it ain’t trickin if you got it

BREAKING NEWS: McCain picks young woman from from sub-arctic wasteland as running mate.

deep thought

Strange to see someone you had a class with two years ago writing for the Village Voice newsblog.

and the earth also continues to revolve around the sun

Just seen on a Fox News story about the “Democrat (sic) veep flavor of the hour”:

This, of course, after this.

w. douglas richards

“Master of satire.” -W. Douglas Richards

Ever been to a CIA prison, Billy?

i think we lost him

So Cox Media sells off most of its newspapers. The AJC, one of three newspapers retained by Cox, announces an 8 per cent workforce reduction and cans most of its well-known scribes, with the notable exception of two-time Pulitzer winner Mike Luckovich, officially making him The Only Thing Worth Reading In The AJC.

One of the other remaining Cox papers is the Palm Beach Post, whose editorial cartoonist, Don Wright, had also won two Pulitzers. I say “had,” of course, because this week Wright was bought out in the Post’s own round of staff cuts. Wright’s artwork shows him to be a member of the Jeff MacNelly school of political cartooning, a visual style which dominated newspaper cartoons from the 70s through roughly the mid-90s. Generally speaking, the visual complexity of such cartoons suggests a time period when editorial cartoons weren’t crammed into the “Laugh Lines” section next to Letterman’s Top 10 list. Too bad the Post and the AJC didn’t reach the same conclusions about the arrangement of their respective deck chairs on their respective sinking ships.

and if you ain’t down you’ll get played out, son

Adam’s dealing with trouble in paradise… plus he’s having problems with his English class!

It’s not just that the students don’t have respect for their English teachers. They goof around and don’t do any work in their other classes just like they do in ours, but the difference in those classes is that the teachers either aren’t bothered or just decide to let it go. Kids are rewarded with good grades whether they deserve them or not. I mean, I’ve got kids failing my class (because their performance warrants it), and the officials at the school are telling our English Program Director that we can’t give kids grades like that because they might quit.

[zing] Since when did UGA open up a campus in Ecuador? [/zing]

TAKE MY SON PLEASE

Job listing posted yesterday on Athens Craigslist:

LOOKING FOR AN EXPERIENCED TUTOR TO TAKE MY SON IN ANY OF THE SUBJECT BELOW…

MATHS
ENGLISH
FRENCH
SPANISH
GERMAN
ITALY
CHINESE
BIOLOGY
SINGING AND DANCING
TAE KWON DO
MARKETING
SCIENCE
COMPUTER SCIENCE

APPLY WITHIN IF CAPABLE TO TUTOR ANY OF THE ABOVE SUBJECTS…Please reply me to smithken70@gmail.com thanks

Singing, dancing, math, computer science, marketing, Italy… I think that a large percentage of people who want children actually want something more like a dancing bear that does other tricks too.

Update! A cursory Google search reveals that this same ad is appearing in multiple cities. If escalating tensions between scam artists and Web moderators are any indication, it’s time for the press to ask Obama what he’s going to do about the shadowy production of Nigerian yellowcake spam.

now with 100 percent more human rights violations

Lest we forget our prime directive, let’s look at the wide range of opinions editorial cartoonists have given us on the Olympics. A cursory glance at Cagle reveals the following:

Crowson, The Wichita Eagle, 8-3-08

Chan Lowe, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 7-30-08

Turner, 8-08

Rice, 8-08

Bill Day, Commercial Appeal, 8-08

Nease, 8-08

Steve Greenberg, Ventury County Star, 8-08

Stephane Peray, 8-08

Dan Wasserman, Boston Globe, 7-08

Olle Johansson, 8-08

Give a cartoonist a universally recognizable logo attached to a well-known controversy, and without fail he will give you the above. The first four cartoonists go with the gas mask. We can surmise that the Chinamen don’t deserve the Olympics because they didn’t clean their yellow planet’s atmosphere of poison gas, or something. And nobody wants to see Bob Costas doing play-by-play for Amazonian beach volleyball players choking on poison gas. Besides, you can find that stuff on the Internet for free.

Bill Day goes with the slightly more universal skull-rings motif. The repetition of the skull indicates that it serves as a visual stand-in for death at the hands of the depersonalized, commodified post-industrial capitalist order. His image, then, evokes a sense of moral equivalence between the Olympics and the branded commodity — in this case, a bucket of bony, white-meat chicken. Day is clearly decrying the ubiquity of KFC franchises in Beijing, but he leaves unclear the question of whether or not such a moralistic response is an appropriate mechanism for dealing with the imposition of a neoliberal global order. Perhaps it will become clearer when the Chinese win pole-vaulting.

Following that, we see the repeated use of the Chinese factory blowing out smoke rings. One can clearly see the thought process at work: “Olympics! Rings! Pollution! Smoke! Smoke Rings!” The cartoonists condemn the Chinese for their use of the latest in pollution technology. The Chinese, an especially tricky people, cannot be trusted to rape the Earth as gently and tenderly as Americans can.

And lastly, we see Olle Johansson doing something particularly thoughtful — reminding the reader that somewhere towelheads are plotting to kill you, so enjoy the poison gas Olympics, but be eternally vigilant. At least somebody comes out with a positive message.

grab bag o fun

-It would be remiss of me not to recall the name of my own blog. This is supposed to be a cartoon blog, and I haven’t posted a cartoon (or any other thing I’ve drawn) in months! The horror! Since returning from DC in April, much of my time has been spent transitioning into “art student” mode. I have just finished the first semester of the UGA art school’s foundations classes, i.e. drawing, composition and art history. At the outset I was worried that all the time I spent in cartoon mode had somehow robbed me of any latent ability to represent things as they actually, well, look. Judging from the meager, two-month sample size, this doesn’t appear to be the case. I will post a select few examples of what I’ve produced in these classes once I get the photos up (most are too big to scan).

-The semester has, in certain ways for me, been a months-long rationalization of what could be interpreted as a decision on my part to delay “real life.” I have come to the conclusion that the most useful thing a 22-year-old in my position could do in a recession would be to improve skills for a future potential economic upswing while at the same time becoming relatively self-sufficient. I’m using that as my narrative from now on.

- I’m currently working on a character that I haven’t spent much time on until now. You’ll see the results of that soon, too, hopefully.

- My image-hosting site has decided to change names, once again rendering all the embedded images in this blog dead. I will dig through my memory banks and correct everything in the next few days. Fixed.

- I have added to the “Luminaries” category the Web site of Joshua Bienko. Wish him well at Texas A&M.

you a fake maya angelou, stunt get a job

Most of my admittedly few posts of late have dealt with the blind, Obama-worshipping hackery that has lately characterized The Progressive Netroots Nation. But Hillary Clinton’s undead supporters show me that self-delusion knows no race or gender.

Some Democratic activists are moving ahead with plans to finish gathering delegate signatures for a nominating petition for Clinton. Will Bower, co-founder of the pro-Clinton group PUMA (“Party Unity My Ass”), said the organization has 200 of the 300 delegate signatures necessary to qualify Clinton for the ballot. Party rules stipulate that Clinton would have to sign off on her own nomination.

Bower said the Daily News report was an attempt by the media to quash the petition drive. “It’s not true. She wants her name to be placed in nomination but she can’t actively ask for delegates to do it because she has suspended her campaign and that would be campaigning. But we can make sure the petition is in place for her to sign if and when she needs to or wants to at the convention,” he said.

Bower also said PUMA is holding a closed conference Aug. 8-10 in Washington during which activists will meet to coordinate their strategy for the Democratic National Convention and also to try to secure the final 100 signatures necessary to get Clinton nominated.

This reminds me a lot of a heartbroken young lover monitoring his ex’s facebook page. “Her status says she ‘hopes tonight goes well!’ That must mean… that means she’s going to come over and apologize! She knows how I feel about her, but she’s just trying to figure out how to tell me that she feels the same way. I know that’s what it is, I just know it!”

Really, though, she’s about to go fuck your friend. And then sleep in your favorite t-shirt afterward. Oh. Snap.