Been awhile since I asked. How ya been? How's things?

My main monitor died and I'm gonna have to get a new one. No way around it. My secondary is a tiny, 20yo POS sustained only by some kind of magical necromantic fuckery so that's not an option. Right now I'm struggling with analysis paralysis.

AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Aight, so, I was going to migrate splash pages and spot-illustrations off to BlueSky because I feel like dumping 10, 20, or more illustrations in one page might be overwhelming and it undercuts the work I put into them. Quite a few people expressed disappointment at this because they don't have and/or don't want a BlueSky for various reasons and ya know what? Fair enough. Additionally, a few people made a good point that it can be frustrating having to follow artists around allover the internet. Also fair.

So here's what I'm going to do: Instead of 10, 20, or more spot-illustrations per page, I'm going to put in maybe 3 - 8 spot-illustrations per page. I WILL be uploading them both here AND on BlueSky. Here on FA, I will be uploading full pages. On BlueSky, I'll be uploading singular spot-illustrations.

I'm DEFINITELY NOT leaving FA. I don't think that will ever happen unless something really absurd happens. I may, however, at some point, think about leaving DA. I really don't like how they're doing things over there these days. No one ever uses the chat feature except for spam bots, the front page is a deluge of AI, and the algorithm still seems to prefer anime waifus over all else. Nothing wrong with anime waifus but that's not for me.

So does that all sound good?

You may have noticed that a bunch of my artwork just got nuked. No need to worry. I'm not deleting my gallery. I'm just not going to be posting splash pages full of spot illustrations either here or on my DA anymore. I am going to be posting those to my BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/bjpentecost.bsky.social and in my Discord server.

There was a hew and cry to not migrate all my splashes/spots to BS because a lot of people don't have a BS and don't want a BS for very valid reasons. SO as a compromise, I'll still be uploading splash pages here, just with a handful of illustrations per page instead of dozens. Sound good?

I've also been side-eyeing Cara but I'm not sold. Thoughts on that?

And lastly, boy I'm glad I switched away from Adobe years ago. JFC, what were they thinking? Holy crap.....

Gather, children, for the drama du jour....

Here's the abridged summation of a summary of the cliffnotes of some context:

In March of 2021, my mother received a diagnosis of S4 lung cancer. Only a week later, my partner received a diagnosis of S4 lung cancer. Almost an exact year later, March 3rd, 2022, my mother died. She left my sister, BIL, and their child in my care, all of whom are developmentally delayed. Only a month later, BIL was diagnosed with two different forms of lymphoma. Only a month after that, my partner's license was revoked due to a diagnosis of narcolepsy. Then she went blind due to a combination of retinitis pigmentosa and a detached retina.

At that point I was taking care of my sister- a sociopath with an IQ under 70, her husband- who is a little more tolerable, their child- an unpotty trained 5yo who still is not speaking in complete sentences, my partner of 12y- a blind, narcoleptic cancer patient with lupus, WPWS, POTs, pernicious anemia, lumbar spinal stenosis, fibro, IBS, Von Willebrand's, and EDS (which is destroying her teeth and we can't afford to fix them because the American healthcare system doesn't think teeth are important and NO dental colleges will touch her because she's a cancer patient and it has at points gotten bad enough that she has resorted to pulling out her own teeth), ten cats (I have one cat, my sister dumped her cat on me, my mother left me two when she died, and my partner has six), and a house big enough to home this shitshow. The ONLY reason I didn't end up destitute in the streets at that point is because my stepfather generously allowed us to stay in his house so long as we pulled our weight and kept the house clean.

October first of 2022, my sister removed herself, her husband, and her child from my care. At that point, I suggested to my stepfather that we downsize. He agreed. We cleaned up the house, put it on the market, and it hadn't even been on the market a full day when we got a bite. Family came to look and pulled an ABRUPT U-turn due to cat smell. They had no other complaints and would have given us full asking price. So basically, the cats cost my stepfather a day-zero full-asking sale of his house.

Needless to say, he is pissed. We have a month to rehome at least half of the cats or GTFO.

A few problems:

(1) I've spent hours on the phone and every single damn shelter I've called is either full up, doesn't take cats, or "we'll get back to you" and then they don't.

(2) My partner agreed to rehome one cat because, and only because, Princess is happier as the only cat in a household. She will not rehome her other cats. Period. And she is giving me holy hell for opting to give up the cats my mother left me. So I can find some way to work around this or I can call animal control and have them forcibly removed which she would never forgive me for.

(3) Release them into the wilds? They're cats. They'll be fine. Yeah.... no. Several of them are frail, problematic, and/or elderly. Also, we have coyotes in this area.

(4) I have to stay in NY for the affordable healthcare and benefits my partner receives. The only places I can afford in NY are either terrible or VERY far away up north. But even if we were to move up there, all we're doing is transferring the problem up north. It's still too many cats.

(5) Almost no one will rent to us because we have so many cats. Only places we could find are 5k/mo or more. "Well, just lie and don't mention the cats." KINDA HARD TO HIDE TEN CATS. Not like you can just casually tuck one under the boob when the landlord shows up.

(6) Neither I nor my partner know a single, solitary person within driving range who can and will take any of our cats.

(7) I cannot keep up with ten cats, my very ill partner, the house, AND my job. I'm a shit-tier freelancer. I'm not exactly rolling in cash.

(8) "Just stash your partner in a trailer until your dad sells his house." It could take weeks to get the smell out, maybe longer, and moreover, I'd have to buy a trailer. In the Ulster area, I have enough to afford literally half a shack... like.... not even a whole shack. I can afford a fucking outhouse. Trailers become more affordable the further north you go but, (a) trailers depreciate sharply, (b) they're hard to resell, and © my stepfather convinced me to sell my Kia because we had three cars and we no longer needed em. He'll let me borrow the Jeep but not keep it so at some point, I'd also have to buy a car.

I'm just so exhausted thinking about this.

I'd start a cat sanctuary myself if I had the money. Alas..... I dunno. How do you think a Kickstarter for a cat sanctuary would go?

After getting hosed by Ls all year long, it looks like we finally caught an unambiguous WIN. My partner's cancer went into remission. Weeeeee! Take that, endometrial stromal sarcoma! -boot-

I took my partner, JD, to the eye doc a few days back. The prognosis isn't bleak so much as black. The doctor was absolutely clear about three things. (1) JD is going blind. (2) It will not get better. (3) There's nothing we can do about it. She also has a detached retina in one eye that withered up. The official diagnosis is retinitis pigmentosa which apparently runs in her family. Bit of a record scratch moment. We just nicely escaped indentured servitude only for THIS SHIT to hit us upside the head. There's always another shoe.

So if you have any experience with either going blind or being close to someone who is going blind, by all means, hit me up with advice, links to online resources, anything you've got... except money. Unless you're, like, "Buy then immediately crash and burn Twitter" wealthy and you can throw a spare few mil my way, don't bother. I don't think we're gonna be buying our way out of this one. But I'll appreciate anything else you can offer, even if that's only advice or well wishes.

TBH, I'm having a hard time dealing with this. I'm never going to be able to play videogames with her again. Watching movies and shows won't be the same. I'll never be able to show her my art. We wanted to see Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon together. I wanted to take her scuba diving in the Bahamas. There's a pretty long list To Dos we're gonna have to scratch off. I'm getting real damn tired of having to be strong all the time.

Welp... I'm tempted to just say "fuck me" and leave it at that but I'll elaborate. I'm abridging this a bit because some of this has been hashed and rehashed and rerehashed which can all be found scattered throughout my journals. →

Roughly a decade ago, I bought a condo and got NIMBY'd out of it by homophobes. At that point, I had no choice but to move back in with my mother. Some years later, my mother and my partner would be diagnosed with stage 4 cancer within a week of each other. My mother died earlier this year on March 3rd. My partner's cancer is a little more survivable... in theory. I was my mother's primary caregiver up until the end and I've been taking care of my partner as well.

My failure to launch made my mother think it would be a great idea to dump my sister, BIL, and their young child into my lap for a lack of other options. No homes will take them because they are married and have a child. No one else in my family has stepped forward to take them either because they can't or don't want to. I had already been partially responsible for them anyway so I knew the ins and outs and my mother saw this as a "big" advantage since anyone who isn't familiar with the trio would have NO IDEA what they were getting themselves into.

Thus, for the last half year, I have been taking care of:

• My sister, a developmentally delayed sociopath and quite possibly the laziest human being you will ever hear of. She once brutally murdered my cat, killed a bird out of negligence, falsely accused several men of rape, stole thousands of dollars from my mother and I even though she knew it was wrong and explicitly said she DGAF, and she once tried to poison me to death because I yelled at her for having absolutely repulsive bathroom hygiene. She decided that changing a diaper once or twice a day is less work than potty training her child. She, more than once, wished her husband dead so she could get rid of her child because "it's too much work". I understand that she cannot help being the way she is but that doesn't make her any easier to deal with.

• Baby. A rocket-powered 4yo who is missing every single one of her developmental milestones in large part because her mother isn't making any effort to engage, interact with, or raise her. On an average day, the baby would do such things as throw dirty kitty litter allover the garage, rip up important mail allover the house, throw clothes allover the floor, flush things down the toilet, color on the walls, break things, shit her diaper and fingerpaint with it, and on and on and on and on. Meanwhile, my sister would be sitting on her lazy ass somewhere, not doing anything about any of this, sexting some Korean boyfriendo and sending him SSDI money behind her ill, bed-ridden husband's back.

• My BIL. BIL is generally a good boy and was a HUGE help but a few months after my mother died, he got bitchslapped upside the head with a diagnosis of SUPER CANCER!

I cannot overstate how difficult this situation was. Taking care of my sister, BIL, and the baby was in and of itself, a full-time job. No joke. Literally every day was dedicated to taking care of them. Between driving them to appointments, driving the baby to and from her special needs school, grocery shopping, impromptu trips to and from the hospital, chores, errands, etc etc, there was almost no time for me to get any of my actual work done. Basically, the whole shitshow became entirely financially dependent on my stepfather who was working 80hr+ weeks at a job he hates to keep this mess afloat.

As all this shit was festering, my partner's health took a turn for the worse. Despite having confirmed diagnoses of lupus, pernicious anemia, chronic pain, WPWS, POTS, and stage-4 cancer, among other things, she was actually fairly helpful. She could still drive, run some of the errands for me here and there, cook dinner, and such. That might not sound like much but on some days, the help she provided was literally the only thing that kept me from going completely over the edge and drinking a Draino smoothie. WELP, earlier this year, she got a confirmed diagnosis of narcolepsy on top of everything else and the state yoinked her license. (Somehow, after all that, she's still only eligible for partial disability.)

So my stepfather and I were basically carrying this entire situation alone with no help. I don't know how bad inflation is where you are but in my area, previously $200 or $300 grocery bills ballooned to $500. At that point, we had to insist my sister be responsible with her money and contribute to the groceries and whatnot. No more Korean boyfriendos. We also insisted that she help clean the house which her child was destroying. I mean that word literally. The house was becoming an actual trash dump because I couldn't keep on top of everything by myself and my stepfather certainly couldn't after working 12hr days for weeks on end, sometimes more than 12hrs, and sometimes having to commute for hours.

Instead of helping out with cleaning and being more responsible with her money, my sister chose violence.

One night, a relative of my BIL's called us up screaming that my stepfather, my partner, and I are horrible monsters. "Screaming" might be a bit of an understatement since it was more like... "unleashed a verbal Niagara Falls of vitriol and accusations for ten minutes straight without stopping for air until we hung up on her loud, stupid ass." My sister apparently told the relative that we were stealing their money, abusing them, and neglecting them and because said relative is only a few IQ points smarter than a potted plant, she believed this without question. Not long after that, this ratchet-ass wildebitch appeared on our porch with a pair of police officers who "escorted the trio to safety." None of these fools seemed to notice how enthusiastic we were about helping them move out. When an officer asked us if it was okay that they were taking the trio away, my stepfather and I nearly burst into laughter.

A month has passed since they moved out and it has been fucking amazing. My stepfather and I both feel like we were just let off a life sentence. After decades of low-key torture and indentured servitude, we're free. We can sleep without being woken up by screaming and yelling. We're working on cleaning and repairing the house. I don't have to spend all day chauffeuring people around. Our grocery bills are a fifth of what they were. I have a clean, organized bathroom now. There has been not one single fight. No yelling matches. No controversy. I have been catching up on 6mo-worth of backlog. I'm not stress eating anywhere near as much as I was and I'm losing weight. I've been having fewer migraines and when I do get one, if I need to take a nap, I can take a fucking nap without having to worry about being screamed awake. My stepfather has been taking days off every now and again. I dare say things have been almost idyllic. At least compared to what they were.

If you've been following the Shitshow for any length of time, you know what's coming next.....

My partner estimated that it would be a week before the trio wore out their welcome. My stepfather said a week to two weeks. I guessed it would be one to three months. I know how my sister works. She played the victim. She turned on the crocodile tears (she can make herself cry on command). She's a superb liar and deeply manipulative. People are well-aware of this fact and yet they still often believe her because she's that damn good. So I imagined that she would start out on her best behavior. Helpful, obsequious, manipulating. Then eventually, she would do what she does and after about a month, BIL's relative would begin to realize what she had gotten herself into.

The trio haven't been kicked out yet but my sister admitted that the relative is getting tired of their shit. Shocker. My stepfather has made it abundantly clear they are not welcome back here. So what happens to them after that? I don't know. They might end up on the street. And people are looking at me like I'm supposed to do something about this because I promised my mother on her deathbed that I would take care of them. Thing is, I really don't know what to do.

"Buy them a trailer!" is a common response but they cannot own property or they'll lose their benefits. So if I buy them property, it has to be in my name which means I'm on the hook for it. I'd have to find a park that allows subletting. Many don't. If the trailer ended up on its own lot, I'd be responsible for the property taxes as I don't think what little aid they're eligible for covers that. It specifically only covers 70% (up to 500$) of rent and only within the Tricounty area. I'd also possibly be on the hook for their utilities. So I'd have to charge them rent and basically take over their finances and become their payee and manage alllllll of that bullshit which, frankly, no goddamned fucking thanks.

Moreover, they are incredibly destructive and it's not just the baby. My sister destroyed a bathroom and a huge swath of ceiling by taking daily scalding hot 45 minute-long showers and baths and getting water allover the floor. The repairs have cost us thousands and that patch of ceiling is still fucked. She also threw trash allover, some of which has gotten into radiators and melted. She left food messes allover which brought in mice, rats, and insects. BIL wasn't entirely without guilt there either as he would leave bags of chips laying around on the floor. All of them often left dirty dishes laying around allover and none of them clean unless you yell at them to... a lot. A lot of yelling. Constantly. If you asked me to bag every item of clothing I own, it would probably be three or four large trashbags, tops. My sister had twenty. Just for HER clothes. She's basically a hoarder and she would turn a trailer into an actual trash dump. Trailers already have a short lifespan so once they destroyed it, what then? I'm out all that money and what do I have to show for it? All that would accomplish is kicking the can a few years down the road and wasting stupid amounts of money.

People are looking to me to do something about this situation and I just don't know what to do. There are no good answers. Every single possibility has some huge drawback or catch or fatal flaw. You might be thinking "well it's not your problem anymore. Now they are in the care of another relative." But if they end up on the street, everyone will be looking at me like I dropped the ball because at the end of the day, they are developmentally delayed. Basically permanent children. And the responsibility of caring for them was handed to me.

In the midst of all this, right when we thought we had caught the break of a fucking century....

It appears that my partner is going blind. We don't have any confirmed diagnoses yet, only some vague ideas based on the experiences of family members who've had similar issues. Several of her relatives have gone blind in one eye. A grandniece is expected to be fully blind by her teenage years and is currently undergoing some kind of extraordinarily expensive experimental treatment for it. The issue appears to be genetic. It may be Usher's syndrome, congenital glaucoma, retinitus pigmentosa, or something along those lines. We have an appointment coming up soon to find out.

Ironically, she thinks I'm having a harder time adjusting to this new reality than she is. Maybe she's right. I'm just so tired. It's been one goddamned thing after the other. There's always another shoe.

So yeah. That's the state of the shitshow. If you're wondering why my art has been so stop-and-go these past few years, that's why.

How you guys doing? I survived Charley and from what I hear, Ian is worse. Frankly, that's hard to imagine. Hope you're all okay.

An Odd Thing

An odd thing happened to me awhile ago. It was not profound or magical or worldview-changing- just odd. A few weeks have passed and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it.

One early midsummer evening, I sat on my front porch eating an overdressed salad to a serenade of suburban working class dads all mowing their lawns in unison. A splendid breeze conveyed aromas of lilac and freshly mown grass under a subtle mist of gasoline. The weather was almost unseasonably cool for mid-August- a perfect reason to eat outside and avoid the ever-fulminating chaos inside. I lazily munched on soggy greens while watching a chipmunk dart around under the bee-harried hydrangeas. It was nice.

Twilight approached in a phalanx of rose, gold, amber, and lavender led by a vanguard of opalescent cumuli. One by one, the mowers retired, leaving an almost eerie hush in their wake. Much to my gratitude, a breeze eventually broomed away the unpleasant stink of gas. Where the mowers left off, a chorus of birds picked up, percussed by crickets, rustling leaves, and the shivering of dry grass.

Such rare, quiet, unbothered moments are what sustain me in the face of all the chaos I’ve suffered since my mother died. There were, in this brief idyllic span, no screaming children, no screaming sisters, no impromptu adventures in indentured servitude, no angry tirades, no call to chauffeur anyone anywhere or mediate arguments and confrontations or go shopping or appointments to keep or cleanup duty or shouts for help or anything. No one encroached onto the porch as so often happens when I dare to enjoy half a second’s worth of peace and quiet. No such things happened.

I sat there enjoying the nascent glow of twilight shimmering and gleaming through a canopy of peridot leaves. Disbelief mounted with every passing moment that I did not hear someone shouting my name or a child screaming or someone yelling angrily about something or a UPS or FEDEX truck barreling up the driveway or any one of the two dozen other forms rain on my parade typically takes.

It was a memory compilation of being interrupted so many times by mail trucks that reminded me to go get the mail. There was no record_scratch.wav or screeching car brakes sound at this realization. Barely even a blip. Because it was just a thought that came to mind. It was “I’m going to go get the mail” rather than “DID ANYONE GET THE MAIL!” furiously yodeled from some indeterminate corner of the house.

I trooped down the steep steps and across a concrete landing to the front lawn. My feet slid into crispy golden-brown grass baked by a merciless heatwave which only deigned to yield that very morning in the aftermath of rain. Hints of petrichor still flavored the air.

I watched my feet passing by little periwinkle cornflowers, tiny white tendrilly flowers whose name I do not know, dried leaves, colorful pebbles, twigs, the occasional acorn. Honeyed god rays of twilight aglitter with dust blazed across the tawny grass, casting long crooked shadows that stretched well out of sight. I remember feeling like I was in that area of Skyrim near Riften where the colors are all fiery autumn and you almost fall into the sounds of nature. There was no end in sight, no way out, no escape. I was destined to walk this never-ending expanse. And I was totally okay with that.

I’m an atheist with no belief in the supernatural whatsoever but I recall thinking that if this is heaven or purgatory, that’s fine. More than fine. I could be happy with this. I wouldn't mind being proven cosmically wrong by this solitudinous embrace of perpetual twilight. It was as if I had fallen into my own little pocket universe where nothing else existed but what my mind had turned into a late summer woodland paradise.

I imagined a tributary brook winding off into a waterfall-tiered creek buttressed by towering cedars and awned by gem-leaf weeping willows. Deer gathered in the shade. A Rivendale-like town lay off in the distance, barely discernible against a cool blue mist. There is no climate change here, no PFAS in the rain, no war in Ukraine, no corrupt politicians with corporatist ambitions, no microplastic pollution, no pay-walled basic necessities, no inadequate healthcare woes, no countless phone calls trying to find a damn dentist who will take my insurance AND also do extractions. None of that. Just a long, lovely stroll into the sunset serenaded by birdsong and crickets as a rainbow's worth of flowers passed underfoot.

And suddenly pavement.

wat.......

I stood there staring down at this bizarre gray mass like the witches from Hocus Pocus who had never seen asphalt before. Hopefully, none of my neighbors were watching because I’m pretty sure I stood there for a solid half-minute or more just staring groundward like a drooling slack-jawed orc. I felt as if a great deal of time had passed, way more than a standard march across the front lawn would take.

I looked back at the house which seemed like it should have been long out of sight, swallowed up in an eternity of flowery fields canopied by pearly birches, scarlet oaks, gem-leaf weeping willows, and violet maples. I half-expected to see distant crystalline mountains looming up to a billow of pastel rainbow cotton clouds. Instead, there sat the house, a hulking behemoth of wood that doesn’t belong to me. There was something jarring in the sight of it. The sun had sunk enough such that a shadowfall of trees cast a gloom over the hill where it lurked like some Bloodborne boss fight in waiting.

I turned back around and suddenly mailbox! Right in my face. I blinked in surprise as if it had just abruptly popped into frame out of nowhere. After staring at it for a solid ten-count, I pulled open the metal door and fished out a credit card bill, a Central Hudson notice (they’re raising our rates again, this time by 60%), and some furniture magazines. With one last dazed glance around, I began my trek back.

Would I slip into that place again? Would I return to that strange and beautiful ever-twilight world? Alas, no. My return trek was ordinary in every way and over in the blink of an eye. Most of the golden glow had fled, given over to gloomy gray-blue shadow. I plopped down on the top step then set the mail aside. For awhile I sat there wondering what in the everloving red white and blue star-spangled trombone solo fuck just happened.

Did I encounter a glitch in the Matrix? Did I become actually hypnotized by, of all things, grass!? Did I fucking time travel? Because I swear upon the bowling ball-smooth sheen of my shiny fat white arse, it felt like twenty-two entire years from front porch to mailbox. Why Twenty-two specifically? I dunno. You tell me. Maybe half my brain fell asleep like a dolphin. Whatever the case may be, the whole ordeal felt stranger than I could hope to encapsulate in words. It really seemed like something adjacent to an out of body experience. Like, my brain went on a little mini-vacation or something. Nothing like that has ever happened before and neither has it happened since then.

I’m not worried. I don’t think it was anything bad. Maybe stress-related. I do wish I could make that happen on command though. That would be great.

It's been a fair few months since my mother died and I'm sad to say that things are not going well.

My family always ran like a fucked-up, co-dependent but basically functional jalopy. I was the front wheels. My primary jobs were chores, errands, and working as a commission artist. My BIL, Daniel, was the back wheels. He's developmentally delayed but he's a good boy, capable, and he worked hard. He was responsible for some chores and errands and taking care of his wife (my younger sister) and their child, both of whom are also developmentally delayed. My stepfather, the breadwinner of the family, was the engine. I cannot overstate how pivotal this man has been in keeping the shitshow afloat. I don't know anyone who deserves a long, happy retirement more than him. And then there was my mother, the driver. She steered the shitshow down the long and winding roads.

Some months ago, my mother died. Lung cancer. I have been through some next level shit- various kinds of abuse, a murder attempt, psychological and physical trauma that would stand your hair on end; none of it comes even remotely close to watching my mother fade away as cancer and pain meds slowly eroded everything that made her who she was. I try not to think of her because it feels like a lifetime's worth of memories have been buffaloed out of my mind by the last two uniquely horrible weeks of her life.

When she died, there was no one to steer so I had no choice but to jump into the driver's seat. It was difficult being both the front wheels and the driver, but I got the hang of it eventually. We were just nicely finding a new equilibrium when BAM. The back wheels went out. We were not expecting Daniel to be diagnosed with cancer only a few months after my mother died but the universe just has a way of kicking you when you're down sometimes.

So now I'm the front wheels, back wheels, and driver. Likely, the next thing to go will be the engine. He's an old man who will either retire or die sometime within the next few years. That will leave me as the sole caregiver of four disabled individuals, two of whom have cancer, one of whom is a rocket-powered 4yo, and one of whom is a sociopath with an IQ two standard deviations below the mean whose entire existence revolves around doing as little as possible and making messes for me to clean up. Oh, and TEN CATS that no one wants to rehome.

I am exhausted in ways that cannot easily be conveyed in words. But I'm still here. I'm still doing art. I still have plans. I can't say how well those plans will go being that life seems to enjoy fucking them up as much as possible. But so long as I have functioning eyes and hands, I'll never stop making art. There's that.

How bout you? How you doin?

Bad things happen to everyone, right? That's life. Shit happens. There's always another shoe waiting to drop. I'm sure that's what it's like for most people. We adapt, we deal, we move forward. It's all we can do. But sometimes, I feel like I'm trapped in the midst of a shoe monsoon and I'm not so much waiting for other shoes to drop as I am waiting for the next steel-toed boot to bean me upside the head.

My brother in law was just admitted to Montefiore in the Bronx. They think he may have an extremely aggressive form of cancer, possibly leukemia, myoma, or both. We don't know yet. My poor sister is having to go through this only a few months after having lost our mother to cancer.

Daniel was a lynchpin of this family and now that he's down for the count, I'm having to step into a lot of the roles he had taken on. I will still be putting out art. That is my job. It is my reason for living. But please be patient. Big, high-detail pieces may take a little longer. I've been thinking about experimenting with quicker styles too since I've gotten my mitts on Rebelle and ArtRage.

Nothing to do but keep moving forward.

Tiny homes? I don't want to get into detail but my current situation is pretty terrible and I need my own space or I will literally either go crazy, take a long walk off a short pier, or disappear into the wilderness and become a hermit. I'm presently side-eyeing tiny homes because they seem like a viable option. I know I'd need to buy a plot of land and bring in plumbing or septic and electricity but beyond that, I know next to nothing. I've never owned my own home... unless you count the condo I was summarily chased out of by homophobes ten years ago. I got to experience homeownership for all of like.... a day before they ran us out.

Anyway. Tiny homes. Thoughts?

Or any other options. I'm all ears. Though, I should note that renting is not an option. Been there. Done that. Never again. And I can't really afford a proper house anywhere in NY except really far north which isn't an option because it's basically just rural Texas up there and fuck that. I need decent internet for my work and I don't think they even have Fiber up there yet. I can't leave NY either because they have affordable healthcare I depend on.

So yeah. That's where we're at.

Edit: Oh and just to be clear, I'm not in imminent danger. I'm not being beaten or abused. TBH, I've been in that situation and what I'm dealing with now is as bad or worse in some ways but I'm not in physical danger. So I don't need an emergency couch to land on. I'm looking for tenable long-term solutions.

https://youtu.be/NYGdO5E_5oY

https://youtu.be/g9Z0pqsCUhY

https://youtu.be/yCBEumeXY4A

https://youtu.be/PdfFRlabohg

https://youtu.be/XjTENlTTWk8

Here are my thoughts...

In the course of my thirty-eight years of life, never have I ever been so unnerved by something and yet simultaneously entranced by it. I need this in my life to an extent that I cannot adequately convey but I'm also aware that this technology will, at some indeterminate point in the future, possibly eat my job or at least parts of it. There may be some people who prefer a human artist's work on principle or for aesthetic reasons but there will be many more, maybe even a majority, who will prefer the infinitely faster, cheaper AI options.

I believe there will be a grace period where Dalle, Imagen, and other such technologies serve more as tools and aids than direct competition. Being an aphantasiac, the idea of iterating dozens of options instantly, it's literally a dream come true. I have no mind's eye and I can't visualize my ideas which can sometimes make my creative process nightmarishly difficult. The idea of being able to just type something like "white cheetah gryphon standing on a crystal rock under a starry twilight sky" or "machine viscera" or "rainbow volumetric smoke swirling around a faintly glowing fluorite crystal" and immediately get dozens of iterations... I could probably sit here for an hour trying to adequately articulate how desperately I need that in my life and still fall short. Though, it's worth pointing out that these AI don't always hit the mark, lol. https://twitter.com/Chitwan_Saharia.....81129820512256

It tried. Bless its heart.

But eventually, that grace period may wane and we might see a point where digital artists become obsolete. The answer to this is probably, to put it bluntly, adapt or die. Perhaps our jobs will shift more towards cleaning up or curating AI imagery. I've actually already done some of that and I don't hate it. I find it kind of oddly cathartic. Or perhaps we'll dip out of digital art into real media. Many artists may just opt to find a new career path entirely. Whatever the case may be, this technology will rewrite the world, it will absolutely force people to adapt or die, and it will challenge us in ways we can't even predict.

In a personal bit of irony, I assumed "the robots" would come for my job last, not first. As founder and CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, said in his Dall-e 2 launch blogpost:

"It’s a reminder that predictions about AI are very difficult to make. A decade ago, the conventional wisdom was that AI would first impact physical labor, and then cognitive labor, and then maybe someday it could do creative work. It now looks like it’s going to go in the opposite order."

I'm prepared for the eventuality that I may have to find some other source of income. It does scare me a little but mostly, I'm excited. I'll still make art regardless, even if the AI "terk muh jerb." I do art because I love it and I wouldn't rather be doing anything else. It's my reason for living. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about when I go to bed. No AI can ever change that. I think AI will, if anything, enhance it. Rather, I hope so.

That is assuming these AI are ever released to the general public. As it stands, they are being withheld for safety concerns. Frankly, as desperately as I want it, I understand the hesitancy. Let's play some AI misuse mad libs!

• [Politician name] doing [terrible act] to [child, elderly person, dead body, animal, etc], images taken on a cellphone.

• Two male [racial minorities] doing [type of violence] to [police officer, priest, comatose victim, etc], security camera footage. There is blood splattered across the floor and walls. The two men are smiling and one is holding a [weapon description].

• [Celebrity name] doing [extremely perverted act] with [celebrity name, politician, teenager, etc].

• [Celebrity name] having sex with [celebrity name] on a hotel bed as seen from outside a window through dingy blinds, taken with a cell phone.

• [Input an image] Remove [person description] and replace with [person description].

• Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit for evidence... [AI-generated images that are indiscernible from actual photos being shown to a room full of people who are completely uneducated on the topic].

These are just a few things I could think of off the top of my head. There are people a lot smarter and a lot more sinister than I could ever be who would come up with gods only know what. The reality is that a significant portion of the public would believe such images without question and if even a small fraction of them acted on it, we've got serious problems- I mean the kind of problems where innocent people get hurt, killed, or have their lives ruined. This isn't a very big leap. People have committed heinous acts based on way less.

I want this technology desperately. I want it more than I think I've ever wanted anything. But I don't blame Google or OpenAI in the slightest for being hesitant to hand the genpop such a powerful tool. That said, it's only a matter of time before this technology finds its way into public hands and if we're not prepared for it, we're gonna see some ugly shit.

Anyway, those are my long-winded thoughts. How about you? What do you think?

The last few years, I've generally avoided discussing politics or anything even vaguely politically related but NGL, I am very curious to hear people's thoughts on this one. It's kind of a big deal. Or seems so anyway. Thoughts?

Turns out being the primary caregiver for two developmentally delayed adults, their child, ten cats, a disabled stage-4 cancer patient in extremely poor health, and a household, is a LOT more to deal with than I anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I knew it was going to be a lot. Just not quite this much.

I don't want to gripe about specifics because (a) we'd be here all day and (b) I don't want to spill that particular tea if I can help it. Some of it's pretty scandalous. All I can do is promise that I'm working towards trying to find some equilibrium in my life and when that happens, there will be more artwork and more activity on my Patreon.

That said, addressing my Patrons specifically: If anyone wants to go, please do so guilt-free. I don't want anyone feeling obligated or guilted or anything like that, especially since I've been putting out so little recently. Believe it or not, my biggest problem right now isn't money. Er... not exactly? Let me put it this way: A lotto win would save my life and set everything right (but that's not going to happen because I have the worst shit-luck in the universe and I don't play any lotteries anyway). Small amounts of money from Patreon and Ko-Fi are nice and I appreciate it immensely but it's not going to help much towards alleviating the vast number of issues I'm facing right now.

A lot of the difficulties that have come down on me since my mother died can only be solved with FUCK OFF amounts of money. I'm not comfortable just asking for it and even if I did, I likely wouldn't get it anyway. I accept that. All I can really do is keep doggy paddling along. I remind myself often that my life could be worse. I live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Most of my basic needs are met. I was able to afford a nice new computer recently (if a bit overpriced). It's just hard to be comfortable because the situation is tenuous. This isn't my house. The rug could go flying out from under us at any moment.

I feel like the last year of my life has been constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop and there's always another shoe. It's like a fucking shoe-monsoon. Most days it's flipflops, crocs, and sneakers I can deal with but some days, it's steel-toed combat boots and stiletto heels. I just need a moment to breathe every now and again but it's really hard to come by that.

Nevertheless, I'm still here. I'm still doing art. Just a little bit at a time.

















I also may have slightly kinda.... rage-deleted a few things out of my gallery. Sorry. ^___^; There were emotions happening. I'll put it back soon. In the meantime, you can still find most of it in my DA gallery here: https://www.deviantart.com/bjpentecost/gallery

Thanks for all your well wishes and condolences. I am grateful. It's been a rough few months but I'm back on my feet and trying to find some new flavor of normalcy or at least a taste of tepid equilibrium. The Shitshow hasn't imploded yet. I do sometimes have to remind myself not to dwell, especially on the last two weeks of my mother's life. It was bad in ways I can't quite put to words and those of you who know me know that's not something I say lightly. But I'm trending towards okay. More or less. I'm trying to see every day as a "new adventure" and taking little pleasures where I can find them.

Right now, the biggest problem I'm having is messes everywhere. Getting the shitshow to clean up after itself is like pulling teeth. Though, there are also some concerning expenses looming on the horizon. Let's just say that dying apparently isn't cheap in America. I can't say that the Shitshow is swimming exactly but we're not sinking and I count that as a minor victory.

In any case, thanks again. I read every comment and I'm grateful. ♥

If any of you have any good news, I'm all ears. Seems like it's been bad news all the way down for the past few years and I'd love to hear something encouraging.

On a miserable, muddy gray-brown dawn, I woke to shouts of "she's gone! She's gone!" I felt relief more than anything else. My mother's suffering is over. Only two nights ago, she was gibbering drug-haze nonsense as I tried in vain to reason with her about medications. Her eyes were vacant, unrecognizing and unblinking. In my frustration, I hugged her. I cried that I didn't want her to go. We weren't ready. As if someone flipped a switch, the haze cleared. "This is what I wanted," she said as she hugged me tightly and kissed the top of my head. "I love you. You'll always be my baby." She rocked me back and forth then drifted away into sleep.

I wish I could say that was the last cogent thing she said to me but it wasn't. The next day, in the midst of restless, drug-addled gibbering, I asked her what her pain level was. She looked me dead in the eyes and said in a clear voice; "eleven." Possibly, she was exaggerating, but I did not want to take the chance that she was suffering to that extent, not when cancer was eating into her bones and organs. With the blessing of our hospice team, we transitioned to higher doses of heavy duty drugs. This morning, mercifully, she passed.

Now that the chaos has waned and I'm sitting here in the still wake of her leaving, it hits me that I'll never show her my artwork again. We'll never have anymore silly nonsense fights about nothing and laugh over it afterwards. We'll never watch any movies or shows together. I never was able to convince her to try sushi. She'll never buy me another birthday present. I came out of the closet way too late in life and she won't get to see me marry my partner. I'll never ask her advice again. She'll never nag me about "missing a spot" when cleaning or about my fashion sense or not getting enough protein in my diet. We'll never talk politics over ice cream way too late in the evening.

My mother bounced back from one health scare after another, more than I can count on two hands, and right up until the end, I kept thinking that she would bounce back, any moment, like always. Not this time.

It was about a year from diagnosis to death. We were told we would have three to five but also that she was fragile and could go anytime. "Fragile." That is not a word I had ever heard used to describe my mother. She was anything but fragile. There was a reason her coworkers and subordinates called her Scary Mary. Make no mistake, she was well loved and liked but she ruled with an iron fist and brooked no shit. She was known for punching above her weight class. I have been inundated, throughout the course of my life, with stories of all the Goliaths she fearlessly went toe to toe with.

But suddenly, she was "fragile." I watched helplessly as this unyielding pillar of strength, a cornerstone of my life, crumbled before my eyes. For the first time, in my thirty-eight years, I saw her afraid. I saw her powerless, resigning to the reality that there would be no bouncing back this time. I watched her lose control of her body. Then her mind. I saw the moment when she gave up and stopped fighting.

Nothing good came of this. There's no light in the storm. I can only hope that like all things, the pain will fade in time. There is, however, a moral to be had and that is don't. Procrastinate. Your. Healthcare. Don't wait until it gets to the point where loved ones have to call 911 on you. Don't put it off. Make that appointment. Go to the doctors. Get the scan. Cancer is a bitch but if you catch it early, you can stand a fighting chance. So many of us seem to think we're invincible right up until suddenly, we're not. All it takes is one crack in the wrong place.

Take care of yourselves.

Those of you who can, do me a favor and hug your mom for me.

My mother is dying. It hasn't been a quick or dignified death either. She is bedridden and drowning in her own lung fluid as cancer rapidly consumes her. The drugs that dull her agony rob her of everything that defined and characterized the woman I've known for over three decades. Most of the time, she sleeps. In her few waking moments, she is a vacant, twitching zombie, little more than an id only capable of rasping pleas for more pills.

Rarely, she emerges from the drug stupor haze, a portrait of quiet dread and exhaustion. In those moments, I don't see fear of imminent death in her eyes but fear for having to live another day through the merciless, unrelenting destruction of her body. In a rare moment of clarity, she intimated that she would suffer the agony if she could just have back control of her body, mind, and life.

Only a few months ago, the portrait was very different. I liked to joke that my mother was the most aptly named woman in the world- Mary Mills. She was always milling about. It occasionally seemed like she could teleport because you'd turn around for three seconds and she'd have somehow milled her dumpy little ass clear out of sight. I have distinct childhood memories of locating her in department stores by listening for the creak in her knee. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, she needed a walker. Another switch, bedridden. Another switch, hospice. The last switch is coming anytime now. Every day, I wake up wondering if today is the day I have to start the rest of my life without my mother in it.

She was the captain of this shitshow and she ran the ship with confident ease. Now, that responsibility falls to me and I am confident only in my ability to run aground and hit icebergs. I never realized how much my mother was doing behind the scenes. The number of small things I took for granted could fill a stadium. Looking back with newfound perspective, she seemed like the Wizard of Oz, silently directing and orchestrating countless gyres of chaos from behind black curtains.

I am now responsible for my developmentally delayed sister and BIL, their child, and a household. This feels like being dropped into the middle of a black ocean with no land in sight. I don't know which direction I should go. I don't know what horrors might lurch forth from the murky depths. All I have is a little paddleboat named Jordan. My partner has been keeping me afloat in all this but she too is slowly succumbing to cancer and it will only be so long before I have to do this allover again.

I tell you this so you know that if I disappear for awhile, it's because I'm trying to steer this shitshow. If you're a Patron and you want to bow out, don't feel guilty. I was barely making enough to cover even my electricity bill anyway. I won't hold it against you if you leave. Really. I mean it. Don't feel obligated. I will still try to upload art here and there when I can but I'll ask everyone not to have any strong expectations.

Don't worry about me. Worrying won't help anything. Just know that I'm still here, paddling along as best I can.

Every Monday, I am blessed with the illustrious and most noble of obligations… taking out the trash. Now, I don't know exactly how long the driveway is but if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a little longer than a blue whale, about 125ft or so. Yes, I absolutely use blue whales as a unit of measurement. Don't judge me. I can't help it, I'm American. We don't do metric so we're forced to use all manner of weird bullshit for scale. I promise you, blue whales are not the weirdest thing I've used to measure distance. (That would probably have to be buttcheeks….. don't ask.)

The trashcan and recycle bin are almost as tall as I am and usually quite heavy, the former weighing probably about as much as six toddlers and the latter weighing about as much as three toddlers, or thereabouts. (Yeah, I know, Americans really should have gotten on the metric bandwagon by now.) I don't really "drag" the bins so much as I escort them like an angry teacher marching naughty students off to the principal's office by their collars- that is to say, I get one in each hand with myself directly between them, elbows bent. Usually, this is an uneventful affair. Usually.

As soon as I set foot onto the driveway, I knew it was gonna be a fun time because instead of pavement, which is what I thought I was stepping onto, my foot came down upon a perfectly invisible, uniform glaze of black ice. Great. Now, I may be a dumpy little shortshit, nolo contendere, but I am also somehow decently athletic in my own way and I can usually remain upright on ice, even if it does require some slick dance moves. So I moonwalk-jazz-tap-ballet-clog-squaredanced my way across the ice until I made it to the bins where I would have expected a standing ovation if anyone had been watching. No one was, thankfully… that I know of. I grabbed the handles and gave a good yank.

You ever see in the cartoons where the character's feet are going yet they aren't really moving? Yeah, that shit can apparently happen in real life. I pushed, I pulled, I invented some magnificent new cursewords, and after a solid minute, I managed to dislodge the bins from the ice they were glued in place by. The first 25ft were pretty uneventful if a little more taxing than usual. It was less like marching naughty students off to the principal and more like skiing a pair of refrigerators across an ice rink but I managed to get a decent rhythm going and after that, it was smooth sailing. A little too smooth.

Uh oh.

See, the driveway is not flat. It has a flat area where I started out but after that, it "gradually declines" and let me tell you, it is amazing how not-so-gradual it feels when you abruptly find yourself Tokyo Drifting down a 125ft invisible ice rink in near-pitch darkness. I went full-on reverse Sonic the Hedgehog trying to stop the shitshow from going south but there was no stopping.

Completely without any permission from me, my mouth began to make this sound I can only describe as "operatic yodeling" the likes of which would impress even Andrea Bocelli, if for no other reason than that I could likely have shattered glass. It felt almost malevolent somehow, schadenfreudean, as if the bins were getting some kind of perverse enjoyment out of it. Like, "haha, ya bitch! How do YOU like it! In Soviet Russia, trashcan take out YOU!"

The driveway ends in a little rampy-swoop that I was sure would launch me clear across the street into the neighbor's lawn gnome colony. Amazingly, that did not happen. Bobbie Jean: Shitshow On Ice came to a full and complete stop with a perfectly anticlimactic thud. I stood there for a moment wondering how, given all the many ways that could have gone spectacularly wrong, I somehow managed to land the Shitshow with all the uneventfulness of a docking passenger jet. Hm. Oh-fucking-kay, I guess.

So I went to park my bins on the curb when I heard this EAR-PIERCING SHRIEK that startled me so badly, I nearly lost my footing. I suppose it would have been some form of comedic irony to have survived being escorted down a 125ft-long invisible ice rink in the dark by a pair of trash bins only to eat shit because a bird startled me. Except it was not a bird. In was, in fact, my neighbor, laughing his ass off. I can't entirely say I blame him given the repertoire of Animal Planet noises I was making on the way down.

"Are you okay!?" he shouted.

The affair having been witnessed, I was too mortified to speak actual words so I gave him a simple thumbs up and beat a careful retreat back up the driveway. If nothing else, I can say I invented a new sport; I call it Involuntary Skiing.

The other night, we were due for our first real snow of the season. It didn't amount to much, only about two inches. Even so, I enjoy watching snow fall, especially at night when it's all still and quiet. Odd, I know, but it fills me with a rare, pleasant sense of nostalgia. I can tune out everything else and just get lost in the falling snow.

As I was turning in for the night, it occurred to me that it should be snowing right around that time so I grabbed my flashlight and moved the  curtain aside to see. Mind you, this isn't some dinky little pen-light. This thing would make an elephant blush. This  is the power of a hypergiant star contained within a metal tube the size of my forearm. I'm pretty sure I could eye-shine GOD with this fucking thing. It is a +12 DnD bludgeon that  instantly blinds on-hit. I know not whence it came or how its power was  bequeathed unto a lowly mortal such as myself but I do occasionally use  it to look out the window into the woods behind my house.


I did exactly that and…..

Nothing. Not so much as a singular wayward flake. Poo. Oh well. So I went to bed. Now, I usually sleep like the dead so if something wakes me up, it's not nothing and I was dead-ass-asleep when some SPECTACULAR SHITFUCKERY unlike anything I've ever heard started going down in the woods behind my house. Like, I mean a kind of racket that made me question my disbelief in the supernatural. You know that painting; Witches Going to Their Sabbath, by Luis Ricardo Falero? I imagined something like that partying through my back yard but with less naked broom-riding hotties and more banshees screaming deathmetal into megaphones. "WELL! Golly-what-the-fucking-gee willickers could that be?"

I grabbed my light and shined it out into the yard whereupon I was abruptly confronted by a ghastly, pale white face staring back at me from the darkness only inches away.

AAAHHHHH!!!

Was it a witch on her way to Sabbath? A gaggle of headbanging deathmetal banshees? Nope. Just my own dumbass reflection. That's right, folks. Nearly blew a hatch through the back of my pajama pants over my own dang reflection. I don't know that I've ever facepalmed so hard over something I, myself, did. In my defense, it was like 2am and I maybe wasn't firing on all cylinders.

I never did see what the hell was making that noise. Alas, there were no naked broom-riding hotties to behold and no deathmetal banshees either. Figured it was just a strong wind blowing through the trees or something, turned off UY Scuti, and flomped back into bed. As I closed my eyes, flying through the darkness across my room, came a ghastly, pale white face.

AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

If you're not as much of a dingus as I am, you know what it was. See, my flashlight is so incredibly bright that even aimed away from my face, it was strong enough to create a near-perfect afterimage. Eeeeyup. I nearly launched myself through the roof into low Earth orbit over the afterimage of my own reflection.

Moral of the story, Bobbie Jean is a dingus.

This morning, in the twilight hours before sunrise, I heard this bizarre, unfamiliar sound. My first thought, having been woken up out of a dead sleep by this, was "OH !@#$%^&*! THERE'S SOME KIND OF WEIRD MUSICAL DEMON OUTSIDE MY DOOR!" Despite not believing in the supernatural, I am phasmophobic so I lay there frozen, just listening to this strange sound for a time, trying to decide whether my magical anti-monster blankets would protect me or whether I should act like a grown-ass adult and go see what the noise is. It took a few minutes for my rationality to wake up. At that point, I supposed it sounded like a bird. Maybe.

The sound was a gentle percussive knocking but it had a vaguely musical quality to it, quiet and hollow, almost like some kind of wood instrument. I couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from which was part of what freaked me out. One moment, it sounded like it was drifting lazily up and down the hallway outside my bedroom and the next moment, it was across the back yard. Sound travels strangely sometimes out here so it's entirely possible that what sounded like "right outside my door" was actually right outside my window or over the roof.

The sound was different from the racket a woodpecker makes when going at a tree- much slower and lower pitch. There were maybe three to five knocks per call. Moreover, the sound was traveling. When woodpeckers make their characteristic gatling gun noise, they are anchored to trees (or my friggin gutters.... little bastardshits >8{ ) and this sound was moving about freely.

I can't think of any other way to describe it. It was just bizarre. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's something entirely mundane I've just never heard before because I'm not usually up at that hour. I live in the Hudson Valley of New York. My sister claims she heard it too when she got up sometime around 6am. I tried to record the sound on my phone but of course, as soon as I hit the button, the sound stopped and all the other birds started up. It was like someone hit a switch. Just my luck.

I've looked up bird calls successfully before by googling the characteristics of the sound. That was how I discovered the little bastardshit who likes to go REHHHHHHHH REHHHHH REHHHHHHH for hours on end from the bushes out front is an unexpectedly cute gray catbird. No luck this time though. It definitely was not a sound made with wings or by knocking on something. This sound would almost assuredly have been made with its beak or in its throat.... assuming it's not a demon who likes to play wood instruments outside people's doors at 6 in the morning.

Thoughts?

Edit: Mystery possibly solved? Might have been a raven. It sounded kinda like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_vjGNUwuyM

Upfront, I am not asking for money. If you see any gofundme ops in my name, DO NOT contribute. I'm not fishing for sympathy either. My intent here is purely to inform everyone of what's going on and why I'm making certain changes, most notably, that I'm closing commissions to focus on my Patreon. Also, keep in mind that the following text-wall is abridged. I've left out a lot to prevent this from becoming a George R.R. Martin-rivaling septology.

On with the shitshow…

In 2013, I bought a condo in Deep Creek Gardens, Florida. The down payment was 15K which totally wiped out my savings and then some. I wasn't worried. We hadn't touched my partner's money and my mother offered to help me if things got bad. So, at the somewhat embarrassing age of thirty, I finally managed to move out of my mother's house. I had my own place that I bought with my own money. I didn't see any way this could go awry. Call it blissful naïveté.

No Gays Allowed! My partner, JD, and I were told in no uncertain terms by the HOA that we were not welcome. "But that's not legal!" you might be thinking. And you'd be right. It's not legal to tell someone "GTFO because you're gay." It is, however, perfectly legal to tell them "single family units only." Beverly, the HOA head, told my mother they didn't want any lesbians in their complex because apparently gay people mean "drugs, prostitution, and loud parties." See, when ignorant bigots know they can't discriminate against you legally, they just find backdoor ways to go about it.

We tried to fight but they had a team of lawyers who made it clear we would not win. I should also note that I was not out of the closet back then. I'm still not. Most of my family has no idea that I'm not straight (trust me, that's for the better). And even if I had come out, we didn't really have much in the way of resources to fight with at that point. Just goes to show that bullshit can totally blindside you despite your best efforts to bullshit-proof your endeavors.

JD and I both went back to our parents. I turned the condo over to my mother so she could rent it out in hopes of recouping money. The "and then some" I mentioned previously was hers, a few thousand to help me out with the down payment and some minor repairs/updates. Unfortunately, Deep Creek Gardens only allowed us to rent six months out of the year and there were exhaustive vetting processes for renters so there really wasn't much recouping.

Not long after that, JD's elderly father took ill with stage-4 lung cancer. She was the only one around to care for him. When he died, he left her his house, a typical Port Charlotte Florida home with an estimated value of 120K. Unfortunately, around that time, my younger sister and brother in law, both of whom are intellectually disabled (IQs around 70), decided that it would be a great idea to have a child.

This threw everyone's plans up in the air. My mother had intended to buy a condo for them in the same complex as me, preferably, right next door so I could keep an eye on them. It would have been ideal. I'd be in proximity to take care of them but I'd still have my own living space (occupying quarters with them is unpleasant for reasons I don't want to get into).

My mother decided that it would be a good idea to move back to NY which has affordable healthcare and aid programs for people like my sister and BIL. We always wanted to move back to NY anyway. However, JD had just inherited a house. She couldn't immediately pick up and go with us. Both houses went on the market around the same time- my mother's sold in a few months and in that span of time, JD hadn't even gotten so much as a nibble. I wanted to stay with JD but there were some issues, most notably that my mother needed help moving. Moreover, all the money from the sale of my condo went into the new house on the understanding that I would have a place to stay until I could get back on my feet. JD and I talked it over and determined that we would do the long-distance thing until she could sell her house.

So I moved to NY and JD stayed in FL. It was only temporary. All we had to do was wait for her house to sell and we'd have plenty of money to buy a decent place together in NY. The intention was to find a location within easy reach of my mother so I could help her with my sister, BIL, and the baby but I'd have my own place and I could finally live together with my partner like quasi-normal adult human beings. Dare to dream.

If you've been paying attention to this point, you probably noticed the trend and have guessed that there's a "but then" coming and boy was there ever. JD's health took a sudden, drastic turn for the worse. Her insurance was around 700$/mo and her deductible was enough to buy a decent used car with so she had to cancel it. Only by the grace of a charity clinic could she get any care at all but they had no idea what they were doing.

The Florida doctors kept telling her "it's just female problems" and sending her home with pain meds. It should be noted at this juncture that JD has a 100% cancer rate in two whole generations of her family and the third generation is catching up. She also has pernicious iron deficient anemia, lupus, WPWS, POTS, and a list of other issues longer than she is tall. But they kept telling her it was just "female problems."

No one was showing any real interest in her house even as she lowered the price. 115K. 110K. 105K. 100K. Nothing. Her health got so bad that she finally caved in and started looking at these "we buy unsellable house" type buyers. 70K. That was the only offer she got in the two years we were apart- a little more than half the house's estimated value. But it was better than nothing. She needed to get out before Florida bankrupted and killed her. Tens of thousands in medical debt were piling up as the doctors kept telling her "feeeeeeeeeemale problems." We decided waiting for the full cost of her house wasn't worth her life and so she sold it for 70K.

If you've been paying attention, you should definitely have noticed the trend and you're sure there's a "but then" coming and this one is a real doozy. Apparently, there was a 40K lien on the house that JD was never informed of. She called the man up, apprised him of our situation, and begged him to drop it. He laughed in her face, called her a bitch, and hung up then out of pure spite, tried hitting her with penalties and fines since the lien had gone unpaid for almost a decade. According to this man's own lawyers, he is a multimillionaire (they also said he was a horrible POS but they were not at all willing to work with us because he paid them 2M a year EACH). I'm not sure whether the number I heard was eighty-million or eighteen-million but either way, he could have easily shrugged off 40K and he pointedly did not. There was no fighting it. The house could not be sold without satisfying the lien.

When all was said and done, after closing and moving costs, my partner had a little over 30K in hand. This completely destroyed all our plans and sent both of us into a blind panic trying to figure out what to do. No one would rent to her because she has six cats. Yes, I know she could have rehomed them but that would have destroyed her, especially after having just lost her two dogs back to back.

In the end, she had little choice but to buy a shitty, falling apart trailer with barely enough room for her and her cats, let alone me and my cat. Keep in mind, our plans fell apart literally in the span of however long it took her lawyer to inform her of the lien. Deals had already been made, hands shook, and everything was in motion so decisions after that point were made in a hasty panic.

At least we would be together again… sort of. She settled about twenty minutes away from me and could only come to visit on days when she wasn't horribly exhausted by the one shitty, low-paying employer that would have her. She worked a lot of Uber in her off-hours which eventually destroyed her car so I had to lend her mine (she no longer Ubers because it's just not worth it). Disability kept turning her down which ended up being comically arbitrary (more on that later). Nevertheless, we were determined to try again. I began saving up with the intention of getting a bigger place for the both of us.

If you've been paying attention, you'll notice the trend has kind of a rhythm and it's about time for another "but then." This one goes by the name of Covid. Manifold and multitudinous are the ways in which this disease fucked our lives (took me out of commission for about a month and I haven't been right since) but my partner got the worst of it. Her health was in freefall. I don't want to get into specifics she might not appreciate me sharing but it was really bad. I mean literally, no joke, not exaggerating, "how THE FUCK are you even alive right now" levels of badness. Her hemoglobin was chronically in the near-fatal range and resisted all treatment for reasons it took NY doctors approximately two days to figure out. (FL doctors couldn't figure it out in all of two years.) It was determined that she needed a radical hysterectomy.

Naturally, covid came along and befucked that right the hell up. She was told that her surgery was an "elective procedure" and elective procedures were on hold due to the virus which was starting to ramp up at that point. So they pushed her surgery back into April. Then they pushed it back again. And again and again. And again until almost a year later. Her hemoglobin was so low (4.2) that they had to spend a whole day transfusing her before the surgery which finally took place on January 8th of this year.

Remember those "feeeeemale problems" I mentioned previously? Turns out that was about 41lbs of fibroids and endometrial stromal sarcoma which set up its own vascular system and was constantly exacerbating her pernicious anemia which had been resisting treatment for years because the sarcoma would basically just eat any transfusions and spit them right back out again.

But wait, there's more! A short time later, after a two-week recovery period, she passed out at work with a fever nearing 104. There had been symptoms leading up to this but she was afraid to take more time off from work. Turns out she had a softball-sized abscess at the site of the incision. A CT scan was ordered to determine how best to proceed.

If you've been paying attention and you have an IQ higher than the average rutabaga, you're now very well aware of the trend and you should be 100% sure there's a "but then" around the corner and in this case, the "but then" was the aforementioned CT scan which happened to incidentally pick up a few blurry bright spots in the lower lobe of her left lung.

Stage-4 metastatic lung cancer that migrated from the endometrial stromal sarcoma.

And not even a full week later, doctors found cancerous nodules in my mother's lung.

Yeah….

So here's the bottom line:

I can't keep coasting on commissions. I just cannot work fast enough or command prices high enough to keep this shitshowship afloat that way. Both JD and my mother have countdown clocks over their heads. When my mother dies, I will be responsible for two intellectually disabled adults and their child, who, by all accounts, is a normal, sweet, healthy little girl in every regard (some-fucking-how, magically, I guess). I could just walk away but I don't want to. No one else has stepped up to take care of them and I hate to think about what will happen to that child without me or my mother around.

I have three more commissions in my queue and after that, they will be closed indefinitely so I can focus on my Patreon. (More on that soon.) To be clear, I will still be putting out personal art. It may just be more sporadic until such a time as I ever find stability in my life.

Just finished my first rewatch of ATLA. Was it perfect? No. But damn if it didn't come close.
Also all caught up on Supernatural FINALLY... jeeesus. Man, that show went downhill and yet I still
keep watching it. Onto She-Ra now. I get way too invested in media aimed at demographics
half my age. ^___^;

I like to watch stuff on my second monitor while I work and I work usually around 12-14hr every day
so I blaze through a lot of stuff. Only took me a week to get through ATLA. Always open for
recommendations if you've got em.

Got Covid, it kicked my ass around for a month straight, I beat it, probably left me with
permanent lung damage but I'm alive so there's that I guess.

My SO got me Bloodborne which I thanked her for then quietly tucked it away because I
have the eye-hand coordination and reflexes of a blind T-rex and I knew I'd never be able to
"git gud" enough to beat it. FF a few years, I found it, dusted it off, decided to give it a try,
and I beat it! With the pimp cane no less. Absolutely stunning game. Really interesting. Playing
through it again with Ludwig's Holy Shit Blade. Like... damn. This sword is almost easy mode.

Several Patreon Projects in the works. Revamping old work as a form of catharsis. Opening a printshop
on redbubble soon. Not much else to report.

How about you guys? How you doin?

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The Most Terrible Weapon

Yesterday, as I was pouring myself a glass of milk, I witnessed, on the edge of my periphery, my brother in law bending over. And there, ladies and gentlemen, was buttcrack. My pupils dilated. The rest of the world seemed to disappear. There was only myself and the buttcrack. You see, I am deeply amused by buttcracks and if I spy one, it cannot go unremarked upon or unbothered. If I am very familiar with you and your personal boundaries, you might just end up with something in there; a lint roller, a shoe, a note that says "wash me", a sign that says "VACANCY", or something of equivalent ridiculousness. Knowing my BIL's proclivity towards dropping ice cubes down the shirts of unsuspecting victims…

I. COULDN'T. NOT.

Thus, I shut the refrigerator door ever so gently and pressed the pedal to summon forth a single ice cube. With the grace and surety of a panther, I slunk forth. A quick hook of a finger and the deed was done. "GYAH!" he cried, as the frigid cube disappeared into his underwear. I cackled away gleefully to observe the show from a safe distance, feeling quite wonderfully avenged for all those times he dropped an ice cube down my shirt. This was ten times better. I dropped one down his butt! "HAHAHA!" Oh, it was glorious, watching my ordinarily cumbersome ogre of a BIL transform into the most graceful belly dancer, whirling around in circles, gyrating, shimmying, desperately trying to excise the ice from his arse. Oh, it was marvelous.

It. Was. Marvelous…

Until I noticed the darkness beshadowing his eyes and the malicious rictus spreading across his face as he raised his hand, therein clasped a small, glistening object. It was in that moment I realized I had armed this malevolent cave troll with the most terrible of weapons….

BUTTCRACK ICE.

I casually took a sip of my milk thinking that if I did not run, if I did not betray any signs of mounting abject horror, perhaps he would not realize the magnitude of the weapon he had come to possess. But oh, he knew. He knew. And he gave chase so I did the only thing I could, the only option available to me at that horrific juncture…

I RAN LIKE A LITTLE BITCH.

Determined as I was to remain unacquainted with the unholy marriage of ice tainted by the horrors of my BIL's buttcrack, I may have slightly splashed a tiny bit of milk allover the goddamned everywhere.

My mother cried out; "Bobbie Jean! Put the damn glass down!"

"I can't!" I replied. "I'm afraid to stop moving!" For as cumbersome and ogrely as my deeply asthmatic BIL is, somehow, that mahfucker is still remarkably goddamn fast. No matter how far I ran, he always remained no more than a few feet behind me. I knew that I could not stop, not even for a moment, or I would be smote with the consequences of my own bad decision…

BUTTCRACK ICE.

And not just any buttcrack ice…

BROTHER IN LAW BUTTCRACK ICE!!! Full of poison and cooties and farticles and Gods only know what else.

I leapt over the couch into the realm of baby toys hoping that the Legos and assorted pokey objects might slow him down but there was no such luck. He hopped across the plastic minefield like an army pro over a path of tires. I circled the kitchen counter and he did the same. Around and around we went. I detoured this way, I dodged that way, I scrambled wherever there was an open space, hoping to put some distance between us but never did I gain anymore than a few scant inches at best. I vaulted over a cat, two dogs, and a toddler in rapid succession like an Olympian triathlete hurdling grand champion and he did the same without missing a beat.

I considered bolting towards the nearest door but it was locked and I knew that in the precious moment it took to unlock it, I would be smote. Another door lay at the end of a long hallway but he, with legs ten times longer than mine, would outrun me for sure. The only other exit? Blocked by a baby gate too tall for my dumpy ass to jump over. A great fear rose in me, the fear that I was condemned to run forever from the wielder of the mighty Hoarfrost Shard of Buttcrackery Doom, locked for all eternity in a game of buttcrack and mouse. To my ultimate shock, in a twist of fate I could not have foreseen as my thoughts were too busily occupied with desperately fleeing for my life, the whole affair was over in a blink when we both realized that the buttcrack ice had melted in his hand.

We stared at each other across the silent void. A smile curled on my lips. "HA!" I cackled maniacally. "HHAAAAA!" I was free! I had won! I laughed and danced in place. "Not today!" I howled. And that was when he took a big step forward...

Then slapped me upside the head...

With a handful of...

BUTTCRACK WATER.

There came, from the depths of my soul, a sound no human being should be capable of making, like a fleet of trains careening off-track through an orchestra of tortured power tools shrieking into a bouquet of trombones, like a chorus of Styrofoam, an eternity of nails on a cosmic chalkboard, and every fork in existence vigorously scraping odes to Chopin across an endless sea of plates. This was no mere loss. This was the loss of losses. I played a stupid game and won the grand stupid prize.

His victory having been achieved, my BIL crumpled to the floor in a half-dead, wheezing pile. Without hesitation, I flung myself into a certified hazmat decon shower and scrubbed myself from head to toe with sandpaper. When asked if he was dying, my BIL replied; "yes." When asked if it was worth dying for, he replied; " yes," without hesitation. He did not die but he did lie half-dead on the floor for upwards of fifteen minutes.

When asked if I learned my lesson, I replied; "yes. I learned perhaps the most important lesson one could possibly walk away with from all this; the importance of planning out petty vengeance more carefully lest it buttcrackfire on me. Next time, I'ma nail that motherfucker and run like hell right off the bat."