Labor Days in the Life

Apparently the ‘Abstinence Only’ approach didn’t take here. My own mother was 18 and in high school when I was conceived, so I certainly have no judgement to make regarding teen pregnancy. However, I do think that the ‘Abstinence Only’ apprioach to sex education in Public Schools is a complete failure. There are reasons that ‘Abstinence Only’ programs have been failing, and this news only underscores the pointlessness of telling human beings to ‘just say no’ to their biological urges. Of course, this just raises more awkward questions about McCain’s VP pick, but there were already plenty of those. Expect to see an outpouring of compassionate understanding from people who just moments earlier were condemning women with out-of-wedlock pregnancies. It is amazing how these folks can turn on a dime. Orwell saw that the totalitarian mind must be flexible enough to praise what it just condemned and to believe the new truth as quickly as possible, and the American Right Wing excels at this process.

In other news, here are some links regarding the police oppression of free speech occuring at the RNC. Watch this video.
Read this.
Read this and look at the pictures of the FBI agents collaborating with local police.
Ask yourself what kind of country you live in when the police can surround your house with guns drawn and tell you that you have to stay inside until they get a warrant. Ask yourself why the government is infiltrating Vegans instead of the Phineas Priests or other Christian Identity movements that are actually doing violence to American citizens.

In other news, I lost a filling or chipped a molar or something and it’s driving me crazy. Since it’s Labor Day, I simply must endure it and will instead just complain to you about it. I finished several paintings this weekend and am very pleased with how they’ve turned out. More later.

And it’s later. A few years ago I started filling my sketchbook with designs for Tarot cards. I’ve been fascinated by the Tarot since I read Jung and what he had to say about archetypes (obviously, I was aware of them before but thought them no more relevant than an Ouija board). I don’t believe the cards or magic or anything like that, but rather that they are an excellent tool for introspection and self-analysis. I have an old friend who does readings, and he gave me a particularly excellent one several years ago that gave me a lot to think about. On one of my birthdays, Lara gave me one of my favorite presents ever; The World. She slipped the card into a book she had given me. The first painting I did for this series is ‘The World’. I have no idea how many years it will take me to finish an entire deck, but I am immensely satisfied with this one.