To the rotten cunt in her SUV on her cellphone who almost hit me today – I hope spiders lay eggs in your ears and your tits rot off. Swearing at me was your second mistake. I hope you arrive at whatever important place you were going, somebody points out that the snot glob I so amazingly landed in your salon perfect hair is indeed a loogy. You are a vile waste of skin, with your retardedly over-sized sunglasses, your frost pink lipgloss, and your talon-like acrylic nails. You make Paris Hilton look like a MENSA member! It really is no wonder that police find people like you in ditches with strangulation marks on your throat. Go get a virulent case of herpes. In your eyes. Where some fratboy SKULL-FUCKS you!

My dad was in a pretty horrific accident this weekend. Totally fucked up his leg. I mean, destroyed it. And of course, I’ve got to listen to all the stupid family shit that now comes with this tragedy, as they all think this accident is about them. The feuding and arguing, the blaming and fake crying, and the opportunistic power plays – they wonder why I left home at 17? Fuck, I hope my dad can make it through them, never mind the physical therapy. What a bag of assholes.

The thing with my family is you should never tell them anything, anything that will get used against you later on. This is why I don’t tell them about my artwork or what I’ve been up to and I keep this all a big secret. I used to think it was because they love to embarrass you over Thanksgiving turkey but it’s really about one-up-manship. Who can be better than the other one through a process of shame, but to what purpose? I don’t have the foggiest… I just wish they’d stop.

I figure, oh video games, you’ll make things better. Wrong. I’m playing Dragon Age: Origins, and I’m chatting up the would-be assassin and there are several options to say flirty things back to him and the next thing I know I’m being treated to a soft-porn montage of dwarf on elf homo-sex inside a tent! I’m not kidding. If you’re playing this, keep it up and you’ll be throwing elfin ankles up around your neck and sliding in between is ass cheeks, holding him from behind, and showering him with kisses! Now, as with all your characters who adventure with you can either get a positive or negative score – I just did +16 points of boingy boingy for dwaven/elvish relations. What’s weirder still, is that Wynne, the resident old female wizard, had a +1 to her like score of me after the dirty was done. What was she doing, spying outside the tent!? Not that I mind an audience, but, whatever…

I’m actually enjoying masturbation again, which I’m taking as a good sign. I just hope I can keep it to myself, so to speak.

Speaking of which, just fiddling with some ideas to make this site expandable and easy to update and it needs a fresh coat of paint. It’s the first major thing I’ve felt excited about in some time and this site is stale (over 5 years old), so that’s something. Some oooh-n-aaah flash stuff and well, we’ll see where it goes from here. I’m not going to do any new artwork for anybody for awhile as well. Sorry, that’s just how it’s going to be. I can’t be arsed.

And, I’m going to meet with a doctor on Friday and discuss seeing a shrink or somebody to talk me down off the proverbial ledge I’m on. During a conversation today, I thought I was going to either have an aneurysm or heart attack because of repeated amounts of stupidity, which was then compounded by my favorite phrase I love hearing “Tell us how you really feel!”  Not for nothing, if I’m expressing myself, don’t say that. Ever. It’s condescending, douchey, rude and I’m liable to make your face look like bloody hamburger, ok? As a side note, it’s probably not a good thing to mutter if you’re already walking on thin ice with me anyways.

Still not having sex. Halfway through masturbating, I give up. What’s the point if it’s hurting my arm? So, I roll over and look for the cool area of the sheets.

I hate this.

Knowing this one was rejected for the letter ‘K’ – makes me a bigger fan, if that was at all possible.

I’m getting my groceries for my week at work, clocking the college age (or older) hotties: workers, skaters, punks, etc. and occasionally somebody clocks me back. Hard. Really hard. Repeated glances. Again. Again. Again. Okay, I’m getting cruised.

Just like that old ska song by Symarip (changing she to he), there he was, swinging down the high streets, yeah, his hair cut short, boots set firm, I couldn’t believe my eyes, like a story out of a book. He was height, my weight, my size, he wore braces and blue jeans. Okay, no braces and blue jeans, but damn close, he had on big docs, Dickies shorts and was very SoCal skinhead.

Raised eyebrows and a smile in passing, then in the line turning around to catch my eye 3 times, leaving line with his Schlitz and turning around to say good-bye, then waiting outside for some reason to say hello to me and I just tell him ‘see ya round’. Lame. I know I’m on my ‘no sex’, year long challenge, but… but… grrr!

I get in my car and loop the parking lot, scrambling to pull out one of my cards with my number on it. Damn! No number on these? Argh! Grab a pen. Fuck! Purple and exploded – ALL OVER MY HAND! FUCK! Are you kidding me? Write. Wipe my hand. Oh no… he’s going behind the grocery store. Back around into the rear parking lot, parking… where did he go? I see him over by the dumpster, drinking his beer.

I march on over and say hello and hand him my card and he asks a question that takes me back.

“So are you a skinhead?”

I smile and tell him I used to be. Kind of a stretch now at this point, but I have a Fred Perry shirt on.

“What kind?”

There’s that nervous knot in my stomach that totally takes me back. Yep. Right back again. The sniffing out begins.

“I was a S.H.A.R.P.,” charm turned away up, smile, and he stops me dead as soon as I got the letter ‘P’ formed. Like car-wreck dead. I can still hear the screeching tires in my head. Over. And over. And over. Followed by the sound of the crumple zone and steam shooting out of the engine.

“I’m white power,” complete with Sieg Heil salute and then very aggressively defensive, “so why are handing me this card with your number on it?”

My face contorted, my eyebrows cocked, and a look of disgust. His back against the wall of the dumpster container and both of us sizing each other up – not for sex, but whether or not this is going to start to go badly. Ice in the pit of my stomach. Him looking the card over and then shooting daggers at me.

“You know what, just give me that card back.” Cooly taking it back, shaking my head and back into my car. What a waste of my time fraught with misdirection and ultimately some of the most uncomfortable bunch of bullshit I’ve been part of in some time.

For what it’s worth, I’ve made a bet with myself to remain celibate for the next year. This means nothing past 2nd base for me so I can get my priorities sorted. I don’t see it like some who might try to quit smoking, but more like a study in human nature as I don’t see myself as being addicted to the act, instead more like a science experiment complete with taking notes on what makes me a stronger person and what really nearly makes me break. I’m on week 7 of my sexy-strike of self-discovery. It will be blogged about.

I’ve had some interesting reactions to declining sex so far which range from “Yeah, right.” to “What? That’s bizarre and you’ve lost your damned mind.” to “If you change your mind, you have my phone number.” Even more curious are those that see this as a challenge to their own libidinous natures, ie. How can I get you to (show me your) crack? So far, I’ve not had to push anyone away physically, as we all know I tend to go a bit melty when certain somebodies makes me look at them right in the eyes and get all forcefully grabby and breathy, so if I wiggle away, look away or don’t make eye contact with you, don’t take it personally… or, perhaps, do? Thankfully, most of the enticing offers/challenges have come from the online community and have been much farther away than a 10 minute car ride. Some of you are quickly making it on a list of people I am not to be left alone with should two or more of you collude and gang up on me deciding to play “Let’s Tempt the Lusty Priest of Perv”. You will be ex-communicated if I should fall from grace and you will be labelled forevermore – Lucifer’s Slippery Bell-End. I’ve already nearly chewed the edge of my desk off twice like a Tex Avery cartoon, so stop sending me pictures of your beautifully sculpted pecker, pucker, or bedroom eyes. I don’t even want to see your feet. You are making this very, very, gulp, hard.

Don’t think I can do it? Well, I’ve already cut out television from my routine. The prohibitive AT&T U-Verse bill certainly nudged me out of my lame-brained habit of plopping down on the couch and watching shows I absolutely detest. I’m actually amazed at how much television I don’t watch now, outside of a NOVA special or something on PBS.

The main reason I want to push myself in this manner is to scientifically see if this has a bearing on my level of creativity. In this past year, and it’s not a lie or a boast, I’ve had a LOT of sex (most of it terrible!) and I’ve created absolutely ZERO new artwork or finished any pieces I’ve started. Horrifying. And if we follow out this mathematical sexual equation: the greater the amount of sex, the lesser amount of creativity and time devoted to being arty. And if the correlation is correct, then I can also do it with the news, politics, and the devil a lot of us know – Facebook. Which, if we extrapolate this puppy out, more time for cooking, yard work, etc. and incidentally, more money in my pocket.

Things that are excluded are masturbation by myself, kissing (oh! the gateway drug! …but I will allow it. Just don’t be upset if I throw you to the floor yelling, “Get out! Get out! Foul demon, get out!”), sexy chit-chat and sex toys.

Things that are included: Anything past 2nd base with another person in the room, touching under the clothing, engaging in any kinky horseplay (bondage, wearing rubber, getting into jlube fights, et. al.) with one or more people, and hanging out with another person with the purpose of doing the nasty. This means, do not grab my wang or thrust your hand down the back of my jeans to “poke the kitty”.

This means no ComiCon for me as it’s sensory overload. I can just see that if somebody clever enough, seductively loquacious enough, with the devil in their eyes decided to speak a few well-placed, sweet somethings in my ear or along the nape of my neck, I’d be a goner on my knees in your hotel room praising all that is holy before me or perhaps in less nicer, less clean facilities. And I don’t need any of you thinking it’s funny and ganging up on me there, chasing me through the convention center in some sort of psycho-sexual Night of the Living Dead yelling, “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!” because some of you geeks are way too hot and that’s playing with fire. I’ll stay home with my green tea and my ice cream, thank you very much. I’m deadly serious.

All that said, there are some key things I am setting as goals that I must accomplish in this long, dry year. The obvious one is doing artwork again. The second one is joining a gym and tearing up this slight frame to be reborn as something better, stronger, and something worth whistling at. I don’t want to ring in year 37 with a spare tire any more than I want to approach 40 (good grief!) farther down the hill than I anticipated. “The body is a temple”, or so they say. Third, I believe I have the mental fortitude and doing is proving.

See you around Memorial Day.

Sure, the song ‘Paper Planes’ captured imaginations rocketing her to fame with it’s sampling of The Clash as a backdrop for her voice over rap – but it only stands to testimony that some things are classics and can stand on their own. And as she borrows here from the great Joe Strummer and company, Maya wraps herself in conflict and strife of the Tamil Tigers, falsely claiming their struggle as her own, and embossed that into the minds of many with that facile, para-military, ginger holocaust styled video in which we were assaulted with on the internet for her song, Born Free.

My first inkling that M.I.A. wasn’t all she said she was came when I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher and he interviewed her asking her about the plight of her native land, to which she seemed to know less to nothing about the Sri Lankan civil war than I did.

Chris Matyszczyk, at Cnet.com, summed up my sentiments this morning, reinforcing my dislike of M.I.A. and Twitter simultaneously. Simply put, Maya Arulpragasam, is a flaming jackass! I pity anyone who bought into her shtick and purchased any of her music. Her persona is like an onion, the more you unravel the layers, the more you are brought to tears, only to then be used to make Revolution Canapé.

Now, why does this even matter to me?

A writing teacher in college once told me, “Don’t write or produce work from the point of view that you know nothing about. It will be your own undoing.” These are words to live by, as an artist. Another one might be, “Don’t shit where you eat.”

I’m the product of my working class family and my environment. Historically, I’m also the first person in the last 200 years (perhaps more) of my family to attend a college and complete my studies. I almost dropped out of college after my second year because I ran out of money, and only when I begged the school to find some need based scholarship funds was I allowed to continue my studies to get my Bachelor in Fine Arts degree of which I have remaining $12,000 in loans I pay at regular monthly intervals. I bust my ass in a graphic design/printing job that sees me as little more than a skilled hand to press buttons, just so my right-wingnut boss can live just off a golf course and make ludicrous payments on a lease for his Porsche to keep up appearances at the country club or on his Match.com dates. I come home and I’m so fucking tired, that what little time I have for myself on weekends is spent doing battle with weeds in my garden or going out looking for somebody to fist my brains out so I can forget it all for a night when I should be making artwork for appreciative clients – not the ones who run magazines who collect thousands of dollars from beer or porn company advertisements or run gay shops in trendy parts of town who can’t be bothered to dole out paltry sums of money to artists trying to make it in this world.

Ask me again why I’m upset and I will keep pointing at charlatans like M.I.A. and the people who like to play the fool.

Just drop me an email detailing how many cards or 13″x19″ prints you want and we’ll set up the PayPal connection to get you your new piece of art for a good cause.