Maybe I Was, and Maybe I Wasn't

Folks,

I'm all for believing. In anything. Anything at all. As long as the central part of your belief is that you have taken a good look at yourself and a good look at your surroundings, and said, "I don't think I can go on if this is all there is."

And that's why you have to believe. You have to believe that your current self and the powers you wield are insufficient to produce anything significant. So you believe in something that will. You can't just know it will. That's within your reason, within your capacity. You have to believe it will, you have to hope that what is entirely beyond you and your understanding will turn out right. And the only way to have that hope is to humble yourself. That's why I'm all for believing. Humiliation.

But there are just some things that I cannot believe or accept are worthy of belief.

Here they are:

Number One:  Mako Sharks can never hold electoral office. I can't believe it. My hopes can simply not reside in the idea that an animal so instinctually ruthless and aggressive could ever be elected by literate, adult citizens.

Number Two: Saying that you are going take me out for pancakes one morning is NOT THE SAME as taking a person out for pancakes one morning. It's not. I can't believe that. I can't believe that these lies and falsehoods that certain people propagate equate to the physical manifestation of that claim. Furthermore, I still have no pancakes.

And Number Three: I refuse to believe that the thing of importance is what you look like

when you're doing what you're doing. Instead,

it is what you are doing when you're doing what you look like you're doing!

EXPRESS YOURSELF

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I think the entirety of what I have learned in college can be summed up in the words of Express Yourself by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Rhythm Street Band.

Bob Ross vs Justin

My friend decided to experience the Joy of Painting with a video of a Bob Ross that had been modified into a drinking game entitled the Joy of Drinking,  we just wanted the video part, and my entry-level Best-Buy tablet.

Let's see how he did!

First, Bob Ross created this in about 28 minutes.

And didn't even break a sweat...

Justin made this in about 20 minutes and spent the last 8 minutes staring in amazement at Bob Ross's ability to make rocks and bushes appear out of nothing.

Joyful of Painting!

Not the Best

I like the little butt-chin blob thing. It really went downhill from there and I just kept digging it deeper.
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Something I learned from the Enchiridion, in case you haven't read it yet:

The things you can control are opinion, pursuit, desire, and aversion!

Basically, I can't control the functions that produced this drawing. It's beyond my control. The only thing I can control is my expectations and reactions to it!

And when I look at this picture,

I see someone who isn't afraid to lay his cards on the table. Even if, instead of cards, he just has a pile of ham-cubes in his hands.

I see a guy who went on a run today and with about two miles left, he really needed a pit stop! He had to release some intestinal pressure. But he struggled, and clenched, and ran stooped over like a 90 year old man until he made it to the end of the run!

He's got heart, is what I'm saying. And, you know, you only get compliments like that when what you're doing doesn't look pretty but you're dealing with it anyway. And that's noble.

That Blob-man and that Platypus Zeppelin, they've had enough of the Scratchy Line city. They're on a journey to the untamed wilderness. The land of the Exploding Geysers and the Clocks that don't make sense.

They're moving right. That's the important thing. Because on a standard graph or number line, the positive numbers move in the right direction. And they're moving to the right. It's math.

This...this is one of those drawings where--when Internet archaeologists discover it in the Blogger Ruins thousands of years from now, they're going to recreate our entire culture with the clues embedded in this sketch. They're gonna know that we knew how great number lines are. They're gonna know about our struggles with urbanization and our yearning for concentric semi-circles in the sky.
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Make the kind of thoughts your Brain didn't know it would have to make.

The Enchiridion

It's a real thing!

from the Adventure Time Wiki

It's pretty good, too.

http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

Flier Time is Here Once More

Some potential fliers I made today for Second City.

Which one would you rather see?

Suggestions? (in regards to the giant building-robot emerging from the inferno of wrath?)

Topical, Coherent, and Organized

You can't tell but this man is wearing a dress.

I really just enjoy drawing faces you guys. Bodies and limbs and fingers and toes are weird and frustrating.

I've made small improvements but I've never said, "Oh, how about I examine the beauty of the human figure today?"

No. It's always, "I'mma just draw a weird face with googly eyes." That's what makes me happy.

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Do what makes you happy. Unlike Orson Trucks. He looks sad. Probably because he is wearing a dress.

Unless what truly makes him happy is looking glum in a ball gown.

Yeah, you're gonna be alright, Mr. Trucks.

Wax and Abundance

I'd like to take a moment and try to appreciate all the time in this new year that will be spent doing absolutely nothing.

I think that when you let your mind wander it does what cats do.

And by that I mean it goes under the bridge by the train station and gets knocked up by one of the many cats there and a few months later plops out a problem you'll have to get rid of which is so correctly named a "litter."

But in brain terms it's a whole lot cooler:

The brain goes off into some ethereal plain where other wandering brains hang out and they bump ideas with each other and later you get the idea that you could build a state underneath Kansas and call it NetherKansas. It would start off as a hole in the ground but then that would turn into a hovel, and then that would turn into a home, and then you invite some of your buddies over and boast about the excellent insulting properties of earth. Pretty soon they're moving in and adding their own chambers and they tell their cool family members about it and before you know it you've got a little neighborhood assembled. At some point, being the progressive-minded mole-people that you pride yourselves on being, you're going to reconfigure the famous John Winthrop's 'City on a Hill' and those philosophical underpinnings are going to provide the momentum for a bustling and Utopian metropolis. It's all so simple.

And you after you think that you'll be like, "Where'd that idea come from?"

Got your brain knocked up on a higher plane from doing nothing.