tangential ranting after a long tangential night

i happened upon Dave as he was watching the news this morning. at first, they were talking about the demographics of some pseudo-scientific abortion-opinion polls; apparently they hadn't already noticed catholics are generally more liberal than protestants. then they were talking about China's advances in human cloning and stem cell research. as usually, they capped the story by pointing out that people who don't like that sort of thing say that that sort of thing is immoral (i'm always amazed at how redundant the vast majority of 'communication' actually is).
thinking about this, i realized that there was a wierd pattern in evidence here. abortion is the ending of fetal life, stem cell research is the perpetuation of fetal life; they're opposites, but what do they have in common? the same people say no one should be allowed to do either of them.
i'm really tired of people saying no one should be allowed to do things. if they'd offer a better solution to the problems we have, no one would do these things they don't like, as there would be no reason to. instead, they just forbid things and assume people will get along without. bullshit.
a great example: abortions happen. legal, illegal, whatever. they happen. should they happen in hospitals or alleys? that's what the abortion debate is really about. anyone who thinks it's a good idea to promote backalley abortions is stupid and cruel, whether or not they look it or know it.
if you're pro-life and offended by having how stupid and cruel you're acting pointed out, i'm glad.

Tip for the Day

Never shave on acid; never cough when you're cleaning your ears.

summer!

hurray! it's summer and i survived the semester again. still got a pyshc exam at 9 sat. morning, i assume because UT hates me and the rest of the students, but stupid fucking school's fucking over.
yeah.

i'm not doing anything at all today

'coz i don't have too. nyaah.

must be weird to be an art prof

so i stopped painting at 5 this morning so that i could drive my painting back to school and not paint on it. had to have a little individual critique, a bit of a sit-and-chat if you will, with the stupid prof. he asked what my plans are for the summer, and the fall and after school and crap. i almost asked why he cared. instead i told him about driving tractors. it was like talking to a highschool guidance counselor. he was asking me what i was going to do after i graduated.
him: so if you could be anything, what would it be? (i'm not kidding, he asked this!)
me: anything?
him: yeah, anything. not necessarily art-related, just anything.
me: some kind of fictional character. ideally.

i have a tradition of not sleeping before critiques.

monkeyfaces

they're finished. everything's finished except the table and the feet.. which means the table, the knives, the cloth, the feet and the cart, but whatever. it's one more night's work, basically.
here's my monkeys. sorry about the glare, stupid oil paintings.

sorry, my mind-reading's a little dyslexic

ah, sleep. takes up alot of time i could otherwise be painting, but it sure feels nice, and sanity-inducing.
i dunno if i'm going to finish this thing completely before class on tuesday (for which i should ostensibly take the thing back to school) but having it done for thursday when it's due shouldn't be a problem.
the monkeyfaces are done. i need to paint everything else much faster than i painted them, but they were really hard, so maybe that won't be a problem.

....was there a point to this post? i don't remember.

the detriment of education

i'm painting the monkeyface on the big mushroom. i just finished the eyes. they're done, i'm not touching them any more, damnit. anyway, i was sitting there pondering their doneness when i realized i should have painted the mushroom cap and the monkeyface at the same time, using the colors on the cap on the monkey's eyelids and shit where the monkeyskin shows through the monkeyfur.
seems pretty obvious, right? not when you're more worried about exactly what shade of weird purplish-gray that is above the black, and the fact that that purplish-gray is monkeyskin showing through monkeyfur and that black is an eyeball is the last thing on your mind.
after all, why worry about how you could tweak your stupid collage into a really badass, cohesive piece of work when the real objective is to mix colors really accurately?

life is difficult

i was just pondering this again: people never get a break. suicide's a perfect example. most people spend their whole lives trying to avoid getting killed, and everyone fucks it up in the end. but try to have a little control over it? try to pick a specific time and method? it astonishing how hard people discover getting themselves to die can be, apparently. i know, i know, everyone says it's because they didn't really want to die, the plea for help and all, but the guy who shoots himself in the face and misses all the really vital parts of the brain isn't pleaing for help. especially when he jumps out the hospital window as soon as he wakes up.
people poison themselves and learn how hard it can be not to puke. people jump off stuff and discover you can live with every bone in your body broken. people do all kinds of horrible stuff to themselves, and instead of just dying like they intend to, they just end up with brain damage or something else that'll make it even trickier next time they try.
so the point to all this is, maybe we're just going about stuff entirely in the wrong way? i dunno. makes for a post in wonderfully poor taste, though.