NO.

It seems today is yet another fucking special ‘holiday’, “National Love Your Pet Day” which is unofficial, thankfully. This mania needs to bloody stop. A very small sample:

Baby Grace.

Doll & Jayne.

Barnaby Jones & Sullivan.

I have had pets all my life. There has never been one godsdamn day I have not loved them and cared for them. Much like my feelings for V.D., my answer to such fucking nonsense is NO. What is this but yet another way companies have to push insanely overpriced goodies and treats, and to guilt you for being a rotten pet owner if you aren’t spending a ton on junk for them? NO. If you need a day to remind you to play with your pet, dig around in the treat drawer, go for a walk with them, or whatever, then you should not have a bloody pet in the first place. All responsible owners love their animals, they mean the world, and they would do anything for them already.

Besides this being a greedy capitalist’s wet dream, this is also yet another burden on all those people who have lost their beloved, no matter what type of animal. Back when I kept koi, I about collapsed when I lost my beautiful Guin when he was yet a babe, I’d had him for 16 years. Whatever being it might be which captures a human heart, we already care. We don’t need yet another stupid manufactured day. This sort of “special day” thing needs to die. In a fire.

First Reaction: Bad Flash Update.

So sorry for the bad flash, between one zillion things to do today, serious medication, and cancerland in general, I’m lucky I remember how to use a camera. Not a good effort, but it’s too damn cold to wander outside in my robe.

First Reaction, © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

First Reaction, © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

Upper left corner, WTF Duck and Face, bound and gagged. Middle left, the remnant of pre-cancerous me. Lower left corner, the Welcome to Cancerland Mesmerowlbat. Upper right corner, the Cell Slug, she’s a good one. Lower right, Face – anxiety, fear. All bound in a cell matrix. The cancer cells are the red-purple ones. Markers on Bristol, 16″ x 20″.

Raising A Government For A Nonexistent God.

Capitol Ministries' February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Capitol Ministries’ February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has joined Ralph Drollinger in his quest to raise the Jehovah government, not just here, but globally. Granted, this effort will go much further here in Amerikka than elsewhere, which is bad enough. It seems the department of agriculture has now turned into a giant “hey, cough up money for gawd! We have to get this religious reich going!”

All the conservative christian lunatics are in on this, stumping away god and guns and every other evil.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and former Rep. Michele Bachmann were the featured speakers at a Tuesday evening fundraising dinner for Capitol Ministries, the group that sponsors weekly Bible studies for members of the House and Senate and President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Also offering testimony on behalf of this “special type of ministry” was Rep. Jeff Denham, whose relationship with the group goes back to his days in the California legislature. The show was emceed by Frank Sontag, a Los Angeles-based Christian radio host who voices the audio versions of the written Bible studies that Capitol Ministries publishes every week.

Hundreds of people packed an event tent at the massive World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, the heart of the state’s agriculture industry, to hear Perdue, Bachmann and Capitol Ministries’ founder and leader Ralph Drollinger. Tulare is a reliably Republican area of the state, now represented in the U.S. Congress by Rep. Devin Nunes, a local boy from a farm family. At the event, tables were sponsored by wealthy farming families and an array of agriculture-related businesses, along with Bank of America and local branches of Wells Fargo.

[…]

Some sponsors may be supporters of Capitol Ministries’ mission of encouraging public officials to embrace conservative Christianity. Some may have bought tables based on personal and professional connections to Capitol Ministries board member and event host Rob Hilarides, who heads a dairy operation in the area. Some may appreciate Drollinger’s teachings that “God is a capitalist” and that because of excessive environmental regulations in the U.S., “the economic benefits God intends from private property ownership have been greatly diminished.” And some may have given to express support for the Trump administration’s rollbacks of regulations governing their industry.

Perdue told Capitol Ministries’ sponsors that he is “the beneficiary” of their “investment,” saying he hoped the Capitol Ministries fundraiser would become an annual event. Perdue talked about how God had guided his life and career moves, from the time God told him to give up his veterinary practice and go into agribusiness to his election as Georgia’s first Republican governor. Like Bachmann, Perdue gave an altar-call-like pitch for people to give their lives to God.

[…]

Drollinger is on a mission to recruit public officials at all levels of government to his conservative version of Christianity and his particular fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Part of Drollinger’s pitch for his ministry is that Religious Right groups have spent too much time lobbying public officials to change laws. Capitol Ministries focuses instead on “the most influential component in the legislative process: the people who make the decisions and create the statutes.”

Drollinger says he doesn’t lobby, but he does instruct public officials that the Bible mandates adherence to right-wing policy positions on a wide range of issues, including environmental regulation, the death penalty, abortion, LGBTQ equality and more. He says it is the government’s job to quell evil and punish sin. He teaches that care for the poor is meant to be a job for the family and church, not the government, and that entitlement programs have no “biblical authority.” And he says that once “righteous” people hold positions of power in government, they should hire only other “righteous” people.

Drollinger’s efforts should wake everyone up, they are terrifying, and unfortunately, effective. He has a great deal of influence on capitol hill, and like most christian lunatics, his views are that the way things were in Medieval age are splendid, and we should go right back there. He has no use whatsoever for christians who go all Jesus, or think things like compassion and care have a place in life:

Drollinger is not particularly open to other interpretations of scripture. He has called Roman Catholicism “one of the primary false religions in the world.” He has written that liberal Christians are “simpletons.” In a September 2017 Bible study, he wrote that the Social Gospel, a major strain of American Christianity in the 20th century, is a “perversion” or “corruption” of biblical teaching, and “not Christianity whatsoever.” As for Christians in Congress who do not share his conservative theology and right-wing politics, Drollinger wrote, “I believe the biggest deception on the Hill today is this: the religion of the Social Gospel proffers itself as being ‘Christian’ when it isn’t even close to being biblical.”

Last July, Drollinger warned public officials, “Do not be deceived by syncretistic ‘prayer breakfasts’: God only hears the prayers of leaders and citizens who are upright, who live righteously through faith in Jesus Christ.”

This is a man who is fully in favour of an inquisitorial government, in spite of his hate for the catholic church. He’s very much an inquisition and crusades kind of guy. The article at RWW is in-depth and link heavy, lots of important reading there. If liberal/moderate christians find such efforts to be repulsive, you have to stop being milquetoasts on the sideline, shaking your heads. You need to stand the fuck up, and put this effort down. Time to roar. Naturally, all us godless/religionless folk need to roar our faces off, too. This all starts with awareness, so go read, become aware, and start yelling.

The full article is at RWW.

Money Shot. (NSFW)

Judith Bernstein, “Money Shot – Blue Balls” (2017), acrylic and oil on canvas, 104 x 90 1/2 inches.

Judith Bernstein, “Money Shot – Blue Balls” (2017), acrylic and oil on canvas, 104 x 90 1/2 inches.

Judith Bernstein, “President” (2017), acrylic and oil on canvas, 90 x 89 1/2 inches (all images courtesy the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery).

Judith Bernstein, “President” (2017), acrylic and oil on canvas, 90 x 89 1/2 inches (all images courtesy the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery).

Judith Bernstein, who is finally getting the attention she should have had all along (only took until she was 72), has a new show, Money Shot, and it is a scathing indictment of our current state of regime.

In Money Shot, Schlongface is an omnipresent demagogue. The character (similar to Cockman, who debuted in Bernstein’s works of the 1960s) has a cock and balls for a face. Schlongface is meant to represent Trump, but the figure can be spliced into innumerable moments of history. He is the pathetic villain, the dictator whose rampant destruction betrays both his predilection for rape and impotence.

What hits you on the nose feels like a kick to the crotch. The seriousness of these political and psychosexual implications, told through tongue-in-cheek (or cock-and-nose) wordplay and humor, are important themes in Bernstein’s work. In her impactful scale, enraged mark-making, and caricature, there is never an either/or. There are only contradictory couplings. Laugh. But fear.

[…]

In “President” (2017), Schlongface seems to merge with a foreshortened female figure whose legs are spread-eagle in the foreground. The figure’s crotch is stamped with the US Presidential Seal – with an asshole like a target beneath it. The political and psychosexual dynamic of Bernstein’s work turns on the complexities derived by the receiver.

Judith Bernstein: Money Shot continues at Paul Kasmin Gallery (293 Tenth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan) through March 3. You can see, and read much more at Hyperallergic.

Mother’s Nightmare.

Kate Kretz, “Cri de Cœur (Heart Cry)” (2018, after a detail of “Scène du Déluge,” 1827, by Joseph-Désiré Court), graphite on paper, 14 x 11 inches (courtesy of the artist).

Kate Kretz, “Cri de Cœur (Heart Cry)” (2018, after a detail of “Scène du Déluge,” 1827, by Joseph-Désiré Court), graphite on paper, 14 x 11 inches (courtesy of the artist).

While I understand poetic license, I’ll just add this is a father’s nightmare, too. That said, powerful artwork and poetry from Kate Kretz…

Here
the bitter dusty old men
dream
of the battle they shoulda won at Gettysburg
or finally
showing Daddy they could be a man
(in the street at High Noon)

Here
the young ones (who can’t get laid)
are
momentarily
Duke Nukem from Bulletstorm Full Clip
(in overkill mode, for extra points)
Finally scoring.

Here
another walking-anger-management-issue
finds a people-killing machine
(no problem)
It fires
fast and hard
a jolt
to finally feel something
Make their mark.

Here
mothers
must forever wade in the nightmares that
their children
might be the next collateral damage
in
yet another lost man’s
fantasy
of self-actualization

Via Hyperallergic.