’m upset about tonight here in California is with the undue out-of-state influence from religious zealotry from such incongruous groups such as the Mormons, Baptists, business owners, 70% of black Democratic voters, and Republican fat cats in office – Prop 8 won. Angry doesn’t begin to even cut it when I think of how I was raised in a not-so-liberal household and to experience the world around me, grow up and learn to celebrate diversity in all people, it cuts me to the core. Tonight, my civil rights are less important then they were just days ago.

How would people of color like it if I started an initiative that placed a proposition on the next ballot that they could no longer practice their faith, or worse, repeal their right to vote? And what of the Mormons who caused this constitutional crisis, how would they react if we just ban them outright branding them as a cult and wanting to teach our children to be howling polygamists, right?

Wrong.

I wouldn’t do this, because I’m better than that and I wouldn’t DARE take away rights granted to anyone. It’s Un-American and it’s a slippery slope when you remove rights from one group of people granted lawfully opening the door to take away the rights sanctioning discrimination to select groups. Where does it end?

Now what happens to all the people who *did* get married since the CA Supreme Court gave the right to gay and lesbian couples? Will their marriage certificates be nullified? Will they remain married while others will never get the right? What happens to their rights as ‘married’ individuals? Do home mortgages get redrawn? How do you explain that to their children that Mommy and Mommy or Daddy and Daddy are no longer a legal married couple? What an embarrassing nightmare on the world stage, where on one hand we’ve elected our first African-American President and one the other we denied the happiness of committed homosexual couples in California, Arizona, and Florida bringing the total to 35 states.

In this day and age where people are wondering how to institute fixing the economy, in what sort of twisted logic going on upstairs in people’s heads, did they think this was the right thing to do for this failing economy? I suggest reading this wikipedia article on the economic impact this will have.

So shame on religious zealots for sticking their fingers in where they don’t belong! I challenge people of faith who voted for the ban to take a long, hard look at themselves and their faith, realizing what a foolish thing they’ve done here. The constitutional amendment to the California Constitution should be made annul and churches who supported this ban should lose their tax exempt status for violating the separation of church and state.

This makes me sick to my back teeth to think about the implications and the lack of forethought of the electorate.

No, it’s not a new movie. Mercury in retrograde just how my lesbian and radical faerie friends have described my life’s obstacles in how they’ve been whacked out and high in bullshit. I’m not sure how much stock I really want to take in these areas but it’s funny to think that planets made my brother, family, the DMV and other agencies total dick-faces to deal with.

I guess it’s ended as all sorts of things are now tied up and coming to an end. Various house and insurance stupidity has been vacuumed up and disposed of – from a bogus policy a crooked agent filed in my name on my house to my driveway being jack-hammered, broken up and carted away to make room for the pavers I’m going to put down. And my license being suspended for the last 14 weeks due to my brother’s absolute stupidity and callousness when it came to my driving record – I received my “all clear” letter, have an appointment with the DMV on Wednesday and I just sent my brother a bill for the $470 in costs to get a $28 license. If he’s not careful, I’ll make him go on Judge Judy or something to let the world see what a trashcan he really is.

And then there is this election of which I’m really hoping for the best. I’ve been watching the polls extend a 5 to 8 point gap between McCain and Obama and I think instead of a 6-pack of Guinness (drinking to forget each of the last 2 elections) this year, I’ll be popping the cork on some champagne.

I think most of all, I just need to breathe deep breaths and exhale and look back and laugh. Letting go is probably my hardest thing to do. “Well, that’s because you are a Leo,” they say.

Yes. The son (sun?) and the heir of nothing in particular.

Here we are now, at the bottom of the fresh hell my brother has unleashed – nearly 8 years in the making. A ‘disaster bomb’ if you will.

Because of my inability to remember the course of events back to the time when I fled Connecticut for the green grass of Missouri and Kansas and when I held what state license, my plea for logic in the case of my license being suspended and being on the national “DO NOT DRIVE” database, I am now forced to travel to Los Angeles on October 2nd to go to traffic school.

Traffic school for a crime I did not commit. A crime perpetrated on me by my brother that will go unpunished in the arms of the law, but will not go unpunished by the likes of myself. I paid $125 to ‘facilitate the paperwork’ in the Constitution State to only hit a brick wall and within days of submitting concrete proof I was not in the state I have no other alternative but to attend the class in Marina Del Ray.
A class which will run me $100 plus any fees to ‘facilitate the paperwork’ over to CT DMV to clear my name of any traffic violations they can NOT find on record as they only keep them for 3 years.

The mental anguish, physical toll, time wasted on phone calls and in line at the DMV, and the money spent are unlikely to ever be recuperated from my truculent and sorry excuse for a immediate blood relative.

Maybe it’s in the stars that not only my world be turned upside down, but in the government’s star charts as well (if you believe in that mumbo-jumbo) with our country’s economy on the brink of collapse from unregulated ‘yeee-haw’ capitalism. Seriously for a moment, if you vote for McCain – you’re no friend of mine.

All week I waited for Rancid to come to town only to have the show canceled/pushed back to December as Matt Freeman has hurt his arm and shoulder. Disappointed again, but no fault no foul, I hope he gets better.

In the meantime, I’m going to hold on to my sanity (and receipts) and mail them to my brother and family, with a nice note detailing what I’ve been through as they just don’t get it. The rotten cunt owes me over $200 and I’m going to get it back one way or another. Until then, my brother can suck a bag of dicks and I’ll wait for an apology from my family – but I won’t hold my fucking breath.

Otherwise, I’ll pretend I was adopted and forget they even existed.

Kudos to Frank – He made this hilarious send-up of the Shepard Fairey poster. See comments below, a link to Frank’s site and sorry for any confusion as I’m not responsible for this clever dig.

My weekend seemed to get off to a good start and having Monday off because some zombie guy died 2000 years ago and my day-job boss is feeling giving. I’m sending out 4 pieces of art on Tuesday and maybe a few extra packages for some friends. Those are the high points and it pretty much goes downhill from here.

I went out on Friday looking to socialize. Did so and came back to not find the friendly feral cat who sleeps on my front porch, which is strange. She’s always out here to greet me and follow me inside for love and food. It’s been over 48 hours now and it’s as if she’s totally disappeared without a trace. Nobody in the neighborhood has seen her or heard anything. She was there when I left. For little over a year now, she’s made my back yard a sanctuary to get away from the street and she waits at the door for food and petting almost like clockwork, 4 times a day. She made the first steps to become friendly with me and just this week she was cuddling with me. I now have little hope left for Patience (the cat) and this makes me incredibly sad. I’m fearing the worst.

To add insult to injury, as I sometimes do, I log into MySpace and add truncated bits of this blog over there to keep people aware of goings on and things I’m proud of with a direct link to what it pertains to in regards to my illustration work and events I attend. I originally joined up to keep in touch with college friends, but it’s morphed into a place to keep in touch with nearly anyone I’ve ever met, slept with, known through events, worked with, gone to school with, collaborated with, or just plain enjoy their company. A friend on there informs me that my blog link is “weird” that links to my post below so I investigate. Here’s what came up:

Now, I’m no spammer, phisher, or “head louse” but either somebody on MySpace is a prude and doesn’t like to read about events that are rather G-Rated or somebody in management at MySpace has a small penis tiny reptilian brain power abuse problem and is making up for his short comings by blocking random users from linking to stuff that may or may not be objectionable without reading any of the content. As you can tell there is nothing wrong with the post below and I don’t even think I used an expletive. They decided that I was to be censored over a rather tame posting where some of my other postings were decidedly left alone and much more, um, not for the faint of heart. I immediately filed a complaint with their help desk.

Surprisingly, I got a nice note from somebody who took time to read the posting and personally offer his dismay and explained to me the general workings of his office atmosphere and corporate bullshit since being bought by right-wing douche-bag, Rupert Murdock. I asked him to escalate the problem to a supervisor (side note: this tactic can be applied to everything you disagree with in life from your percentage on your credit cards to the lack-luster food at your favorite restaurant. 9 times out of 10, it works to get favorable results unless the person you are talking to is less intelligent than a potted fern. You just have to be good at arguing.) but he couldn’t promise me anything as these things usually go on unanswered and fall on deaf ears because everyone is too busy pulling knives out of their backs or feasting on some unfortunate person’s brain like a ravenous jackal. I think if I worked there I’d eat barbed wire to dull the pain.

In any case, I’m leaving MySpace posthaste by Friday the 28th. I’ve been on there for a good solid 4 year stint and informed my peeps of my happy move over to Facebook and to hand over their contact information for any further love and affection. Rupert and his gang of 4th level magic-users can suck hairy goat balls.

This afternoon, I channeled my negative energy onto the overgrown plant life, dirt and rocks. I cut, hacked, weed-whackered, buried, moved, overturned, pruned, killed, and maimed anything I was sick of looking at – much like I’d like to do to most Baracknids and the “reporters” at the Fluffington Post.

This is just what you need – another list of must have music, hot-or-not people, events that will always be remembered as a “2007 Event”, right? Or maybe some wistful, dreamy, dewy-eyed dream for the new year that is now upon us?

Fuck that noise.

I’m going to attempt to re-frame that annual idea as more of a high colonic for all the shit we’ve had to put up with from people I rather wish would just remove themselves from existence. I’ll attempt to vent frustration on some other things that the powers-that-be deemed newsworthy when they actually were not.

I don’t want to hear any more quotes from Paris Hilton, Larry the Cableguy, or any other Huxleyan Gamma Minus that the all too stupid press is hungry to pick up and make nonsense with which to amuse the abundant flock of average nattering numskulls with no ability for rational thought.

And speaking of the Epsilon class… Perez Hilton, please go away. Who died and left this hack access to copyrighted photos, rudimentary photo editing software to “doodle” upon said photos, and the self-inflated ego to comment and fabricate gossip about celebrities we could give two shits about? The man is a professional gay harpy and an amateur human being and if you link to him in your blog-roll, you’ve got problems too.

I can’t watch CNN any more. This year it seems they’ve gone all out trying to retain viewers instead of actual reporting. Glenn Beck? Are you shitting me? Why don’t you just film a cactus for an hour and put that on. At least then you’d get something out of it. I wish this station would close it’s doors. Lynn Russell, save us!

Hey, St. Liberace! Keep your nose out of the politics of a country who is moving forward with a logical progression in human rights. You are a religious leader, stick to what you know. The last time I read the news, gays and lesbians that got married in the few places where it is legal weren’t invading other countries, wrecking other married couple’s homes and taking lives. I think you guys did it best when you called it the Crusades.

So this year, the world finally gets global warming and the argument is over. Everyone and every business seems to be climbing on board to show how green they are and how they are effectively reducing their ‘carbon footprint.’ Fantastic, now where the hell are those hydrogen cars Bush talked about in 2002? If a Honda Civic can get 52 miles/gallon on the highway, don’t you think it’s about time the automotive industry got pulled by the short hairs into this reality we are all living in? I want to see a real drop in the dependency on oil and some actual, usable innovation come out of this industry. You got that, Ford? Ford? Somebody check on Ford because I’m not getting a pulse.

Everyone gets that the Republican Party is full of corrupt, duplicitous, greedy, hypocritical, war-mongering, faux religious, corporate shills who get away with whatever they want? Ok. Good. Moving on.

Everyone gets that the Democratic Party couldn’t fight it’s way out of a paper bag or organize a piss-up in a brewery, right? That includes you, Senator Feinstein and Harry Reid. A pox on your house for not standing with Christopher Dodd over the illegal wire tapping fight he and a mere handful of your party members took to filibuster and had it pulled, but will likely be resurrected when Congress reconvenes. And the pat answers written back to me as if spit out by robot? Lame. I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of lily-livered, overpaid jerks in all my life. You work for us.

No more girl jeans on guys! No more of that Growing Up Gotti hair on guys! (I call this style, The Mup. You’ve seen it. It looks like a dirty mop end and makes the guy look like an absolute muppet.) I’m sure that as soon as this 70′s revival fad passes, the great unwashed inevitably will come up with something abysmally worse. Remember the faux-hawk?

Morrissey. Oh, Morrissey! What the hell is wrong with you? Suing the NME over the comments you made in an interview? For the sake of all things sensible, you are the son of an Irish immigrant, you lived in Los Angeles and now live in Italy and you make xenophobic comments about immigration? This is staggeringly bizarre. Then you blame the guy who recorded the comments? It creeps me out that I have music in my collection that sounds more and more like a Tory MP with each gray hair.

No more reality television. Ever. And don’t talk to me about it like I might care. Go read a book!

During the writer strike, Keith Olbermann has been a welcome discovery this year. Keep up the good fight, Keith!

I have to try to scale back my ideas for things I’d like to do, like trying to learn Spanish, which I never started. Maybe I should set the bar low and try to be more social? Hmm… Maybe I should just learn Spanish.

Just a quick little design I did of the rabid evil ape.
Enjoy your 4th of July, where you remember how life was just 7 years ago.

Before you are huddled around your friends with a beer in your hand, enjoying what freedoms you have left as you are distracted by pretty fireworks, remember there are over 100 scandals that this administration have perpetrated against the American people and the world. You can read them in great detail here, where you need a list to keep track of them all.

Here are some of my favorite scandals that put the “mock” in democracy:

• Plamegate (during a war?)
• Commuting (with the possibly pardoning the patsy) Scooter Libby’s Prison Sentence
• Overseas, Secret Prisons Used For Torture
• Firing of US Attorneys Who Weren’t Lock-step with the Administration of Evil
• The Iraq War/ No WMDs
• Illegal Spying on American Public
• Ignoring Global Warming
• Hurricane Katrina
• Torture, Indefinite Detention, the End of Habeas Corpus, and Kangaroo Courts
• Dubai Port Deal
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
• Healthcare (see the movie Sicko!)
• The Terri Schiavo Morality Talent Show
• Abu Ghraib
• “Free-Speech Zones”

Don’t you wish Al Gore was president? Happy Independence Day!

It’s taken me days to chill out just a bit so I can form sentences that convey the amount of anger I feel towards those who are supposed to “protect and serve” this nation.

Why is it that when people put on a badge and a uniform, they become sadistic stormtroopers out for blood? I know some guys find uniforms a turn on, and I’d have to agree, but that stops dead at cops. I hate the police. I don’t trust them, I don’t like them, I don’t respect them.

And why should I? From personal experience in being pulled over by the police and attending political protests, at the first sign of trouble they reach for their weapons – and we all really know what that’s a penis substitute – I only carry the utmost contempt for these self-important bastards.

Common sense should tell a policeman that if he was getting rocks thrown at him, he would root out the problem people in the crowd, escort them off and let the march carry on in the peaceful manner it had maintained for it’s duration. Well, that wasn’t the case on May Day Immigration March where women, children, the elderly, food vendors, television reporters and radio reporters where fired upon with rubber bullets, beaten with batons, kicked, thrown to the ground, bruised, and bones broken. I’m just sickened by the footage, all caught on television camera, that is out there on the net and on my TV.

There’s going to be some sort of investigation into the use of violence against those who did absolutely nothing to get this sort of extreme treatment. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for those responsible to be punished and thrown off the force – after all we are talking about L.A. cops.

When I’m in Hollywood in June for the Toonfetish show, I’ll be sure to behave, as I don’t want to have my ribs cracked while I’m kissing asphalt for turning right on a red light.

Just when I can’t think of a worse way to be embarrassed to be American, some dumb group of dillholes make explaining anything to my overseas friends an impossibility.

These riot police should all wear big white numbers on the front and back of their uniforms so we can identify them later should problems arise. If I were the chief of police or the mayor of Los Angeles, I’d be demanding the resignation of some of the key people who decided thuggery in a mob scale was exceptable behavior for people voicing their right to free speech.

Of course, they’d just go off and join the ranks of the racist Minutemen. ‘Splain to me why they are even allowed to exist again?