Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Oh, the roiling turmoil, the ducking, the dodging, the calls for resignation, yada, yada, yada. Lots of headlines over Sessions right now. He lied. He committed perjury. Surely, I can’t be the only person not in the least bit surprised. What would surprise me is if any of the current cabinet didn’t lie during confirmation hearings. So, all the headlines:
Sessions lied to Congress about his contacts with Russia during the Trump campaign. Here’s the tape.
Jeff Sessions said that people who commit perjury must be removed from office.
Jeff Sessions’ shifting, deceptive explanations for his secret meetings with Russia.
48 Congressional Democrats call on Attorney General to resign.
US Attorney General Sessions says to recuse himself when ‘appropriate’.
Just one question, and this goes for every person, not just Sessions – why in the fuck were these people ever confirmed in the first place? It would have been nice if all the democrats had been busy doing their damn job then.
Pastor Greg Locke.
Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke is well known for his spittle-flecked invectives over most everything, but mostly over…women. Everyone knows everything is the fault of women, right? One woman made a donation to Planned Parenthood in Mr. Locke’s name, and he had a meltdown over it. He really, really doesn’t want anyone to ever do this again, so…
In the video below, he howls about the fact this thank you card was sent to him and wants to make it crystal clear that he doesn’t in anyway support women’s health care at Planned Parenthood. He warned that such donations in his name are a waste of time and he’ll deposit any thank you cards in the trash. So, whatever you do, don’t waste your time donating to the Planned Parenthood clinic closest to Greg Locke’s church—Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee—and don’t waste your time making sure a thank you card gets mailed to him at:
Greg Locke
c/o Global Vision Bible Church
2060 Old Lebanon Dirt Rd
Mt Juliet, TN 37122
Via Daily Kos.
Everything Anywhere.
A steel blindfold covers the head of a human female figure, yet, unlike Lady Justice, her arms and legs too are bound. Fiber, in an interlocking braid, ties her wrists, wraps her neck and belly, and snakes down to hitch her legs at the ankles. Over her shoulder, however, her hands clutch the means to freedom from her bondage: a soft white blade digs beneath the rope around her neck. Salvation via ceramics.
Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger was born on the Standing Rock Reservation. He is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian heritage. A graduate with honors from The Institute of American Indian Arts, in 2016 he was the recipient of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artists Fellowship Award for artists who “represent the cultural continuity of Native peoples in contemporary contexts, and are the creative voices of their communities.” His work in sculpture is figurative yet imaginative, assembling a panoply of cultural symbols—feathers, bones, textiles—into signifiers all his own. More mythopoeic than surreal, it frames him as a medium, a psychic intermediary between colonizer and Native, ancient tradition and modern understanding, soft clay and hard ceramics.
Nature.
The Creators Project has an interview with Cannupa Hanska Luger, you can see and read much more!
In the Spring of 2014, after spending a decade working on her photography book, The Oldest Living Things in the World, artist Rachel Sussman came across an image circulating on the internet: a broken bowl that had been restored using gold dust and glue. The bowl was the product of a traditional Japanese art practice called kintsukuroi, which translates to ‘golden repair’ and involves fixing broken pottery with lacquer that’s been mixed or dusted with powdered color pigment. After she was introduced to the technique, Sussman had the idea to take this practice to the streets—literally—by using it to repair cracks in sidewalks. This concept ultimately went on to become the basis of her ongoing series, Sidewalk Kintsukuroi, a contemporary take on the traditional Japanese practice.
You can read and see much more at The Creators Project.
Joe Hisaishi, the composer who put music to nearly all of Hayao Miyazaki‘s 11 feature films, once remarked in an interview that, “Many of his works have flying scenes and flying has always been the dream of human beings.” In fact, few artists have so successfully captured how the imagination defies gravity than the My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke director. A new film essay by Zach Prewitt gathers some of the 76-year-old director and producer’s finest flights of fancy into a rejuvenating three-minute video.
Miyazaki, who recently announced he was coming out of retirement (again!), explains the paradox of his love for military airplanes and his hatred of war in the video below. While little is known about the narrative of his upcoming film, currently titled Boro the Caterpillar, an ending in which the protagonist transforms into a butterfly and attains flight would align with Miyazaki’s fascination with airships, fantastical insect-winged aircraft, flying castles, and early 20th century aircraft. All of the above and more stretch their wings and take to the skies in Prewitt’s Fandor-produced video.
Via The Creators Project.
A Yellow-hooded Blackbird, from “The”. Beautiful! Here, to get shots of Yellow-headed blackbirds, you need to get into the very thick rushes by water, generally at the height of tick season. That would be why it’s a rarity for me to get such shots. Click for full size.
© “The”, all rights reserved.
The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) is a U.S.-based white supremacist group that was founded in 1985 as a spinoff of the White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s that fought school desegregation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group’s mission states an opposition to “all efforts to mix the races of mankind,” and was described by the Atlantic as the “largest white-supremacist group in the nation.” The group has also been active in Canada and was cited in Dylann Roof’s manifesto, the white supremacist behind the 2015 Charleston church massacre.
This week, one of the buildings at Concordia that was targeted by the bomb threat is scheduled to hold an Islamic Awareness Week between Monday and Thursday.
The email from the Council of Conservative Citizens of Canada included threats to “detonate once per day, a small artisanal amateur explosive devices,” targeting two floors of the Hall building and one floor of the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts building, both of which were evacuated on Wednesday morning.
The specific locations were described in the email as “where Muslims hang out,” and the sender clarified that the bombs are “not meant to kill anybody. The only aim is to injure some Muslim students.” According to Global News, the email demands a halt of “religious activities of all kinds on campus.”
Full story here. I don’t have anything. At all. Just an enormous headache and desire to go to another universe entirely.
Tattered. Mixed Media, 36″ x 36″. © C. Ford.
Lousy photo, but it’s snowing outside, so a bad indoor shot.
President Donald Trump, right, meets with leaders of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.
Too much stupid. Too much open hate. Too much bigotry. Too Much. DeVos, the secretary of education…yeah, just go read. Oh, and what are people upset about? That Kelly Whatsherface had her feetsies on a white house couch! Oh Fuckin’ My. I could not possibly express my scorn for this country and the people in it.
Following President Trump’s meeting with leaders of Historically Black Colleges and Universities on Monday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos released a statement applauding the schools as “real pioneers when it comes to school choice.”
“They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality,” she continued. “Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.”
[…]
One HBCU president who met with Trump and DeVos on Monday was frustrated with how things went.
In a blog post, Walter Kimbrough, president of Dillard University in New Orleans, wrote that plans for the day “blew up” after the HBCU leaders were taken to the Oval Office to meet with Trump.
The whole fucking mess is here.
There’s nothing quite as nice as a new, blank canvas. To work!
Oprah Winfrey. Shutterstock.
One of the world’s most powerful billionaires, Oprah Winfrey, said in a recent interview that she is considering a run for the White House especially after President Donald Trump’s victory in the November 2016 election. Winfrey would be the nation’s first black woman president and first woman president if she won.
Winfrey, 63, spoke with financier David Rubenstein in December in an episode of Bloomberg’s “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations,” that premiered Wednesday. When Rubenstein asked the legendary TV host about whether she’d run for president Winfrey said, “I actually never thought that was — I never considered the question, even a possibility, I just thought ‘Oh, oh.’” Rubenstein responded, “Right, because it’s clear that you don’t need government experience to be elected president of the United States, right?”
NO. FUCK NO. THIS HAS TO STOP.
Allowing no experience whatsoever people, regardless of their celeb status to think they are somehow magically fucking qualified to be president. Can we get some godsdamn standards up in here? Please? Also, 63 years old. In four years, 67 years old. I have nothing against that age, I’m close enough myself at 59, but hey, here’s a radical fucking idea: how about if someone actually qualified and at least 20 years younger steps up and runs? Also, how about someone who isn’t a fucking billionaire? Y’know, someone who at least knows what reality is, and doesn’t have billions of cushions against it.
The PRESIDENCY is not supposed to be a popularity contest (I know, I know), nor is it supposed to be a hobby for celebs. Jesus.
I’m going to go paint, before I fucking explode in an overarching blend of outrage and frustration with the utter idiocy that is the united states of stupidity.
Via Raw Story.
Joint Chiefs of Staff attend President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress (Fox News/Twitter/@WhileInTheWild).
Former NSA analyst and columnist John Schindler reacted in horror on Tuesday after seeing Trump “exploit” Carryn Owens, the wife of slain Chief Petty Officer William (Ryan) Owens.
Mr. Schindler had a great deal to say about it on Twitter.
.@mdfsmith1 @Christi64297529 she was trapped. Literally. Terrible abuse of a grieving widow. She didn't want to stand up. We know why.
— John Schindler (@20committee) March 1, 2017
So "the generals" got S/Chief Owens killed, but let's spotlight his widow on live TV.
Has Stockholm Syndrome overtaken the whole country?
— John Schindler (@20committee) March 1, 2017
Has Stockholm Syndrome overtaken the whole country? That’s an excellent question. I’m starting to think so, because every day I fail to understand why people refuse to wake the fuck up.
You can see all the tweets here.